GENIUS FORUMS

(This is in response to your comment on the Empiricism vs. Logic thread, Trevor. I thought I'd post it here so as not to disturb the other thread).
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Trevor wrote:

"Here's the bullshit: you were backed into a corner, and to save face, you started calling Kevin pathologically crazy while asking for help, rather than conceding that the claim you made was ridiculous and indefensible. I don't think I need to embarrass you as completely as I did AJ by calling you out on every piece of reasoning in your post that is unsound, but Appeals to common sense are fallacious. In other words, this argument isn't going to work."

(I must be so shameless that I just don't feel too embarrassed...)

The way I look at it, Trevor, is a little different. I am pretty convinced that you-all are more or less crazy. Not like the realy crazy people you run into on the street sometimes, but that something is missing, some essential piece. The Edifice of Neurosis that you construct is, supposedly, contructed with the building blocks of philosophy, and yet the end of it all, the contruction itself, is the habitation of a group of nut-cases. Reasoning ability, in the hands of a dedicated nut-case, can defend nuttery against all comers! It will always win, just on the strength of the determination to win. It is enough to say I win, you lose! just like kids do.

I actually think this is one of the first real lessons one learns in life, Trevor. It is certainly one that I grasped early on. You come into contact with people who have developed very sophisticated 'raps', and they are so good at it that they can 'win' over anyone. It happens in spiritual groups, in religious groups, in psychological cliques, in politics, in family life---everywhere. You learn to conclude that, apparently (sadly?) it is NOT exclusively reasoning skill that determines what is 'true' (or sane, or good, or productive, or desirable), it is something else. I am not sure what that 'somethig else is' but perhaps it is 'good faith'?

I don't want to cast this in some sort of Christian light, but I ask you this: When in the Gospels that quirky man says: "They who have ears, let them hear", what do you think he meant? We generally interpret that to mean that you can or will only hear what you are predisposed to hear, or what you have the sensitivity to hear. Sometimes that 'sensitivity' is a kind of grace. More than a few times in my own life I have missed opportunities because, it seems, I didn't want to hear. I couldn't 'hear'. But later I was able to 'hear', and things made sense. When that happens, you see, you recognize that it is not REALLY about 'reason', and that it's something else. But who can say what that 'something else' is?

In the Dylan song Idiot Wind (which just came to mind) he says somethig like 'in the final end you won the war after losing every battle', and I reverse it and suggest: What if it turns out that you (-all) win every battle but lose the war? 'To win' means to be a successful person in the life given, yet certainly what success is is up for conversation. But what if it turned out that after establishing all the edifice of reason, of being 'right' on every account (at least in your own eyes), the battle was actually lost?

And that is the Hum of Disagreement you hear...you are right!

I suggest to you that, with y'all, there was never a way to win, and that it is not now and never was about the 'triumph of reason'. That's what is said, but it's not really like that. I don't think you fully grasp just how well people can lie to themselves, and how often they succeed at it. You are absolutely right: in standard argumentation I am merely suggesting things, I cannot prove them to you. Insinuation is a very tricky area and it CAN be devious. But also, a suggestion and an insinuation is sometimes the only way to get through to a neurotic. This is a truth that comes to us from the psychological field.

AJ, there is more than one meaning to the word "embarrass", and I was not using the most common definition.

I don't think you fully grasp just how well people can lie to themselves, and how often they succeed at it.

If your disagreement is as I said, and is founded on principle, rather than engagement with the facts, this is particularly true of you. You have created an arbitrary structure that separates your own psyche from others, that saves you (miraculously) from falling prey the problems you perceive <special pleading>.

But the problems you have enough eyesight to perceive are essentially nothings: a little bad faith here, a little neurosis there, some essential piece of humanity that is lost. The thing is, even were these problems present, even were they not projections, these are insignificant. They do not effect the truth of claims whatsoever: they are too holistic. So, if they affected you, they would also not be something worth bringing up. Your own inability to structure arguments logically (avoiding fallacies, etc.) are genuine problems in reasoning. "Bad faith" isn't even a blip on the radar compared with argumentum ad hominem. But you don't have the eyes for these ones. You see tiny problems at the expense of glaring flaws.

