GENIUS FORUMS

And are coloured by.

I think we are getting to the heart of the matter here....

Yeah, it's emotional.
Don't ya' love it?

the intricate web.

exhilarating!

David wrote:I think we are getting to the heart of the matter here....

Is that supposed to be an argument, David? Isn't that nothing more than an insinuation? Dennis, as resident monkey, seems to approve. ;-)

Ideas have consequences. Ideas mould the world. Ideas mould how we live and act. Ideas, and how we live and act, determine all that we construct in this life. Everyone must pay very careful attention to the ideas they receive and what the consequences of those ideas will be. Receiving of ideas and installation of ideas without careful analysis (if it is possible) is foolishness. To have experienced or to have observed the consequences of ideas lived, both positive and negative, is the foundation of 'wisdom'. There is an intimate link (duh!) between experience and wisdom. You can indeed contest a person's personal experience, and you can insinuate that it is 'emotional' (and here we are again: we know we are among the GoFers when they pull out the long guns of an attack on 'emotion'), but I do not see how you can deny any of the rest of this 'wisdom methology'. The person, the I and Thou, is precisely the field where any of all that is talked about here, is tested. If the person, the I and Thou, does not appear, it is a false platform of conversation.

As Dennis would say: Got it?

Play your games, chilluns...

PS: Damn! How could I have forgotten? Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again.

GF has a commitment to rationality.

Playing the victim of your parents is irrational.

Bring the situation up to the Truth Conditions...True or False.

Are the sins of the father visited on the son?

No.

That conversation was sorted out 3,000 years ago.

Alexis Jacobi wrote:Emphatically, you would have to excise 'Jesus' from the list, that much I am almost certain of. No matter how you cut it, it is impossible to make the Gospel figure of Jesus (though there are at least 5 different persons there, maybe more) into some sort of Zen monk merging with the forest and spouting koans.

The Buddha, Nagarjuna and Hakuin are all from different cultures, and different times. Yet, they are all Buddhists. And Jesus lived in culture that was very different from Western culture. How then can he be considered as the founder of a religion that has been present in Europe for two millennia?

My own parents did almost exactly what I am critiquing here. I lived it. And I know that you find it contemptuous that I mention personal experience, but it is significantly what my opinions and ideas expressed here are based in.

Dude, if you think that understanding the words of another person who is different from you means that you want to hold hands with a bunch of stinking hippies and live in trees, then you have serious parent issues. It's not our fault your parents are/were hippies.

Jupi wrote:The Buddha, Nagarjuna and Hakuin are all from different cultures, and different times. Yet, they are all Buddhists. And Jesus lived in culture that was very different from Western culture. How then can he be considered as the founder of a religion that has been present in Europe for two millennia?

The answer to the last question is involved but extremely interesting. CG Jung wrote:

• "We have conquered the East politically. Do you know what happened when Rome subjugated the near East politically? The spirit of the East entered Rome. Would it be unthinkable that the same thing happened today? [...] I know that our unconscious is crammed with Eastern symbolism. The spirit of the East is really at the gate."

And Jung has much to say about 'psychic infection'. Yet, in terms of the West, the Eastern influence merged in so many different ways with the Western 'body', became incorporated into it, and in this sense Christianity became a thing of the West.

Buddha and Nagarjuna share the same culture, Buddha from the north of India, Nagarjuna from the south. And they both arose out of Sanskrit linguistic sources with clear links to the Vedas, Arya culture, etc. Hakuin shares a connection to the Sanskrit linguistic source but yes, he was not a (direct) product of Indian culture. I would imagine that is why his Zen attitude is significantly different from either of the others.

In any case, the point was not to propose that influence is not inevitable or something 'bad', but that ideas and modalities are blended into a culture through syncretic processes. (David is a Australian practitioner of Zen or Taoism, and if these traditions take root they would become Western-Zen-Christian traditions and distinct from any Eastern tradition. You, as a berdache Indus River man, a tritiya-prakriti, may admire and long for Weininger, but to truly incorporate him will prove a difficult enterprise).

In America and Europe (and to a siginficant extent Central and South America), a major and primary influence in our present is Sixties Radicalism. Referring to my own parents, who were intellectual hippies who became professionals (with good hygenic habits btw), I trace in my own development levels of influence that extend from what Farrell in The Spirit of the Sixties calls 'Sixties Personalism'. This Personalism, at least in America, is so extensive and so pervasive, that there is no way to discuss ideas about the present, or about social change, or about spiritual and religious ideas and praxis, without considering it. There is no way that any one of you, that is to say each and every person participating now in this forum, is not beholden to significant influence that extends from Sixties Radicalism and Personalism.

