Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Julius Evola wrote:A religious factor is necessary as a background for a truly heroic conception of life, such as must be essential for our group. It is necessary to feel the evidence in ourselves that beyond this earthly life there is a higher life, because only someone who feels this way possesses a force that cannot be broken or overwhelmed. Only this kind of person will be capable of an absolute leap. When this feeling is lacking, challenging death and placing no value on his own life is possible only in sporadic moments of exaltation and in an unleashing of irrational forces; nor is there a discipline that can justify itself with a higher and autonomous significance in such an individual.

But this spirituality, which ought to be alive among our people, does not need the obligatory dogmatic formulations of a given religious confession. The lifestyle that must be led is not that of Catholic moralism, which aims at little more than a domestication of the human animal based on virtue. Politically, this spirituality can only nourish diffidence before everything that is an integral part of the Christian conception, like humanitarianism, equality, the principle of love, and forgiveness, instead of honour and justice. Certainly, if Catholicism were capable of making a capacity for high asceticism its own, and precisely on that basis to make of the faith the soul of an armed bloc of forces, almost like a resumption of the spirit of the best aspects of the Middle Ages of the Crusades —almost a new order of Templars that will be compact and inexorable against the currents of chaos, surrender, subversion, and the practical materialism of the modern world —in a case like this, and even if at minimum it held firm to the positions of the Syllabus, we would choose it without hesitation.

But as things stand —given, that is, the mediocre and essentially bourgeois and parochial level to which practically everything that is confessional religion has descended, and given its surrender to modernism and the growing opening of the post-conciliar Church of ‘aggiornamento’ [bringing up to date; modernization] to the Left —for our men the mere reference to spirit can suffice, precisely as evidence of a transcendent reality. We must invoke it to inoculate into our force another force, to feel in advance that our struggle is not only a political struggle, and to attract an invisible consecration upon a new world of men and leaders of men.
On one level of another, at some point or another, one has to make very real one's spiritual commitment, and in some way one has to translate understanding into deliberate activity and an ethic that reflects one's understanding. My impression of Kierkegaard, and of his renovated and rejuvenated relationship to the 'spirit' of his religion, and his existential link with 'higher reality', is that he carried this forward and carried forward many others too who resonated with his intent.

'A religious factor' does seem to be necessary for heroic activity of that level, and few can illustrate that better than Kierkegaard, though he certainly seemed torn by cross-purpose. In this sense it is the 'bourgeois domestication of virtue' of Wright's Catholicism (likey to be that) which requires animation by a more radical or perhaps determined (religious) spirit. While the 'enlightenment' gambit could not be called 'bourgeois domesticity', it can still be interrogated and its intent examined. It seems more than anything to involute to powerlessness and spiritual flacidity.

When faced with 'currents of chaos, surrender, subversion' one is forced to discover and enunciate that spirit which can operate against those.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:...While the 'enlightenment' gambit could not be called 'bourgeois domesticity', it can still be interrogated and its intent examined. It seems more than anything to involute to powerlessness and spiritual flacidity.
This is certainly a valid criticism but it's been given to Buddhism, many Hindu schools, much of the New Age schools and so on. Perhaps the actual beef lies more in a broader (but counter-) cultural analysis like Nietzsche examined the effect of "late" and "old" cultures, with religions always being a container for its symbolic expression. In as far this "enlightenment gambit" being examined is part of a broader "cultural malaise" (old age), such conclusion seems inescapable. The task for every philosopher then is to elevate himself above the constrains of the culture and times which gave rise to him. But the will to philosophy... might need a certain type of fertile ground, a certain decay to even have a chance to flourish? So it seems I'm challenging your specific order of cause and effect.
When faced with 'currents of chaos, surrender, subversion' one is forced to discover and enunciate that spirit which can operate against those.
Spirit might as well be defined by this, which goes further than just "forcing". And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. This might express that consciousness always lives at the surface, that tiny pinnacle which operates "against" it all as much as being its cover -- where order can shine and imagery keepts hinting. This is where it needs to "operate against those", to produce for its own sake.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:...While the 'enlightenment' gambit could not be called 'bourgeois domesticity', it can still be interrogated and its intent examined. It seems more than anything to involute to powerlessness and spiritual flacidity.
This is certainly a valid criticism but it's been given to Buddhism, many Hindu schools, much of the New Age schools and so on. Perhaps the actual beef lies more in a broader (but counter-) cultural analysis like Nietzsche examined the effect of "late" and "old" cultures, with religions always being a container for its symbolic expression. In as far this "enlightenment gambit" being examined is part of a broader "cultural malaise" (old age), such conclusion seems inescapable. The task for every philosopher then is to elevate himself above the constrains of the culture and times which gave rise to him. But the will to philosophy... might need a certain type of fertile ground, a certain decay to even have a chance to flourish? So it seems I'm challenging your specific order of cause and effect.
When faced with 'currents of chaos, surrender, subversion' one is forced to discover and enunciate that spirit which can operate against those.
Spirit might as well be defined by this, which goes further than just "forcing". And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. This might express that consciousness always lives at the surface, that tiny pinnacle which operates "against" it all as much as being its cover -- where order can shine and imagery keepts hinting. This is where it needs to "operate against those", to produce for its own sake.
"Might" suggest, yes because your view begs the question: If there is always present the tension of "being against"/being the cover for, how can there be a movement upon the face of the waters, waters implying a tension/friction-free movement. Wouldn't such a spirit of God move upon the face of gravel or even hit an eternal wall?

