GENIUS FORUMS

cousinbasil wrote:Prince, you will note I have not labeled anyone as a misogynist and that it was Kelly who brought up the term. Methinks that thou dost protest too much.

You did plenty of it in the woman's world thread.

And furthermore, you still can not grasp the difference between feminine as a lack of consciousness, and feminine the gender and manifestations thereof. It requires a level of discernment which you (will likely always) lack.

Did you mean being able to reflect on patterns of thoughtlessness in oneself, and then seeing more coarse symptoms more generally in women, prince? Otherwise, I can't make sense of your distinction, as it's not possible to directly identify consciousness/unconsciousness in anything/anyone other than oneself. In others, or other things, one can only judge by "manifestations". That is, outward behaviour.


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Kelly wrote:It looks as though you have yet to identify ultra-masculinity. That is, the relationship between the characteristics of the wise, and most men. When a person becomes wise, and familiar with those traits, then they will start seeing femininity in most people, in varying degrees.

...it's not possible to directly identify consciousness/unconsciousness in anything/anyone other than oneself

So femininity and unconsciousness are not synonymous?

LIkewise you seem to be saying consciousness and wisdom are not the same thing.

Rocks, clouds, gravity, and worms are all unconscious, but not feminine. That is, their outward behaviour, the "manifestations", are most easily explained as lacking consciousness, relative to what a conscious person regards as conscious behaviour.

Feminine-mindedness is a particular kind of "consciousness": it's a consciousness that is nothing. For example, a woman can do and say things with a great display of passion and fervour, but then announce she meant nothing by it, or it was a joke, or she takes it all back, or it was all a passing mood. The feminine-mind is that kind of fickleness and volatility that has no inward-centred focus. It lacks a pinning rationale or focal principle, so it is nothing. It responds and reacts to the moment, to the emotional impulse, to the passing stimuli, changing from mood to mood, without an inner stability - without individuality - so one can say it is virtually inanimate, like a plant responding to the sun, or a rock falling down a hill. By contrast, the conscious person has a deep constancy formed out of the drives of an inwardly-formed character.

The reason I make these distinctions, is to help drive home the difference between wisdom and going-with-the-flow. Wisdom is consciousness: it is individuality that knows (con-scio) the ultimate truth about itself.


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Kelly wrote:Wisdom is consciousness (my italics): it is individuality that knows (con-scio) the ultimate truth about itself.

...it's not possible to directly identify consciousness/unconsciousness in anything/anyone other than oneself

Therefore it is not possible to identify wisdom (and so lack thereof) directly in anyone/anything other than oneself.

Again, you claim here you cannot identify consciousness/unconscious in anything/anyone other than oneself. Yet you said:

Rocks, clouds, gravity, and worms are all unconscious

and rocks and clouds, etc., are all things.

I am trying to pin down what we are speaking of and whether or not we are allowing certain generalizations as valid observations.

prince wrote:

cousinbasil wrote:Prince, you will note I have not labeled anyone as a misogynist and that it was Kelly who brought up the term. Methinks that thou dost protest too much.

You did plenty of it in the woman's world thread.

I don't think I did any of it anywhere. Perhaps you could quote instead of merely accuse...?

And furthermore, you still can not grasp the difference between feminine as a lack of consciousness, and feminine the gender and manifestations thereof. It requires a level of discernment which you (will likely always) lack

Yet you seem to be missing my point, or at least persist in avoiding it in favor of making personal (mis)judgments:
If feminine the gender and any and all "manifestations thereof" have nothing whatsoever to do with with feminine being a lack of consciousness, why use the term instead of another term? Why not use the term "masculine"?

Better, if consciousness or lack thereof have nothing to do with gender or any manifestation of gender, perhaps we could use a term which has no connotations regarding gender...? Why not stick with the terms "conscious" and "unconscious"? Or we could use the terms "red" and "blue", and claim that we are not talking about color or manifestations of color...

Your characterizations of my ability to discern are nothing but a way to deflect my observations, which continue to be valid, unless you can actually address them and demonstrate that they are otherwise. Can you?

cousinbasil wrote:

Kelly wrote:Wisdom is consciousness (my italics): it is individuality that knows (con-scio) the ultimate truth about itself .... it's not possible to directly identify consciousness/unconsciousness in anything/anyone other than oneself

Therefore it is not possible to identify wisdom (and so lack thereof) directly in anyone/anything other than oneself.

I am very precise in my choice of words, unlike most people. Notice that I wrote "it's not possible to directly identify consciousness / unconsciousness in anyone / anything other than oneself."

In other words, judging whether consciousness is present, or unconsciousness, in something other than oneself, is an empirical judgment. It's uncertain. One has to go from a thing or a person's "outward manifestations", that is, their behaviour. For example, a person could be acting the fool for some purpose unknown to us.

Again, you claim here you cannot identify consciousness/unconscious in anything/anyone other than oneself. Yet you said: "Rocks, clouds, gravity, and worms are all unconscious..."

You forgot to include the following sentence. It continues, "That is, their outward behaviour, the "manifestations", are most easily explained as lacking consciousness, relative to what a conscious person regards as conscious behaviour."

I am trying to pin down what we are speaking of and whether or not we are allowing certain generalizations as valid observations.

That's fine. I welcome that scrutiny. You just need to read a little bit more carefully.


