GENIUS FORUMS

So, the issue for you is average vs non-average? You're missing the point. Each of these girl-men has made certain compromises with Life. And like anyone, to get 'what they need to live', they have arrangements with people (and women), perhaps they even live together in the same house. Because they are human---just like those 'average' people you seem to have a tremendous problem with (please examine this carefully)---they also have emotional relationships, they fuck women from time to time, listen to music, watch TV, buy things.

What they sell to you is some sort of weird holiness trip, like they are sages living up on the side of a mountain. You buy this 'product' because you too attempt to get out of it something that you need to live (examine this).

"In a world as deluded as this, even an interest in wisdom is something quite noble...in my eyes at least."

Alex agrees and he often says as much. BUT! Neither you nor they is really all that clear about what delusion is or isn't; you or they are not so very certain what is wisdom and what isn't. It has not been concluded and it is not written across the sky.

Just read 3-4 of Nick's posts. Inspiration? I often get more from geese flying south.

Cory wrote: "Yes, good issue to raise, Nick. We live in an age now where religion is unfashionable and looked down upon. There's almost a mainstream consensus that religion is for those of lower status, for those who lack modern sophistication. In the meantime, the efforts of theosophy and the 60's counterculturalists to promote lite eastern philosophy and mysticism have percolated through mainstream culture, eroding the rigidity of religion.

"Naturally, without religion, people still need a source of magical thinking, and so here to replace religion is "spirituality" which to most people seems to mean you can think and do just about anything you want. Celebrities and Musicians are naturally leaders of this new spiritual way of thinking."

Except that the last thing Nick seemed to be speaking of is any level of support for 'religion'.

Though I agree with you that religion, with Rousseau, is now seen as incompatable with enlightenment values and methodical science, and is only tolerated in the upper echelons and ridiculed in the lower orders, the use of such a general term puzzles me. I don't think anyone here (of the TBs) has used the term religion, and has never used it to describe what the QRS do or recommend.

I pretty much agree with everything you have written though. Religion, at its best, is miles above mere magic, and there is a definite and general debasement process going on.

It would be terribly interesting to hear more of your ideas of what religion is, what man does with it, where it fits in, and what (even) might be the role of sane religion in the lfe of the family. (I won't be holding my breath though ;-)

Hold on now Mr. Alex, I wasn't speaking in support of religion. I was just pointing out how culture has transitioned or shifted, how one form of magical thinking (religion) has been replaced with a more subtle and vague form. If I had it my way there would be neither Religion nor New Age spirituality.

James Randi once remarked: "The New Age is just the old age put in the microwave for a couple minutes."

I did imply though that much of conventional religion has virtues over modern spirituality, but I would also argue the opposite. Both have their advantages and limitations, yet both could be dispensed with for the greater good, provided the requisite emotional stability and intellectual wealth was there in the people.

I actually find New Age spiritual people quite a bit more entertaining to talk to, they often have more broad ranging and active minds, but in an ADHD, amoral, bipolar kind of sense. A disciplined religious person is more reliable and careful, someone I would be more inclined to trust with my kids, provided I had any.

It would be terribly interesting to hear more of your ideas of what religion is, what man does with it, where it fits in, and what (even) might be the role of sane religion in the life of the family.

Religion, for many, is a powerful source of courage to help people live their lives with confidence, yet it deliberately attempts to restrain ones confidence from indulging in the excessively visceral, substituting the objects of our lusts and passions with concepts and symbols that diffuse and mitigate, directing people toward honest work toward a larger communal good. Even the scientific revolution has religion to partly credit. Obviously religion doesn't always succeed, but the intention is there. (There's also a tradition of logical arguments to support it, despite they are rather weak)

New Age spirituality can perhaps have a similar effect, but too often it does nothing but serve the individuals unlimited desire for individualistic material growth, narcissistic fantasy, personal distinction against others, and even fuel paranoia. It is intensely egotistical, and in the times I've seen New Agey people get together to communicate, it's not long before they disperse in subtle animosity or dislike. This is largely because everyone wants a piece of the power, there is an expectation for greater and greater ego gratification, which is easily frustrated, and the intense multiplicity of ideas and information change and transform every passing week. There is nothing absolute, consistent and reliable everyone can subordinate themselves to, and that's because there is more of an orientation around increased individual power and mastery. It's not the kind of thing that keeps people together, which is really kind of why I find such people quite a bit more entertaining and sometimes more capable of philosophical thought.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Just read 3-4 of Nick's posts. Inspiration? I often get more from geese flying south.

Lets be real Alex, you care about entertainment, not inspiration.

Cory,

In my way of seeing and understanding, I see the religious impulse, the fact of religion and the evolution of it, as progressively refining itself. The problem, which is also fascinating and very strange, is that religious notions ('the magical thinking' you speak of) represents a very, very long and archaic continuum, and these ideas and impulses have been with man...since forever. But it is likely that I regard that whole, long process of investigation, interpretation and discovery in different terms than you---likely more generous ones.

There are some who say that religion is a primitive impulse in man, one borne out of fear and powerlessness. But a more generous view is that the whole impulse of it arises from the very genius of man, what makes man man: the willingness to confront the strangeness of the world, to attempt to discover the causes of things, a way to superimpose a structure and an ordering over phenomena so that man can then 'handle' those phenomena. Every age and every people has developed a religious structure that is intimately woven with its cultural forms. Some of them remain primitive and rather quaint, and some of them become vast systems that order ideas about all facets of life and human activity.