Why keep surface consciousness producing tension is a valid question both from the perspective of desiring its continuation (tension is valued, tension = life) and from the perspective of desiring its end (tension is not valued, the ending of tension = life). What is obvious (this board is evidence) is that both perspectives end up confronting one another, are dependent on one another. Perhaps what it comes down to is that whatever direction one attaches their identity/purpose "to" is "what happens" for them (causal and effect as per the law of Identity).
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

One thing seems clear, and this comes up all the time here, is that various individuals are working hard to establish their sense of 'absolute reality', and having established that, be in a position to be able to make 'absolute statements' and the sort of Grand Pronouncements which are often made and which are, in my opinion, part-and-parcel of the attractivenesss offered here. Is it really 'enlightenment' that is discussed? It has occurred to me that perhaps this is a false understanding. You'd certainly get it reading the surface. So, 'enlightenment' is not really the objective, and the objective it seems to me is seeing clearly 'what is' and being able to describe it and to enunciate it.

These are, of course, primary metaphysical designations and as I have said my overall interest is in getting to the bottom of the operative metaphysic. It is my present view that to say 'We are in an age of chaos' is really to make staments about a topsy-turvy relationship to a metaphysic: a guiding metaphysic, a genuine and visceral sense that 'This is how it is' which allows one to say 'This is what I must do'.

Now, it has to be stated that now, in our present, people generally (I mean the sort of people we all might know, those that are part of our world), are in a conceptual disarray. It seems to me that one could linger over this issue for a good long time in order to gain clarity about the profundity of this disorder. Disorder might mean 'no order'. And I think that one of the characteristics of Homo modernus is just that there is really no overall, no encompassing, no articulated metaphysical grasp of Where we are, What we are, Who we are, and What we are to do.

How do 'we' visualize our Cosmos?

Here in this forum-space, I suggest, one encounters some folks who are working in this sense against Chaos, against Disorder, and (thinking of Seeker since I have been interacting with him) are quite taken with a project that they have defined. What is that project? I would say, based on my present thinking, that this question has to be lingered over, even if those who are engaged in the self-defined project may not feel it necessary to do this. In this sense 'the mirror' has to be turned around to examine those who seem most interested in holding up mirrors (to a larger society with which they seem to be in stark and open discord and even rebellion).

So, Evola and people of that Traditionalist school, at least in my view, function within a metaphysic (defining a cycle of chaos, surrender, subversion) which allows for one to 1) conceptually map oneself within a metaphysic, and 2) define precise courses of action in relation to the subverted present.

This quite obviously has a great deal to do with the original QRS project, and reference to these fine fellows cannot and should not ever cease. There is no doubt of any sort that they desired to toss up, to propose, an 'alternative metaphysic'. A confrontational and an activist's metaphysic. True as well that their model (at least David's and Dan's) became linked to what can only and should only be described as neo-Buddism: a syncretism in fact between Western 'rationalist' modes of thought (certain approaches in philosophy but too a scientific-minded approach to 'facticity') and a romantic appreciation of Buddhism, tinged with a naughty zennish roguishness.

I suggest that this is all front, deception, and in many ways a convoluted lie. It could be a fun lie, and a lie that captures one for a long long time, but it is in essence a lie. It is not 'truthful'. I say it is important to 'see through' this deception and, doing so, examine the suggested or proposed metaphysic. I say 'It is not ours'.

This opens or reopens what is the only conversation I can conceive of having. I do not agree (at all) that threads should be locked and that style of moderation can become quickly dangerous to open ideas. The same conversation will simply appear and reappear again and again.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Can't remember where I copied this from, but it seems to have some relevance here:
Here, too, philosophy has aped the sciences by fostering a culture that might be called “the genius contest.” Philosophic activity devolved into a contest to prove just how clever one can be in creating or destroying arguments. Today, a hyperactive productivist churn of scholarship keeps philosophers chained to their computers. Like the sciences, philosophy has largely become a technical enterprise, the only difference being that we manipulate words rather than genes or chemicals. Lost is the once common-sense notion that philosophers are seeking the good life — that we ought to be (in spite of our failings) model citizens and human beings. Having become specialists, we have lost sight of the whole. The point of philosophy now is to be smart, not good. It has been the heart of our undoing.
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

You really need to read what you write again.

"I suggest that this is all front, deception, and in many ways a convoluted lie. It could be a fun lie, and a lie that captures one for a long long time, but it is in essence a lie. It is not 'truthful'."

No explanation whatsoever, no reasoning of how you came to this conclusion, no argument against any specific claims,- you don't even mention specifically where you find fault or to which ideas you refer- no elaboration. Just that "it" is a "convoluted lie".

if you read the post you'll notice there isn't a single line of reasoning. You refer to people and ideas so generally, speak about our proposed metaphysics, and all of a sudden the post changes to "I think it's all a deception!", without anything to bridge the void which lead you to this conclusion.