Now, in my parent's generation---this is a known fact---many kids who sensed conflict with their own culture and parents opted for a radical breaking away (shearing off) from their own selves and used the tools of exotic religious ideas (et cetera) to perform this shearing off. (Similarly but also distinctly from what is attempted here). On one hand, this radical project was intensely creative and in that sense 'positive', but on another level, because people assumed that radically changing the present (one's relationship to it, that is to say one's own bodily relationship to it and all this connotes) could be achieved by an almost Dionysian incorporation of the radical other, a great psychological gulf opened up. 'The sins of the fathers' were indeed visited on the sons and up to the third and forth generation, and what this means is that if one is proposing or planning change, modification, revolution, violent shifts of perspective, etc., one does this within the structure of one's own person, and that is to say (as I tirelessly and valiantly repeat) in the body. The meaning of that phrase, from the look of it, cannot be received here for the simple reason that 'you' do not live in your bodies, you live in (I suggest) a falsely-conceived, 'rational' and 'mental' and 'abstract' world in which you-plural desire, neurotically, to cut yourselves off from your 'vital self' (I am developing an interesting and dynamic nomenclature!)

Because you are in denial of the fact(s) of your own contextual selves, you are in denial of unconscious desires and wishes (a primary tenet of modernity which, because 'you' have virtually no intellectual preparation, is unregisterable in your thinking) that are part and parcel of your being, and yet these desires and wishes seem to come to the surface anyway: with a sort of perverse hero- or father-worship (Weininger, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche); through a dubious fraternity with distinct homo-erotic undertones; through a noted and rather virulent contempt of women and the feminine (in your own selves); along with a privelaging of 'reason' (the rational) with no understanding (and I am emphatic here: NO UNDERSTANDING) of what has occurred within our own intellectual traditions that would force us, that indeed does force us, to have to consider 'the body', our own psychological persons, our relationship to our context and to our parents, and so many other things that must be dealt with if we are to consider ourselves 'self-consciousness' and growing.

(Dennis: I'm sorry that I can't respond to you. Your posts are so mind-bogglingly stupid that I can only imagine they embarrass those you attempt to defend).

It seems my post hit a little too close to your "body", eh?

Alexis Jacobi wrote:Buddha and Nagarjuna share the same culture, Buddha from the north of India, Nagarjuna from the south.

Have you ever heard of the term "Indo-European"? The people in the north of India are at least partially descended from the Indo-Europeans who settled there and who started the vedic culture. The Buddha was probably one of those, since he belonged to one of the upper castes. The south of India is largely inhabited by the Dravidian people, who have similarities in both language and culture to Africans. Sanskrit is an Indo-European language that belongs to the north of India, while the language of south India is Tamil.

So they are two completely distinct cultures with no connection whatsoever between them, see?

Hakuin shares a connection to the Sanskrit linguistic source

Japanese belongs to an altogether different language family, which is more similar to Chinese and other east asian languages.

In any case, the point was not to propose that influence is not inevitable or something 'bad', but that ideas and modalities are blended into a culture through syncretic processes.

According to you, since an individual's thought belongs completely to his culture, it's impossible for there to be any differences between two individuals of the same culture regarding the interpretation of the religion, morality, maxims etc. of that culture.

In reality, any difference in the interpretation of any aspect of a culture(whatever you define it to be) between two individuals would point to a difference in their own culture(to that degree). Do you deny that this happens all the time between people belonging to the very same "culture"?

There is no way that any one of you, that is to say each and every person participating now in this forum, is not beholden to significant influence that extends from Sixties Radicalism and Personalism.

you live in (I suggest) a falsely-conceived, 'rational' and 'mental' and 'abstract' world in which you-plural desire, neurotically, to cut yourselves off from your 'vital self'

Because you are in denial of the fact(s) of your own contextual selves

This is nothing but imagination on your part, because you've provided no evidence whatsoever for any of those claims.

It seems that, for whatever reason, you have created a worldview for yourself that prevents you from becoming the things that you hate or fear. That worldview involves drawing inherent distinctions between "cultures", equating culture with individual thought, and then putting yourself into the "culture", "body", "space" or whatever, that you find to be copacetic.

Additionally, you can also avoid feeling guilty about yourself by thinking that every normal, sane human being fits squarely into one of those little cultural cubicles, even if their cubicle is different from yours. And anyone who doesn't fit squarely into one of those cultural cubicles, like some of us here at GF, has to be a neurotic gay transvestite.

It's easy now to understand some of the content of your posts(that I've read). They seem to be a kind of perverse mockery of the ideas/cultures that you find threatening.

In conclusion then, you seem to be projecting your own intellectual shortcomings onto an Indian Mahayana Buddhist Weiningerian ladyboy, an Australian evangelical atheist Kierkegaardian Nietzschean zen monk, and a Dutchman.

From a Wiki page on Nagarjuna: "According to a biography translated by Kumārajīva, he was born into a Brahmin family, but later converted to Buddhism. This may be the reason he was one of the earliest significant Buddhist thinkers to write in classical Sanskrit rather than a prakrit."

Through the language-base of Sanskrit (a repository of existential ideas) both the Buddha and Nagarjuna seem to be pretty intimately related. Much more related than, say, a Jewish prophet and a Roman general. Did the African-Dravidians also have a brahminical culture?

