New Age

[Matt Gregory]

Ok, I'm not abandoning this thread yet. I'm just having a hard time coming up with things to discuss. This is kind of like discussing the feminine--my mind draw a blank.

There's the New Age idea that everything is spiritual. People usually take this to mean that outer space is spiritual. But outer space being a place, it's kind of like saying the bathroom is spiritual. If outer space is spiritual because it's so big, then that's just as silly. That would imply that bigger people are more spiritual than smaller people. Maybe that's why everyone is so fat around here, I don't know.

[Leyla Shen]

Oh, goodie -- comic relief! :)

[sevens]

Matt,

Your drum sounds like everyone's:

"Oh, all knowledge has been discovered! I don't like this word (cause it don't - symbolically - sit well, with my ego)!" You know what? Outer space is 'spiritual'. You know what else? All phenomenon in outer space are describing processes that occur within the Mind - your mind.

Just a wild guess.

Don't be the 'Last Man'.

(Keep Bangin')

[zarathustra]

do you drop acid sevens?

outer space is spiritual - indeed! you better watch it doesn't bite you then!

[sevens]

Once again,

Symbols are how we perceive Reality.

The implications of that, is enough to make you upgrade your processor.

-

You misinterpreted me.

(Me, me, M e, ME, m e)

Me.

[Matt Gregory]

Just a wild guess.

Yeah, what's new.

[sue hindmarsh]

Matt Gregory wrote:

Ok, I'm not abandoning this thread yet. I'm just having a hard time coming up with things to discuss. This is kind of like discussing the feminine--my mind draw a blank.

Maybe that’s because it is inexorably tied to the feminine?

When you try to get a hold on what IT IS that New Age adherents actually think they believe, or even believe they think, you constantly find yourself coming up empty handed.

The New Age-speak is very telling in its ‘un-telling-ness’, which is full of hardly thought out ideas, about happily impossibly fun topics such as, how wonderfully wonderful it is to be here in this far out extremely out there kind of loving free living fantastically mind blowing funky universe made by something that is really specially loving altogether magical thingy that really really loves us all and everyone is dreamy and beautiful except those bastards that get in the way of our dreaming - thingy...

This is not to be confused with Feminine-speak which goes something like this:
I believe that the world is really full of kind hearted people that given the chance would make the world a far better place to live in even though the world really is wonderfully great and everyone is special in their own way except those that I don’t like and everyone’s got a right to their own opinion as long as its different everyday and even bad people have rights as long as they don’t bother me and love and caring and giving are all that counts as long as it is for the common good and everyone gets a fair chance at having it all...

I think the main point of both is to not have a main point so that every point is the main point and …

Slippery little suckers –eh?

In fun, funny, funnier, funniest, phantasmagorically fun...

Anyone got an antidote for this virus?

Sue

[zarathustra]

yeah Q speak...He knows...

[zarathustra]

Q speak:....feminine values, democracy....kill it all! lets have some total...totality...totalitarianism....

[sevens]

"Girls just wanna have fun..."

I know, Sue.

Know, right?

[Kitoak]

I don't know much about new age, I think its a way for people to justify what they can't explain or don't want to take the time to research. I did try and do some new age research a while back...boy it was scary to me. Last there was no bases of truth on what they processed or how (aura's being an example). I went into a new age chat place once and someone was telling me about auras there, and reading my future.

Now the part where new age is feminine values, I'm not sure I believe, not that I disbelieve either, its just that it seems to me that I find that most females do look for a religion of some sort, more often than men.

Last if we are talking about new age, are we talk in general or is wiccen the only one? Please forgive if I spelled it wrong. does new age have different factions?

Next I'm not sure where the list came from. But Wars I think can be just as much male as female.

computers in different aspects are both female and male.

Money, sorry, every dirty politian is more greedy than 20 women ever thought about being. Money is about greed and power, and men go for that just as much as females in todays world.

Trees I'm not sure why you think of them as sex one way or another. Trees are loved by hunters, woodsmen, several militant groups. women only like trees trimed and in a proper place, so they don't sink their high heels into the ground. And if a female did like trees and woods, they wouldn't go screaming everytime there was a bug, snake or a spider.

bubble gum..hmmmm...interesting choice...I have no opinion there.

dirt, I think it would matter the kind of dirt, what's in the dirt, what use is the dirt.

[Matt Gregory]

Thanks for your thoughts, Kitoak.

(We're deep into New Age territory now kids, whoa boy!)

[Matt Gregory]

Sue Hindmarsh wrote:

When you try to get a hold on what IT IS that New Age adherents actually think they believe, or even believe they think, you constantly find yourself coming up empty handed.