Then, repeat post X100.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

I am always really interested in your use of these emphatic, teacher-terms: "You really need [thus and such]; You really need to see this, or understand this, or to undertake the practice of [thus and such]".

If I were you I'd stop and linger over the evangelical mood that seems to animate and 'possess' you ...
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:This quite obviously has a great deal to do with the original QRS project, and reference to these fine fellows cannot and should not ever cease. There is no doubt of any sort that they desired to toss up, to propose, an 'alternative metaphysic'. A confrontational and an activist's metaphysic. True as well that their model (at least David's and Dan's) became linked to what can only and should only be described as neo-Buddism: a syncretism in fact between Western 'rationalist' modes of thought (certain approaches in philosophy but too a scientific-minded approach to 'facticity') and a romantic appreciation of Buddhism, tinged with a naughty zennish roguishness.
Seeker wrote:No explanation whatsoever, no reasoning of how you came to this conclusion, no argument against any specific claims,- you don't even mention specifically where you find fault or to which ideas you refer- no elaboration. Just that "it" is a "convoluted lie".
It seems to me quite possible - probable in fact (though 'absolute statements' are problematic!) - that you are as wrapped up as 'they' are in a deception (yet I do not say that deceptions have no useful function) that you cannot entertain as a possibility either a detailed accounting (of convolution, of lying), or general allusions. Also, I do not think you have a sufficient intellectual foundation to be able to grasp what I am getting at with talk about 'metaphysics' and 'metaphysical platform'. I think you'd have to have a greater understanding of the shifts that have occurred in metaphysical vision, or the falling away from a ruling metaphysic, to understand the general condition in our culture(s), to then be able to entertain and to talk about the attempt by these fellows to propose a 'workable metaphysic' with a radically contrary ethic.

This is not easy material, and it is not a critique that can be successfully carried out in one or two paragraphs. As I understand you from what you write, though I do not suggest that I have you all figured out, you are emblematic of a man who has been captured by a religious experience (a 'vision' of sorts that resulted in a shift in view of things) but who has very little intellectual structure to be able to analyse and to speak about it. Yet, you have a huge amount of will and you operate within an attitude of 'certainty' and egoic self-declaration. I'd say that this combo: a 'religious' insight, coupled with large will, coupled with illiteracy and lack of intellectual preparation, is a recipe for disaster. But I do not mean that you are either a 'disaster' or are heading toward disaster. The problem is really a broad cultural problem: a problem of our age and our present.

The question I ask is: Can it be remediated? And if so, how?

Because I come at this from a critical perspective (and let's agree that 'criticism is divine', meaning, a very important skill and undertaking) which seeks to bring to the table ways of looking at such a Project (to describe the QRS Project is a good way to put it), I have never gotten a very good reception. This is understandable.

I have this Nietzsche quote pinned up over my desk:
  • "What is familiar is what we are used to; and what we are used to is most difficult to 'know' - that is, to see as a problem; that is, to see as strange, as distant, as 'outside us".
It is not - not really - that I need to read again what I write, but that you need to be yourself a better reader. To be such a reader is a project of self-education. This is what is likely most disconcerting about my approach. Let us be entirely frank though. The important work of defining a metaphysic and proposing ethics is not a task that should be left to someone, like you, or to any member of this forum, who is not willing and also able (or interested in becoming able) to 'really see' what is going on in our present and what is at stake.

'To lie' in the sense that I (obviously!) mean is to make Grand Pronouncements about very important matters when one is not qualified to do so. That is deception and lying.

At the very least to come at 'all this' afresh by saying We need to look at the entire platform all over again, is not a destructive proposal. It is in fact a necessary and a productive point from which to start. I start from the declaration that 'we are all' attempting to describe a metaphysic which is accurate, and then to define an ethic for activity in this world based on our metaphysical grasp. This gives a great deal - to you for example - while it also demands more of you.

I am nearly completely immune to the adverse reacion I receive in defining this project or counter-project. I choose simply to plow on because ... I find this all very interesting and worthwhile.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

I propose the way of faith in Life Itself.

A metaphysic? Just the opposite, instead, a cure for the disease.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Such an interesting statement, Pam! It is not as simple as it sounds. If there were such a thing as 'way of faith in Life itself', there would be no discussion of much of anything, would there? One would only have to refer, somehow, to 'life itself' for all outlines, all directives, all correctives.

And the only critique that could be made, the only deviation, the only 'sin' in this sense, would be a failure to grasp what 'Life' is.

But simple statements might require the most deconstruction. What is 'the way'? What do you mean by 'faith'? And then (to ask the most obvious question) what do you mean by 'Life'.

In order to answer you'd have to define an ontology through a hermeneutical endeavour which, by its very nature, would be transcendental! (Insofar as looking down on Life in that way is a transcendental act, the action of a transcendent spectator).

I suggest this is 'metaphysics'. ;-)

A creature that thinks about thinking, and about Being, and about things, and also historically, and futuristically, is a creature engaged in a transcendental endeavour, since 'transcendent' means 'beyond' or 'above' existence. It can only be arrived at by a conscious person and no other creature (that we know of) thinks in these terms. Man's domain is, therefor, the domain of the transcendental, the metaphysical, the imagined, the revealed, the revelatory. How shall one interrogate therefor *that*?