Jupi wrote:So they are two completely distinct cultures with no connection whatsoever between them, see?

Are you still as sure? This is not at all an area that interests me, myself.

Japanese belongs to an altogether different language family, which is more similar to Chinese and other east asian languages.

That is true, but the philosophical system, the ideas, the scriptures of Buddhism, seem to have arrived in that culture through the medium of Sanskrit. It is my understanding that Sanskrit has been very far-reaching in this sense.

I would imagine, though, that Taoism might have originated in indigenous traditions unconnected with an imported Sanskrit.

According to you, since an individual's thought belongs completely to his culture, it's impossible for there to be any differences between two individuals of the same culture regarding the interpretation of the religion, morality, maxims etc. of that culture.

In reality, any difference in the interpretation of any aspect of a culture (whatever you define it to be) between two individuals would point to a difference in their own culture (to that degree). Do you deny that this happens all the time between people belonging to the very same "culture"?

This is your paraphrase, and I express myself differently. I would say: an individual is an 'outcome' of his cultural matrix and 'thinks the thoughts' of the beingness of that culture and locale. It is quite possible to note differences in thinking between members of a given cultural matrix, no doubt about it, but I doubt very much that Hebrew and Judean culture (for example) would spit out a Taoist shaman, or a man like Nagarjuna or the Buddha with a radically different orientation toward and interpretation of reality. Certainly, syncretism is an unavoidable fact, and the origin of so many 'good' things. But remember, I brought a specific criticism against David et al for using a foreign tradition as an extremely blunt tool, and 'as-against' their own cultural matrix and tradition. I spelled this out in some detail and in nuanced manner. Can I help it if 'you' are 'binary thinkers'? ;-)

This [see my post, or what you quoted of it, above] is nothing but imagination on your part, because you've provided no evidence whatsoever for any of those claims.

What 'evidence' would you accept? You should know, if perchance you don't, that if 'someone' wants to defeat every single or any single criticism that may be brought forward, they manage to do it. It is something like the Will-to-be-Right. You can avoid any part (of a post) that, as you say, strikes a little too close to home, and then divert the conversation (for example) by focusing on a part of the critique that isn't really that revelant at all, and keep the rhetorical engines sputtering...Another possibility is to try to entertain and comprehend the ideas a person is putting forth.

Still, I often feel I am not writing for your benefit but for those dozens---nay hundreds!---of invisible lurking readers. Perhaps it is immodest of me but I feel I score ten points to your one point.

In conclusion then, you seem to be projecting your own intellectual shortcomings onto an Indian Mahayana Buddhist Weiningerian ladyboy, an Australian evangelical atheist Kierkegaardian Nietzschean zen monk, and a Dutchman.

(But wait, shouldn't you use some qualifiers with Diebert? Like: 'post-Christian neo-nihilist trans-Nietzschean and all-around Nice Guy?) I am very interested in hearing more of what you perceive as my intellectual shortcomings. I often tend toward irony but there is no irony in saying this. How would you describe my intellectual shortcoming? Where do you most obviously notice it? I have written 3-4 posts describing my views, can you use that as a platform?

(Dennis: I'm sorry that I can't respond to you. Your posts are so mind-bogglingly stupid that I can only imagine they embarrass those you attempt to defend).

We just got to the heart of the matter.
You and your parents.
Just for a moment it was authentic.
Now you've flipped into inauthenticity again.

Dennis wrote:Just for a moment it was authentic.
Now you've flipped into inauthenticity again.

I disagree; it's perfectly authentic if you know what you're looking at.

He likes to bait people to get them into his interview room. He makes up disorders like "binary thinking", and tries to group-diagnose an entire forum -- let me stress this: over the Internet. He talks a lot about neuroses without the slightest bit of clinical evidence. Basically, Alex is an amateur, Internet-using, Google-consulting, psychoanalyst. I don't think he cares one whit about actually doing philosophy (as opposed to 'treating' it), nor does he realize that the experiment that was psychoanalysis failed.

Also, he's kind of gullible. If you're considering agreeing with him, just feed him a meal of red herrings.

Perhaps you have an angle there Trev and I trust your depth of knowing but I'm inclined to call his behaviour inauthentic wherever it's showing up.

'the heart of the matter' and 'ultimate reality' have the condition: available and present.
10,000 posts of unmitigated rubbish that amounts to a kettle on the boil full of insistence and hostility (emotionality) cannot cover up the truth.

It's like the hammer in the shed is available and present.
The hammer in the shed cannot be the fullness of hammer unless and until you pick it up and use it rationally in the way that the fullness of hammer can be realised.

