Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

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 basically what you wanted to write was that you have the intelligence of a 16 year old girl who states "No one knows why we're here!", "Where are we anyway?". Thanks for your insight Alexis.

The "why", which seems to imply there might be some greater transcendent purpose for our reality which has been designed, is of course delusional. "Why's" are usually just based on temporary perspectives, some platform of meaning-making, some implication of a causal reason, it works with the context of specific subjects, but it is never applicable to existence or reality itself.

The "where", seems to imply that our spacial location matters at all in regard to wisdom or understanding. I'd ask you to elaborate but, whenever you're called out on the unreasonable things you say, all you're capable of doing is repeating your generalized criticism of 'this forum', which includes no actual reasoning, just the same description of how you see it a thousand timers over.

This is your entire philosophy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-zJHKRvw4
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Ah yes, back to the 'female' manoeuvre. When in doubt assert that it is female. It has worked very well in the past, no need to give it up just yet!

The video is actually quite interesting insofar as it is a very real, if open-ended, metaphysical declaration with a real and substantial platform, of sorts anyway. It could all be said in that sort of folksy urbanitish and very crude American vernacular way, or stated with more elegance, yet it really does seem to represent a newer threshold for speculative and imaginative capture of 'reality' for the post-religious. It is quite fitting as a position and follows from certain developments within a basically materialist viewstructure. It is a way of holding a 'metaphysical dream' within one's consciousness, the function of which I am not exactly sure of (and I am not sure the author is, either) but which allows some freedom of movement, at least mentally (spiritually). Note that establishing, opening and closing, of 'conceptual pathways' is a big aspect of declared metaphysical positions.
Seeker wrote:The "why", which seems to imply there might be some greater transcendent purpose for our reality which has been designed, is of course delusional. "Why's" are usually just based on temporary perspectives, some platform of meaning-making, some implication of a causal reason, it works with the context of specific subjects, but it is never applicable to existence or reality itself.
That is a perspective to consider I suppose. But I would start more primordially and say that it is now, and will always be, a child's question, and I do not mean that negatively. It is a necessary question, meaning it flows naturally and inevitably from within 'reality' itself.

Since the question is 'What exactly is delusion'? and 'Can those who seem to be clear in their enunciations of 'delusion' really be trusted to know what is delusionary'? your question has been placed on the table (after it politely took a number and indicated its willingness to wait its turn).

Again, there is really no way that I am aware of to make absolute, declarative statements which would wipe off the board the large question of 'transcendent purpose' becuase, once again, you have no capability to answer the question of how you came to be here. Much hinges though on the nature of the 'metaphysical dream' or the 'story' that one functions with. There are certainly lower-end versions and there are certainly upper-end versions (of a metaphysic in which man is incarnated in difficult circumstances and avails himself of a superior intelligence to alleviate his condition).

But I would step back from each and from any version of story for a moment, and then focus on the one that you suggest or inch toward: your's is devoid of the possibility of meaning in large, and so nullifies meaning in small. I think this offers us an opportunity to examine the metaphysical predicates, though I do not think it does much toward settling the question. Additionally, a 'Why?' is a question that calls for a response as is any phrase with a question mark on its end. Questions asked are questions answered but it is also true that some large part of the equation is simply formulating good questions. If one doesn't ask a question it is likely that none will or can be answered.

'Where' does not mean 'where located' - as if there is a locale that could be described - but more a question about what sort of 'World' one finds oneself in. The primary question, is it not? It's the ur-question.

The critique of your metaphysical predicates, and those shared by our Glorious Founders, is not a vain critique or a vain effort. Nor is it exactly a 'general criticism'. But it is, shall we say, an uncertain or tentative criticism.
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

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An insight which you have helped to elucidate is that philosophy is entirely personal. There is no such thing as a direct communication of "philosophical" understanding, all you can do is provide some pointers, some vague signs through language, and if the traveller doesn't see the direction you're suggesting, or can only see it from the viewpoint of another road, then that is all there is to it. No language is clear enough that it can directly or sufficiently communicate your understanding, it's always a gamble or maybe a vain hope, like sending out a message in a bottle via the ocean when you're stranded on an island, either it is recieved and it is understood, or it's not. You can send out plenty of these bottles, write the message a thousand different ways, but it may never change a thing.

As I see it, relations and relationship is all about barriers and the overcoming of them, and you will always come across unbreachable barriers. Often we "talk to the wall" and there is no chance of getting through.

Perhaps it would be more "Genius" of us to eschew the focus of the forum entirely, to refuse to discuss the indiscussable, and instead skip right to wherever common ground can be found, such as the best practical methods to 'butter your toast', to avoid sufferring, or even to attain 'peace'. Understanding cannot be communicated with any certainty that it will be recieved, but 'methods' are much more easily communicable.

Give me methods, give me conclusions, give me advice, give me suggestions, all of these I can try for myself and explore personally, but don't try to explain how you got there, to attempt to do so is usually futile, it often only leads away from whatever "gifts" one might have to share.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

movingalways wrote: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.
No, consciousness has to be part of effect and cause, like everything else. We agree here.
And because it is an effect, it cannot determine truthfully causes or reasons (the source of its dukkha or stress).
But Buddha does talk about the origin of dukkha as a fundamental truth in his vision. This means we have to posit a metaphysics which then transcends consciousness. With dukkha it's clear: all life, birth and death are dukkha so we're talking about something way bigger than life, things, sensations, ideas and the world. The only thing bigger than everything else is its fundamental, underlying truth or operating principle. The biggest thing then is always absolute truth or in common terms: god.
Why do you desire to keep stress and dissatisfaction?
That amounts to asking if I stopped beating the wife. It's important to know why you're desiring to get rid of it before you can start believing it's a truthful aim or even that you would have accomplished it.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: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.
There's no difference between saying you know shadow or traces of "something" or that you know "something". It's the same thing in the natural philosophy of science. The fact that there's a lot more you don't know does not excuse one self from any knowledge claimed of there being shadows and traces. Perhaps one needs to imagine an "everything before" and an "everything after" just to make that shadow of a doubt, which we call our knowledge, happen. However, knowledge has been positioned nevertheless. And under that lies a framework of a priori truth, the axiomatic declaration, this absolute defining invoked with every step.