'Faith in Life itself', if it is the 'faith' that an animal has (unreflexive certaintly that the reality it exists in will/is continuing) would not necessarily be a step up, would it? It would be a step down, toward unconsciousness.

But I don't want you to imagine I do not understand a vastness that saturates your *simple* statement. That too is 'metaphysics'!
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: If there is always present the tension of "being against"/being the cover for, how can there be a movement upon the face of the waters, waters implying a tension/friction-free movement.
The water just implied a surface (of things, world, existence, any thing you imagine to have depth). It's always moving but that might be relative to the spirit. Of course, every dualism breaks down when picking it apart! The spirit is the very scratching of surface if not surface itself. Always imagining depth, always moved by some secret stirring. The friction is also the start of any construct.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

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Alex: Such an interesting statement, Pam! It is not as simple as it sounds. If there were such a thing as 'way of faith in Life itself', there would be no discussion of much of anything, would there? One would only have to refer, somehow, to 'life itself' for all outlines, all directives, all correctives.

Since life is the source of all things, it is logical that life is all that is needed for directives and correctives. No outlines required.
And the only critique that could be made, the only deviation, the only 'sin' in this sense, would be a failure to grasp what 'Life' is.
Everyone fails to grasp what life is. It is the wise one who comes to this conclusion.
But simple statements might require the most deconstruction. What is 'the way'? What do you mean by 'faith'? And then (to ask the most obvious question) what do you mean by 'Life'.
Faith = trust. Life needs no definition, you are alive, I am alive.
In order to answer you'd have to define an ontology through a hermeneutical endeavour which, by its very nature, would be transcendental! (Insofar as looking down on Life in that way is a transcendental act, the action of a transcendent spectator).
I answered without referring to any of those things
I suggest this is 'metaphysics'. ;-)
It appears as if you believe it is possible to be a transcendent spectator, like an absolute God managing Its things. Faith/trust in Life or God is to be a child or Son of God, it is to be managed.
A creature that thinks about thinking, and about Being, and about things, and also historically, and futuristically, is a creature engaged in a transcendental endeavour, since 'transcendent' means 'beyond' or 'above' existence. It can only be arrived at by a conscious person and no other creature (that we know of) thinks in these terms. Man's domain is, therefor, the domain of the transcendental, the metaphysical, the imagined, the revealed, the revelatory. How shall one interrogate therefor *that*?
When one gives up on trying to grasp the ungraspable (existence/God/Life) by trying to go beyond or above that which cannot be gone beyond or above, they stand right where they are, of existence.
'Faith in Life itself', if it is the 'faith' that an animal has (unreflexive certaintly that the reality it exists in will/is continuing) would not necessarily be a step up, would it? It would be a step down, toward unconsciousness.

Not at all. To be of existence is to be of the Word, it is to stand in the transcendent and to live of the transcendent. To do so requires faith, not metaphysics.
But I don't want you to imagine I do not understand a vastness that saturates your *simple* statement. That too is 'metaphysics'!
The concept of 'vastness' is problematic for the child or Son of God since he or she is immersed intimately in everything It is. 'Simple' is a blessing.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:
movingalways wrote: If there is always present the tension of "being against"/being the cover for, how can there be a movement upon the face of the waters, waters implying a tension/friction-free movement.
The water just implied a surface (of things, world, existence, any thing you imagine to have depth). It's always moving but that might be relative to the spirit. Of course, every dualism breaks down when picking it apart! The spirit is the very scratching of surface if not surface itself. Always imagining depth, always moved by some secret stirring. The friction is also the start of any construct.
A secret stirring yes, friction as the start of any construct, no. The constructs of joy and happiness (perhaps love as well) do not seek cause, therefore, are without friction.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

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Well, I could say that each 'declarative statement' that you have made here is the front-facing end of a vast metaphysical understanding, yet the way you present your *vision* and *understanding* it is not really discussable since your terms are, in this sense, absolute.

However, I understand that you are asserting a platform of faith, and I also think that faith works. Since we all require a 'metaphysical dream' with which and within which to dream our way through this existence, any particular condensation seems to work. Except there are some condensations which are so flawed that they can't, or don't, function well.

The 'faith' position is I think the one that each person has to carve out for themselves. It is the one that functions prior to our 'well thought-out metaphysic', this much I think we agree on. That is why it is a dangerous enterprise to 'undermine a man's faith'.

However .....

To say that 'life is the source of all things' is not such a simple statement. It is a truism naturally but a bit tautological. 'Life is the source of life' does not mean much.

In my view, I return to Nabokov's interesting statement: We can get closer and closer to a definition of 'reality' but we can never fully arrive at it, because there is always 'another horizon'.

But when you are riding a bicycle, you know, you are just riding it and you don't really have to think about it that much ...
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

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"We all require a metaphysical dream with which and within which to dream our way through this existence."

Perfect, so where's the disagreement? Is this not an "absolute" statement? What I really propose is the theory of no theory in regard to the absolute, basically, the recognition that these are just "metaphysical dreams". When one no longer claims that such dreams are absolutes, then truth is elucidated as the absence of the ignorance that they are only dreams. Absence of delusion is the 'territory' in which absolute understanding resides, it is not a domain of knowing and believing in some fantasy, it is the action of recognizing the prevalence of "metaphysical dreams". It is in a sense the 'transcendence' of ignorant belief.