The New Age-speak is very telling in its ‘un-telling-ness’, which is full of hardly thought out ideas, about happily impossibly fun topics such as, how wonderfully wonderful it is to be here in this far out extremely out there kind of loving free living fantastically mind blowing funky universe made by something that is really specially loving altogether magical thingy that really really loves us all and everyone is dreamy and beautiful except those bastards that get in the way of our dreaming - thingy...

This is not to be confused with Feminine-speak which goes something like this:
I believe that the world is really full of kind hearted people that given the chance would make the world a far better place to live in even though the world really is wonderfully great and everyone is special in their own way except those that I don’t like and everyone’s got a right to their own opinion as long as its different everyday and even bad people have rights as long as they don’t bother me and love and caring and giving are all that counts as long as it is for the common good and everyone gets a fair chance at having it all...

I think the main point of both is to not have a main point so that every point is the main point and …

Sue, you crack me up. I doubt I could ever write like that. Is that what you get when you write from the depths of your ego or something? That's the impression I get from that. When I do that I get that juvenile bathroom humor: jokes about pubic hairs and fat bitches.

I think my deepest egotistical impulse is just to rebel against all of society. It's got to be a male thing because I've always been confounded thinking that a woman would be the same way, even when she dresses up very strangely, like dying her hair jet black. You would think that jet black hair on a woman stands for rebellion, but it doesn't. It doesn't stand for anything. Women don't do things to express a principle, they just go with whatever feels best, I guess. Rebellion doesn't run very deep in them at all. That's almost incomprehensible to me because supposedly they are the downtrodden ones who would benefit most from it.

I'm guessing rebellion has to be about conquering fear. Perhaps it's the crudest expression of it. I think that's what it is for me because I was always very afraid growing up and it was always very disturbing to me that I was afraid. Women seem to become afraid easily, but I guess it doesn't disturb them enough for it to turn into rebellion. Or perhaps they never get over the fear so their rebellion can never find an outlet.

[Matt Gregory]

Masculine religion says that the individual is missing something that must be recovered to form a complete individual. Feminine religion says that the individual is complete, but would be better with a few accessories.

Man's religion is about overcoming anxiety by pushing his way through it to the other side. Woman's religion is about relieving anxiety by avoiding it.

[sue hindmarsh]

Matt Gregory wrote:

Sue, you crack me up. I doubt I could ever write like that. Is that what you get when you write from the depths of your ego or something? That's the impression I get from that. When I do that I get that juvenile bathroom humor: jokes about pubic hairs and fat bitches.

It’s called channeling the devil.

I think my deepest egotistical impulse is just to rebel against all of society. It's got to be a male thing because I've always been confounded thinking that a woman would be the same way, even when she dresses up very strangely, like dying her hair jet black. You would think that jet black hair on a woman stands for rebellion, but it doesn't. It doesn't stand for anything. Women don't do things to express a principle, they just go with whatever feels best, I guess. Rebellion doesn't run very deep in them at all. That's almost incomprehensible to me because supposedly they are the downtrodden ones who would benefit most from it.

What you write is frighteningly true. Women don’t need principles, men do – women just need men.

You write that you find all this men and women stuff, “almost incomprehensible” – hell – it makes the gods sweat blood. Just the same, let’s see if we can make head or tail of it.

When a baby boy is born, his unformed future lays before him. As he grows, he prepares himself for the challenges ahead. Fully grown, he takes up a job that will from then on define him as a man.

With a baby girl it is different; she is born with her life fully formed. Femininity defines her; therefore, the moment of her birth, and the moment she reaches her full potential, are one and the same.

Accrediting your “impulse to rebel” as “a male thing” is correct when you consider how and why men lead the lives they do. Males, from any time or from any place in history, have all faced the same demands from their society – get a job, get food, get a mate, then fight other males for a better job, better food, and a better mate. All male endeavours can be boiled down to this cycle of toil. When men become great artists, musicians, scientists, leaders, or thinkers; they are still trapped in that same cycle - they have just pushed the bar up a peg or two.

A woman’s life is defined through her relationships with others. She becomes a child, girlfriend, wife, mother, or grandmother, because that role has been created for her through the other person. The more relationships that come her way; the more Woman she inherits. Even if she doesn’t have any relationships, and is alone in the world, she is still defined by Woman through the lack of them. Because women are not defined by their actions like men are, what they do is of little consequence, that is - as long as they don’t stray too far from Woman. For example, an unmarried female President and her unmarried sister, raising six kids, have exactly the same status in the ‘Woman Stakes’ as each other - because they both lack that crucial relationship. For a woman to reach the highest that Woman has to offer, she would be married, or at least be coupled with someone, have children and lots of friends.

These relationships are extremely necessary. Through them, women’s emotions are given life; which in turn, gives her life meaning.