Don't you think there's value in exploring that sense of the absolute underlying everything you think you know?
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Seeker wrote:An insight which you have helped to elucidate is that philosophy is entirely personal.
I think what you are saying - which is a retreat in a way from your real position - is that any person is justified in cobbling together a 'philosophy' which is (by your own definition) really a spurious collection of personal preferences, partially-baked conclusions, likely a collection of sentimental 'reasonings' and perhaps the condensation of an influence from social environment. According to your view, one requires a 'corrective' and this is to submit to thought-therapy of a specific sort. I don't think you bothered to read Earnst Becker (critique of Zen) but he points out that Zen (and by extension aspects of Buddism) are thought reform programs and are similar in some senses to some of our psychological therapies insofar as they seek to modify the individual in odd and sometimes coercive ways.

I do not think you have yet grasped what are the implications and ramifications of the thought-modification program that you recommend, insofar as it attacks quite directly the reasoning mind and a mind that arrives at solid conclusions about important issues. If it is permissible to speak of 'Western modes of knowing', everything that we have done and all that we do is a construct within rational thinking. And the edifice of our creativity and our creations is vast indeed. My impression of your 'philosophy' is that in it you desire to have it both ways: On one hand to destroy the possibility of strong, structured thinking that concludes, but then on the other to hold to and defend your own willful and willing self which is so very much present. In this sense you are an outcome, as we all are, of Western modes, but yet you play with a mode that is foreign and quite destructive. I keep hammering this point because I think it is a real and considerable critique, and because it is part of a larger movement toward irrationality. In short the destruction of philosophy. But is it more than that too? What 'it' is I am not certain. But when we participate in the destruction of the modes which made the construction of the edifice possible, we work to destroy the edifice.

I'd also mention that when Diebert refers to 'philosophy' (certainly it is philosophy that is Diebert's main area of interest and concern) he seems to make a categorical error (insofar as it pertains to the Forum at least). The Forum is not a philosophy forum but really a platform for a specific and defined religious structure of view and also life-style. What I mean is that it has been that, by and large. The Founders themselves, I think, made a rather serious error when they attempted to make their religious and metaphysical platform one of 'logical reasoning'. I think this can be seen as quite patently absurd.

As to 'the sense of the absolute underlying all we think we know', I am of two minds (heh heh). One is that I think that we establish 'knowing' at a level prior to reasoning. It is fruitful therefor to trace back our metaphysical assumptions as it were and find out where, in fact, we really do stand. I have not been able to understand how it could be seriously proposed that a man can 'reason' his way to understanding of Life, since Life can only be revealed to him, because he is the subject of it and not the other way round. But on the other side of the equation is, of course, the ambitious, willed, Promethean human who reaches into the Creation and *takes* out of it what he wants and needs, and then assembles his knowledge-sets and insists on them.
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: is that any person is justified in cobbling together a 'philosophy' which is (by your own definition) really a spurious collection of personal preferences,


No, I didn't say that or advocate anything like it at all, nor has my 'position' changed or been retreated from, what I said was that philosophy is entirely personal and whatever deeper understandings we attain are essentially incommunicable insofar as they are like messages in a bottle thrown into the sea. This doesn't mean anyone is 'justified' in 'cobbling together' some spontaneous personal philosophy, it doesn't mean that since philosophy is entirely personal that people are any less delusional, it only means that repeating explanations of an understanding in the attempt to share it is often futile. Thus I would say: "Give me methods, give me conclusions, give me advice, give me suggestions, all of these I can 'try out' for myself and explore personally, but don't try to explain how you got to there." From now on, all the rest of the shit is your shit.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Well then, and please excuse my paraphrase as it is only an attempt to get more clear about what you do mean: to say that 'philosophy is entirely personal', when compared to the statement 'scientific understanding of the world is entirely personal' (a problematic statement and also likely false), seems to indicate that 'philosophy' is not so much linked to 'reality' or arises out of an understanding of reality, but is a 'personal' issue of personal choice. I gather that you don't see it so, but I wanted to explain why (for a moment) it looked so.

But what you seem to be saying is that deeper understandings of the 'true nature' of reality, or the 'true relationship' to existence in the phenomenal world, is a special category of knowledge and in this sense is 'personal' and also incommunicable.

But it must be so that you are speaking of yourself and also that you are offering additional commentary in this on-going conversation; insofar as you are talking with a deluded idiot who, you feel, does not get what you are on about. So, you have been sending out bottle after bottle but the 'message' is not received. How terribly frustrating this must be! And 2,200 posts of the same. ;-)

If I have got this right, this sort of statement always interests me. Why? Because it points to 'special knowledge' or special epistemological 'secrets' that are only revealed to initiates. And if this is so, it indicates that in your metaphysical grasp, the metaphysical picture of reality that you refer to, there is in this sense a revelation of knowledge or information. Which also means - I think this is implicit - that there is something that reveals. Not a 'person' or a deity but yet the very place itself. It teaches in this sense.

Meaning that in the 'World' you describe there are paths and processes which lead, shall we say, a thoughtful man to such knowledge that gives him advantage or power, even if only over himself. This reveals additional dimensions of the *place* itself: something of its mysteries but also of *patterns* of understanding that arise in us and yet essentially out of *it*. I think this is a rather common feature of epistemological and ontological experience.

I think that this functions against some of your other statements: that there is no 'reason' to things, and hence that the question Why? is not one that should be posed.

Give you methods - for what? Conclusions - for what? Advice - for what? The puropse - and I admit that it is and should be the purpose - is to accurately and realitically define the place where we are. To define a metaphysic. If we cannot do that how can we then construct an ethic which must - mustn't it? - arise out of the place itself if you catch my drift.

If it doesn't, and if we yet avail ourselves of an ethic, it will have to arise spuriously in our own imagination and through our choice, or to come from *outside* as an imposition on the natural world. This could mean 'transcendentally' but also 'demoniacally'. I do not mean to say that you think in these terms - you seem not to - but that people often do.

The most that you say, now that I think about it, is that 'thinking exists and is real' and that 'we can modify thinking' or 'stand back from thinking' as an observer of it.
Seeker wrote:I'm no longer concerned with discussing where philosophy starts, but where it leads. Purpose and further benefit seem to me to be the only reasonable drives behind such an activity.
I have little sense of where exactly you desire to go. But having a goal is in different ways a statement, too, about where one has been. As I look back over my (so-called) spiritual path I am aware that what I sought originally was 'personal power'. I had been instructed that 'The first order of offerings are to the self' (which could also be written as Self to indicate something higher than mere 'self'). I could describe this nearly in Taoist terms, or T'ai Chi terms: the purpose of knowledge is strength, power, equilibrium and also advantage. I suppose one could see it all in Chinese terms: strength, order and power sought in order to benefit the self in its pursuit of the tangible things of life. When I began to look into the various 'Vedic' schools, I found that in most cases their focus was entirely tangible: health, strength, longevity, fulfilment of social function and thus fulfilment of dharma, producing intelligent and powerful children, for purposes of fulfilment here.