This I think modifies some of your assumptions, Jupi:

• The Indus Valley civilization (IVC) was discovered in the 1920s. The discovery of the Harappa, Mohenjo-daro and Lothal sites changed the theory from an invasion of "advanced" Aryan people on a "primitive" aboriginal population to an invasion of nomadic "barbarians" on an advanced urban civilization, comparable to the Germanic migrations after the Fall of Rome, or the Kassite invasion of Babylonia. The decline of the Indus Valley Civilisation at precisely the period in history for which the Indo-Aryan migration had been assumed, provides independent support of the linguistic scenario. This argument is associated with the mid-20th century archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, who interpreted the presence of many unburied corpses found in the top levels of Mohenjo-daro as the victims of conquest wars, and who famously stated that the god "Indra stands accused" of the destruction of the Indus Valley Civilisation.

From: Indo-Aryan Migration.

• The rishis, the composers of the hymns of the Rigveda, were considered inspired poets and seers (in post-Vedic times understood as "hearers" of an eternally existing Veda, Śrauta means "what is heard").

Interesting that this is basically the 'realm' in which they operated: language, hymn: channeling.
___________________________________________

Okay Dennis: I am willing to submit to your analysis. Bring it on. I promise I won't cry, that would be embarrassing. :-(

Trevor: You've forgotten youtube. My using of the term 'neurotic' is perhaps innaccurate, but I am not using it in a clinical sense. I am at a loss as to what other word to use. I see ideas and attitudes that seem to express dysfunction, and though each of the participants in this forum is a distinct person and can define themselves as they wish, still in a general sense the forum (the TBs) has a kind of basic personality. One could say 'the environment is neurotic' or 'the environment is dysfucntional' or 'the core ideas seem neurotic/disfunctional'. It is hard to describe the psychology of a forum (a group place) and yet each forum certainly has one. My definition of neurosis is something all humans share. To be human is to be neurotic. Most everyone I come in contact with wishes to discover and explain a means to recover something, and many people sell a program. I would also point out that, some time back in another conversation, you performed some of your devilish 'lessons', as you are wont to do sometimes. I don't think that I completely gave way to gullibility this time around, did I?

I am really interested to hear more about your sense of the failure of psychoanalysis. And what 'doing philosophy' means.

Binary thinking: Denotes a system of thought that predominantly considers things in an either, or, right, wrong, black, white way, ignoring any subtleties or consideration of third or more alternatives. Such binary thinking proceeds from an exclusively 'rational' orientation, the standard modus of the forum's (psyche?). It is a more 'fair' term than neurotic. It is a good term.

Let's see what Princey thinks about what Bobby had to say on
The Qualities of a Divinely Inclined Person.....

Fearlessness

No.

purity of heart

Definately No. That's for babies (literally)

perseverance in acquiring wisdom and in practicing yoga

Not at all. The wise are "born" wise

charity

No!

subjugation of the senses

Can be beneficial for a short period.

performance of holy rites

Nope.

study of the scriptures, self-discipline, straightforwardness, compassion for all creatures, absence of greed,

No, no, no, no and no.

gentleness, modesty, lack of restlessness, radiance of character, forgiveness, patience, cleanness, freedom from hate, absence of conceit

No, no, perhaps, no (although it's certainly imaginable that Alexi holds true to himself that he has it) no, no, no, no.

Alex wrote:One could say 'the environment is neurotic' or 'the environment is dysfucntional' or 'the core ideas seem neurotic/disfunctional'. It is hard to describe the psychology of a forum (a group place) and yet each forum certainly has one. My definition of neurosis is something all humans share. To be human is to be neurotic. Most everyone I come in contact with wishes to discover and explain a means to recover something, and many people sell a program.

Neuroses is abnormal functioning, and not, as you've defined it here, as something normal. I think the word you are searching for is "proselytizing"?

I would also point out that, some time back in another conversation, you performed some of your devilish 'lessons', as you are wont to do sometimes. I don't think that I completely gave way to gullibility this time around, did I?

Cops and psychiatrists are less obvious interrogators. Yes, I was talking in D&D metaphors, and yes, I was playing a language game. But I could have told you I was doing that. I also could have told you why. You seemed to think the game was some kind of neuroses, and not motivated action. You'd have prescribed me the wrong pills, or locked me up for something I didn't do.

I am really interested to hear more about your sense of the failure of psychoanalysis.

The only thing psychoanalysts did right was get mental patients out of prisons and into hospitals. The interview technique is all wrong.

A psychiatrist has a few medically relevant questions ("how many hours do you sleep?", "how's your appetite?") and also a few really easy questions ("do you know where you are?", "what's your address?") that check how you get from point A to point B (or if you get there at all). It's quite hard to get into the head of someone, especially if you've never met them before the interview, deeply enough to decide on a diagnosis. Theories of Oedipus complexes and the collective unconscious are pretty much useless.

How do you diagnose a philosophical system? It seems to be something you've been trying to do.

And what 'doing philosophy' means.

I made a contrast for a reason. It's not just doing philosophy, but doing philosophy vs. treating philosophy. I get a strong impression from you that you feel you are here to cure GF of its ailment, but the ailment is philosophy.