You're extremely deluded, you constantly contradict yourself when you make absolute claims and then say that nothing can be known absolutely. Perhaps you're just playing childish "games", you think you're in some kind of competition or debate where you can't give any leeway for fear of repercussion. Fot example, any person who isn't being deceptive or isn't mad would agree that we all absolutely know that "There is thought". You argue for the sake of argument, not for truth or wisdom. You are "the problem", one who perpetuates and supports ignorance. (To dismiss, to ignore.)
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

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Also, to be illiterate or intellectually unprepared does not mean "Hasn't read the same books as Alex". And you claimed that I was the one who attempted to work for an absolute unassailable position? Stoopid. You are apparently incapable of adhering to even the most basic conventions of a discussion. Perhaps you're akin to the gambler, you want to lose on some level, you want to get kicked out, ridiculed or banned. A perfect example of "the immoveable object" that is extreme ignorance.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

If I understand you right, you are saying the following:

There is not theory about 'the absolute'. 'The Absolute' is. But people have 'metaphysical dreams' which, I gather, they absolutize. In doing that they step into error and 'delusion'.

But one can arrive at an understanding that these 'dreams' are not absolutes and elucidated truth is that 'they are only dreams'.

Absolute understanding is knowledge of the above (and this knowledge the wise have).

It recognises everything outside of this understanding (that is 'metaphysical dreams') as 'knowing and believing in fantasy'. Absolute knowledge, and hence wisdom, is knowing and understanding that people are (if I can put it this way) in the grip of their fantasies, insofar as they are outside of the understanding that you elucidate (elucidated truth).

Transcendence is likely to mean: transcendence of these ignorant beliefs.

I think this encapsulates, though it restates, your understanding.
____________________________

I think I understand quite well what you are saying (if indeed I have restated it correctly, you will of course let me know).

I'd have to say that - clearly - this is a viewpoint with intentionality. It is an attempt to 'order the world of confusion and chaos' by discovering and uncovering a 'deluded psychology'.

I think we employ (if you'll permit the trun of phrase) such metaphysical view when, for example, we peek in on a Pentecostal religious service. (There is a Pentecostal church up the street from my house so I think of this as an example). Surely this 'metaphysical dream', this visualisation of self in relation to God, is deluded, and surely there must be a sort of cleansing, or awakening, or perhaps sobering up from this? And if you and I see this, and if you and I recognise sobriety, we understand outrightly or tacitly that it can be - and should be - applied as active understanding to ... everything.

I think that this is the gist of your philosophical and existential platform.

A clarification: There is a difference between suggesting a functional truth, or a truth that seems to operate in our realm, and making 'absolute statements'. So, you are wrong to say that I make (similar to you and to 'you') absolute statements. Overall I have many questions about the stance that you have outlined, and which I encapsulated, and my endeavor is to see how these ideas and notions function.

Though I do recognise the value and the necessity of 'clarification of thinking', as well as the attraction for a platform of clear seeing of a universal or absolute sort, I'd also say that it is a recipe for nullifaction of intentionality in living. It is the posture for a fairly strict quiessence and quietism.

Though you see me (and the world I'd imagine, and this 'by definition') as 'deluded' (extremely so) and playing childish games, and in a competition (etc.) I don't feel inclined to agree with you. I only suggest this as another possible perspective for you.

Truth and wisdom ... are in my mind at least ... still open for definition. Though I can certainly say that 'drunken insobriety' of living and delirium (and I have ways of understanding and defining this, like you) are 'mistakes' requiring rectification, I am differently oriented (to all appearances) than you are.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

I would define 'literacy' not as 'having read the same books as I have', bt as having (much) more awareness of 'Western context': what has made us us. I see self as a historical entity.

While I do think that a 'faith position' (and this is how I interpret Pam's overall position) is necessary and, well-designed, is very functional for men (and for a man - for people - generally), I think that we are in an age of dramatic and really rather strange and overwheling revision.

Though it is not for everyone, literacy in my view would give a person a better capacity to grasp the philosophical and existential questions and problems being examined here. A lack of 'literacy' will limit the conversation or perhaps parochialize it.

I see you (and our Founders) as parochial intellects.

These conversational exchanges, when they render fruit, do so over longish exchanges. It is more often in the sweep of the conversation that perspectives can be developed. It takes time.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote:The constructs of joy and happiness (perhaps love as well) do not seek cause, therefore, are without friction.
Aha, you seem to think here about a whole other meaning when talking about "friction". You are imagining frictions to be some quality of experience which can be abandoned, like suffering and especially the notion of dukkha, which captures also all the stress, friction and unsteadiness one might experience through life, physically as well as mentally.