So, looked at through a practical and 'this-worldly' lens (what I understand as) your thinking-reform practices should have an effect in enabling you as a more powerful, a more competent person. Or what else? What one does notice about you is will and drive. These are not the typical characteristics of renunciants (and it seems to me that most Buddhist doctrine is a form of renunciation-while-living).
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: But what you seem to be saying is that deeper understandings of the 'true nature' of reality, or the 'true relationship' to existence in the phenomenal world, is a special category of knowledge and in this sense is 'personal' and also incommunicable.
Nope, you're wrong to speak about it as if I'm referring specifically to "special knowledge" I'd say this remains true for most understandings, whether they are "deeper" or not, though of course some things are easier to communicate than others. (Buttering your toast)
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: So, you have been sending out bottle after bottle but the 'message' is not received. How terribly frustrating this must be! And 2,200 posts of the same. ;-)
Hate to break it to you, but your last 100 posts were of the same message in a bottle. Still on your island.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Give you methods - for what? Conclusions - for what? Advice - for what?
That's my point, don't tell me based on me, but on you, whatever you think is good advice, for however you see things. Then I can take those suggestions, those statements, and explore them personally.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: The most that you say, now that I think about it, is that 'thinking exists and is real'


That thinking exists was only repeated as a starting point- as an example of something we know with absolute certainty, it's not "most" of what I say, it's just a conversation that never really started because we have those barriers between us. This isn't to say that I think this justifies insanity or delusion because it's just a personal philosophy. Stop imposing shit on me as you did in the rest of the sentence quoted above.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: I have little sense of where exactly you desire to go. But having a goal is in different ways a statement, too, about where one has been. As I look back over my (so-called) spiritual path I am aware that what I sought originally was 'personal power'. I had been instructed that 'The first order of offerings are to the self' (which could also be written as Self to indicate something higher than mere 'self'). I could describe this nearly in Taoist terms, or T'ai Chi terms: the purpose of knowledge is strength, power, equilibrium and also advantage. I suppose one could see it all in Chinese terms: strength, order and power sought in order to benefit the self in its pursuit of the tangible things of life. When I began to look into the various 'Vedic' schools, I found that in most cases their focus was entirely tangible: health, strength, longevity, fulfilment of social function and thus fulfilment of dharma, producing intelligent and powerful children, for purposes of fulfilment here.

So, looked at through a practical and 'this-worldly' lens (what I understand as) your thinking-reform practices should have an effect in enabling you as a more powerful, a more competent person. Or what else? What one does notice about you is will and drive. These are not the typical characteristics of renunciants (and it seems to me that most Buddhist doctrine is a form of renunciation-while-living).
It's nearly impossible to explain myself in any way that is sufficient or can be certainly received, as Diebert put it, "Who can really explain themselves anyway?". Talking to you has only elucidated this for me. I can give suggestions, advice, statements, methods, but don't ask me to explain how I got there. You can take those and explore them for yourself.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: 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.
Myself, I am quite interested in what he means by 'religious factor'. My interpretation (and his other writing backs this up, obviously), is that the purpose of defining a metaphysic is exactly so as to be able to define an ethics. If we have not gotten clear about our metaphysical base, then we cannot really, or perhaps consciously, establish an ethical platform. If we have no defined ethical platform, and one capacitated to deal with and respond to everything, then we cannot live either heroically or authentically. At the base of this definition, in the most relevant sense, is the definition of *value*: what has value and what is valuable. So, instead of drinking down the potions which nullify us to value or hinder us in defining it (and protecting it), it seems to me that an opposing heroism is needed: that of working to define value. The lingo of Buddhist transitoriness seems, overall, to be one of the steps taken that leads to surrender - surrender of the capacity to recognize and to defend things of tangible value. In neo-Buddhism then there is a strange thought-trick which clearly seems to drive people away from defining values, and to defining somewhat abstract idealisms as 'more valuable'. Not only will this lead to 'surrender' it also seems to lead toward an ethic that becomes subversive. Hence my focus on 'acids' that eat away at value, as well as 'cultural termites' who nibble away at a structure of value with little understanding what they are doing (or participating in).
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.
It is not very common anymore, is it? that someone speaks of a value or a quality that 'ought to be alive among our people'. It is a loaded and prblematic phrase for many reasons. Who is 'our people' but moreover who is not? The definition of the latter seems almost as important as the former. Again, what I like about Evola is that he cuts right through a good deal of nonsense to focus on tangibles, not on abstract 'spiritual' ideals. One thing that I do appreciate about the AltRight positon is that it is an identarian movement. But along these lines I find it - again - interesting to note that neo-Buddhism nullifies or dulls 'identification' of this sort. In fact, it is entirely opposed to identification with one's vessel and perhaps even one's body. But if you cannot identify, you cannot struggle, you cannot in fact work. All that you can do is release identity, and this calls up again the sense of 'surrender'. To be powerful in this world is to be identified, and also to accept the consequences of identification.

The Syllabus of Errors is a bizarre and yet attractive concept. First that it is possible to define a 'correct' stance or viewpoint for action in this world, and then that it is possible to outline with precision what hinders strong definition. I can't help but notice that on this forum quite often people speak - with no irony! - of delusion and ignorance and such things seemingly unaware how close to a syllabus of error they come. But in some sense at least it would amount to an 'heroic' act to make the bold effort of defining a Syllabus in our present. What interests me is that some people are attempting something along these lines: in their confrontation with that which subverts, disempowers, leads to spiritual chaos, etc. They identify it with 'modern culture' and with debilitating trends which originate in thought. So, to gain power is to reclaim thought, to think newly or differently. To turn against the current.
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.
I always had the impression that our Founders were attempting a 'heroic' gesture in the face of a weakened, a debilitated, a ridiculously-oriented present. Certainly it is quite noble to suggest alternative paths and choices. But what happened? It seems to me that once the renunciant has left the human family behind, he nullifies himself. Evola is speaking of something most (here) have no sense of: post-concilial Catholicism. As an Italian at that time of course he'd have to have dealt on these things. But it is fascinating that he transcends the mediocrity of parochial religiosity by referring to what stands behind it, and futher up the scale.