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Perhaps it is because of my rural background, I can't be sure, but I enjoyed Huxley's descriptions of the Tuscany hills seen from the promontory. It is odd that 3-4 pages at the beginning are just description of the natural setting. Then, he phases into the story by dealing on a familiar Huxleyan theme: the contrast between cultivated, conquered nature, and nature in its wild and 'demonic' state. In a few essays he deals on the theme of the illusion of the beauty and bounty of nature---the 'goodness' of nature---by describing the utter horror of nature in a jungle environment: the place is out to get you, it will literally devour you if you can't protect yourself. In this Tuscan setting there is the best of both worlds: tamed, cultivated, rural countryside that still offers a few pockets of untamed forest. I have a feeling there may be some keys to the story that develops in these first 3-4 pages which are so carefully drawn.

Another small note: I have a strong feeling that a huge percentage of the GF critique of women stem from Weininger and his Sex and Character. This is an opus and a viewpoint that arises from a particular context: the turn of the century. In significant ways Huxley's intellectual formation stems from this same matrix, and Huxley brings a very relevant---indeed essential---critique of certain modern trends the seeds of which were evident to someone with his insight and intelligence. He was shocked to visit America in the 20s where he observed a group of trends that now comprises, basically, the modern degeneracy: trends that are now reaching out to swamp the whole world. So much of this was dealt on in his essays but of course it was expressed so brilliantly in Brave New World. In this sense the QRS(J) only continue a critique that was begun by other minds. We could---if we were to really stretch it---take Signora Bondi (the sanguine, childless, meddlesome and destructive woman) as an emblem for a whole class of feminine appetite and 'freedom' (democratic freedom, 'market freedom') that was to emerge. The problem arises in defining exactly what this degeneracy process is and putting language to it. For QRS(J) it is 'woman' which, I think, is a term not qualified enough. To embrace the QRS philosophy you have to embrace 'misogyny', to become a sort of hateful, opinionated, adolescent squeaker. But to combat the degeneracy of consciousness that both GF and Huxley critique (and rightly so) must be a far more carefully nuanced endeavor.

Final note. The way the labels 'woman' and 'misogyny' and 'feminine' is used here---universally---has always seemed partly to be a baiting tactic. One could carefully, and more intelligently and more effectively describe the human ailment that QRS sums up as the female or 'woman' problem, and could also describe what the alternative is, without getting bogged down in what always becomes a culture-war: men vs women and all that hovers and interweaves with those issues. It is a great mistake to use, without qualification, the terms the QRS(J) have established. It is attention-getting but in the end it works against the dissemination of 'the message'.

Talking Ass wrote: One could carefully, and more intelligently and more effectively describe the human ailment that QRS sums up as the female or 'woman' problem, and could also describe what the alternative is, without getting bogged down in what always becomes a culture-war

When I first started to engage the specific terminology at this forum, I pretty much agreed with your criticism here, Alex. But over the years I came to realize, even to admit wholeheartedly that the "summarizing" by Quinn et al. in fact is the most effective, non-intellectual, description of the human "erring" in this specific end age, and that it's as far as I can see the most intelligent, cunning and effective approach, no matter how unsophisticated or 19th century it can be framed as. And Weininger's views are hardly bound to his age, it was a late summer age with many ripe ideas, ready to harvest or burn - but similar viewpoints have been developed independently in other ages but perhaps not that intense as with Weininger, linking it to the subject of genius and even Jew.

Of course, one could contemplate different approaches using more abstract notions like nihilism, density, fragmentation, seduction, separation, narcissism and so on, but since it's all becoming literally embodied in the female image, the 21st century femininity, all projected outwards to symbolize the great confusion of the human mind - why not just going straight for it? Why not directly challenging, exposing the empress without clothes? It looks to me very effective, very helpful to learn people to look around them and see for themselves the truth of the situation most of their fellow beings are being stuck in, limiting severely the view.

Alex Jacob, a small note but what happened to your accounts Alex T. Jacob and Alex Jacob? They both have been removed by you? It would be so much easier to take your words more seriously if you kept with one identity, even if only to pretend there was one.

The self is an illusion, Diebert. What you know as 'Alex Jacob' and 'Alex T. Jacob' (what the hell is that 't' about, anyway?) never in fact existed, nor do they now. So, you can't really say that 'something happened' to those personas. They weren't. You can't go looking for them, there is no them to be encountered. It was all a story about some fog that swirled in the primeaval mists, but in truth it never really happened. The trick, and the achievement, is to take seriously what can never, by definition, be serious. Or, never to take seriously what must needs take itself very, very seriously. If you finally decide not to take me seriously, you will have achieved a great thing. When you feel you need to take me seriously, don't. When you are inclined to dismiss me as just an ass-face on the left side of a vaporous post, choose instead to pay close attention.

Diebert writes: "When I first started to engage the specific terminology at this forum, I pretty much agreed with your criticism here, Alex. But over the years I came to realize, even to admit wholeheartedly that the "summarizing" by Quinn et al. in fact is the most effective, non-intellectual, description of the human "erring" in this specific end age, and that it's as far as I can see the most intelligent, cunning and effective approach, no matter how unsophisticated or 19th century it can be framed as. And Weininger's views are hardly bound to his age, it was a late summer age with many ripe ideas, ready to harvest or burn - but similar viewpoints have been developed independently in other ages but perhaps not that intense as with Weininger, linking it to the subject of genius and even Jew."