You are pointing out problems that have the significance of typos. Really, you need to adapt. You need to learn how to see the big problems. Fallacies lead to incorrect conclusions; I have read extended arguments where philosophers have felt the need to justify something as simple as begging the question or a slippery slope, to explain why one particular instance of circularity is not a problem. Bad faith, on the other hand, although it may be an ethical problem for people of a particular moral system, is not a universal problem that can completely destroy the possibility that the conclusion is true.

Alex,

Of course I could continue with outlining that for example when you criticize the spiritual extremism to "'hate everything", you are literally changing the texts that specifically outline discord in family and social relationships and turn it into something else. I could go on endlessly about relationships being just by their very nature the strongest attachments we're engaged in, that it's the hive, and our slightly damaged instincts whispering us continuously what's good and bad. And it will whisper bad things about anything that might threat to cut into the connections we have identified with.

But really, the approach to expose particular inconsistencies and dubious twists in your thought process doesn't seem to lead anywhere now as you think purely in holistic blocks of general meaning and hint. I cannot deny you seem to have a strong intuitive relationship to truth, you sense this or feel that and are word crafty enough to spin a web of tempting prose around it. But at the same time there's this intrigue you have with the very things you also despise. This is how you keep circling around, trying to absorb and wanting to be absorbed. There must be more possible, more participation in the process of a simple sober dialectic? Getting down from the helicopter view and check out some logical realities from up close, no matter how ugly and unattractive they appear to you.

But perhaps not, perhaps it's not the way you work or think. Leaving me to wonder which quote would be appropriate to end this post.

Nietzsche wrote:Suitor of truth?', they mocked me; 'you?'
no! only poet
an animal, cunning, preying, prowling
that must lie
that must knowlingly, willingly lie:
lusting for prey
colorfully masked
a mask for itself
THIS, the suitor of truth?
no! only fool, only poet!
only speaking colorfully,
only screaming colorfully out of fools' masks,
climbing around on mendacious word bridges,
on colorful rainbows
between false heavens
and false earths
roaming, hovering...
only fool, only poet

Or

Kazimierz Dabrowski wrote:Hail to you ... you perceive sensibility in the insensibilities of the world, uncertainty in its certainty. For you are often as conscious of others as of yourself. For you feel the anxiety of the world, its limits and its false unlimited assurance.. [hail] For your fear of the absurdity of existence. For your awkwardness, for your transcendental realism and your lack of daily realism.. For your creativity and your ecstasy, for your maladjustment to what is and your adjustment to what ought to be. For your immense possibilities not yet actualized.. For what is unique, original, intuitive and infinite in you. For the solitude and the oddness of your paths. Hail to you.

Trevor,

Since I came onto this forum I have had a critical stance, not of mere principals, but of specifics: quite specific attitudes, or assumptions, of supposed demands of 'enlightened life. Very little of all that I have expressed has been merely on 'principal', as you say. But it is true that 'holistically' I also have a general argument against a whole stance that is represented on this forum.

It isn't either that I have 'created an arbitrary structure that separates your own psyche from others', not at all. To be truthful I think the stance that 'I am enlightened' and I know what Truth is and you don't (etc) is the far more arbitrary structure. I have, in different ways of course, been through so many of the games that I see played here, including yours I might add. I feel like I know something about my human companions because I too am a human. And if you suppose that I think I am 'absolutely correct' about every accusation I make, however exaggerated, you are absolutely wrong.

And I absolutely do not agree that I am talking about 'nothings'---the philosophical equivalent of 'typos'. The fact is 'it' seems far more serious than that, to me. I think there is a sort of 'general outlook' that is expressed in these pages, a way of understanding and approaching life, and if I feel I locate 'error', it is perhaps more a attitudinal error, an error of general perception, a sort of blocked approach to life. You can mention specific issues, and I do, but truthfully the whole 'problem', as I see it, is really quite large. You mention, oddly enough, 'genuine problems in reasoning', and I do feel I understand what you mean, but I don't think my reasoning is defective. You are, I think, correct in calling me or anyone on rhetoric flourish and exclusive stress on fallacious argumentation, but that is not all that I do. You will avoid any recognition of any particle of validity and lay exclusive stress on questionable tactics, and this is really par for the course around here. All critiques that are levelled, by anyone, at any time, are 'defeated'. Okay, I have only been here since last August but so far this is what I see.