So women’s lives aren’t like men’s; they don’t have to fix their lives to some goal to create their own existence. Their lives flow freely from relationship to relationship, from circumstance to circumstance. Men can change and grow from their experiences; women never change, because they never experience anything directly – only through their emotions.

And Matt, your being “confounded” by Woman, is inevitable. Men value certainty - something woman can’t possess. Her emotions pull her first this way and then that way. Never are they at rest. Never are they satisfied. Women are compelled to change their hair, clothes, décor, boyfriend, job, ideas, husband, loves, hates - everything, all the time. No thing escapes this emotional whirlwind. Even the idea, that she is “downtrodden”, becomes just another emotional fix.


So Matt, you hit the nail on the head when you said, “Women don't do things to express a principle, they just go with whatever feels best”. Expecting women to be able to have a principle, let alone express it, is asking something of them that they are entirely incapable of ever achieving.

Sue

[Leyla Shen]

Men can change and grow from their experiences; women never change, because they never experience anything directly – only through their emotions.

Being a woman, how do you know this to be true -- through your emotions?

[Leyla Shen]

sue: Being a woman, I’m not sure I want to get into philosophy.

So, sue hindmarsh, what should we make of your dissertations on the subject?

[sue hindmarsh]

I wrote:

Men can change and grow from their experiences; women never change, because they never experience anything directly – only through their emotions.

Leyla Shen wrote

Being a woman, how do you know this to be true -- through your emotions?

If my thought emanates from a swirling torrent of emotional play, then it would be circumspect of you to ignore all I write as fluff and nonsense.

If, on the other hand, my thought is based on cold, hard reasoning, and resonates with your own thoughts on this matter - then so be it.

I can’t do your thinking for you.

Sue

[sue hindmarsh]

I wrote:

Being a woman, I’m not sure I want to get into philosophy.

Leyla Shen wrote:

So, sue hindmarsh, what should we make of your dissertations on the subject?

My “dissertations” are whatever you wish to make of them.

To discriminate against someone, because of their biological sex - has no validity.

To discriminate against someone, because of the sex of their mind – is wholly valid.

Again. I can’t do your thinking for you.

Sue

[Kitoak]

To discriminate against someone, because of the sex of their mind – is wholly valid.

I'm not sure any kind of discrimination is valid. We can question thoughts and how conculsions are reached, but to make a mind related to the sex, I think is stereotyping the masses, and for philosophical thoughts thats very closed minded. I thihk some women are very calulating and cold harded logical, yet they are totally female. I've also seen some men who are totally caring and have more clues as to how others are feeling better than women.

Okay having said that, there are differences between how some men think and how some women think, but to say one is more new age than the other, or that new age is more to the thought of women than men, I would say I've seen just as many men thinking and doing new age thought just as I do women.

So what does discremination of the mind have to do with new age thought?

[David Quinn]

Kitoak wrote:

I'm not sure any kind of discrimination is valid. We can question thoughts and how conculsions are reached, but to make a mind related to the sex, I think is stereotyping the masses, and for philosophical thoughts thats very closed minded.

Yes, those who discriminate are clearly inferior to those who don't.

And what's more, anyone who stereotypes others is not only close-minded, but they also belong to an inferior class of human beings.

It couldn't be any more black-and-white. Well said, Kitoak.

-

[Leyla Shen]

Excellent.

I needed that, Mr Hindmarsh!

[Bondi]

"New Age" seems more like the ebb of structured/disciplined thought. The swamp of animalistic desires that becomes apparent when people get tired of conformity.

To be precise, New Age is the ebb of disciplined thought in a negligible sense, as it is rather a caricature of disciplined thought.

If we put it that way, it is astonishing to see that New Age has a devastating effect. New Age, as a more or less undefined "movement", is not spiritual in any way. It is only psychical, and cannot reach beyond that realm. All the so-called "wisdom" it can offer is only reflective, or we can say "lunar", that is only reflecting the light of the spiritual ("solar", masculine etc.). And last but not least, New Age is declaredly feminine, and very-very offensive and untolerant against everything that is masculine (i.e. real wisdom, which has the origin/aim on its own self, and not a mere reflective "opinion" in any way). Indeed, it seems very tolerant and "nice" at the first sight but only up to the point where there are real ideas or concepts in question, not only false ideas (common, well-known and well-accepted opinions of ordinary life). When you want to discuss real ideas, everything is turning in the diametrical opposite way, the "tolerant" mask is fading away in a blink of the eye.

(Sorry to hit a "prophetic" tone but I think one can never be careful enough concerning the dangers of pseudo-spirituality.)

[Matt Gregory]

No offense taken, Bondi, I thought that was pretty well said.

I for one can't think of anything else to say on this thread. It's like trying to criticize a bunch of hippies for smoking dope. What can you say?