• Talking Ass appreciates what you have written.
• Talking Ass sees your point.
• Still, he is of a contrary position, that which he expressed earlier.
• The QRS(J)(vR) is like unto a ship plowing the waves.
• 'It' has points and ideas and facts it wishes to communicate.
• It is like unto a voice crying out in the wilderness.
• Like a 'voice' for those who 'have ears'.
• Talking Ass is also a voice 'braying' in the wilderness.
• Or like unto a ship plowing the waves.
• Oh look! The magnificent ships are near one another!
• But they came from different ports and to different ports they proceed.
• It is a question of destination.
• Still, I see you and your crew on your magnificent vessel.
• Ho Diebert! Ho Kelly! Ho David and Dan and Kevin!
• Selah.

It's flawed reasoning to think that constantly changing one's identity reveals no self. It reveals that one doesn't know one's true identity to be changeless and present in everything.


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It is flawed reasoning to take my declaration about no self seriously. My 'self' indeed exists. It is presented through every changing landscape of identity. Talking Ass is the nearest to the core of the self I believe is 'really real'.

• Selah

Talking Ass wrote:The QRS(J)(vR) is like unto a ship plowing the waves.

Who is the (J) in QRS(J)?

Like a 'voice' for those who 'have ears'.

Talking Ass has his share of ears.

Oh look! The magnificent ships are near one another!

No chance they might merely pass in the night...?

Still, I see you and your crew on your magnificent vessel.
Ho Diebert! Ho Kelly! Ho David and Dan and Kevin!

In his dizzying mix of metaphors, Talking Ass has chosen to link to a depiction of a battle on land...!

cousinbasil wrote:Who is the (J) in QRS(J)?

Ah, never mind. You are including Kelly!

• Boom!

Kelly writes: "Huxley could see coarse forms of the feminine-mind. He recognised the hellishness of the prostitute, and female zealot. But he regarded them as hellish because they didn't make him happy and "bliss out". He didn't understand the other side of the coin. Namely, unhappiness creates happiness, and happiness creates unhappiness. He was still deeply attracted to the "butterfly woman" - the blissful, wafty, soothing, sweet, ego-reinforcing magician-nurse. In Island, probably his most interesting work, he shows that he was deeply drawn to a childlike form of unconsciousness, as offered in drugs. In other words, Huxley himself had a large component of feminine-mindedness in himself, and this is why his soulmate was a maternal figure. He wanted to escape consciousness and rationality, and return back to infancy, rather than grow up through consciousness and make all reason, as the wise man does."

Kelly, I don't believe you have actually read much Huxley. Had you read more of him, I feel, you wouldn't make these incorrect statements.

It is more accurate to say that Huxley well understood so many ways that human beings are mired and afflicted. He recognizes extremely clearly that intelligence and intellect and awareness are the Keys to human (individual) progress, but---in contrast to you and the QRS(vR) generally---his conceptual order is much more inclusive. He actually entertains these ideas in Young Archimedes: he recognizes a wide range of difference between human beings. He sees that, in comparison to the young math genius he is like 'a dog wagging his tail'.

He has awareness and what is likely a 'compassion' (for humankind) you simply do not have, (though in his youth he was extremely acute and cutting) nor do you seem to know what it is. You can find these ideas brilliantly expressed in Proper Studies and Do What You Will, which you certainly have not read. Cutting to the chase: in comparison to Huxley's formation, intellectually and literarily, you are a stunted being, as is QRS and all the rest of the Crowing Crew. In this sense (preparation, wide reading) you are like the dog he employs in his story.

Because you have a strong mind, a mind with perservering qualities, and because you have forced yourself to abandon crude sensual expression, your mind drives on. But you utterly lack a wide range of material with which to work, and a complex structure with which to work with it, and so the larger percentage of your ideas and opinions are like distorted creatures: they are born in unhealthy, fetid slime with three legs and a distorted mouth. They try to scurry around but can't quite stand up straight. But there is a huge cranium in the distorted, afflicted creature that pulses with electrical energy. There is also a huge deposit of straight-up arrogance. And yet you will prate on about 'wisdom'. It is not surprising that you and Diebert appear here together, stupidly concerned about a non-issue---my 'identity'. You are like two head strong children.

It is completley incorrect to characterize Huxley's interest in and experience with psychedelics as a desire for unconsciousness. That is terrible use of your discrimination and obvious evidence of lack of familiarilty with his work. It is a doltish statement and below even your own afflicted standards. He was facinated by the way that consciousness could shift, how perception could shift, and open into different vistas. He probably made the best intellectual and spiritual use of his psychedelic experiences if compared to any other intellect or philosopher who was similarly fascinated. It also led him, in the latter part of his life, toward considerations of 'the Perennial Philosophy', toward an interest in the essence of the religious/spiritual impetous. You doing the dirty on him and even comparing yourself to his attainment, is absurd.

The 'butterfly woman' statement is comparable to some retard drooling. You have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Wipe it off your chin for God's sake!

What you have done with your statements is a travesty of intellectual work. It is a hack job performed by an inferior mind on a Superior Man. For that, you get a Slap Down!

• Once again, I demonstrate, why it is NECCESARY to bash the QRSers right in the teeth with my powerful hind leg. Let them pick the bits of broken teeth up off the ground and crawl home to safety. Can anyone see an alternative?!

Talking Ass wrote:[*]Oh look! The magnificent ships are near one another!
[*]But they came from different ports and to different ports they proceed.
[*]It is a question of destination.