To conceive of a 'struggle' which is metaphysical and transcendental in origin is, I think, a necessary manoeuvre for man: it simply has to be done. But to speak in these terms with a straight face nowadays is nearly impossible. Hence the call to 'spirituality' always seems to be a call away from engagement and participation. And can you seriously imagine anyone round these parts speaking of 'invisible consecration'? Impossible! ;-)
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

From a fast-moving and nearly unbearably interesting adjacent thread:
Your post Jup is a perfect example. Worse actually, you're trying to explain myself for me. I see it only as niavety.
From where I sit I have come to conclude that the foundation of the dialectic - the entire foundation, the entire dialectic - is false. False means it is not really a conversation, and not really a dialectic. And it is not really 'philosophy'. It is something quite else. But how to define it? I suppose it must stem from the fact that 'enlightenment' and all its cognates is simply a false term. Not a term that can be used in serious discourse. It means nothing yet it fills so much imagined space. But the same must be said - by extension - for other definitions which are, basically, empty and yet fill a vast amount of imagined space. Take 'wisdom' for example.

Now, let me get this straight: Two youngsters, one from India and one from Australia, both severely undereducated, but both phenomenally willful, imagine that they can carry on a plausible conversation about what is, and what is not, wisdom?

Am I the only one to hear the Universe erupt in laughter?

You see, the whole comic expedition, the whole bogus theatre, is exposed right there. The ramifications are significant because this is precisely what our Beloved Founders have done right from the start. Those that come after are like smallish mirrors. What once gets established as a modus, is then repeated again and again and again. The most curious question is to ask What could possibly change that?

Now, I suggest that it is *this*, quite precisely and quite exactly *this* which holds, gives form to, and expresses the delusion. The delusion is *there*. It is in no other place.

Further, that this 'delusion' arises out of chaotic circumstances, as a result of a surrender, and that it is itself a subversive activity. (Meaning: it is itself a 'pathology' and evidence of a wrong turn made somewhere). The only way to get moving in another direction is to successfully make this point to the degree that it steps around the mental blinders, the vast youthful arrogant blinders, and gets to the heart of the matter.

Once this happens, a 'genuine' conversation between people genuinely and authentically interested in speaking of themselves in their given worlds might happen.

But until that time there are two basic options, two neurotic options: One is the 'genius game' of one genius attacking the other genuis and making the effort to blow his ship out of the water. The other is a conversations that disappears into pointless - literally meaningless! - abstractions which spiral upward in gloriously dry rhetoric before attenuating ... into silence.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:But until that time there are two basic options, two neurotic options: One is the 'genius game' of one genius attacking the other genuis and making the effort to blow his ship out of the water. The other is a conversations that disappears into pointless - literally meaningless! - abstractions which spiral upward in gloriously dry rhetoric before attenuating ... into silence.
The most interesting thing from that paragraph, which is basically the 324th time of restating your opinion on the discussions at this forum, is that you leave out the 3rd option: desperately trying to start a conversation while it can never happen because it's still only display, of knowledge, of readings, of verbal experience. An underdeveloped, sterile option of displaying frustration with the inability to access any other unattainable mode such conversations could have. Secret whispers behind closed doors?

But your description of the two common options are spot on, although they are destiny for every conversation. Through the dialectic every weakness or contradiction will be detected and laid out. There's no further meaning or conclusion to that, especially because it's not done to change anyone or to "get through". The strife has its own build-in purpose. The other direction is unavoidably emptiness and indeed silence. Very hard to distinguish from dry rhetoric, abstraction or meaninglessness. The reason for that is simple: there's no actual difference. The ambiguity is necessarily appearing and the power of such exchange depends purely on perspective. It can indeed flip very easily from one state into the other. A bit like the meaning of life, the invisible borders between hard to digest absurdities and profound, deep connections. The most known and most alien, like the deepest understood and most alienating, are twin brothers in arms.
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Gustav Bjornstrand
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

The strife has its own build-in purpose. The other direction is unavoidably emptiness and indeed silence. Very hard to distinguish from dry rhetoric, abstraction or meaninglessness. The reason for that is simple: there's no actual difference. The ambiguity is necessarily appearing and the power of such exchange depends purely on perspective. It can indeed flip very easily from one state into the other. A bit like the meaning of life, the invisible borders between hard to digest absurdities and profound, deep connections. The most known and most alien, like the deepest understood and most alienating, are twin brothers in arms.
The great Mother Hen of the Forum speaks for her Brood.

Yeah, well, from my 'perspective' its doing no 'flipping' and it looks like formulaic Diebertian bullshit. But what do I know ... ;-)

Talk to me of 'emptiness', jackass, and I'll bray back ...
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SeekerOfWisdom
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Take 'wisdom' for example.

Now, let me get this straight: Two youngsters, one from India and one from Australia, both severely undereducated, but both phenomenally willful, imagine that they can carry on a plausible conversation about what is, and what is not, wisdom?

Am I the only one to hear the Universe erupt in laughter?
All I seem to be hearing is a madman who thinks that reading his own very specific, very narrow, selection of books makes him "educated" and that old age allows the possibility of wisdom. What if we were from Europe, fifty, went to your school, and had read all your (very specific very narrow selection of) books, then is "wisdom" a possibility? Wait, don't answer that question, you weren't going to anyway. All you've done so far is stereotype and generalize based on appearances, one of the traits of ignorance. A nice old guy appears at the alter (the lecture alter) with glasses, he must be wise, get on your knees Alexis.

Even better if it's a dead writer.

Judging wisdom based on appearances and your personal belief of what it means to be educated, rather than any attempt at logic and reason, anyone else hear the universe erupt in laughter? The fact that you even mentioned that Jup was Indian and I was Australian says more than enough, should I move to Sweden? Iceland perhaps? Where is best for wisdom? You see "humanness" and humanness is strongly associated with ignorance, so perhaps only the dead can be wise.

Nevertheless, your repetition of the same message in a bottle doesn't seem to be working. Reminds me of Einstein's description of insanity. Someone didn't reply to you, so you wrote another more desperate message, still on your island.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

What you 'seem to be hearing' and also what we 'seem to hear' (you, me, everyone) is always where some attention has to be focussed.

