GENIUS FORUMS

In addition to Kharma & Dharma, the Vedas also have the ideas of action and non-action. I'm not here telling anyone how to handle this; YMMV. The Vedic cycles set the zeitgeist for the times, but no matter what the times are, some are lucky. Some are smart, some go with the flow or set the pace.

I dont think any of would argue that these are not "interesting times", and some of us have wondered why the Chinese sages thot that was a curse. But you may live out your times egzactly as you expect. We all see things we'd rather not look at. I dont take the blame for any of it, and dont see any way to tell whether the changes I see coming will affect me personally that much one way or the other. The tides of the times have tended to sweep by the Ozarks leaving us to our own devices.

it has helped not being a rich target. Make your own judgment on how the cyclic shifts will affect life where you are. Whatever your opinion is, there seems to be a global expansion of variety so that while a lot of what goes on is disturbing, there's also places where you fit in better. If people who dont like the way they see the US, UK, Eu, or any other culture is evolving, I dont blame them for not wanting to live there.

Somebody told me that the new Barbi doll outfits make them look like hookers, and Ken looks like a pimp. I dunno; I dont see any that in my neck of Ozark woods, but it seems consistent with what I see on TV. Does that mean the girls are going to grow up to be sluts? Well, if the young men are no longer making enuf money to support a family, I can see how the girls would be considering different career paths.

i dont see that it was my Kharma or Dharma that the rich should make more money and the working man less.

Alex,

With that said, it has often been a part of my perception in dealing with feministically oriented women

This nomenclature of yours leads me to think that you classify women in three groups: feminists, feministically oriented, and those who think men are better than them. Is there any group I left out?

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Shahrazad writes"

That is probably true for airheads, but not all women are. I'd rather become a lawyer than marry one. A few years of studying will get me a law degree, but there's nothing I can do to make sure that a man I marry will stay with me all his life, or even if he does, that I will want to stay with him if I consider he has changed beyond recognition. I can't control a man completely, or at all, really, but I can control what I become and the skills I perfect to support myself and those who depend on me.

I didn't say all women are airheads. What I am trying to get you to do, S., is stop saying that very kind of thing: "all men want is..." and "the only thing men respond to is..." In fact, I agree with much - most, really - of what you have to say. Like the rest of the quote above, you are making all rational points.

Shahrazad wrote:

"This nomenclature of yours leads me to think that you classify women in three groups: feminists, feministically oriented, and those who think men are better than them. Is there any group I left out?"

I am only talking about, and to, a small group of people, and we all have a similar background pretty much (culturally and socially). So, I am talking more to a background, about a background that we have received. The 'feminist discourse' has been one of the most insistent, and it has penetrated far. When I write about 'feminists' I am thinking of my mom and her friends and a vibrant and contentious time in the 70s (now just a memory in the past), about women I knew in university settings during the 80s. And, I am also thinking of the second wave, and even the third-wave feminists who I have read more recently.

It's likely you aren't familiar with Ilan Stavans, a Mexican essayist, but he wrote a very nice essay on political correct speech and politically-correct-derived thinking as a terrible bane on the intellectual world. I believe that PC formulations drive much of our thinking, and in order to get clear of this we have to do though a process of de-indoctrination. We have to be willing to examine certain Sacred Cows without the PC mediation.

You may find, as I have found, that when you take issue with a PC formulation, the Upholders of Truth come at you like a swarm of hornets. If you break ranks, you will be attacked and destroyed. This sort of thing goes on all the time in intellectual, academic and literary circles, and when the stakes are high, and when it touches controversial issues, good luck getting to the bottom of it, or anything. And one tactic is to deliberately try to move the argument to an ugly, personal arena, or to so confound an issue that it is impossible to talk about it 'rationally', civilly. You have seen it I'm sure, and I have certainly seen it.

I am not into pigeon-holes---are you?

...

xerox writes:

"The gender discussion fundamentally goes nowhere. It always breaks down into a power dynamic. Asserting self interested agenda masquerading behind clever rhetorical veneers. It essentially says nothing more than a rock is different to a drop of water... discuss, debate, critique, elaberate. It constantly throws up equations like 1+green=tuesday. Take on this difficult question, twist oneself in many dramatic directions, work it out, evolve. When such ends cannot be achieved asking such questions."