But it's not hard to see your own flotilla has no goal, never had any real direction here so you end up swarming around a forum where a few people do appear to have set some high-post goals (not all the same ones though, but applying a similar masculine direction nevertheless). All the posturing and word dropping you call posting is just a way to make yourself at home, not to contribute (this is how you justify it perhaps, when you're not laughing it away) but to live of. And I've said it before: it's not healthy, especially not for yourself. You have in the end nothing to bring here, only to take away but you cannot carry that out, even, the tiniest of principles is simply too heavy for your ghostly arms; in the end being just another child of modernity who at best can phrase his dilemma in powerless reactionary or postmodern terms.

You're gonna have to try to link these critiques in to the topic here, Diebert. Please know that I totally disagree with your assessment of me, on every point. But still, the topic of this thread is a story by Aldous Huxley and to a lesser extent the way a view of woman is framed. Your tactic is to waylay me into irrelevant considerations. Were you neglected as a child?

;-)

Diebert wrote: "And I've said it before: it's not healthy, especially not for yourself. You have in the end nothing to bring here, only to take away but you cannot carry that out, even, the tiniest of principles is simply too heavy for your ghostly arms; in the end being just another child of modernity who at best can phrase his dilemma in powerless reactionary or postmodern terms."

There is really no way to engage with this, Diebert. It is part of the same strategy of QRS toward all and any who oppose them. It is transparent, but if it works for you what can I say? Ultimately, your strategy only leads to boring discourse, and you know that boring discourse is unforgivable.

But, I don't really 'oppose' them (QRS). I operate at a cross-current. Or I am destined for another region. The metaphor is apt. I'm interested in certain ideas here but note that they are expressed 'pathologically'. And it is not fair to say that I am not interested in 'taking away' from this forum or others contributions. But I call a fool a fool, or a dullard a dullard. You can spend your time critiquing me, my posts, my style, my antics, or you can deal with the content. To me it is equal.

But let's try to work with the 'child of modernity' phrase. What does that mean to you? Are you a 'child of modernity'? What about Huxley? Was he a 'child of modernity'? If so, how do you differ? Have you read any Huxley? You know from private conversations how disappointed I was to learn that your reading has been extremely narrow, certainly in literature.

Talking Ass wrote:It is flawed reasoning to take my declaration about no self seriously. My 'self' indeed exists. It is presented through every changing landscape of identity.

If self continues to be presented through change, then it is unchanging. Otherwise, it would not be presented through every changing landscape.


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Talking Ass wrote:He has awareness and what is likely a 'compassion' (for humankind) you simply do not have, (though in his youth he was extremely acute and cutting) nor do you seem to know what it is.

Huxley was not interested in helping people out of their delusions, but consoling them in their suffering. To me, he was like a priest in the cave of ignorance, doling out various "sophisticated" drugs, instead of attacking the root cause of their suffering.

You can find these ideas brilliantly expressed in Proper Studies and Do What You Will, which you certainly have not read. Cutting to the chase: in comparison to Huxley's formation, intellectually and literarily, you are a stunted being, as is QRS and all the rest of the Crowing Crew. In this sense (preparation, wide reading) you are like the dog he employs in his story.

If he were indeed compassionate, he would have realised that the fear of the void - of the truth - is a lot like the person with cabin fever. They are afraid to go outside, because they are habituated to the familiarity of their small tomb. They imagine that the unfamiliar is uncomfortable, frightening, turbulent, and disturbing, simply because they refuse to extend themselves to explore it. The wise man immediately breaks down the walls of the cabin, completely and suddenly destroying the delusion. What a favour! Yet Huxley mucked around with literary crap, which only built up his readers' deluded fears of Reality still further.

you utterly lack a wide range of material with which to work,

You mean, I lack appreciation of the complex nuances of the shit with which the deluded masses decorate their cabin walls, and the sophisticated methods they use to glue it all in place?

and a complex structure with which to work with it,

Reality has no such structure, simple or complex. Are you asking me to lie? What good does that do?

and so the larger percentage of your ideas and opinions are like distorted creatures: they are born in unhealthy, fetid slime with three legs and a distorted mouth. They try to scurry around but can't quite stand up straight. But there is a huge cranium in the distorted, afflicted creature that pulses with electrical energy. There is also a huge deposit of straight-up arrogance. And yet you will prate on about 'wisdom'. It is not surprising that you and Diebert appear here together, stupidly concerned about a non-issue---my 'identity'. You are like two head strong children.

Your attachment to a false idea is not a non-issue. It is a clear manifestation of foolishness. Attacking me for pointing it out, and calling my compassionate attempts to break down the walls of your little comfy tomb, as "distorted", "unhealthy" and so forth, only convinces me why you like Huxley. You are like he: someone who has no faith in the truth, but fears it. You prefer the little drugs of psychological bliss, helping you to push away those "maggotty" thoughts.

I used to spend time in that cabin. It's called The Aesthetics of the Human Condition. Those who no longer live there, know it as the place where people praise their artistry and compositional flair in the rare discipline of whinging. I well know its appeal. The more sophisticated believe they have reached the upper echelons of the human race, being far more advanced in their literary skills and conceptual dexterity than the coarse, hellish whining of the working class. It's the old Wordsworth motto: the maturity of adulthood is in a "deep artistic consolation" for the loss of childhood's sensorial immediacy. Blurgh! It's worth less than a constipated man's toilet paper.