The way I'm suggesting these terms can work is to see them, metaphysically, as integral part of life and existence. Even more so, things come into existence only through struggle, like Heraclitus proclaimed. This is thus not just about how one feels or assigns moral value, but how existence, formation and ultimately how construction follows through. This includes any formation of self and its pinnacles of self-reflection, truth desire and unbinding. Which then by definition would be the most stressful of them all.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

To 'be in this world' is to stand in interrelated being and relationship with everything in and part of this world. This places all emphasis on the unique features of humanness, and that unique feature is, essentially, a sort of amphibiousness: we are, like animals and plants, rooted in the material and biological, and yet we *live* in a mental, spiritual, visionary, imagined 'world' which we seem to feel comfortable, in this conversation, referring to as 'metaphysical dream'. We are mental-spiritual creatures therefor with a vastly complex relationship (to all) which, in reality, we do not seem to turn around and examine. This relationship extends from us in the present, psychically, out to all beings who share this space, but also back through time and history to all who have gone before, and into the future and all who will come.

This interrelatedness is vastly complex and it would seem that no other creature (that we know of) exists in this way.

This interrelatedness in its unfathomably complex relationship implicates us in an active relationship and an active engagement with 'the world', not in the strict sense of worldliness but as a creature (as I sometimes say) in an incarnated reality. What this is, what this means, and how this came about - I suggest - we have no idea about. But we know the 'world' insofar as we are in it. This is 'reality' and it is, in this sense, unfathomable, incomprehensible. It seems to be true that we can get 'closer and closer' to some useful definitions but that we can not ever lay our hands on a precise 'definition' (for want of a better word).

Because being here is ipso facto engagement with *here* in all the senses of interrelationship, the notion of detachment and separation is, truthfully, a misapprehension if it is not a deception and a lie. Radical detachment, attractive and comforting, is not in truth possible for us. To be here is to be implicated.

Detachment through elaborate mental trickery, or through 'metaphysical dreams' that allow one a detached, non-implicated posture, and to avoid 'responsibilities', or to deny and negate one's historical relationship, and in general a failure to engage oneself with 'the world', is a form of false intellectual distancing. The mind in this sense leaves 'the body' behind. It is an illusion and yet it is a comfort. When pain is overwhelming one retreats away from 'engagement' to neurotic distance.

It is in this sense that I would speak of deception and lying.

Since detachment (Buddhist, neo-Buddhist for example) is not really possible, one is better off making the effort to consider deeply the authenticity and honesty of one's total relationship within the *temporality* of one's *incarnation* (a fancy way of saying 'now and in the life one lives').

One cannot dissolve the theatre (of being in this world and being in any world), one can only purify one's theatrical performance or, to push the metaphor, rehearse better, more interesting, and more meaningful plays.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

movingalways: The constructs of joy and happiness (perhaps love as well) do not seek cause, therefore, are without friction
.
Diebert: Aha, you seem to think here about a whole other meaning when talking about "friction". You are imagining frictions to be some quality of experience which can be abandoned, like suffering and especially the notion of dukkha, which captures also all the stress, friction and unsteadiness one might experience through life, physically as well as mentally.
Your view that stress, dissatisfaction and friction are an integral part of existence explains why you understand it cannot be abandoned and why I understand it can. I explain further below.
The way I'm suggesting these terms can work is to see them, metaphysically, as integral part of life and existence. Even more so, things come into existence only through struggle, like Heraclitus proclaimed. This is thus not just about how one feels or assigns moral value, but how existence, formation and ultimately how construction follows through. This includes any formation of self and its pinnacles of self-reflection, truth desire and unbinding. Which then by definition would be the most stressful of them all.
At the root of our differences and correct me if I have interpreted yours incorrectly is that where you interpret consciousness as being the (same as the) totality/causality, I do not. Instead, logic reveals to me that consciousness is an effect of the totality/causality. And because it is an effect, it cannot determine truthfully causes or reasons (the source of its dukkha or stress). And that this delusion or ignorance is corrected (ended) by no longer seeking causes (reasons) with the effect of this detachment from seeking causes being that of joy, happiness, bliss. Using Buddhist terms this bliss is nirvana leading to parinirvana, the end even of bliss, ascension 'into' the causality or totality.

This view of consciousness as being an effect of a hidden causality/totality (to the reasoning intellect) is not about how I feel about things (although feeling the struggle of distinction interpretation acutely was the beginning of wisdom attainment), rather, it is the logic of cause and effect at work.

Why do you desire to keep stress and dissatisfaction?
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

Addendum: Stress, dissatisfaction and friction is the mind-body experience of duality (reasoning) which is released gradually as one becomes accustomed to abiding in unity consciousness or A = A. Contradiction is neither good or bad or positive or negative, instead is the necessary or purposeful wisdom principle of spiritual identity awakening.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:If I understand you right, you are saying the following:

There is not theory about 'the absolute'. 'The Absolute' is. But people have 'metaphysical dreams' which, I gather, they absolutize. In doing that they step into error and 'delusion'.

But one can arrive at an understanding that these 'dreams' are not absolutes and elucidated truth is that 'they are only dreams'.

Absolute understanding is knowledge of the above (and this knowledge the wise have).

It recognises everything outside of this understanding (that is 'metaphysical dreams') as 'knowing and believing in fantasy'. Absolute knowledge, and hence wisdom, is knowing and understanding that people are (if I can put it this way) in the grip of their fantasies, insofar as they are outside of the understanding that you elucidate (elucidated truth).