One of the possibilities that fascinates me is to examine and to know our own, that is, the one we have arisen from, the one that still holds us in so many ways: the Medieval Roman-Catholic unified conceptual ordering of the world and the cosmos. We have a certain vantage from which we can look back and critique it, or criticize it, but seen from almost any studied and considered point of view it may indeed be, or have been, the most thorough conceptual, legal, municipal, ethical, mercantile, theological, cosmological and cultural achievement in any age. And the whole of it, woven with and composed of the Greek and Christian and Judaic and Roman conceptual orders, was born out of religious impulses, a strange metaphysic, impossible metaphysics, hallucinations and pipe dreams. In some way at least, to negate 'all that' is just not very intelligent and certainly not a very understanding point of view.

I suppose that we all feel we are in a grand cycle of decay. I don't know how you ultimately interpret 'things', and perhaps it is simplistic on my part, but I am rather fascinated (in a macabre way I suppose) by the processes of decay as 'we' spin away from an intelligible and elaborate model of Reality that was once our possession, our heritage, and have had every single anchor (to understanding and to 'connection') pulled up, so that we no longer have any kind of language, any kind of system of ordering, by which we can understand this reality, our place in it, our past, our present or our future. I am fascinated by the Babel-condition in which atomized individuals no longer have a common language---a universal language---to enable communication. Communication leads only to misunderstanding and, as we retreat into our own selves and our private meanings, to ever-increasing atomization.

In the small summary you presented I don't think I disagree with any part of it. I would construct a 'rebuttal' only in terms of metaphors. I would ask that the 'content of the metaphors'---essentially: a God who interacts with the creation in conscious and intelligible ways through consciousness, an on-going, eternal process of which we are a part---be allowed to remain intact, and that the metaphors be penetrated, examined, discussed. Really, that the life that is in them be not diminished but be increased.

I do find it peculiar that, even here, or especially here (on GF), that there is an effort to point to and to explain something you refer to as Ultimate Reality. I will grant you that each person who uses this term is speaking from their own private, subjective bubble, and the Befuddlement of Babel still (obviously) applies. David's 'ultimate reality' is his own. Jupiviv has his. As does Dan. If it is a definition, it is a metaphysical definition, even a mystical definition, not one that arises from the dominant scientific view. I suggest that it is the very same religious sense---that which inspired the historical religions---all over again. It is not a rational term but a sophisticated (at best) term to refer to intangibles. With it, you are back in the same sphere. And when it moves (as it does) into Buddhism or more properly neo-Buddhism, I don't see how you could not see the very same 'danger' arising all over again.

I personally think that a whole, vast description of the 'the world' (it is so huge as to be hard to name it, but it is utterly fundamental to ourselves in the most intimate and far-reaching sense) is dying, is falling apart. Looked at from the outside, we seem to only be victims of a death, of a process of dying. And yet (excuse the metaphor) we desire to resurrect, to be born anew, to rise up: to live, to have Life. If we do not define a link to Life in the fullest and even splendorous sense of that word, and if our thoughts and activities do not conduce to Life, what the hell really are we doing?

This is why (in my view) there is still supreme value in the metaphor of the God who offers Life in greater abundance, who holds a door open to that, who invites. I assume that many people, at least in the Judeo-Christian world, also 'cling' to an 'ineffable' interior sense that our world (this life in the fullness of the sense) conduces to that Life.

How do you see it?
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Nick writes: "Lets be real Alex, you care about entertainment, not inspiration."

I get more inspiration from my farts than from almost anything you write.

My Beat-'Em-Upside-The Head Truth Teachings© and Integral Method® will become clearer to you as the Cloud of Befuddlement lifts. Say in about 5 years...

Ah the age of 30, the age when all traces of genius in most men expires. Of course you, the harbinger of mediocrity, would associate that age as entering into a more enlightened period in one's life.

Listen to this, and 3% of the Befuddlment will lift...as if by magic!

Not mediocrity...but wonderfulicity.
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Okay, the Beethoven was...too much to start with. So try this.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:If it(Ultimate Reality) is a definition, it is a metaphysical definition, even a mystical definition, not one that arises from the dominant scientific view.

Reality(i.e, the All) is not a definition. But it can be understood by eliminating delusions, and that requires the use of definitions. The method of eliminating these delusions, and the nature of the definitions used to do so, may differ from person to person. The efficacy of the methods may also differ.

jupiviv wrote:

Carmel wrote:It's 2010 and here in "affluent" America both men and women maintain society.

jupiviv:
No they don't. The people who manufacture, build, produce food etc., are still almost exclusively men. These are the jobs which are primarily responsible for the maintaining of a society.

Carmel:
Yes, they do in my country. Women play an essential role in the maintenance of society. Nearly half of the workforce in the U.S. are women.

You seem to hold a narrow view of what maintains a society. It requires the efforts of professions other than the ones you listed i.e. teachers, healthcare workers among others. These positions are primarily held by women(U.S.)...and increasingly women here are entering fields that were traditionally dominated by men such as engineering, science, law and politics. The number of female Senators and congresswomen are currently at a historical high.

I don't know where you live, jupiviv. Perhaps there are some cultural differences between my country and yours?

jupiviv:
Also, you are forgetting that men are the ones who created a secure and affluent enough environment for women to go out of their domestic prisons and work in extra jobs which could be created out of the spare wealth.

Carmel:
This is the third time you've said this. I already addressed this point.

jupiviv:
I'm stating the reality that virtually every human achievement has been possible because of men.

Carmel:
You're stating essentially the same point for the fourth time now. Do you have ocd?

jupiviv:
Besides, I myself have accomplished enlightenment - which is the highest anyone can achieve.

Carmel:
Uh...proud o' ya? I'm not sure why you're stating this, but if you'd like to elaborate... feel free.

jupiviv:
So I've no reason to be gloating over the achievements of anybody else.

Carmel:
No, you really don't. (nor, do I)

jupiviv:
Human beings in general are "masochistic", i.e, willing slaves. They are slaves to their desires, environment, etc.. Men are almost as bound by their desire to reproduce as women are, but since they are more conscious,

Carmel:
more conscious? heh. Yeah, well, you've never met hillbilly Cletus from the bible belt of America, so perhaps I'll forgive this faulty notion of yours, but other than that, I generally agree with this point.

jupiviv:
they have tried to create an organised system of sexual relations which brings some order to the chaos which exists in these relations.