It is completley incorrect to characterize Huxley's interest in and experience with psychedelics as a desire for unconsciousness. That is terrible use of your discrimination and obvious evidence of lack of familiarilty with his work. It is a doltish statement and below even your own afflicted standards. He was facinated by the way that consciousness could shift, how perception could shift, and open into different vistas. He probably made the best intellectual and spiritual use of his psychedelic experiences if compared to any other intellect or philosopher who was similarly fascinated. It also led him, in the latter part of his life, toward considerations of 'the Perennial Philosophy', toward an interest in the essence of the religious/spiritual impetous. You doing the dirty on him and even comparing yourself to his attainment, is absurd.

If a person is in love with forms, they haven't attained anything. I see no evidence that Huxley knew the source.

The 'butterfly woman' statement is comparable to some retard drooling. You have not the slightest idea what you are talking about. Wipe it off your chin for God's sake!

You are revealing more than you know.

What you have done with your statements is a travesty of intellectual work. It is a hack job performed by an inferior mind on a Superior Man. For that, you get a Slap Down!

• Once again, I demonstrate, why it is NECCESARY to bash the QRSers right in the teeth with my powerful hind leg. Let them pick the bits of broken teeth up off the ground and crawl home to safety. Can anyone see an alternative?!

Much of your post presents no reasoning, only wallowing in ad hominems. You haven't come close to actually engaging with my ideas. If you really want to do battle, you will need to enter the realm of reasoning.


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Talking Ass wrote:The topic of this thread is a story by Aldous Huxley and to a lesser extent the way a view of woman is framed. But let's try to work with the 'child of modernity' phrase.

A good analysis would be by G.K. Chesterton in "The end of the moderns" :

• They are not opening the gates either of heaven or hell;
  they are in a blind-alley, at the end of which there is no door.
  They are always philosophising and they have no philosophy.
  They have not reached that reality, that reason of things, or even
  that fully realised unreason of things, for which they are obviously
  and indeed avowedly seeking. But, what is here more to the point,
  they do not (like the old revolutionists) even know the direction
  in which they are to seek it. They have failed to discover,
  not only any purpose in the world, but even any purpose in the will.
  They are witty, brilliant and fashionable bankrupts.
  They have come to an end; and they have not come to an End.

Diebert! You're a fool. A stone-cold fool! How, in the recesses of your grey matter, do you manage to pull this off? G.K. Chesterton, the 'prince of paradox', was a strict, orthodox Christian, and an excellent Christian apologist. He ended his career converting to Roman Catholicism with all that that implies! How is it that you, in the murk of your own position (whatever the heck it is), refer to such strong statements that directly fly in the face of the entire basis of the positions weilded here, and your own?

• They are not opening the gates either of heaven or hell;
  they are in a blind-alley, at the end of which there is no door.
  
  They have not reached that reality, that reason of things, or even
  that fully realised unreason of things, for which they are obviously
  and indeed avowedly seeking.
  
  But, what is here more to the point,
  they do not (like the old revolutionists) even know the direction
  in which they are to seek it. They have failed to discover,
  not only any purpose in the world, but even any purpose in the will.
  
  They are witty, brilliant and fashionable bankrupts.
  They have come to an end; and they have not come to an End.

The dude was a complete literary. "Eighty books, several hundred poems, some 200 short stories, 4000 essays" but you and the QRS are anti-literaries. You have no operational ability to understand or to appreciate literary effort by your own admission! You have no means to comprehend the revolving door between philosophy (and religion/spirituality) and the novel (fictional format). You are in the same boat as QRS, and Kelly apparently. So, on what basis do you insist that I am lost in some post-modern ghostly fog? When you say this about me, who are you really writing about? Have you stopped to consider that you are in fact making a strong statement about your own position? Your own intellectual and moral position in modernity as a kind of bog you are stuck in?

This is absolutely facinating to me and, despite your intentions, deeply relevant to my own 'project' here, as someone coming alongside this strange QRStian vessel.

Kelly,

Your position has been engineered so simply that, with the slightest pressure, it all becomes obvious. It is a one-part lever, a unilever. You use the same tool to lift any weight that stands in front of you. If you insist this is 'masculinity' or even a masculine use of intellect, I will continue to slap you down, time after time after time. You are doing nothing more than dressing your female self up in a man's clothes and putting a bulging sock in your crotch. It is called cross-dressing.

You start from the premise---a false premise, a crude, girlish insistance---that you hold in your hands the key to the human problem. You do this in the manner of a typical 9-10 year-old adolescent; with unstudied and untested assurance. You will appear in front of real wise men---men who have worked for knowledge and wisdom and who have dedicated themselves to contributing in tangible terms---and give cross-dressed lectures. But you're just a snot. A snotty girl with a fake penis.

You speak about the difference between cruelty to the ego and making the ego smart. Take what I write here as the 'very rare latter'. You can call it ego or cruelty or aggression I don't care but I will not sit by and watch you do the dirty on a man such as Huxley.

Kelly writes: "To me, he was like a priest in the cave of ignorance, doling out various "sophisticated" drugs, instead of attacking the root cause of their suffering."

This is far too subjective. It is just opinion and badly formulated opinion in fact. We have to return to the first point: your entire intellectual capacity is 'ruled' if you will by a simplistic mechanism---the lever I spoke of. Like a child you've got hold of a lever you can weild and wield it you do! You will apply your simplistic tool to every consideration. And in your limited rhetoric (like the QRS btw) you will always 'win'. There is no losing for Kelly. It is the same simplistic structure of mentation and reasoning that functions in cults, my dear. You should become aware of this.

