- "It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived—forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward- looking position." ---Journals, S.K.
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David writes: "No, my focus is upon ripping up the page completely. "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"
Well then, I wasn't so wrong in my assessment: the destructive desire. We've seen what those 'fires' can do. Quite often, perhaps more often than not, when people or groups come under the spell of this desire it tends to turn out badly. By and large, this is the general impression I get from reading the writing of the people who hold dearly to this 'Teaching', to a particular flame that attracts peculiar moths. (You are completely
BOUND to the Judeo-Christian tradition in ways that are invisible to you). I don't think it is wise to disregard a potential operative 'psychology' at work. I do suppose, though, that
discerning intellects might be able to see through the 'project', and it appears this is the case. So, you have a kind of mental (or perhaps spiritual?) battle where one side accuses the other of error or omission and then a whole defense is offered by the other side, and on and on it goes. I am supposing---I have stated this openly many times---that it is just that
discerning reader who is my 'target' reader.
D:"Kierkegaard was confined to the insular world of 19th century Denmark in which everyone was a Christian. It was therefore natural for him to utilize the Christian tradition and its various concepts for his higher purpose, which was to stimulate people out of their delusions and encourage them to value truth."
Since your basic logic is that there is no 'revelation' offered to man through superior consciousness---outside of time and reaching to man in time---and no God who acts in history, no process of revelation, and your use of the word 'God' is essentially a false usage (I suggest somewhat devious), it certainly follows that you must reinterpret Kierkegaard (and any other intellect produced from this matrix: the unique historical circumstance that spans Judea, Rome, Greece and the Alexandrian melting/synthesis pot) as only a certain sort of mind, the 'genius' you favor, and that were he to have been placed in 10th century China his genius would merely have been applied in that locale. In this way, as I have suggested often, you 'convert' man into a mere machine, an advanced computer that you can drop into different circumstances, and that pick up the 'software' operating there. I suppose that for people afflicted with a reductive mentality this is an attractive view, a necessary view.
D: "In this, his project was essentially identical to mine. Only the outer clothing differs. Nowadays, it would be inappropriate and counter-productive for me to confine myself to the Christian "matrix", or to any other matrix. We now live in a global envirnoment where postmodernism/science rules, which therefore means that an entirely different set of concepts are needed. Christian concepts no longer hold any credibility with most people in the modern age."
'Identical to mine'. I think this is where your 'self' asserts with a great deal of presumption its exalted view of itself. It is pointed out to you often, you have all sorts of mechanisms to deflect it (not the least of which is 'becoming invisible'---one of the more remarkable strategies yet observed). In regard to 'outer clothing', it would at this point become almost necessary not to trace the lines of Kierkegaard's 'genius', but to put on the table his deeply conflicted nature. Sometimes I get the impression that what draws you to Kierkegaard is not his genius but his dysfunction.
Following the thrust of your own 'logic', in respect to 'truth', it shouldn't matter what the global environment is or isn't; if it is post-modern or scientific or paganistic. One does not adapt 'truth' to the operative concepts but rather truth should only express truthful concepts.
That is a flimsy argument against 'Christian concepts'.
D: "In many ways, the work done here on Genius Forum is superior to what Kierkegaard did, precisely because it is global in nature and can cut through any tradition. And this globalness or universality means that it will continue to be relevant in the long-term future, regardless of what new traditions arise."
Again, it is my feeling that you can't really speak about or for Kierkegaard and, truth be told, about any of the major figures you coopt into your program. Your grasp of them is too shallow; you do not have yourself the 'conceptual tools' to pick them up. Your statement above is more evidence that you are 'marketeers in a genius town'. Now you are speaking of 'globalism' and purveying to what sounds like the least common-denominator. If you were
REALLY dealing with genius I think you would appreciate it as a rare essence. As far as the lowe denominator goes, it is sad to say but I think to understand your message you'd merely have to look clearly and insightfully at your 'following'. Naw, David, you are pulling shit out of your hat now...
Alex: Do you see? You-all have a very, very strange 'project' you are undertaking in all this, I actually think it is quite devious and that it stems from a core 'self-deception'. There is a very essential thing that you are working to DESTROY but I don't think you can cop to it, perhaps because you just don't see it.
David: You still don't understand. I don't value anything that you value. None of it. / It's not a case of my deviating away from the same page that you and I are both working from and that if I were to just include the elements that you favour then I would be brought back, as it were, to the center of the page again. No, my focus is upon ripping up the page completely."
Someone: "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"
Probably, this is the clearest sort of statement you could make about your project, your vision and your intentions. Only an ignorant man could make such a statement, and do so without grasping the ramifications of it.
D: "You do it in order to bring things back into the realm of the convoluted and the superfluous, which would allow you to gain control of the conversation again. The Eastern teachings are too cold and sterile for you; you're like a fish out of water there. Judaism and Christianity are full of the complexities that enable you to keep distracted and provide the materials for you to dazzle others with."
No, it goes back to the question and issue of 'values' and what one is to privelage in the living of life. According to you, your own values are essentially 'destructive' and like many who, for various reasons, develop a hatred---motivated by unconscious forces (one assumes)---of their own self and their own matrix, you dedicate yourself to a project of 'burrowing under'. I haven't quite figured out all the 'whys' of this phenomenon but I begin to see that this is where you have located yourself.
Truthfully, I think the 'Eastern teachings' at least the ones you talk about all the time (and A=A and 'the Totality' ecetera) are far less demanding than the essences that reside in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which are part and parcel of the structure that is our own 'self', insofar as we are products of the Hellenic-Judaic-Roman-Alexandrian 'person'. In point of fact, I think you show yourself more and more as a romantic post-modernistic escapist with a 'marketing strategy' than any sort of genius or even gifted intellect.