Carmel:
That's part of it. The 'nuclear family' is benefical to the survial of the species, but the marriage contract is superfluous. Many possible inferences can be made from this, one of which is that marriage is a social contrivance created by men, for men... to oppress women by legal claim.

...fast forward to present. The current trend in the US is that, increasingly, both genders are opting out of marriage and childrearing, particularly among the educated. It may be that marriage has outserved its purpose and be becomingly gradually obsolete. Only time will tell...

Memes are a popular escape for the mind because they represent the easy way out, the road that requires the least amount of critical thinking, yet the most egotistical pay off.

Memes such as religion, postmodern thought and new age also give men an artificial hierarchy to cling to, a sense of belonging to something powerful and higher, a drive that men have, but most are unable to satisfy. It also creates a new hierarchy for women to chase powerful men, but in a less crude sort of way. Women can convince themselves they have found a "good man" by falling into the same traps as if they chased an alpha male at the top of a hierarchy. There are all kinds of reasons why Memes work for the masses.

However, on the other hand, the truth doesn't give much satisfaction at the emotional level, considering the nature of truth is to dissolve many of these emotional drives in the first place.

illogical memes are popular for the same reason sappy music is - it gives the ego an emotional ride. A dishonest type of mental and physiological journey, one that is terribly addictive and difficult for average brains to see past and go beyond.

It is like giving humans the option between raw broccoli or a chocolate bar. The default path is the wrong path by deterministic folly.

Carmel wrote:You seem to hold a narrow view of what maintains a society.

I also hold a narrow view about what truth is, and what football is. There is also the fact that I was talking about what primarily maintains a society, viz, what is essential for the existence of a society. And the academic, juridical and political situation of the west(especially the Anglo-Saxon world) is extremely poor. You only have to look at the current condition of thought in the humanities field, where women have entered en masse.

jupiviv wrote:Also, you are forgetting that men are the ones who created a secure and affluent enough environment for women to go out of their domestic prisons and work in extra jobs which could be created out of the spare wealth.

This is the third time you've said this. I already addressed this point.

An argument doesn't become invalid if it is repeated. You're saying that both men and women equally maintain society currently, and I'm saying that they do not. The fact is that women wouldn't be able to any of the things they do today(or at any other time) if it weren't for the actions of men, both in the present and the past. So your point about women breaking out of domestic prisons is wrong. They are still as domestic as they were 100 years ago. All that has changed is the scope and nature of that domesticity.

A person may say that the self is an illusion, all the time believing in an illusory self. Similarly, a person may think they're free, all the time remaining resolutely bound. Delusion is a very powerful thing. It's extremely hard to escape it, because the very effort to escape delusions is deluded in most cases.

jupiviv wrote:I'm stating the reality that virtually every human achievement has been possible because of men.

You're stating essentially the same point for the fourth time now. Do you have ocd?

I think this discussion would be more fruitful if you spent more time understanding my points, and less counting the times I make them.

Besides, I myself have accomplished enlightenment - which is the highest anyone can achieve.

Uh...proud o' ya? I'm not sure why you're stating this, but if you'd like to elaborate... feel free.

Look at the next sentence you separately addressed. Oh dear, now I've made essentially the same point twice.

Human beings in general are "masochistic", i.e, willing slaves. They are slaves to their desires, environment, etc.. Men are almost as bound by their desire to reproduce as women are, but since they are more conscious,

more conscious? heh. Yeah, well, you've never met hillbilly Cletus from the bible belt of America, so perhaps I'll forgive this faulty notion of yours, but other than that, I generally agree with this point.

I think your perception of the notion is faulty, because men being more conscious than women has nothing to do with hillbilly Clefty.

Jipiviv writes: "Reality (i.e, the All) is not a definition. But it can be understood by eliminating delusions, and that requires the use of definitions. The method of eliminating these delusions, and the nature of the definitions used to do so, may differ from person to person. The efficacy of the methods may also differ."

Come ye geniuses! Come ye from near and far! Come ye drooling middle class milquetoasters with your exalted sense of your third-rate (hardly even qualifying as) intellectualism and watch one of your own (David especially watch since this is your little creation) spout the Dominant Doctines of the Domain! (And while you do that let me vomit my breakfast in the dust bin...)

Finally, it all becomes clear: this bullshit 'enlightenment' rap is just psychobabble. It could even be comparable to Scientology. It ain't worth the air that blew it through the vocal cords. Yet it is the CORE of the so-called genius doctrines that are barfed-up all over these pages by our tight-assed, femmy-masculine crüe. The one who takes this to impossible extremes is Kelly: her whole discourse, her whole person it would seem, has been overshadowed and possibly possessed by tightly-woven word construct, a weird and even perverse mantra that when you actually examine it (with a razor intellect such as my own, a fine, prepared, penetrating mind radiating wondefulicity), just falls apart.

It was Monday, May 17th at 6:54 AM that the lie that the wonderboys had internalized was once and for all unravelled. The so-called geniuses were seen as a group of boys very inclined toward cult doctrines. Now, the Cure begins. Now it CAN begin!

"A person may say that the self is an illusion, all the time believing in an illusory self. Similarly, a person may think they're free, all the time remaining resolutely bound. Delusion is a very powerful thing. It's extremely hard to escape it, because the very effort to escape delusions is deluded in most cases."