I don't think I will ever get to the bottom of some of these formlations becuase, it seems, I am opposed to the very core ideas that inform them. I don't even try to discover, anymore (when once I might have), just what those core ideas are, only because when I do extract them, they simply are of little use to me. But one thing, and this is my way of establishing at least some sort of a bridge to you and what you write: those string and can telephones kids used to make, they only work if you pull the string tight, if there is some tension there. Maybe you have set your goal as 'infinity' or 'the absolute' (which ideas are useless and meaningless to me), yet nevertheless you devote time to your writing, to your expression, and you present your ideas on a public forum. So, in that, you 'need' the tension that I provide you, or would you be happy if everyone here were just 'sharing their agreements'?

When I say that 'with me the gender conflict goes somewhere' I mean that as a personal affirmation that I intend to get something out of it, something of use. Now, I draw tou your attention that a great percentage of what the QRS have written on the subject of gender is commentary with a very definite purpose, and in that is polemical. These polemics are designed to persuade and to influence, in that sense, as I say, they are representing and selling something. But then, in your case, you have the option of retreating from it all, of floating above it like a feather in the sky, and seeing it all as useless and even ridiculous. Whatever. I sort of admire the stance because it gives you at least 2 very different options, but I don't understand at all what you are after.

I think when you are involved in literature, as I am, it makes it harder and works counter to your purposes to take up these philosophies of escape or retreat, that's how it seems to me anyway. Y'all seem more than anything to want to unbecome, to minimize, to reduce, in a sense to become nothing, to disappear. And yet---and it seems to prove a Nietzschean point---your will so very cleary still exists, and it insists on making itself known, on doing things, asserting itself. But it seems you assert something that is a value-negative. And I work only with value-positives, I am filled with them, they animate me, literally. You guys, it seems to me, when anything gets too 'value-positive' can bring out a giant wet rug of 'value-negatives' and throw it over the whole deal, and then you can retreat among yourselves, talking in value-negative code, picking apart words in an ever-shrinking circle or game, until there is no utterance left---and this seems to satisfy you.

As they used to say, different strokes for different folks.

[left blank]

Kevin, that was a xerox quote. I'd say that 'the gender discussion...always leads to the bedroom', but I doubt you'd quote THAT.

What is useful is to dispassionately understand where the global corporate culture is going. They, after all, have the money, and people will adapt to it, whether we like it or not, as they always have. This discussion may not be going anywhere, but the issue is, and you can either go with the flow, or vote with your feet to some eddy that is going nowhere, where people live the way you think they should with your moral values.

broken,

I didn't say all women are airheads.

You said it's easier to marry a lawyer than to become one. What kind of woman would find this to be true? Certainly not my kind. In my society, a lawyer has enough status that he could easily get a girl who looks like a model. He wouldn't be interested in a smart woman like me who doesn't.

What I am trying to get you to do, S., is stop saying that very kind of thing: "all men want is..." and "the only thing men respond to is..."

You're doing this very same thing.

-

Alex,

I am not into pigeon-holes---are you?

No, but I thought you were. If it is not true, I apologize.

You're doing this very same thing.

I don't think I do. If I say "women do this" or "men do that" I mean in general. I do generalize when I need to in order to make a point. I don't believe I ever say - or even think - "all women do this" or "men only want that." Perhaps I could be more specific and say "many women do this" or "most men do that." I thought the "many" and "most" were understood.

If it's understood when you say it, why isn't it understood when I say it?

Shahrazad wrote:If it's understood when you say it, why isn't it understood when I say it?

Most women don't generalize.

[ Insert rolling on the floor laughing emoticon here. ]

...

'La cruz de Cristo nos salvó del laberinto circular de los estoicos'.

---San Agustin

It is a curious fact, a curious point, that a metaphor can liberate us from another metaphor. That we use certain ideas and symbols to guide ourselves along these 'paths' and 'roads' we are traveling, what we call our lives. And how curious indeed that we seem always to be on the lookout for cutting-edge metaphors, or a resurrected forgotten one, or one that we discovered through our own efforts and that came hard.

'Christ's cross has saved us from the circular maze of stoicism'.

I think that the concept 'infinity' and 'absolute' function in this way. It seems to me an attempt, more than anything else, to take stock of oneself, to stop for a moment, to separate oneself from an unwanted current that is sweeping one along. In order to get out of a certain mental mire and muck one needs just one bold idea to grab onto, but not more than one---and definitely not ten ideas that operate against each other, as they do in the pained body of the average mortal. You have to let go of diversity and attach yourself to singularity.