I hate to draw from Nietzsche, since you'll probably just ignore it, but you remind me of those who "act as if they were taking away the stones from the path of the wandering mineralogist in order that he might not strike his foot against them - when he has gone out for the very purpose of striking against them”.

Binary thinking: Denotes a system of thought that predominantly considers things in an either, or, right, wrong, black, white way, ignoring any subtleties or consideration of third or more alternatives.

When you notice a false dichotomy, which is a fallacy, point it out then and there. Deal with it when it comes up. Use a counter-example to show how there are more options. People don't like committing fallacies.

However, universally trashing bivalency is absurd. Sometimes things are either p or not-p, with no third option. (Exceptions are rare enough that knowing how to deal with things like paraconsistency and polyvalency isn't really that important, relatively.)

Alexis Jacobi wrote:Through the language-base of Sanskrit (a repository of existential ideas) both the Buddha and Nagarjuna seem to be pretty intimately related. Much more related than, say, a Jewish prophet and a Roman general. Did the African-Dravidians also have a brahminical culture?

They didn't have a language base. However, both of them knew Sanskrit, and both followed the same religion. which is precisely my point. Your idea seems to be that there are neatly divided cultures, and if there are any similarities between them then it means that they are the same culture. That is ludicrous, since cultures change and intermingle all the time. Pretty much every modern culture is the result of the intermingling of other cultures.

an individual is an 'outcome' of his cultural matrix and 'thinks the thoughts' of the beingness of that culture and locale.

I'll admit that this is a different way of expressing - "an individual's thought belongs completely to his culture." The rest of what you say about this is incomprehensible to me.

What 'evidence' would you accept?

What we actually wrote would be a good place to start...

You can avoid any part (of a post) that, as you say, strikes a little too close to home

Yes, that seems to be what you are doing, Alexis.

But anyways, which parts of your post do you think I'm "avoiding" responding to, in this particular case?

I am very interested in hearing more of what you perceive as my intellectual shortcomings.

You are unable to think in terms of context. Everything that you encounter has to fit squarely into one of your cultural cubicles, and if it doesn't then you force it in. Therefore, people who have a different context from yours appear to you to be stupid. And you appear to be stupid to people who have contexts different from yours. And to me, who has the highest context of all, you all seem stupid.

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:I get a strong impression from you that you feel you are here to cure GF of its ailment, but the ailment is philosophy.

I think he's here to cure us from doing philosophy in the way that we do, because it contradicts his own philosophy. If he can't fit a philosophy into a "culture" or "mode of thought", then it means that it's wrong and the product of a perverse mind.

AJ: My definition of neurosis is something all humans share. To be human is to be neurotic. Most everyone I come in contact with wishes to discover and explain a means to recover something, and many people sell a program.

Trevor: Neuroses is abnormal functioning, and not, as you've defined it here, as something normal. I think the word you are searching for is "proselytizing"?

In fact I think my definition is closer to Freud's definition, before Freudianism became a system, and before an original and dynamic sense (and importance) of it got distorted. The nature of human consciousness is bound up in neurosis; what we are sits upon a great deal of conflict, division, and almost irreconcilable opposition. In a Freudian sense, there is a tremendous amount about ourselves that we have not been able even to distinguish, we haven't even known how to see ourselves. To look deeply into human reality, and the actual truth and fact of anyone of our existences, is not easy. I don't think that Freud had some sort of universal rule as to what 'normal functioning' was, but then he certainly seemed to be aware of what was abnormal or perverse. But a 'true Freudian perspective' would be the recognition that we are all not a little batty, and we stand on the verge of acting destructively, or doing incredibly destructive things. Freud provides a very considerable platform for examining basic human problems.

Trevor wrote:The only thing psychoanalysts did right was get mental patients out of prisons and into hospitals. The interview technique is all wrong.

You are speaking of psychoanalysis in a much more strict sense than I am. When I refer to the psyche I am referring to that strange and mostly incomprehenisble puzzle or bundle of strange forces that we are. I am speaking of that person and that psyche who confronts something unutterably strange: the fact of being alive and in a flesh-body. The core thing, for me, is the experience of that, and it is 'that' that everyone has to live every day. If your experience of living in *that* is anything like mine, and I am sure that it is so, basically, and that you and I share this, basically, then you are living such an unutterably strange experience. And all people are. And so we have that in common. My sense of things seems to be different than yours insofar as you privelage the activity of 'doing philosphy', whereas I privelage that fact of being.

You take issue with the way that I take issue with what is concluded about life and experience here (to speak in such general terms, and as you are aware, there are pitfalls in this). It may help you to know that as it pertains to being in this forum, being here, chosing to write here, I am ultimately out for myself. I don't have much hope or even desire to change your views, and in your case I don't even know what they are---perhaps you don't have them? But I am aware that what I write does seem to 'resonate' with some people, and they have indicated it is something like turning away from a 'dead space' to a space that could be considered more alive. Is that a valid observation? Is that a 'truth'? Who ultimately knows? But at the end of the day I am only trying to organize the ideas in my own head. It would not at all be accurate to say that I don't 'do philosophy' or am not interested in it. Nick and Ryan and Cory (according to them) are 'doing philosophy' and what they are doing holds almost zero interest, for me. I hope it is valuable for them, I hope it gets them where they want to go. But that is not in any sense how I see 'doing philosophy'. But always, I start from the platform of the person, the personal, and the 'body'. I cannot think of any other place to start from, r to resolve to.