Transcendence is likely to mean: transcendence of these ignorant beliefs.

I think this encapsulates, though it restates, your understanding.
These metaphysical dreams are very real, so living with them is not necessarily delusional. As you put it, we all work out of the context of 'metaphysical dreams', and I also agree that this is necessary and unavoidable. Yes, the attempt to 'absolutize' what, for example, is merely a temporary or functional idea/platform, is a form of delusion. As movingalways has done with her belief that she is 'moving toward the mind at rest', or a "being finished with consciousness of form".

Then you said this:
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: "For example, we peek in on a Pentecostal religious service. (There is a Pentecostal church up the street from my house so I think of this as an example). Surely this 'metaphysical dream', this visualisation of self in relation to God, is deluded, and surely there must be a sort of cleansing, or awakening, or perhaps sobering up from this?"

Why is there a question mark at the end of that sentence? How one can write so much and all the while subtly step the line between making a statement and not making a statement is mind-blowing. Those who believe in a personal god and attend a Pentecostal religious service, during which they pray to god, are in fact delusional. It's not a question, it's not 'my view', it's a fact, and only an idiot (such as yourself) would avoid clearly stating this truth. Why? Because if you were to admit the undeniable truth of our ability to know things with absolute certainty, it would clarify that the very core of your critique is flawed.

To clarify I should re-state that "Ignoring, "side-stepping", dismissing" is the root of ignorance. There are many wisdoms which are readily accessible, yet people such as yourself have some aversion to "agreement", no matter how obvious the fact, "agreement" is some kind of threat, because ignorance does whatever possible to avoid wisdom. I could be holding a knife to your dumb-ass, claim that stabbing you would cause pain, and you'd say "Now it might, but, I'm not sure about that, it may be possible". You are the very embodiment of ignorance, the cause of "the problem", if any "problem" is to be spoken of. (Suffering, violence, war, poverty, etc). You disguise your time-wasting gibberish with your vocabulary (which you think makes you intelligent), when really what you write includes little else but vague generalizations, regurgitations and some endless need to listen to yourself talk. You simply do not have the "love of wisdom" required, and you lack regard for those methods which lead to wisdom, such as independent contemplation and introspection. You are essentially 'unconscious' and unable to reason clearly, thus an 'awakening' or enlightenment is indeed possible. It is very possible that you have never even spent a day actually 'thinking for yourself', let alone seeking wisdom.

"Though I do recognize the value and the necessity of 'clarification of thinking'... but"

"Though I can certainly say that 'drunken insobriety' of living and delirium are 'mistakes' requiring rectification... but"

There's a quick solution to this disagreement, which is that you sit in a room alone without distraction and think about a few things. Unfortunately your response to this solution is:
"Though I can certainly see the possible benefit of doing so... but..no, no I won't participate in that sort of mindless activity, I won't even try it.". My claim is easily testable, easily checked, easily verifiable, and you've got plenty of time.

"Truth and wisdom... but... are still open for definition". So who needs those? Ignorance leads away from wisdom through any method possible, it goes so far as to demean the most simple of knowledge by complaining about the very nature of language, which is unavoidably inexact, as if this makes it simple statements of truth less valuable.

I would deem it ignorance on my part to act as if I believed you were of sound of mind, or even as if you were able to comprehend any truths which work against you. You're an unreasonable, evasive, uneducated, confused, and immature dolt who's arrogance is sourced from "the best" schooling and an unnecessarily wide use of vocabulary, the main factors holding up your illusion that you are intelligent. Repeat unreasonable shit a thousand different ways and it remains shit.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Seeker wrote:These metaphysical dreams are very real, so living with them is not necessarily delusional. As you put it, we all work out of the context of 'metaphysical dreams', and I also agree that this is necessary and unavoidable. Yes, the attempt to 'absolutize' what, for example, is merely a temporary or functional idea/platform, is a form of delusion. As movingalways has done with her belief that she is 'moving toward the mind at rest', or a "being finished with consciousness of form".
Not so fast there, Revered Master. This is a more complex and serious issue than you are (I think) able to grasp. And as I have been saying one has to 'linger' over the question and find out (isolate, explain) what is really there.

First, it is not at all an issue or a problem that 'thought' be thought about and it never has been so. It all has to do with how 'you' operate ideas; how you put them to use. That is why instead of starting with an examination of the 'metaphysics of thought' we must deal on the problem of 'parochial intellectualism' and 'philistine spirituality'. I have gotten the sense that you don't like the term spirituality yet I think it is a good and necessary one which yet requires some definition.

I had been thinking over this issue the last few days and came up with this (in a notepad):
  • Philistine spirituality: A low-brow invasion of religious and spiritual value-zones by unprepared dolts who invariably muck it up. But mucking up is part of the efforts and general activities of the lowbrow cultural termite and is a symptom of decay, degeneracy and the failure (moral, ethical) to locate *real value*. This is an issue of perception, appreciation and understanding. A spiritual philistine 'travels second-class with a third-class ticket' (to borrow from Nabokov).