I think it is true that all of us at one time or another avail ourselves of concrete and singular ideas so that we have a rallying point, a focus, and if we have found that focus after a great deal of suffering in diversity, we won't allow anyone to slap that cup away from our lips on just a whim. It is not a question of whether or not the opponent makes all the sense in the world and employs the soundest mathematical logic of all times; when we have discovered the pathway to salvation we had better cling to that path with all our strength. You'd be a fool not to.

In this, of course, is interesting material. But it leads back to a question: What in the heck are we really talking about? I don't mean here, in these conversations, but I mean in our Dialogue with life, with existence?

Throw me a saving metaphor, quick, I'm drowning! And perhaps someone will come along and minister to you with potent and healing metaphors to get you back on track, but what is that track? (Track, road, path).

The metaphysicians and shucksters who operate in these waters are of a lower order. That is why they can only attract and hold a certain quality of person, but lets face it: it's a person who shares a certain kind of mental illness, an unwellness. I am chary to label it, analytically, as 'mental illness', because any 'mental illness' is just a pattern that sits upon a brignt well-being, a kind of effervescence of the soul. It is the bad metaphors, the metaphors that twist back on themselves, the metaphor that ties you up in knots when it promised to heal you and free you, those are the ones that do us harm.

But there is---I am proposing---a higher strata, and we get to that higher strata through a spiritual lyricism, which is to say NOT through dry or hard-angled and boring mathematical and linguistic formulations---that is for the lower orders.

...not for the shining spirit.

Shahrazad wrote:If it's understood when you say it, why isn't it understood when I say it?

It apparently is not understood - by you anyway - when I say it.

And I am not either saying or implying "all" when I write. You, on the other hand, do use the terms "all men" and "men only." If you would stop using those terms when you write, you wouldn't have to backtrack later on and say you didn't really mean "all men want is sex" and "men only respond to sex and violence."

You are quarreling over a word I left out (saying "women" do this and that instead of saying "some women" do this and that.) I am quarreling over words you put in ("all" and "only.") You are deliberately misunderstanding something I did not say in order to defend something you did say.

If you can't see the difference, Shahrazad, I honestly have nothing more I can say on this point.

You, on the other hand, do use the terms "all men" and "men only."

I don't even remember what I wrote 10 pages ago, but if I wrote "all men want is sex", it is very likely that "all" applied to want and not to men. IOW, I was saying "all that men want is sex", so the word "all" was not an adjective modifying men.

If you are claiming that I meant to say that every single man in the world wants to have sex with women, that is a pretty ridiculous claim, as I beleive that close to 1 out of 3 men are gay.

You engage in much ado over nothing.

-

You engage in much ado over nothing.

Takes two to tango.

...

Much appreciated, mr. xerox. I use these conversations---even when I am boringly blogging---just for my own purposes. I find it facinating and also strange that in this medium we meet each other through an aspect, and only an aspect, of ourselves. I always think of a story by Thomas Beckett that takes place in a place, a room, a space where there is no light, no vision, just blindness, and it's all just groping, anguish, misunderstanding, and as always among people (my impression) a certain sort of pain, but its a pain so normalized that one hardly notices it, yet one is in it constantly. Well, nothing quite that grim here, and Beckett is a symbolist in his own weird way, but this medium is always 'blind', always partial, always defective, and most of the time is based in misunderstanding. So that often even when there is 'agreement' it is a sort of false agreement.

I got that quote of Saint Augustine from a small biography I am reading on Jorge Borges. Borges said that he admired Augustine's command of metaphor, and the idea seemed so interesting to me; the handling and the weilding of metaphors. Borges lived and breathed story, and there are so many anecdotes from his own life to illustrate this: Once he visited a woman friend who was crying because her dog died and Borges, trying to be sympathetic, consoled her by saying that there existed, beyond her singular dog, a Platonic Dog, and that she could think this Dog and thus diminish her pain of loss. 'To hell with you, Borges, and your archetypal Dog too!', and she went on crying.

Onn another page, they are 'fighting in the captain's tower' over 'enlightenment', which REALLY makes me think of Beckett, the blind shouting at the blind, or two alcoholics in the street having a bit of a row over some very important issue. Okay, that is a bit mean of me that characterization, but we all seem to have this idea that these metaphors, at certain points, can become acutely real, insofar as we can know or experience anything 'real'. I like to say that 'within a dream-like story, we come across a jewelled metaphor, we pick it up and it explodes', and releases its potency, which is what we all seem to be seeking.