When you notice a false dichotomy, which is a fallacy, point it out then and there.

Sure, point taken. After some years in this 'space' I have grown accustomed to recognizing or perceiving certain 'mental tendencies'. I see these 'absolutes' as functioning in that way. True, if I were dissatisfied I have of course the option of leaving. But it all still serves functions for me. The core question I asked (years ago) is: why do people believe the things they believe (about life, reality, existence, 'this world'). That is a question that can take a person very far. I have learned and continue to learn a great deal.

Now are you going to tell me that this present engagement has all been a charade, a subterfuge, a trap?! Another Trevortrick? ;-) According to you I only wanted to pull you into the interview room...

Jupi wrote:Your idea seems to be that there are neatly divided cultures, and if there are any similarities between them then it means that they are the same culture. That is ludicrous, since cultures change and intermingle all the time. Pretty much every modern culture is the result of the intermingling of other cultures.

It would be ludicrous if it were what I said or meant. That is your paraphrase and what I have written is much more nuanced. There is no value and nothing to be gained (for me) in repeating all over again what I have written out in so many posts. Perhaps you could read a little better, be a better reader?

But anyways, which parts of your post do you think I'm "avoiding" responding to, in this particular case?

I don't think that you can 'hear' about nor have much interest in (as I say) the human person. It is not a center of concern for you. So, this whole essential aspect of my writing would not be comprehensible to you. You wouldn't want it to be comprehensible to you. I sort of follow Harold Bloom in this: we are constantly in a process of deliberately misreading, and through misreading, we define our own selves. It can apply in many areas: Buddhism and a deliberate misreading of [whatever was misread]. Christianity as a deliberate misreading of Judaism. I think we all misread and, I guess, we just have to make the most of it. Have a grand old time at it. Here, misread THAT.

OK, this is what I base my opinion of you on:

Alexis Jaboci wrote:

jupiviv wrote:The Buddha, Nagarjuna and Hakuin are all from different cultures, and different times. Yet, they are all Buddhists. And Jesus lived in culture that was very different from Western culture. How then can he be considered as the founder of a religion that has been present in Europe for two millennia?

The answer to the last question is involved but extremely interesting. CG Jung wrote:

"We have conquered the East politically. Do you know what happened when Rome subjugated the near East politically? The spirit of the East entered Rome. Would it be unthinkable that the same thing happened today? [...] I know that our unconscious is crammed with Eastern symbolism. The spirit of the East is really at the gate."

And Jung has much to say about 'psychic infection'. Yet, in terms of the West, the Eastern influence merged in so many different ways with the Western 'body', became incorporated into it, and in this sense Christianity became a thing of the West.

So it's impossible for there to be a kind of thought that is not limited by the cultural divisions that you make. Also, to you, if two cultures intermingle or change, it doesn't mean that a *new* culture has been formed(and which doesn't fit into your cultural cubicles), but that one of those cultures have been incorporated into the other. This is too crazy for words.

In any case, the point was not to propose that influence is not inevitable or something 'bad', but that ideas and modalities are blended into a culture through syncretic processes.

The syncretic processes would have to occur at the level of the individual, and therefore outside of culture. A group of individuals together may form a culture, but not the other way around as you think.

I don't think that you can 'hear' about nor have much interest in (as I say) the human person.

The "human person" being your anathema towards anyone who doesn't thinks that they can look up the meaning of their own words in a dictionary.

Alex.
Is this your reasoning?

All evocations are false (except you seem to support Xianity).

GF is an evocation.

Therefore GF is false.

Jupi wrote:So it's impossible for there to be a kind of thought that is not limited by the cultural divisions that you make. Also, to you, if two cultures intermingle or change, it doesn't mean that a *new* culture has been formed (and which doesn't fit into your cultural cubicles), but that one of those cultures have been incorporated into the other. This is too crazy for words.

It might indeed be 'too crazy for words' if indeed I had said it! Your reading is not a good reading, as usual. It is a deliberate misreading, and with the misreading you define and support your own definitions. Perhaps it is a reading driven by a mind that must think in binaries? Either/or?