The question What is wisdom? and how would one even begin to discuss that? are the right questions. It should be obvious - again - that it is one's defined metaphysic that determine what one can value, so again the focus reverses itself and instead of being able to make declarative statements (unchallenged) is forced to explain itself. I have recently noticed that you have abandoned the entire project: You have no way - no language, no concept, and no ability to organize your presentation to make yourself intelligible.

What happens to a man when he cannot make himself intelligible? To others, to himself?

I think that your statement: 'who thinks his own very specific, very narrow, selection of books makes him 'educated' ... needs to be turned around and made into various questions; questions asked and questions that ask for an answer.

And the larger question is one that has been presented before: What is the relationship between knowledge and understanding gained by nourishing oneself on what you have called 'second-hand material', and knowledge and understanding that is arrived at through intuition, common-sense, or induction? Or How shall this other *realm* be described? And what is the relationship between language (and really what is language?) and the inevitable dialectic that occurs between minds when they interrelate through the medium of the written word? I get the sense that you might describe book learnin' as comparable to lunar light: reflected from a source to which you can avail yourself. Actually, one cannot be very sure what you mean or don't mean. I have noticed that your discourse attenuates into non-sense since, it seems, you cannot accurately (or successfully) define your platform.

Old age is very certainly not the source of wisdom. Maturity is no guarantor of much. Yet it does seem to be true, or at least it is a common view, that those who are young are rarely 'wise'. Smart, gifted, energetic, perhaps geared toward pursuits that will result in 'wisdom', but 'wisdom' is usually the domain of the mature and the experienced. But then the question becomes: What 'experience' is one speaking of? This obviously points to a valuation undertaken and to the privelaging of specific values. But what values should be privelaged? This turns back again on the necessaity of defining a metaphysical platform, and also of understanding the one that one has and which 'operaes one', whether one is aware of it or not.

'Appearances' is an unusual word to be brought out. How could I not, and how could anyone participating here, not rely on the 'appearance' of what is said by each participant? And how might one avail oneself, here, of that which underpins appearance? You are only what you write and in your case the more that you write, and the more that you are pushed to define yourself, the more uncertain and even a little ridiculous you show yourself. Thus you do not 'appear' as 'wise' but really rather confused and sincere/silly.

It seems to me that we have far too many people in glasses who stand before lecterns and blather-forth some articulate discourse; so many different possible lines that knowing and knowledge takes, but we seem to be in a crisis when it comes to being capable of defining 'wisdom'. This points to 'chaos' (that is the area I would focus on in critiquing this perversion of mind you take as 'deep truth' and uncovering of the path that leads to 'true knowing') and also 'surrender' as pathologies of our present. So, to all appearances (heh heh) I seem to be saying something a little different than what you suppose. It is totally absurd to 'kneel' before any authority and is in truth a grave intellectual error since one should really be required to analyse ideas presented through the use of one's own mind. But then: When we say 'mind' what do we mean? It circles back to epistemological questions and to the pesky question about Knowledge: what it is and how one gets it. This touches on so many different questions (or asks many different questions): What knowledge base do we come from? What has made us us? How did knowledge gained (by previous men in previous generations) become translated into the very structure of civilization that surrounds us, cocoons us if you like? And since we are 'the outcomes' and the results of *all that* Is it 'wise' to sever ourselves away from 'all that' (including book learnin' and study) to then engage with some other 'mode of knowling'? And this turns back on the question - directed to you - of Just what in the heck are you really talking about John Seeker? What in the FUCK are you talking about would be a stronger way to put it.

To refer to context in this and in all conversations is crucial. This much I have become evermore certain of. Therefor, it is really quite important to understand that Jupi is a young Indian from a specific context who - to all appearances - completely or near-completely rejects his own (cultural) matrix in favor of Western categories. In order to understand what he thinks and why he thinks it, it is necessary to 'interrogate' his context. This is pretty simple and pretty obvious stuff. The same is so for you (and for me and for everyone). I have come to understand that to understand Diebert's discourse it is necessary to understand a bit about Dutch history. Diebert is a 'contextual voice' from within a cultural pattern. Know the pattern, better understand the voice.

My personal sense is that to be able to define 'higher value' and 'higher law' and such things requires a certain rejection of 'the human' in order to clarify and privelage strong ideas. But 'strong ideas' must be related to the human world and human problems. Strong ideas must become 'self-law'. I think this is one of the very positive aspects of the QRS Project: to push these definitions. But when it comes to questions of 'ignorance' (a word that you so easily employ! that comes so easily to you! so frequently!), well it is at that point that I think we need to linger and interrogate. What is the relationship between 'high ideals' or transcendent values (that which drives a metaphysic so to speak) and what one does and what is done 'down here' on the ground, as it were?

Your bizarre metaphor of a 'message in a bottle' does not have much metaphorical value for me. Anyplace I write, I write for myself first, and then I write relationally to what I read. It is all gain for me. That is because my will is focussed on gain. But to speak of 'gains' is again to speak of defined (and tangible) values, which presupposes many other definitions, and yet once again: an underlying - implied - metaphysic.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Seeker wrote:You essentially miss-quote by inference, as if your purpose is to confuse and distort the most simple of statements, perhaps because of your prejudice and 'grudge', or maybe you really just don't get language, as you continuously make inferences under the implication that language was ever absolute, exactly defined, or universally applicable, rather than incredibly vague, incredibly unclear, incredibly inexact, in every single case, you're not exempt from this. If you think you are, and that I'm just a failed example, please 'let the universe laugh'. Communication of understanding usually requires a common grounding of experience, hence how it is always a gamble to hope that any message will be "received", perhaps take that into account next time you're writing. If, for example, you were correct in everything you were saying and it was in my best interest to learn so, but I was simply too ignorant to see it, then your attempts to 'get through' are still essentially failures, so if you know that what you're attempting is failing at every turn, then is it really wise to continue with the same methods, the same message in the bottle? Talking to the wall. Indeed it was probably naive for me to explain to you at all, but I'm really doing so as a final 'lengthy' explanation before I opt-out of these generally wasteful endeavors to explain how one has 'arrived' at any claim. I think that fewer words, more basic statements, methods, advice, and suggestions, which are then taken for use in personal exploration and 'judgement', are more effective in the long run, and that these continuous attempts at lengthy explanation (Alex being a perfect example) are often futile, can you really fault me for thinking so? I very much doubt you could show otherwise, though I guess you could try if you want, but then you might need some people as evidence, to show that your method was more effective, wouldn't you?
Wow. This is phenomenal: a phenomenon and various phenomena tossed into motion! So much here to speak about ...
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