If you were to have read Huxley, especially his earlier work, you would know that his ideas and his position is infinitely more nuanced than this. You would also know that he could not, perhaps because his intellect was truly masculine and not female masquerading as mannish, reduce the whole issue of the problem of human existence and human suffering in the way that you reduce it. In your little mind you function on the basis of a simple, reduced perspective, but when it comes to 'reality' and to human social systems the simple and the binary just do not work. Huxley is aware that the work on the human being, socially, ethically, morally and in terms of consciousness, is a long, slow process. When people (historically) get down to the business of transforming beings they rapidly become aware that they must engage for the long haul. This perspective is pretty absent in the binary QRS(J)(vR) position.

Your own 'attacking the root cause of suffering' functions in this way: you have successfully cut yourself off from yourself (a psychic-physical disconnect) and your organism starves. And this you call 'pursuit of wisdom'. No Kelly. That is not the way to go. Your insitance on a binary model, which you ruthlessly apply to yourself, to others, and to all human questions, is a symptom of a diseased modality, a diseased interpretation. It is doubtful it will turn out well or as you wish. And this is not ad hominem per se, it is being sure that the individual, the person we are, is made to appear in our conversations. You have to appear as evidence of your own processes. To me, you look sad, drained and empty.

"If he were indeed compassionate, he would have realised that the fear of the void - of the truth - is a lot like the person with cabin fever. They are afraid to go outside, because they are habituated to the familiarity of their small tomb. They imagine that the unfamiliar is uncomfortable, frightening, turbulent, and disturbing, simply because they refuse to extend themselves to explore it. The wise man immediately breaks down the walls of the cabin, completely and suddenly destroying the delusion. What a favour! Yet Huxley mucked around with literary crap, which only built up his readers' deluded fears of Reality still further."

More BS. Again, back to the beginning: in your little mind, with your binary intellecual cross-dressed dollies in a playhouse of the mind, you have set up a little world in which your limited view will always prevail. The above is witness to this. But the truth is that Huxley-as-intellect starts from a far more open and nuanced position, a far wider grasp of the difficulty of human growth and evolution. Even in his early work he has poised himself for the long-haul, and has not---as in your case---succumbed to the attraction of an evangelical position, one simply reasoned. He has no simple (and simplistic) balm to offer simply because there is none! To engage with consciousness, or Divinity for that matter, is to come into a very wide current, a preexisting current, and to become a part of something greater. One becomes part of a process.

And here you are---like Diebert and like the QRS generally---dissing writers and intellects who 'muck around in literary crap'. This is where the best of your adolescent arrogance is displayed. I know that you will not be able to understand what I refer to and why it is so low and appalling, so describing it is only for the advantage of other readers. But mark this: this forum, by and large, is peopled with intellects who function on a limited platform, like you. It is the great failing of this forum and all its noble intentions.

"You mean, I lack appreciation of the complex nuances of the shit with which the deluded masses decorate their cabin walls, and the sophisticated methods they use to glue it all in place?"

Here you are simply continuing to argue from your a prioris and you are unconscious that you are a binary intellect, and in that sense 'a woman in drag'. There is a strange pain in observing any sort of cross-dressing, both for the cross-dresser and the observer. Slap-down Kelly. Slap-down.

"You are like he: someone who has no faith in the truth, but fears it. You prefer the little drugs of psychological bliss, helping you to push away those "maggotty" thoughts."

No. This is not it at all, but I clearly see how you arrive at this conclusion: it follows from your prepositions. See? I would call this a feminine defensiveness against a frightening truth.

In actual fact I work with truth in a more realistic and dare I say 'masculine' way, from the look of it. I also encourage others to do similar. I do not interpose a false illusion on what it means to engage in spiritual, philosophical, intellectual and conscious life. I am certainly interested in moving with those things, engaging them and challenging myself, but what I resist is the failings of a binary, simplistic platform---and that, my sweet, is your theatre.

If that works for you....

Talking Ass wrote:G.K. Chesterton, the 'prince of paradox', was a strict, orthodox Christian, and an excellent Christian apologist. He ended his career converting to Roman Catholicism with all that that implies! How is it that you, in the murk of your own position (whatever the heck it is), refer to such strong statements that directly fly in the face of the entire basis of the positions weilded here, and your own?

I quoted from a chapter called "The end of the moderns" from his book "The Common Man" which addresses the so-called "thinkers of modernity" and is dealing especially with Huxley and D. H. Lawrence as prime examples of "modernity" at the time of writing and I still hold it to be remarkably appropriate, even while modernity still had to develop in ways Chesterton luckily had no inkling of.

"Anti-literary"? The websites of Solway, Quinn, especially Kelly Jones are loaded with MANY of the heights of literary output of many ages. Most of it is non-fictional just like the essay of Chesterton I quoted. Which by the way was interesting to me decades ago and I wouldn't recommend as a whole but I thought appropriate for you since you admitted to a fling with Roman-Catholicism, your interest in "literaries" and your obvious fascination with Lawrence and Huxley, both by the way totally trashed in terms of philosophical strength in that same essay.

Anyway, as usual your arguments are void of content, your knowledge of nearly any topic you bring up is as deep as cursory glancing over a wiki page somewhere, and the only reason you keep on talking is the need to pretend: as the other needs to be "lacking", as to keep on believing you haven't wasted your whole life misunderstanding nearly everything you glanced over so far.