Although I do not have an 'absolute proof' I can present to you, true, neverthelessI tend to think this is how 'bad faith' functions. And I don't see it as a minor issue. Bad faith as I understand it is really a major issue and it keeps people closed to other perspectives, and defended in their belief-castles.

Again, the bottom line is that Alex doesn't like the idea of being aware of anything, or understanding anything. It's almost as though he considers it against the natural order of things. It goes against his religion, if you will.

The attitudinal desire to master reality via thought, as expressed on this forum, seems to conflict with his own desire to move freely within chaos and unconsciousness.

The removing of oneself from chaos and unconscious via the vehicle of conscious thought is perceived to be a "divorce from life". The lack of desire to revel in unconscious life is what appears to "missing" from this forum.

It's all very primitive. Behind the flowery prose is a basic attachment which Alex will never question.


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Nice post, Diebert, I appreciated it. You express yourself with an admirable subtlety, and I have no doubt that you really do capture some of the 'cores' (the central problematical questions) around which so much of this spins. You also seem to recognize that, by losing track of some down-on-the-ground specifics, some quite specific thing we might discuss, that the whole conversation starts to careen too far beyond our grasp.

Thinking about it all, going through it in the process of dealing with it, I guess I'd stick with what I wrote to Trevor: the issue or the fact of faith (either good or bad or some mixture). You can only really have productive conversation when you are relatively certain of the faith of the others. In the internet environment, I submit, we all tend to know who we trust and who we don't. People that start from positions that are too separated from each other, more often than not, do not achieve reconciliation, and often they just argue endlessly. Even that, I feel, can be very, very useful, both to the 'silent readership' but also to each protagonist. They get to work out their own thinking, they get to 'improve their moves' to put it in entertainment lingo, of or the lingo of craft. The advantage of communicating in this setting is that other people get to read it, and everyone draws their own conclusions.
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"I could go on endlessly about relationships being just by their very nature the strongest attachments we're engaged in, that it's the hive, and our slightly damaged instincts whispering us continuously what's good and bad. And it will whisper bad things about anything that might threat to cut into the connections we have identified with."

And your arguments would make a great deal of sense, put in those terms. But the self-hatred of the early, fanatical desert Christians was truly of another order. Christianity is infected, if you will, with a kind of hatred of self that goes far beyond a taking a break from one's social attachments. What you wrote above is pretty modern, you'd almost have to be familiar with modern psychology to put it in those terms. I hope that I am making sensible point, at the very least acknowledging the view you express as 'valid', as part of it, but not necessarily all of it. I do not feel it is a good idea to sever all our relationships and especially our closer affective relationships. I get the impression that this is what is recommended, often, on these pages by the QRS. Have I simply heard it all wrong? Have I misread?

"I cannot deny you seem to have a strong intuitive relationship to truth, you sense this or feel that and are word crafty enough to spin a web of tempting prose around it. But at the same time there's this intrigue you have with the very things you also despise. This is how you keep circling around, trying to absorb and wanting to be absorbed. There must be more possible, more participation in the process of a simple sober dialectic?"

Again, you can only have a good faith conversation with someone who has the will for good faith. I Do, in fact, feel I have the will, and I also perceive that you do too, and so the conversation has worked. And it could of course still work, or is still working. But allow me to say this: you would have to come down and actually start to talk about what you think and feel about any of this, all of this. The key is in thse two 'poles'. Have I gotten it wrong or is the 'feeling' issue, on this, a forbidden area? It's important really to say this. This forum is quite dysfunctional, I submit, because it is divided. It forces a division and yet supports that division with 'reason', however badly pulled off it is. There you arrive at a 'core': here, you cannot really have a 'real conversation' because the whole person is not, in fact, permitted. However could you start from such a premise and hope for good things to come from it? That is a direct question. (But I am not saying that I perceive you as necessarily 'arbitrarily divided', actually the contrary: conversation is possible because you are not divided.

You or anyone else here wants "more participation in the process of a simple sober dialectic"? Yeah, really? I suggest that this could never happen in an environment where a whole person cannot appear. To risk the 'whole person' is really too much for so many, and especially those who are forcing, so dutifully working, the division between the parts of themselves, all in the name of Absolute Truth. I would only ask that you say that you say that, at the least, you understand what I mean. You don't have to agree.