I just noticed this post this morning.
Diebert wrote:
movingalways wrote:
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.
No, consciousness has to be part of effect and cause, like everything else. We agree here.
And because it is an effect, it cannot determine truthfully causes or reasons (the source of its dukkha or stress).
But Buddha does talk about the origin of dukkha as a fundamental truth in his vision. This means we have to posit a metaphysics which then transcends consciousness. With dukkha it's clear: all life, birth and death are dukkha so we're talking about something way bigger than life, things, sensations, ideas and the world. The only thing bigger than everything else is its fundamental, underlying truth or operating principle. The biggest thing then is always absolute truth or in common terms: god.
Indeed. The metaphysics of the infinite or causality or the law of the spirit of life, each one of them terms that suggest this bigger reality than that of the dukkha of reasoning the world of self into consciousness. The Buddha expresses this realization very succinctly here:

"Seeking but not finding the house builder,
I hurried through the round of many births:
Painful is birth ever and again.

O house builder, you have been seen;
You shall not build the house again.
Your rafters have been broken up,
Your ridgepole is demolished too.

My mind has now attained the unformed Nibbâna
And reached the end of every sort of craving."
Quote:
Why do you desire to keep stress and dissatisfaction?
That amounts to asking if I stopped beating the wife. It's important to know why you're desiring to get rid of it before you can start believing it's a truthful aim or even that you would have accomplished it.
I haven't stopped beating the Wife (the world), however, it is my goal. Why? Beating the Wife (idea of self/consciousness) is metaphysically illogical and because it is metaphysically illogical, it causes suffering. How does one stop beating the Wife? Simply put, by being conscious that one is doing so.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Pam Seeback »

Gustav: Strong ideas must become 'self-law'.
I don't think I have encountered a more eloquent and efficient expression of the reality of the experience of the suffering that is the (ignorant) human condition of idea of self than these four words. Hitler and Churchill probably uttered words very close to these over six decades ago. And here we are today in the same shit pile of the self that must become.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

And I would stop and 'linger' over what you are saying. My words evidently have some meaning for you, but the meaning appears to you as a 'demoniac' meaning, one to be avoided at all cost.

One only has questions for you. Except that in order to ask the questions one has to pre-sift through what you are saying to attempt to understand what you mean. Round these parts that's a demanding work!

I say that 'strong idea must become self-law'. Meaning, we have to arrive at a strong definition which is then the basis for an ethic, and the primary focus of the ethic is toward the self. Seems as clear as day.

You propose, against an 'idea of self', something that I would not know how to name. An idea of non-self? A non-idea of self? No idea at all? No self-idea? Dissolution of self?

Once you start down this rabbit hole you wind up (I assert) in a labyrinth of meaninglessness. Meanings dissolve because the possibility of man in a real realtionship to what is real dissolves. What is left one after that? How would you describe it?

But dissolution of self is tied to a project of dissolution: a dangerous enterprise. What acid best dissolves self, I ask?

Like it or not you are going to have to deal with both 'Hitler' and 'Churchill'. I find this all quite interesting because I think that what we are and what actually (if invisibly) moves us is our post-war condition. You may have no place for these considerations in your system (of checking out of reality) yet they are quite high on my list. We have to underdtand the last war and what was/is at stake to be able to understand 'who we are'. There is no 'spiritual manoeuvre' around this.

Spirituality thus has to do with now, this reality, ourselves in a real world - in the world - and it has to do with 'strong idea'.

Also, there is a great deal that hinges on your understanding that the self is a 'shitpile', that we are shitpiles, that it is a shitpile. That is of course a foundational tenet of your metaphysical definition.

I suggest again that we are dealing with 'chaos', that one of the main issues or questions has to do with 'surrender' (the surrender of self I guess one would put it), and once again the question and the outcome of 'subversion'. When these become subjects or elements on the table of discussion, and when one then turns to address your tenets, it all becomes more interesting and various paths open up from it. If one continues in your defined path, one disappears into meaninglessness and impotency.

A forum devoted to meaninglessness and impotency requires a King. Need I mention what King rules this realm? ;-)
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

You asked seventeen questions in your reply Alex, you haven't answered any of them, am I supposed to go first?

So what the fuck are you talking about? We haven't had a discussion of any kind as far as I'm concerned, I wanted to begin from a different direction, which I saw as a necessary start, you side-stepped it and wanted to begin elsewhere, which you saw as a necessary start. Barriers, still on your island.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Anyplace I write, I write for myself first, and then I write relationally to what I read. It is all gain for me.
There you go.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

Though you think it so I do not 'side-step' anything. What I do though is to delay my response and then extend it over many different posts. It is necessary to thwart an aspect of your will and the way it functions.

Pretty much this is all I have for you, and for you-all: questions. 'What I am up to' has been outlined, filled-out, and expanded upon in concise terms with no ambiguity. I hope that you are not asking that I restate it. It is likely that we will not be able to 'have discussion', and for a few reasons. One, you are not at all certain of your position and have no way to communicate its value or relevance. Unless I have misread you I think this has been your own statement. There seem to be many other reasons and I think that they could all be located. I am interested in locating and enunciating them, you do not seem interested in this.

Image

Presently, I am working my way through Julius Evola's autobiography. What I notice is that he is interested in defining a solid and unassailable metaphysical position upon which to base his ethics and philosophy. This is the first order of work then, in my view. What I have been doing recently is emphasising this point. I believe that - and to borrow Evola's phrase - we are 'men among the ruins'. But what is it that has fallen down into ruins? His statement is a definite statement about conditions and it arises from his metaphysical definitions. Long before I encountered Evola I noticed 'ruin' of this sort. I came face to face with it on Genius Forum. To deal with this 'ruin', and possibly the same 'ruin' that these Founders also noticed and reacted against, has turned into a project of very large scope. I am both unqualified for it as well as quite qualified. I am quite qualified insofar as I, like all of us, am one who stands among the ruins and makes an effort to recover. I am less qualified because, now and from a different perspective, I have to studiously go back over so much material I did not really understand years back.