Well, actually m'boy what is harder to escape is the power of knotted phrasings and word-games that are played in your own mind. You have perpetrated a swindle on your own self and you call this 'breaking through delusion'. You have set up a false dichotomy (either self is an 'illusion' or it is not) and you 'work' this angle as a self-deluded sophist and as a junior disciple of David Quinn. The core of this whole trip is neurotic and delusionary and this precisely is one of the main agreed-upon activities of this forum, a game of shared definitions and image-management that is 'played' here. You have a quack belief that you are enlightened, but this 'enlightenment' is, like in Scientology, the result of a breakdown of your own discrimination and a boundary in your personality: you have achieved Group-Think among a number of participants (in a cyber playing field!) and assign to yourself the label of Enlightened.

I have never seen anything so false, so shallow and so disgusting! The horror is the intellectual dishonesty and inter-personal dishonesty in this environment that has alowed this to happen.

A real good question for our oh-so-bright group of participants here is What is the 'meme' that produces this bullshit, verbal 'enlightenment'? What part of the self is it satisfying? Who set it in motion?

^^Is this meant to be an argument against what I said? If it is, then you haven't really said anything, and I think you know that very well yourself.

It is not so much an argument against the word-construct as it is a blow or a knock against a subconscious mechanism (?) or formulation in your personality that you buy into. It is more a rebuke than a rebuttal. Only another idiot would come forth to debate the phrase-construct. I grant you that that happens but what comes out of it is sheer stupidity that is very, very boring.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:It is not so much an argument against the word-construct as it is a blow or a knock against a subconscious mechanism (?) or formulation in your personality that you buy into.

In other words, it's an ad hominem attack. Don't bother with addressing the useless word-constructs, just attack the subconscious mechanism and personality. Nice way of putting it, though. Which leads me to think - this kind of play with words seems to be exactly what you were criticising in me, David Quinn etc..

Jupiviv wrote: "In other words, it's an ad hominem attack. Don't bother with addressing the useless word-constructs, just attack the subconscious mechanism and personality. Nice way of putting it, though. Which leads me to think - this kind of play with words seems to be exactly what you were criticising in me, David Quinn etc..."

Incorrect. Though I do understand what you are getting at. I admit it is a touchy area, an insubstantial area, and it is 'psychological', perhaps linguistic, maybe behaviorial? I sort of imagine myself 'debating' Tom Cruise and his certainties about Scientology or having a 'discussion' with a Hare Krishna, or even a Baptist. I think ad hominem would dismiss the individual which is not what I am interested in doing. The cultists response to me, I am sure it would be all very studied, it would take place in rational terms, etc. It may seem unfair to you and it likely will appear innaccurate but I have concluded that there is a strange psychological game that is played here between a group of girl-boys who have most definite women issues. I have begun to conclude that the woman-issue may be the core one, the one upon which the rest 'hinges', as I am fond of saying.

Your phrase-construct is 'logical' in its way, no doubt of that, but it is only a paragraph, a conceptual pathway. I suggest that you examine how language is manipulated in cults and in propaganda. Then you might grasp what I am referring to.

At the present time, on this forum, Alex is the one and genuine Enlightened One. Whereas you rely on word and phrase-constructs, my enlightenment is seen and recognized by all sentient beings except those clouded with Befuddlement. I go outside my door, butterflies flock to me, children gleefully greet me, run toward me, cling to me, and cry when I leave them with their parents. I have various mystical powers---which I rarely use---that arise from my enlightened state. I have vowed to heal the denizens here. My word is golden. I shall not deviate.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Incorrect. Though I do understand what you are getting at.

What I'm getting at is that almost all of what you've said about David Quinn, Dan Rowden, me and others have been personal attacks.

I sort of imagine myself 'debating' Tom Cruise and his certainties about Scientology or having a 'discussion' with a Hare Krishna, or even a Baptist.

You are comparing me with those irrational people without giving any evidence that I'm irrational. How is this not an ad hominem attack? I think I know what you'll say to this, and I can't be bothered to respond to that. I've really had my fill with this forum and most of its current denizens. Farewell.

Oh jeezus. Alright already: you're enlightened! But you're still just a couple of rungs below me.

I'm generous though, I share my dais.

And 'denizen' is my word.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Cory,

In my way of seeing and understanding, I see the religious impulse, the fact of religion and the evolution of it, as progressively refining itself.

Yes, that's true, religion is always reproducing itself with slight variations, some of those variations are designed as an effort to accommodate the latest in contemporary thinking, and those variations get selected and expand, while older versions or deviations are abandoned and shrink. Natural selection/evolution applies to religion just as it does to anything else. This is memetics.

The problem, which is also fascinating and very strange, is that religious notions ('the magical thinking' you speak of) represents a very, very long and archaic continuum, and these ideas and impulses have been with man...since forever.

I'm not sure I find it very strange, and I can think of more fascinating things, but sure, it is interesting.

I do see the ideological division between groups of men as problematic, so we are in agreement that religion poses a "problem".

There are some who say that religion is a primitive impulse in man, one borne out of fear and powerlessness. But a more generous view is that the whole impulse of it arises from the very genius of man, what makes man man: the willingness to confront the strangeness of the world, to attempt to discover the causes of things, a way to superimpose a structure and an ordering over phenomena so that man can then 'handle' those phenomena.

Religion has clearly both helped and hindered man's effort to confront the mystery of the world directly. Like I said, much of the scientific revolution was driven as much by a religious impulse as it was by a scientific impulse. Religion gave man the funding, inspiration and courage to explore nature scientifically. But it also clearly placed limits on the extent of inquiry. Religion, in earlier stages of human history, was both a scientists best friend and worst enemy. Religion was like a king who paid his scientists to find out the truth, presuming the truth would bring the King joy, but when the scientists brought back the truth, it filled the king with anger, grief and anxiety, and thus the king brought a halt to the very progress he funded.

Even my own personal journey was initially fueled by a religious impulse, but the more I discovered the more I undermined the very thing that was motivating and encouraging me, and thus new methods of generating enthusiasm and courage had to be adopted as I aged.