    The 'enlightenment gambit', because it is a ploy, a neurotic attempt to control life through a mental trick, is as perverse as psychotherapy and Freudianism: the use of a mental lens that reduces life to formula, through a formulaic pattern of thought, a convention. This is carried out so ungracefully, with no awareness of beauty, nor the moving austerity of, say, a Zen tea ritual, and is symptomatic of a man's destroyed relationship to *authenticity*. Which again renders this perceptual choice, this doctrinal stance, a form of self-seduction.
You can see that I have a very different 'starting point' as it were. But I do think that the reason why I'd start with this needs better explanation. I have very obviously made allusions to the results of reductive, formulaic thinking, and in this case to a neo-Buddhistic imposition (as it must be called) which has captured you. I know that it is nearly intolerable that I place this focus on you, that I put you under the microscope, because with this reductive dogma you see yourself as the one with the powerful analytic tool, and thus you are outside of analysis. This has always pissed off the Holy Rollers but, as I say, it just has to be done to really get somewhere when we examine *spirituality' and the very important question of what we do with it.

Remember that the title of this high-born thread is: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion. To confront is of course to begin to remediate. This takes time.
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It may help you to understand my viewpoint (say in repect to deists given that I brought up Pentecostals) if you understand the following: Because we all operate within a mental structure, a 'metaphysical dream' that is part-and-parcel of our limited, biological, incarnated, very imperfect 'machinery of being', we will always operate with a defective organisation of understanding. If this is true for one of 'them' it is quite likely that it is true for you (and for me and for all of us).

Be that as it may, I say that we need to step back from the specific, say, condemnation of an 'imperfect understanding', and understand that 'being-in-the-world', and being in this World, is exactly the place where exactly such life is lived. How many lives have lived in this *space*? I wonder how this could be calculated. In any case 'billions and billions' of beings who come into Being and have a totally private and individual experience of 'life', and who then check-out, like a snowflake landing on water.

I am much more interested in simply seeing what happens here, and in defining this 'World', then I am in condemning how a person makes their way through it. Moreover, I am interested in their consciousness as a tool of creativity, as artwork in fact. It is helpful to think of the most bizarre possibilities of life-lived, and to compare them, in order to see what I mean about variation of experience.

Now, you say that the possibility of a personal God or relationship is 'factually' incorrect. To the degree that all your contempt rises up in you and against that idea. This is so much a part of the doctrinal tenets of the QRStian *space* that it is illustrative. In fact you have no idea at all about anything at all, and you can make no definitive statement of any sort on these questions. The reason? You have no idea at all 'where you are' nor 'why you are' in this place (this 'World'). You seem to have been self-seduced by a doctrine that you feel especially attracted to and which appears to you sound and 'logical', but I think you'd get more and better mileage (out of thought) if you'd laugh at your own certainties. To be in this space, and to move through it, is totally beyond your capacity to define (as it is beyond everyone's). We stand in relation to Being, we do not command it.

That by the way ...
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:In fact you have no idea at all about anything at all, and you can make no definitive statement of any sort on these questions. The reason? You have no idea at all 'where you are' nor 'why you are' in this place (this 'World').
So we're all in that same boat unless you can provide a list of people who can tell us "where we are" and "why we're here"?

Then again, you just managed to tell us where we are (in a situation of not-knowing) so it cannot be that hard to say someting.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Those are ancillary questions and concerns. As is clear - or should be clear - to everyone, everything that occurs in these conversations has only to do with the tenets and predicates of each opinionator. The conversations go rather wonky rather often because each person is 'functioning' from their given tenets while the other does the same from his. And then one nutcase accuses the other nutcase of 'illogic' and other foul diseases of the soul.

So, it is useful to get down to brass tacks. Just a few posts up the Nimble Seeker layed out possibly the core of his predicate-set. But I note that it is really not very much of one insofar as it could be reduced nearly biologically to a statement a neurologist might make. But I would say that it allows for no prepositional metaphysic; no sense at all 'why' things exist rather than not; or why they exist in this particular way.

So, I find it interesting that he notes that he is in a 'World' with certain characteristics but, it would seem, that a sort of ontological nihilism operates in it. It seems to me that - quite clearly in fact - his represents the 'imposition' of a metaphysical dream, which is also to say a story about things. I just want to get more clear about that. My endeavor is to get to the bottom of the predicate-systems that we operate with.

Now, you know as well as I do that I am pursuing a critical tack here and I have within the bead of my high-powered rifle this odd creature of thought I'd label 'neo-Buddhism' as a peculiar outcome of late modernity, but specifically one for a group of undereducated, but quite willful and insistent blokes who have set themselves the task of rectifying the errors of human life with their dogma and their program.

Like flies to a sugared web the small flying fry land in this sticky webbiness and preach a form of salvation. Don't you find this at all interesting? The salvific mood is still there, the redemption-dogma, the reduced formulae of revelation and rhetoric, except (unhappy face inserted here) the result is decimation of value and the possibility of defining value. True, the 'tool' did not have to be used for this end, and yet used for this end it is.

It seems to me a fair statement that in our 'World' we get to know something - some shadows and traces of knowing perhaps - about *this place*, but that everything before and everything after (two eternities lit up through one fleeting existence) (and a 'library' of existences on record) we simply can say next to nothing about. But please: take a shot at it. If the Dieberclete doesn't know, who can?
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