In that way you're an interesting type, the "Pharisee", who not only is quite clueless on each and every topic he deems himself (more) expert in or authoritative on, but he can only keep that imagined position by seeking out others to judge and admonish for a perceived "lack" or "sin". The sin here is not being intellectual, not sophisticated enough! While the thought of having a clue never will enter the mind. Because in the world of the "Pharisee" there are no clues, only opinions, hierarchies of superiority and levels of sophistication, literacy and showmanship. So in the end "modernity" will be found out to be just a new form of what must be the oldest disease.

Interesting/Funny: What is a philosopher? NYTimes forum.
Lost in the Clouds
_______________________________________________

Diebert writes: "I quoted from a chapter called "The end of the moderns" from his book "The Common Man" which addresses the so-called "thinkers of modernity" and is dealing especially with Huxley and D. H. Lawrence as prime examples of "modernity" at the time of writing and I still hold it to be remarkably appropriate, even while modernity still had to develop in ways Chesterton luckily had no inkling of."

'Remarkably appropriate'? Please explain...

It is just fine and dandy to quote him, or to quote anything, but the critique has to be linked in some way to the topic, and if the topic is me, how could you be leveling an essentially religious critique of my (as you see it) similar-to-Huxley's post-modern philosophies?

You must answer this question.

The paradoxical truth is that, were Chesterton here, he would likely level a terrible critique against the dissolving views of QRS(J)(vR).

You could also find a similar critique of Huxley and certainly Lawrence---and just about everyone else under the sun who is not a confessing Christian---in Francis Schaeffer's The God Who is There and Escape from Reason. Schaeffer also does a number on Huxley.

So what the heck are you actually defending, Diebert? This is your chance to come out and state it directly. Are you *recommending* a similar religiously inflected POV, as is Chesterton and Schaeffer, writing as as Christian apologists? Are you saying that your position, or that of QRS or that of Kelly and others here is a similarly-oriented position? I.e. essentially old-school religious? Are you saying that the famed QRS position is essentially the same as a religious position?

Diebert writes: "Anti-literary"? The websites of Solway, Quinn, especially Kelly Jones are loaded with MANY of the heights of literary output of many ages. Most of it is non-fictional just like the essay of Chesterton I quoted. Which by the way was interesting to me decades ago and I wouldn't recommend as a whole but I thought appropriate for you since you admitted to a fling with Roman-Catholicism, your interest in "literaries" and your obvious fascination with Lawrence and Huxley, both by the way totally trashed in terms of philosophical strength in that same essay."

Yes, anti-literary. As for example Kelly's statement that Huxley 'mucked around' in literary endeavors and the early critiques of my fine self as an 'aesthete', as a pathological term (extended to all artists). And you insofar as you have no grasp or understanding of the place and value of the novel (in the widest sense of meaning) as integral to the formation of our intellectual, spiritual and cultural traditions. It is true that some philosophers are referred to (by Quinn and Solway), and very heavily relied on---almost obsessively so, as if they were a Gospel (and the issue of transferance of religious, perhaps even Biblical zealousness has been noted)---but this is not the same as having a broad relationship with literary traditions. In these recent pages, Kelly took a crap on Huxley, and quite unfairly so, and in my opinion reveals her lack of relationship---ability to comprehend---his relevance and importance. This is typical *here*: what you don't understand or what makes you uncomfortable, you feel free to diss.

The rest of what you wrote is the same crap one always gets from you. I suggest again that it is more descriptive of yourself. The real pertinent question now is why do you quote Chesterton in relation to me? How is it that you feel this is relevant? (I like it, btw, and will get hold of it and read it).

• �They are not opening the gates either of heaven or hell; they are in a blind-alley, at the end of which there is no door.
  
  �They have not reached that reality, that reason of things, or even that fully realised unreason of things, for which they are obviously and indeed avowedly seeking.
  
  �But, what is here more to the point, they do not (like the old revolutionists) even know the direction in which they are to seek it. They have failed to discover, not only any purpose in the world, but even any purpose in the will.
  
  �They are witty, brilliant and fashionable bankrupts. They have come to an end; and they have not come to an End.

What is your relationship to the religious (Christian) position of Chesterton in relation to existential issues? In what way do I give evidence of 'post-modernism' in my views, and in what way do you (et al) not? How has the QRS circumnavigated this funnel, if may I know?

You must explain yourself in relation to every one of Chesterton's assertions. I am certain you will not be able to do it, or will avoid it.

Talking Ass wrote:Kelly,

Your position has been engineered so simply that, with the slightest pressure, it all becomes obvious. It is a one-part lever, a unilever. You use the same tool to lift any weight that stands in front of you. If you insist this is 'masculinity' or even a masculine use of intellect, I will continue to slap you down, time after time after time. You are doing nothing more than dressing your female self up in a man's clothes and putting a bulging sock in your crotch. It is called cross-dressing.

You start from the premise---a false premise, a crude, girlish insistance---that you hold in your hands the key to the human problem. You do this in the manner of a typical 9-10 year-old adolescent; with unstudied and untested assurance. You will appear in front of real wise men---men who have worked for knowledge and wisdom and who have dedicated themselves to contributing in tangible terms---and give cross-dressed lectures. But you're just a snot. A snotty girl with a fake penis.