One of the possibilities that fascinates me is to examine and to know our own, that is, the one we have arisen from, the one that still holds us in so many ways: the Medieval Roman-Catholic unified conceptual ordering of the world and the cosmos. We have a certain vantage from which we can look back and critique it, or criticize it, but seen from almost any studied and considered point of view it may indeed be, or have been, the most thorough conceptual, legal, municipal, ethical, mercantile, theological, cosmological and cultural achievement in any age. And the whole of it, woven with and composed of the Greek and Christian and Judaic and Roman conceptual orders, was born out of religious impulses, a strange metaphysic, impossible metaphysics, hallucinations and pipe dreams. In some way at least, to negate 'all that' is just not very intelligent and certainly not a very understanding point of view.

I suppose that we all feel we are in a grand cycle of decay. I don't know how you ultimately interpret 'things', and perhaps it is simplistic on my part, but I am rather fascinated (in a macabre way I suppose) by the processes of decay as 'we' spin away from an intelligible and elaborate model of Reality that was once our possession, our heritage, and have had every single anchor (to understanding and to 'connection') pulled up, so that we no longer have any kind of language, any kind of system of ordering, by which we can understand this reality, our place in it, our past, our present or our future.

I don't feel I lack a language, or a system of ordering by which I can understand reality. And in the hundreds of people I admire I see no lack of it in them.

You strike me, Alex, as lamenting on what has been lost, not realizing what new has been gained. You complain and focus on decay, having no understanding of what new has been grown. You regret the unwillingness of people to learn of the old, while being unwilling yourself to learn of the new.

Not to mention, there are many relatively ancient ways of reasoning about the world that I value highly. Like you, I value some ideas from certain cultures and exclude or see less value in others.

I am fascinated by the Babel-condition in which atomized individuals no longer have a common language---a universal language---to enable communication.

What kind of communication are you referring to? Every single form of "identity" except for one is anti-social by it's very separatist nature. Culture itself is anti-social. This is why many scientists, who place high value on precise, rigorous communication are often so attracted to the philosophy of Buddha and Lau Tzu because their message of egolessness, interconnectedness, oneness and causation conforms with science very well. In other words, some religious teachers (philosophers, really) meet eye to eye with scientists because both are seeking the universal, they want to communicate something they see applies to everyone.

Communication leads only to misunderstanding and, as we retreat into our own selves and our private meanings, to ever-increasing atomization.

I think you're just projecting. You're describing your own inability to communicate, because the very nature of how you identify yourself is separatist, favoring one cultural-religious system over others.

In the small summary you presented I don't think I disagree with any part of it. I would construct a 'rebuttal' only in terms of metaphors. I would ask that the 'content of the metaphors'---essentially: a God who interacts with the creation in conscious and intelligible ways through consciousness, an on-going, eternal process of which we are a part---be allowed to remain intact,

"God as a metaphor" couldn't be more intact on this forum. I'm not particularly fond of it myself, but David Quinn and Kevin Solway seem to enjoy using the word God as a metaphor.

Nature(God) is all forgiving, all seeing, and creative. I would never argue against that, provided it was taken in a metaphorical sense, rather than an anthropocentric and literal one.

I do find it peculiar that, even here, or especially here (on GF), that there is an effort to point to and to explain something you refer to as Ultimate Reality. I will grant you that each person who uses this term is speaking from their own private, subjective bubble, and the Befuddlement of Babel still (obviously) applies. David's 'ultimate reality' is his own. Jupiviv has his. As does Dan.

It's like that with everyone. Even in your cherished "Medieval Roman-Catholic unified system" each adherent has his own unique private take on what God is, no man entirely sure what the other man really privately understands. It's like this everywhere, quit trying to pin it onto a specific group.

If it is a definition, it is a metaphysical definition, even a mystical definition, not one that arises from the dominant scientific view.

All scientific views rest upon a purely logical, definitional, metaphysical framework. Some people are conscious of this, others aren't.

I suggest that it is the very same religious sense---that which inspired the historical religions---all over again. It is not a rational term but a sophisticated (at best) term to refer to intangibles. With it, you are back in the same sphere. And when it moves (as it does) into Buddhism or more properly neo-Buddhism, I don't see how you could not see the very same 'danger' arising all over again.

Alex, how do you determine if a religious framework is valuable? Is there a method that you use to confirm whether or not something is true, good, and worthwhile?

I personally think that a whole, vast description of the 'the world' (it is so huge as to be hard to name it, but it is utterly fundamental to ourselves in the most intimate and far-reaching sense) is dying, is falling apart.

Like I said before, you seem attached to a framework that is capable of decay and dissolution, and so your experience of the world is of decay and dissolution. You don't see the other side of the coin, the growth and new coalescence of order. I suppose you catch a glimpse of it occasionally, but perhaps you shirk away in fear or grief? You are perhaps a temporal person, caught in the spiraling toilet drain of an earlier time.

Looked at from the outside, we seem to only be victims of a death, of a process of dying.

This is an important first realization to make. However, the next thing to realize is the sense of continuity of life, the constant resurrection of the past into the future.

And yet (excuse the metaphor) we desire to resurrect, to be born anew, to rise up: to live, to have Life.

Not only do we desire such a thing, but each and everyone of us does such a thing everyday, often without knowing it.

If we do not define a link to Life in the fullest and even splendorous sense of that word, and if our thoughts and activities do not conduce to Life, what the hell really are we doing?

You'll have to elaborate on what you mean by "the fullest" and "splendorous".

What are we doing?

Some of us are evolving and transforming. Others are in decay, sure to be wiped out, at least superficially. And it's the superficial that is the nature of those who are in the decay.

This is why (in my view) there is still supreme value in the metaphor of the God who offers Life in greater abundance, who holds a door open to that, who invites. I assume that many people, at least in the Judeo-Christian world, also 'cling' to an 'ineffable' interior sense that our world (this life in the fullness of the sense) conduces to that Life.