I mentioned a Jungian idea as a factor to be considered and not as some kind of absolute statement. Let me repeat one of my main predicates as it pertains to *many* who serve GF processes: the principal formulators of the 'house philosophy' on GF seem to me to take certain religious or philosophical ideas and to employ them in a battle against 1) their own culture and 2) their own selves. This is not to say that the ideas are 'bad' in se, although they may be tendentious, and it says much more about the way ideas are used. Going further: I assume and I accept (with Freud) that the principal motivators that operate and drive a human being (all human beings, everywhere) are unconscious. What does this mean in the context of the 'house philosophy' and those who drink it down? Quite simple indeed but impossible to 'prove' except anecdotally or as a suggestion. But what anecdotal evidence am I working with? Okay: a philosophy that recommends or even insists that to achieve the 'highest' and the best a man must sever, in a very radical manner, his connections with his culture, his people, his 'relatedness' in human terms; a philosophy that sets up reasoning as the exclusive modality with which to deal with living, life, being alive and which makes the erroneous assumption that it is even possible, much less sane and balanced, to deny in himself his own emotional and affective self, is evidence as I see things of an idea structure being used unwholesomely and 'neurotically'. (One must also mention that rather loaded GF contempt of women). The question is: What lies under the neurosis? What unconscious motive operates? I contend, without being able to offer any 'evidence' except the suggestion, that everyone who comes in contact with this USE OF IDEAS, must have the courage and the intelligence to ask a group of pointed questions both of the Formulators and of himself: What is really going on here?

The reference to 'psychic infection' and the psychology of CG Jung is ONLY a way to allude to a group of thoughts and ideas that could, perhaps, be useful in such analysis. I have made a couple of reference to religious movements in American and European culture---those importations from the East---that were used (according to some) as unconscious tools to address deep conflicts within their own selves arising from exterior conflicts: against parents, social structures, etc. I merely suggest that, as I see things, there might well be a similar motive in operation with these radical manoeuvres that are presented and enacted on GF. Does this mean that all aspects of the thinking on GF are 'bad' or represent 'infection' or unconscious denial of self? It does not. To approach ideas as they arrive and express themselves in social settings requires tremendous discrimination and nuance.

The 'human person' being your anathema towards anyone who doesn't thinks that they can look up the meaning of their own words in a dictionary.

Another rather terrible reading. Still, I have carefully spelled it out dozens and dozens of times. To consider the 'human person' is to take into consideration all parts of the human person. It is to recognize and know oneself as a 'human person'. In general, GFers are in denial about the human person both exterior and interior to themselves.

In that context, one can consider the question and issue of 'psychic infection', and the influence of 'foreign' ideas. I have written this out, in nuanced form, in other posts.

David wrote:What is enlightenment? It is returning to what you were before the earth was created.

I really would like some more information about this statement. I also would like to hear what others here take it to mean. 'Doing philosophy'---how does one 'do' this statement?
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Also, a link to an interesting area of study: Theopoetics. I dreamed an existence before my present existence and in that dream a voice spoke to me, mentioning theopoetics. I hope you kind souls---doing a little philosophy with me---will help me to interpret its meaning.

Alexis Jacobi wrote:I mentioned a Jungian idea as a factor to be considered and not as some kind of absolute statement.

And yet you called it an "answer" to the question of how different cultures can share/exchange some aspects of themselves with each other. Jung in that quote is trapped by the same maze of political, cultural and social divisions that you are. You cannot explain culture through culture, because culture is(ideally) a product of thought, and not the other way around.

But that is precisely what Jung is trying to do, and what you are trying to do.

You go on to say that Christianity is a result of the Eastern influence on the West, but what does "East" even mean here? What about the Greeks? Aren't they "eastern" compared to the Romans? The people living in Germany at the time? The Dacians? How did they influence Christianity?

And indeed, what does "West" mean? 1st century Roman culture is not very similar to, say, 13th century Swedish culture. And how is Pamela Anderson influenced by the Inuits? That's another thing - you seem to forget that the passage of time brings about change in cultures, which means that the culture in the same region is different at different points of time.

As I said, you want to explain the differences between the thought of various people through these simplistic categories. Simplistic in the sense that they tell us nothing about the thought, but leave us scratching our heads inside a room full of irrelevant information.

the principal formulators of the 'house philosophy' on GF seem to me to take certain religious or philosophical ideas and to employ them in a battle against 1) their own culture and 2) their own selves.

I can only speak for myself here, but if I am in a battle with any kind of culture, then it is unconscious culture. If that is what my "own" culture happens to be, then I'll not hesitate in rejecting and opposing it.

Going further: I assume and I accept (with Freud) that the principal motivators that operate and drive a human being (all human beings, everywhere) are unconscious.

If that is true then how did he become conscious of that fact?

What does this mean in the context of the 'house philosophy' and those who drink it down?

If I may answer that question - absolutely nothing. If your assumption is that all of your actions are fundamentally unconscious, then you shouldn't say anything more, because there is nothing more to say by definition.

a philosophy that recommends or even insists that to achieve the 'highest' and the best a man must sever, in a very radical manner, his connections with his culture, his people, his 'relatedness' in human terms; a philosophy that sets up reasoning as the exclusive modality with which to deal with living, life, being alive and which makes the erroneous assumption that it is even possible, much less sane and balanced, to deny in himself his own emotional and affective self, is evidence as I see things of an idea structure being used unwholesomely and 'neurotically'.