In the short selection linked to above, he makes an interesting statement about Idealism (of specific sorts related to Hegel and Kantian philosophical positions) which I found interesting, and I'd relate it to a general trend that I note here (among people who seem to be 'birds of a feather' though they bicker over details and nomenclature). He writes about his early philosophical position vis-à-vis idealism and brings up the interesting phrase 'self-alientation' which occurs [when] "the ideal embraced by all these philosophers is projected and 'realized' - as a psychologist might say with regard to hallucinations - on an abstract, speculative plane".

I think that I would locate my overall critique of trends of ideation I see being enacted here as just such 'abstraction' which, in my view, is a symptom of 'alienation', and thus again related to conditions of 'chaos'.

I propose that this condition is what needs to be addressed - remediated - and that alienation (which requires a good deal of definition to understand what is being spoken of) be challenged.

Perhaps it is a Nietzschean take on things but I see [what I understand of] your approach as being an expression of will: a 'drive to conquer'. I have the sense that when the 'drive to conquer' is internalised (abstracted is another way to put it yet places a negative spin on self-conquering) it can become 'dangerous' and self-consuming. I am not at all sure that 'spirituality' (I use a word that you would not) is healthy when it is abstracted. Possibly, a major area of disagreement (with what I understand as your approach) is located here.

You make it sound as if 'writing for oneself' is an incorrect starting point. I do not see an alternative. Generally, I do not get a great deal of agreement about the ideas I communicate. I tend to explore ideas through polemic but - and I hope you know this - there is little (genuine) mean-spiritedness in my endeavour. But what I mean is that I choose a 100% independent position and try to work it out. It is 'relational' insofar as I am writing on a forum and to a group with a different orientation and one, obviously, that I take issue with.

Of the 17 questions, what 5 or 3 or just 1 interest you enough to take a stab at it?
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Gustav wrote: "we are 'men among the ruins".
in some ways we are but it's a perception one can find in all ages. The law of change would demand that we're always residing on the remains of what went before. This can become an emotional issue, a mourning, a missing, perhaps a longing back to something which never really was, at least not in the way it's looked at it in hindsight.

The problem with you Gustav, is not just that you read too much but you also haven't read enough. You're restricting your self with a limited diet of those thoughts agreeing with your sentiment. And perhaps with all your display of knowledge you're just hiding that you're still seriously lacking a broader intellectual knowledge as a result of the way you learn: glossing over everything you don't "get".

It's interesting to realize things are changing and that the future might not be necessarily something we would like or desire right now. But how to determine if it's worse on a more grand scale? Lets imagine a further breakdown of social cohesion, nation-states and current, fleeting traditions. Lets imagine a "technocratation" of our lives where technology and artificial chemistry would replace or facilitate current addictions to faith, entertainment, war, sex and various sentimental moods. What exactly is the loss from your perspective. Which reasons you have to worry? A decline in happiness, economy, thought or even art? But that's a cry we've heard since people started writing their complaints down, before Christ already. In the mean time through various standards of measurement, the world seems to know less war, more eduction and less disease than ever. And indications are that it's looking to improve despite all "decline" and ruin (although it can feel differently and I do know your "pain").

What has to decline though, as it always is in some state of decline, is all holding on to non-existing golden ages, depleted morals and traditions, old glory and the sunset economy of emotional value.
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by SeekerOfWisdom »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Pretty much this is all I have for you, and for you-all: questions.


And I would be on the opposite end of the spectrum, with little to no questions to ask in regard to philosophy. I would say that this drive to question is really a drive of creation - creation of questions and thus the search for answers.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: It is likely that we will not be able to 'have discussion', and for a few reasons. One, you are not at all certain of your position and have no way to communicate its value or relevance. Unless I have misread you I think this has been your own statement.
I am very certain of my 'position', I don't think I've ever implied otherwise. I think certainty is part of the nature of having any 'position', even if you're someone who claims to be uncertain, that's a sort of certainty in itself really. What I'm very uncertain of is if a 'workable communication' is always possible. I think it is circumstantial, the message is received or it isn't.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote: Presently, I am working my way through Julius Evola's autobiography. What I notice is that he is interested in defining a solid and unassailable metaphysical position upon which to base his ethics and philosophy. This is the first order of work then, in my view. What I have been doing recently is emphasising this point. I believe that - and to borrow Evola's phrase - we are 'men among the ruins'. But what is it that has fallen down into ruins? His statement is a definite statement about conditions and it arises from his metaphysical definitions. Long before I encountered Evola I noticed 'ruin' of this sort. I came face to face with it on Genius Forum. To deal with this 'ruin', and possibly the same 'ruin' that these Founders also noticed and reacted against, has turned into a project of very large scope. I am both unqualified for it as well as quite qualified. I am quite qualified insofar as I, like all of us, am one who stands among the ruins and makes an effort to recover. I am less qualified because, now and from a different perspective, I have to studiously go back over so much material I did not really understand years back.

In the short selection linked to above, he makes an interesting statement about Idealism (of specific sorts related to Hegel and Kantian philosophical positions) which I found interesting, and I'd relate it to a general trend that I note here (among people who seem to be 'birds of a feather' though they bicker over details and nomenclature). He writes about his early philosophical position vis-à-vis idealism and brings up the interesting phrase 'self-alientation' which occurs [when] "the ideal embraced by all these philosophers is projected and 'realized' - as a psychologist might say with regard to hallucinations - on an abstract, speculative plane".

I think that I would locate my overall critique of trends of ideation I see being enacted here as just such 'abstraction' which, in my view, is a symptom of 'alienation', and thus again related to conditions of 'chaos'.

I propose that this condition is what needs to be addressed - remediated - and that alienation (which requires a good deal of definition to understand what is being spoken of) be challenged.

Perhaps it is a Nietzschean take on things but I see [what I understand of] your approach as being an expression of will: a 'drive to conquer'. I have the sense that when the 'drive to conquer' is internalised (abstracted is another way to put it yet places a negative spin on self-conquering) it can become 'dangerous' and self-consuming.
Ok. I have understood what you have written above as far as I currently am able, though I would say that it is still rather vague, and I would again refer to the metaphor of the message in the bottle. You've got a shot to communicate a message, if it is received, should you not make sure that it is very clear? I don't think you have been very clear, as far as I can tell I think that your attempt to challenge what you've described as alienation, - and only as far as I understand your use of the term - is a misplaced endeavor, since I would say that we are all already alienated (on our islands).
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
You make it sound as if 'writing for oneself' is an incorrect starting point. I do not see an alternative.
I didn't make it sound like that, I was merely pointing out that you had said it, make of that what you will. I'm not sure there is an alternative either.
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
Generally, I do not get a great deal of agreement about the ideas I communicate.
I disagree.