How do you see it?

The word God only has metaphorical meaning to me. There is no literal intelligence or literal love, forgiveness or anything like that. God is nature itself, which is infinitely dumb, yet in a metaphorical sense, "all-seeing", creative, forgiving and Truthful.

You say God has a metaphorical meaning to you, but isn't there a kernel of literalness to your view point?

Cory writes: "You say God has a metaphorical meaning to you, but isn't there a kernel of literalness to your view point?"

What I said, or tried to say, is that there is an assortment of metaphors, very extensive---turning water into wine, a God who appears in a sacred forest and carries on extensive and quite beautiful interactions with his devotees (Krishna), all the stories about the past lives of the Buddha, the story about a God who liberates a people from slavery and then guides them from acute and blind materisalism to a very exalted sense of the Divine and of man's duty---which most likely cannot (now) be seen as 'literal' in the sense you mean, but which yet have a tremendous meaningful content, and in that sense are metaphors.

If you have read any other of my writings you would know that I am most definitely not an atheist in the sense that, I suppose, you define yourself. To me, the very platform of existence, the fact of existence, that things exist, is part and parcel of God not in the deistic sense or as 'the processes of nature' (or 'not only'), but as an aspect of God that contains all possibilities, and quite likely all imaginable possibilities. I have called this hyper-theism because, in my way of seeing and perceiving, there is always a direct and personal aspect of God which is constantly 'communicating' with us (or 'me' if you wish) and is really the fact or the possibility of awareness.

I define religion and the 'religious impulse' (it would seem) in quite different terms than you. But to describe how I understand it I would first have to define how you see it, because you are most certainly operating on the basis of a principally post-Enlightenment group of ideas and assumptions that are fundamentally about the Roman Catholic Conceptual Order I mention. That is the primary conceptual structure that has informed you and me and all those who participate here. We are direct outcomes of that, and what happened to that is happening to us. One world is dying and it is a slow and agonizing process, which another world is being born. (It is in that sense that I speak of 'death'). A whole, intricate and vast group of ideas and conceptualizations, emotions, imaginings, longings---so much as to be very hard to describe---that is expressed, say, in a figure like Kierkegaard or Nietzsche. To separate out of Nietzsche what is (by your definition) 'false' in 'religion' would be literally to tear the man to shreds. In fact, it cannot be done. We cannot, in fact, separate 'religion' (the necessity for mystical unity) out of our own selves and I think only a fool would imagine that we could. I am beginning to feel---and quite strongly---that in order to understand who we are and where we will or may go (in some future), we have to know what we are, which also means what we were.

You think that I am nostalgic for the Roman Catholic civilization, some grand order that went before, but that is not so. I am aware when I talk with people like you, like Quinn and so many others, just how fundamentally deprived of necessary formation you are (education, background). And because 'you' lack this necessary understructure or pre-structure, and yet because of a certain kind of very self-assuming and pretentious arrogance assume you know, at your 'tender age', all there is to know, and all that can be known, and can pronounce on all things with an astonishing and yet ludicrous certainty, it is for that reason Alex has come forward here. The very basis of the fun, the immense and intense fun, I experience here is because I know pretty much just who I am dealing with. Does it sound horrible that I say this? Does it just make your blood boil? The truth is that that is not really my intention. I always say, and it is true, that I wish to 'help', but like a Great Taoist Master I teach with slaps and kicks and not a few times have I literally knocked a young disciples teeth right out of his head. Once, I fed this one dude to the sharks...but that's another story.

[Some of you can even declare that you are 'fully enlightened' and strut around like fools preening your feathers with your little dinkies tenderly wrapped in the BVDs mommy has just washed for you and set out on your dresser. You gotta have a little compassion for me, Cory, you just gotta see what I see from my vantage point. I know you can't and you won't, but that doesn't keep me for wishin' for it. *Shrugs shoulders, looks a little downcast, but immediately perks up again*]

"You strike me, Alex, as lamenting on what has been lost, not realizing what new has been gained. You complain and focus on decay, having no understanding of what new has been grown. You regret the unwillingness of people to learn of the old, while being unwilling yourself to learn of the new."

First, I am not lamenting anything, though there are people who 'lament', say, the decline of the Holy Roman Empire and its Church (the fusion of Greek, Roman ands Judaic thought in the Alexandrian synthesizing pot). All that had to pass away and it is necessary that it pass away. I am, I think, quite aware of what has been gained, but I do not separate the bounty of modernity and the possibilties offered to us from, if you will, a kind of 'Grace'. I think that man's discoveries about and mastery of the material universe arise concurrently with, if you'll permit, a sounding out of 'God's will', and I also am inclined to see the response by the notion of God, or the metaphor of God, a God who appears through the veils (this God who seeks out man, who frees him from certain conditions, who prepares him, and then makes certain demands on him) as still being real and valid, but I accept that (now) with modernity we face the problem of defining, almost from top to bottom, a new mystical relationship both to God and the universe in which we exist. I think we are in the process of defining a new 'mystical relationship', and that that is exactly what religion is: it is a kind of ordering, or taking stock of oneself, and in that process we define all over again everything that made the last great organization so important, relevant and in a definite sense 'magnificscent' and considerable.

I think it would be an interesting exercise, for you, to try to gain a grasp of what you are doing in your conceptualizations. (This is where, I think, you-plural are rather weak. You only operate with a limited palette, I mean your ideas are so often utterly 'flat' (which mirrors your utterly 'flat' middle-class upbringing). Your 'vocabulary' is painfully limited, your imaginations stilted, your reading and experience of literature very sketchy, and yet there is a kind of megalomania that so many of you seem naturally inclined towards. You get a wee bit of information and go off on world missions of self-righteousness).