If you think that we shouldn't value emotion over reason, then you shouldn't really be criticising us, because you may hurt our feelings.

To consider the 'human person' is to take into consideration all parts of the human person. It is to recognize and know oneself as a 'human person'. In general, GFers are in denial about the human person both exterior and interior to themselves.

So you're saying that the human person is the fundamental personage of a person whose humanly elements can only find expression in his personality, vis-à-vis the personal elements present in the culture that surrounds him - would that be correct?

Jupi wrote:I can only speak for myself here, but if I am in a battle with any kind of culture, then it is unconscious culture. If that is what my "own" culture happens to be, then I'll not hesitate in rejecting and opposing it.

This is the only part of your post that I can really see there would be fruitful (I am an optimist) to 'discuss'. But first, I think we need a definition of 'unconscious'. In the psychological (Freudian) sense it refers to a vast territory under the conscious self, and it might be called the 'psycho-biological' or somatic understructure of man. It is the 'unconscious self' that produces a dream, for example, or a psychosomatic symptom to an unrecognized stress or conflict. In advertising (one of the areas that most benefited from Freud's 'discoveries') it seems that it is understood that people---you and I---pretend to rational activity, in choices, etc., but it has been proposed that we are never as 'rational' as we assume. It is suggested that we are motivated by 'unconscious factors'. What do you think of this? Do you use the term in this sense? Or, do you mean it as it is used more typically: unthinking action, routine action? Like, not recycling, or not wiping?

When you say 'battle' and 'reject'---what do you mean? You say that you are in a battle with 'unconscious culture'. How is this battle taking shape? You are a member of a culture (unless you simply precipitated out of the ethers), you have parents, sisters and brothers, family. You likely speak with these people every day. Are they all 'conscious' and therefore not any part of your opponents in your 'battle'? And, if they are unconscious or have unconscious aspects to behavior, and you 'reject' them, what form does this rejection take? Do you not talk to them? Not answer the phone when they call? How do you 'interface' with the 'unconscious culture' surrounding you?

You work, I assume? (Or study, or perhaps live off your parent's largess?) Can you speak about how your 'consciousness' functions as against any 'unconsciousness' that you 'battle' and 'reject'? What is your specific relationship to your culture and community? That is, Indian culture in the present?

To do philosophy is characterised by a sense of wonder, astonishment. If you aren't a sense of wonder, astonishment you aren't doing philosophy.
Philosophy begins and ends with wonder, astonishment.

Getting organised inside a sense of wonder, astonishment is the natural progression.

Organised means 'everything you want to say can be simply expressed in a syllogism'.

Which is a wonderful thing to look at, a thing of extraordinary beauty, the possibility of it thrills to the marrow.

The natural progression then is to speak it or present it.

To have the thing thinging out there in the space of other minds thinging.

The many now examine it as a natural progression and it's validity and truth are tested.

If it's a dud it's a dud.
If it's a diamond it's a diamond.

Whatever it's thing is,
Astonishment remains.

Doing philosophy is astonishment.

Alex wrote:Freud provides a very considerable platform for examining basic human problems.

Freud's entire value is in that he introduced a new category of patient to medicine. He convinced doctors to take mentally ill people seriously. However, his diagnostic criteria for these patients was completely wrong, as well as his course of treatment (talk therapy and nothing else). You seem to be trapped on these obsolete ideas. If you want a "considerable platform for examining basic human problems", read the DSM-IV. Or, if you mean deep problems, study metaphysics.

I don't have much hope or even desire to change your views, and in your case I don't even know what they are---perhaps you don't have them?

I align myself, ethically and ontologically, with the principle of wu wei.

The core question I asked (years ago) is: why do people believe the things they believe (about life, reality, existence, 'this world'). That is a question that can take a person very far. I have learned and continue to learn a great deal.

Yet, you show remarkably poor judgement when it comes to people's underlying motivations. You grab low-hanging fruit -- what I call "obvious" or "superficial" points of data -- when you should be aiming for the roots. Personally, I think making sure your unsystematic system has a pulse (or gives off the right vibe) is far less important than figuring out if it's true. Truth is just a bit more difficult a goal.

Nevermind the fact that asking why someone believes something is borderline ad hominem. Decide for yourself whether you are commiting this fallacy. I'm quite positive there are more interesting problems to be dealt with than curing philosophers of their philosophical beliefs, or grandstanding in front of a bunch of invisible spectators.

You know, interesting tidbit: psychiatrists (you know, the people who refuted and then surpassed Freud) have never ever tried to tell me that my beliefs are false. Even genuine mental illness (as abnormal a 'neuroses' as you can get) is a separate thing from false beliefs.

Now are you going to tell me that this present engagement has all been a charade, a subterfuge, a trap?! Another Trevortrick?

I already learned from it all I needed. Besides, I doubt I could get you to fall for the same thing three times, since you're now on edge.