Just kidding. But really, I think that many philosophers have a very analytical mindset, they are more often looking for ways to disagree than to agree, and I think this is true for most forums one can observe which are focused on philosophy. I would say that this tendency is both valuable and highly destructive. In one sense it helps to avoid careless agreement upon vague statements, and in another sense it can often bar the possibility of 'authentic' communication.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
and I hope you know this - there is little (genuine) mean-spiritedness in my endeavour.


If I were to assume, I would say that your endeavor is an endeavor of the lost, I see you as wandering without quite knowing where you want to go or why.

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
Of the 17 questions, what 5 or 3 or just 1 interest you enough to take a stab at it?
Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:
The question: What is wisdom?
To do what is best for oneself, which necessarily requires investigation into, and knowledge of, varying topics. Therefore the wise are those who are equipped to discern the truth of what is best for oneself and the method of its 'attainment'. There are many traits which one could count as 'equipment', and many may only be useful depending on the situation: honesty, willingness, patience, independence, and so on.

A quote which has been attributed to the Buddha comes to mind:

"If a man who enjoys a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater."

I think the use of the word "happiness" is perfectly vague in this instance, in the sense that it is not to be taken as the literal emotion of "happiness".
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by Gustav Bjornstrand »

I post this for Pam as it concretises even more a certain existential stance which I had expressed as 'Strong ideas must become 'self-law'.
Julius Evola in 'The Path of Cinnabar' wrote:Another formula I used was to define ideas as potential realities, and realities as actual ideas. This was a bold and dangerous theory, for it was one that led to action. Paradoxically, one could here envision a gradual process whereby the power of an 'I' expands from being the power of thought to that of magical imagination and self-persuasion: to that of persuading others and, ultimately, of persuading and altering reality itself.
_____________________________________
Seeker wrote:And I would be on the opposite end of the spectrum, with little to no questions to ask in regard to philosophy. I would say that this drive to question is really a drive of creation - creation of questions and thus the search for answers.
Your intended meaning is not clear to me. You could mean that from your perspective (what I would call your 'spiritual' or 'existential' or 'perceptual' position, you have little need or use of 'philosophy'. Arising out of that stance, logically, you make the statement that philosophy is imbued with 'creation': making, doing, undertaking, etc. Creation is then (if I read you right) something that you avoid as illusionary. 'Creation' as you use the term might be synonymous with 'samsara'. You imply - and yet you do not state directly - that you know of another way or means, and perhaps that is no way or means at all but rather 'being' (but I begin to put words in your mouth as I interpret what you have written).

It would be rather critical to get some of this established in order to be able to get what you mean.
I am very certain of my 'position' ...
Do you suppose that you could encapsulate it into a short concise paragraph? I am not attempting to bait you and trap you. I honestly cannot say - though I have read your posts - what exactly you do propose, and thus what your 'position' is.
Ok. I have understood what you have written above as far as I currently am able, though I would say that it is still rather vague, and I would again refer to the metaphor of the message in the bottle. You've got a shot to communicate a message, if it is received, should you not make sure that it is very clear? I don't think you have been very clear, as far as I can tell I think that your attempt to challenge what you've described as alienation, - and only as far as I understand your use of the term - is a misplaced endeavor, since I would say that we are all already alienated (on our islands).
We do not understand each other, though I am somewhat sure that some do understand what I am saying (though they might not agree with it or, perhaps, feel they have transcended it for a 'better' position)(here I think of Diebert), because we operate from very different bases. So, the challenge is first to understand the base. I describe that as 'metaphysic' but perhaps that is too pretentious a term.
To do what is best for oneself, which necessarily requires investigation into, and knowledge of, varying topics. Therefore the wise are those who are equipped to discern the truth of what is best for oneself and the method of its 'attainment'. There are many traits which one could count as 'equipment', and many may only be useful depending on the situation: honesty, willingness, patience, independence, and so on.
That certainly provides a starting-point for an exchange about what is wisdom. I think I would first ask for more information re: 'varying topics'.

I note that you have used the term 'for oneself'. Myself, I tend to want to think less in terms of 'myself' and more in terms of 'we'. But this can be gone into as we proceed.
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jupiviv
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Re: Confronting Chaos, Surrender, Subversion

Post by jupiviv »

Gustav Bjornstrand wrote:Now, let me get this straight: Two youngsters, one from India and one from Australia, both severely undereducated, but both phenomenally willful, imagine that they can carry on a plausible conversation about what is, and what is not, wisdom?
But...but...I thought we were *friends*!!!1!11 :*(
You see, the whole comic expedition, the whole bogus theatre, is exposed right there. The ramifications are significant because this is precisely what our Beloved Founders have done right from the start. Those that come after are like smallish mirrors. What once gets established as a modus, is then repeated again and again and again. The most curious question is to ask What could possibly change that?
Except that I don't share a "modus" with Seeker. Our views are only superficially similar, and besides that we use a few terms preferred by the "Beloved Founders" (oh what mordant fake adulation - always brings a grimace to my face...well, it did the first time I read it anyway) as well as most of the other forum members. For example, I agree with Seeker that it is nonsensical to wonder about the cause of reality. However, nobody with any degree of sanity wonders or has ever wondered about the cause of reality (whatever they consider to be such), since all forms of the conception of reality necessarily exclude any and all externalities. Creationists, for example, don't wonder about the cause of the Creator (who is "reality" in their eyes). But what does this fact by itself say about any specific philosophy?

Any overlaps that exist between our views also exists between our views and enough other views such that said overlaps are trivial evidence at best for the claim that they obtain rationale or vindication from the same paradigm. You might as well accuse the majority of irreconcilable philosophies (including your own) of the same thing.

But you don't, because all that matters to you is The Battle - between the divine and pagan Mothers Kirk and Kali respectively, overseen by the divine and pagan Fathers Theos and Deovid/bert respectively, chronicled in the divine and pagan Dream and Founder myths respectively by the guardian scribe of divinity viz. you. Oh, and then there's the Super Mario crossover alternate timeline origin myth!

But even in light of all of this, you shouldn't have stabbed *me* of all people in the back like that. Ask yourself this: do you really want to hurt me?
Last edited by jupiviv on Fri Feb 12, 2016 3:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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