"The word God only has metaphorical meaning to me. There is no literal intelligence or literal love, forgiveness or anything like that. God is nature itself, which is infinitely dumb, yet in a metaphorical sense, "all-seeing", creative, forgiving and Truthful."

Why is this, Cory? On what basis have you concluded this? On what basis are your 'certainties' constructed? Don't you think it is slightly peculiar that you, with your religious background (a limited one and a very dogmatic one to be sure) comes out so strongly against the possibility of a 'Living God'. Why should this be so? (A 'dumb' creation?)

I know that you-plural have a whole linguistic method of presenting your 'certainties' but no part of it convinces me, or even moves me. I see you as just a member of the same pole: a stupid and unstudied religiosity on one hand, that is to say in the death of the old mystical order, but still just the other pole of that Enlightenment debate. A crass atheism.

"I think you're just projecting. You're describing your own inability to communicate, because the very nature of how you identify yourself is separatist, favoring one cultural-religious system over others."

No, when I speak of a Babel-condition I am speaking of something far more huge. I am saying that because we are still in the death-process from a conceptual ordering that has been undermined, and a 'New Mysticism' (the new relationship of man to the newly 'discovered' and defined kosmos) has not yet been formed, upon which we will (I am relatively certain) construct a new model for our existence, our laws, our ethics, our mysticism, our theology, the organization of our states and nations---literally a new place in the kosmos. Because we are still very much in that death-process we have no fundamental 'language' or terms upon which we all agree, which are intrinsic in us. I think this is one of the reasons it is so hard to arrive at 'agreement' between people. As I said someplace else: we stare out of two eyes at the same world, we may live side by side, but we do not make anywhere near the same interpretation. It is not that I don't feel I can communicate, it is rather that communication is so 'problematic'.

"Like I said before, you seem attached to a framework that is capable of decay and dissolution, and so your experience of the world is of decay and dissolution. You don't see the other side of the coin, the growth and new coalescence of order. I suppose you catch a glimpse of it occasionally, but perhaps you shirk away in fear or grief? You are perhaps a temporal person, caught in the spiraling toilet drain of an earlier time."

Okay, you make some reasonable points. But I would like to suggest another vision that runs alongside this one. It is not so much that I am attached to a view of 'decay and dissolution', that is to say a negative interpretation of the present (and the future), it is that I see very distinctly the rise of an unprecedented factor or possibility. I have used the general term, with sci-fi tones, of The Machine. Despite the oh-so-many failings, the dying Conceptual Order still had a human at the very center of it. Or the story of a living and suffering human. It gave rise to personalism and humanism, and this is one of the reasons these values are with us so strongly. In the death-process, and in the scientific-materialism process that arises as an partial structure, a partial attempt to define a New Mystical relationship to the Whole, there is a little bit of a problem, and that is The Machine. I mean this as a metaphor and as a fact. The Machine, in this sense, is not human. It is defined by the fact that it is non-human. It seems inevitable (?) that the Machine will arise and interpose itself in the 'gap' that has opened between 'God' and your 'mute matter'. So, in this sense, I am speaking of and alluding to far darker prospects that are now arising in our present. This is expressed in literature and mythos in ways we are all aware. The greater postion of the Earth's people do not have such a personalist and humanist base to their conceptual grasp of reality, and what 'we' have discovered, felt, intuited, and responded to ('God') is very rare and very powerful. Since we don't have the manliness (!) to hang on to it, to remodel it, to keep it alive even as we emerge in the new, other cultures with other values, unlike our own, may arise and gain dominance. In that environment, with the tools of modern technology, freedom disapperas and The Machine arises to control protoplasm.

All the 'darker heralds' seem to be there, seem to have made their presence known, but how it will actually turn out who can say?

I don't see how any new order will arise---no rosy order such as you propose---unless God or the idea of God is rediscovered and, in this sense, God is brought back to life and lives. I don’t mean bringing up the old shades, the old ghosts, but a radically new awareness. A knowledge and certainty. This is our underscoring myth. I don't think it will just evaporate. It calls to us, it makes demands on us.

In this sense, your 'mute matter' (the inner dimension that allows you to conceive such a thing) is linked to the problem of the arrival of The Machine. I don't mean to say that you are somehow 'demonic' or bad-intentioned. But ideas really do have consequences.

Or do you think The Death of God really signifies the true Birth of Man?
__________________________________________________

One small favor: could you not chop-up my post and respond in parts? Can you make your own complete, free-standing post? It is really time consuming to respond when someone writes in that way.

When I say The Machine, what does that mean for you? What do you think that's about?

I see you have been masticating The Flesh lately, old bean.

Someone, a year or longer ago, posted this video. It always struck me as emblamatic of a 'mechanical present and future'.

Alex T. Jacob wrote:Ask David directly, or I suppose you can go through Dan. David regularly spends time with his family, Sue and his boy, and is therefor involved in a domestic arrangement. No big deal.

Dan, tell us a little bit about your home arrangement. That is if you feel it is relevant.

One of the first lessons in my Manly Man's Be-A-Real-Man Course is that one should never, ever take things at their face value, and most definitely not philosophers or religious types. What they say in their writings and with the handling of public persona is one thing, and can be considered in those terms, and the other is how they actually live, what they actually do. They rarely coincide.

Consider this:

"Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself and that in secret. But there are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind."

---Dostoyevsky

What this points to is a more sticky 'truth' about humans. To understand ourselves and others and our condition we have to understand this first. Everything that is said and 'performed' has to pass through this pre-lens. Well, if we really want to be honest.

My project is to drag the girls out of their closets and parade them in full view. They deride 'lipstick' and sheer panties, I say they are wearing both. I will not rest until I have exposed them all.

"Obviously that respect would be gone if he doesn't abide by what he says, but there is no evidence for it. It seems to me that you are twisting the facts to make them support your position."