You speak about the difference between cruelty to the ego and making the ego smart. Take what I write here as the 'very rare latter'. You can call it ego or cruelty or aggression I don't care but I will not sit by and watch you do the dirty on a man such as Huxley.

Kelly writes: "To me, he was like a priest in the cave of ignorance, doling out various "sophisticated" drugs, instead of attacking the root cause of their suffering."

This is far too subjective. It is just opinion and badly formulated opinion in fact. We have to return to the first point: your entire intellectual capacity is 'ruled' if you will by a simplistic mechanism---the lever I spoke of. Like a child you've got hold of a lever you can weild and wield it you do! You will apply your simplistic tool to every consideration. And in your limited rhetoric (like the QRS btw) you will always 'win'. There is no losing for Kelly. It is the same simplistic structure of mentation and reasoning that functions in cults, my dear. You should become aware of this.

If you were to have read Huxley, especially his earlier work, you would know that his ideas and his position is infinitely more nuanced than this. You would also know that he could not, perhaps because his intellect was truly masculine and not female masquerading as mannish, reduce the whole issue of the problem of human existence and human suffering in the way that you reduce it. In your little mind you function on the basis of a simple, reduced perspective, but when it comes to 'reality' and to human social systems the simple and the binary just do not work. Huxley is aware that the work on the human being, socially, ethically, morally and in terms of consciousness, is a long, slow process. When people (historically) get down to the business of transforming beings they rapidly become aware that they must engage for the long haul. This perspective is pretty absent in the binary QRS(J)(vR) position.

Your own 'attacking the root cause of suffering' functions in this way: you have successfully cut yourself off from yourself (a psychic-physical disconnect) and your organism starves. And this you call 'pursuit of wisdom'. No Kelly. That is not the way to go. Your insitance on a binary model, which you ruthlessly apply to yourself, to others, and to all human questions, is a symptom of a diseased modality, a diseased interpretation. It is doubtful it will turn out well or as you wish. And this is not ad hominem per se, it is being sure that the individual, the person we are, is made to appear in our conversations. You have to appear as evidence of your own processes. To me, you look sad, drained and empty.

"If he were indeed compassionate, he would have realised that the fear of the void - of the truth - is a lot like the person with cabin fever. They are afraid to go outside, because they are habituated to the familiarity of their small tomb. They imagine that the unfamiliar is uncomfortable, frightening, turbulent, and disturbing, simply because they refuse to extend themselves to explore it. The wise man immediately breaks down the walls of the cabin, completely and suddenly destroying the delusion. What a favour! Yet Huxley mucked around with literary crap, which only built up his readers' deluded fears of Reality still further."

More BS. Again, back to the beginning: in your little mind, with your binary intellecual cross-dressed dollies in a playhouse of the mind, you have set up a little world in which your limited view will always prevail. The above is witness to this. But the truth is that Huxley-as-intellect starts from a far more open and nuanced position, a far wider grasp of the difficulty of human growth and evolution. Even in his early work he has poised himself for the long-haul, and has not---as in your case---succumbed to the attraction of an evangelical position, one simply reasoned. He has no simple (and simplistic) balm to offer simply because there is none! To engage with consciousness, or Divinity for that matter, is to come into a very wide current, a preexisting current, and to become a part of something greater. One becomes part of a process.

And here you are---like Diebert and like the QRS generally---dissing writers and intellects who 'muck around in literary crap'. This is where the best of your adolescent arrogance is displayed. I know that you will not be able to understand what I refer to and why it is so low and appalling, so describing it is only for the advantage of other readers. But mark this: this forum, by and large, is peopled with intellects who function on a limited platform, like you. It is the great failing of this forum and all its noble intentions.

"You mean, I lack appreciation of the complex nuances of the shit with which the deluded masses decorate their cabin walls, and the sophisticated methods they use to glue it all in place?"

Here you are simply continuing to argue from your a prioris and you are unconscious that you are a binary intellect, and in that sense 'a woman in drag'. There is a strange pain in observing any sort of cross-dressing, both for the cross-dresser and the observer. Slap-down Kelly. Slap-down.

"You are like he: someone who has no faith in the truth, but fears it. You prefer the little drugs of psychological bliss, helping you to push away those "maggotty" thoughts."

No. This is not it at all, but I clearly see how you arrive at this conclusion: it follows from your prepositions. See? I would call this a feminine defensiveness against a frightening truth.

In actual fact I work with truth in a more realistic and dare I say 'masculine' way, from the look of it. I also encourage others to do similar. I do not interpose a false illusion on what it means to engage in spiritual, philosophical, intellectual and conscious life. I am certainly interested in moving with those things, engaging them and challenging myself, but what I resist is the failings of a binary, simplistic platform---and that, my sweet, is your theatre.

If that works for you....

In this entire post, long as it is, you still didn't engage with any of my ideas. You have only presented a long stream of ad hominems. But an argumentum ad hominem is no substitute for a rational argument.

You can claim that I have a narrow-minded, adolescent attitude, but you don't provide the evidence. Namely, you should prove that the wisest of the wise must not speak plainly and simply, but must always hide their messages in multilayered meanings and complex poetic symbols. You should provide reasoning as to why this is wise and effective at helping others to become wise.

You have to appear as evidence of your own processes. To me, you look sad, drained and empty.

Where is your reasoning to support this belief of yours, that becoming enlightened manifests as being happy, energetic, and fulfilled? As it stands, it's just an arrogant and utterly unfounded assumption.


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