Most definitely not. What I am doing is telling the truth and suggesting that you (everyone) look behind the curtains, read between the lines. Nick, Cory, Diebert and others are playing an elaborate, stage-managed game to present themselves in certain ways. Alex mirrors all this in his wacky, 'irrational' style, as part of his generous penetrating behind the veils program. If you are comfortable moving in the direction of getting all knotted up in misrepresentations and distortions, well do so. The false world will rush out to meet you, selling all sorts of fine products. OTOH, if you want to move toward real intelligence, truth-telling, clarity and freedom, consider the wonderfulness of my Teachings---interwoven with marvellous humor, derring-do, some tap-dancing, as well as deeply insightful commentary about the Human Condition, politics in South America, Chomsky gossip. Plus, I've had and enjoyed more pussy than all these 'dudes' combined.

Alex...i love what i have read of your posts...sometimes they are so winded though...i guess i;m getting old...don't have as much energy to talk that much...i prefer to say less...compact it all in a sentence...something like haiku...anyways...just felt bad that i don't interact much with you here....you are very talented and bright...great sense of humor and humanity....love ya....

Tomas....i'm kinda sorry i exposed your beloved Freemason religion, i feel bad that you might be embarrased....a long time ago i was a christian and someone showed me a piece of paper that was a initiation or something of the FreeMasons.....it was a vow or something at the highest level (about Lucifer)
many people are unaware of what the truth really is....i am sick of not knowing for sure myself....i don't know if all this stuff about the FreeMasons is true....my intuition tells me it is.....you have so much to say about so many things ...i can understand why you are silent about this....i feel sorry for you...you are not free...

Alex T. Jacob wrote:

Cory wrote: "The word God only has metaphorical meaning to me. There is no literal intelligence or literal love, forgiveness or anything like that. God is nature itself, which is infinitely dumb, yet in a metaphorical sense, "all-seeing", creative, forgiving and Truthful."

Why is this, Cory? On what basis have you concluded this?

Nature is everything, and "everything", by definition, cannot reflect, because the moment it does, it ceases to be everything. This is because reflection, by definition, is a division and bound to time. So basically, the very nature of conscious reflection is temporal and finite, rather than eternal and infinite. That which is literally eternal and infinite cannot be conscious.

(There is the case where a conscious being can realize his essence is eternal and infinite, but that's different than the case of a literally infinite and eternal thing being conscious, which is like trying to promote belief in a square circle)

Everything is "all seeing" because everything is the Truth of the matter. What I mean is, you can be metaphorical and say "nature knows", because we all have those experiences were we expect something to happen a certain way, but nature proves it to be otherwise. Nature has a certain insistence. Nature reveals it itself as it is, and in a metaphorical sense communicates to us what is true.

Nature is forgiving because none of us have any real free will, we are all innocent in that sense. So a man who identifies with nature forgives all men, even though he may have a notion of responsibility that he sees some men exhibit, while others don't.

On what basis are your 'certainties' constructed? Don't you think it is slightly peculiar that you, with your religious background (a limited one and a very dogmatic one to be sure) comes out so strongly against the possibility of a 'Living God'. Why should this be so? (A 'dumb' creation?)

All of us act on faith. Some of us are lucky enough to become conscious of this fact and deliberately live with an awareness of the logical or irrational nature of our faith. I have defined what it is I know the best I can, and that's where my faith lies. I still have respect for the scientific method and obviously have much uncertainty about most matters.

One small favor: could you not chop-up my post and respond in parts? Can you make your own complete, free-standing post? It is really time consuming to respond when someone writes in that way.

How about you spend the meager time required to learn how to use the quote formatting feature? You would no longer find replying to chopped up posts challenging, and it would also make your posts easier to read.

Cory writes: "All of us act on faith. Some of us are lucky enough to become conscious of this fact and deliberately live with an awareness of the logical or irrational nature of our faith. I have defined what it is I know the best I can, and that's where my faith lies. I still have respect for the scientific method and obviously have much uncertainty about most matters."

I agreee with you about the faith part. I also agree that we can examine all that our 'faith' is built on. Still, even after all that, we are back to the same or a similar position: a sort of faith. Logic exists as a tool. But it is not the only tool. Or is it? We all 'define what we know' as best we can, and it still seems woefully inadequate. No matter what, we are all 'stuck' within this human, incarnated, material condition. I also have vast respect for scientific method and processes. I would like to believe we are in a process of defining/creating a radically new model of existence. In relation to the New, which is being born/constructed, we live in a mental world of clouds and dreams and ghosts and demons.

Just a few random points:

• From out of absolute unknowability, all things arise.
• Word structures, language, semantic ordering of sentences, 'logic', are activities of man. It is potentially a false notion that we can use them to know much of anything about what is 'absolutely unknowable'.
• Logic and the products of logic are essential and relevant in many fields. It seems doubtful (or doubtable) if they can help us with really grand questions.
• For this reason, what we may express 'logically' about grand questions might be seen, might be recognized, as holding no particular weight or authority.
• Yet, we are forced to do so.
• It seems wise to me to recognize its tendency to see itself as capable and fit to answer such grand questions as questionable, and to doubt.
• It also seems to me that this 'logical artifice' is a foil against the difficult nature of the problem that confronts us.
• In general terms, GFers seem to me people who, like the religious, are impelled by certain notions of a spiritual nature which function in their core, and a desire/need for absolute certainty and a stance whereby they have power over other styles of mentation, and over existential uncertainty.
• But instead of resorting to 'faith' or simple optimism to define and express their religious position, they define it and express it through/with 'logical terms'. This serves a function, it seems to me, since logic has no power to explain anything at all about existence.
• To depend on 'logic' to express or explain anything about what is essentially unexplainable places one in an odd position. One moves about, organizing and reorganizing one's 'certainties'; collaborates with others to define and reinforce these 'certainties', but also to shield oneself against uncertainty.