Here's another thing, and it reminds me of an old, old Star Track episode (sorry, the reference is embarrassing to me too) where some android space capsule probe mistakes Captain Kirk for his Earthly creator, also named Kirk. Y'all have put this label on me of 'poet', but I am not a poet, I don't even write poetry. I included some poetry a number of times to counter the extreme ratioanalistic top-heaviness of this whole place. I could go on telling you why the designation is innaccurate, but the point is really that y'all misperceive. It is an important point. I write in prose and I am a prose writer, and actually my style is discursive and polemical more than anything. Some of my tactics---I say this with a little bit of shame---come from HL Mencken, who was NOT a poet, not at all.

Please revise your definitions...

Finally, and I ask this again: Just give me a clue what you want from me. If you spell it out, I might be able to rise to its attainment.

:-)
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David wrote:

"Again, the bottom line is that Alex doesn't like the idea of being aware of anything, or understanding anything. It's almost as though he considers it against the natural order of things. It goes against his religion, if you will. "

This is so off the mark that it is absurd. Here you make an assertion that has no basis at all in fact.

"The attitudinal desire to master reality via thought, as expressed on this forum, seems to conflict with his own desire to move freely within chaos and unconsciousness."

'Master reality' is a very problematic phrase. It sends up red flags. The way that you go about 'mastering reality' I DEFINITELY take issue with. Also, I doubt that 'reality' is something anyone masters.

"The removing of oneself from chaos and unconscious via the vehicle of conscious thought is perceived to be a "divorce from life". The lack of desire to revel in unconscious life is what appears to "missing" from this forum."

One seems to be able to manufacture 'islands' where, on one level or in some sense, maybe partially, one is removed from chaos and the 'unconscious', but I think it represents a misperception or a mis-stating that one could 'master' those things, or separate oneself from 'chaos' altogether. We have a disagreement. The consciousness to which you refer, as I understand it (and engage in it) is the very best that humans can come up with. It is the area and the activity that truly make us humans. Our language is the principal repository of that 'consciousness'.

A 'divorce from life' is a severe, across the board, severing oneself from one's 'context', and losing oneself in a self-destructive ethic, and also recommending such, 'selling' such, as I say. I use the term as psychologists might use it, to talk about the way that cults 'sever' themselves from social life. The ideas that are expressed here, the ethical recommendations, reminds me of those of some cult figures.

Kierkegaard defined a poet as someone who "confines his understanding to the distance of his imagination" - in other words, as someone who shies away from developing a concrete relationship with truth in his personal life.

Having very high standards, Kierkegaard considered himself to be a poet to a large extent.

So you're right in saying, Alex, that you're not really a poet, as there is currently no understanding existing in your imagination. There is nothing for you to confine.

A "poetician" is probably a better term - someone who spukes endlessly about all kinds of tangential stuff, without having the slightest intention of going anywhere with it.

As for your desire to bring the "whole person" into proceedings, that is so funny as to be laughable. Alex, there is no point trying to bring in anything - whether it be the whole person or something else - if the desire to understand isn't there. It can only degenerate into an old person's gabfest, at best.

That is how your conversation with Diebert appears to me - an old person's gabfest, without any purpose or life to it. Not on Diebert's part, I hasten to add. He has displayed remarkable kindness and patience to try and inject some life into the proceedings, and I admire him for it. Having to constantly wade through streams of henids and create some meaningful structure out of them can't be easy.

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Alex Jacob wrote: "Again, the bottom line is that Alex doesn't like the idea of being aware of anything, or understanding anything. It's almost as though he considers it against the natural order of things. It goes against his religion, if you will. "

This is so off the mark that it is absurd. Here you make an assertion that has no basis at all in fact.

Okay then, give me an example of something that you truly understand.

A 'divorce from life' is a severe, across the board, severing oneself from one's 'context', and losing oneself in a self-destructive ethic, and also recommending such, 'selling' such, as I say. I use the term as psychologists might use it, to talk about the way that cults 'sever' themselves from social life. The ideas that are expressed here, the ethical recommendations, reminds me of those of some cult figures.

The same thing could just as easily be said of a person who manages to escape the clutches of a cult.

The cult leaders could say that such a person is "divorcing himself from life", "removing himself from his context" (within the cult), leading a "self-destructive ethic", and "selling" the process of escape to others (within the cult).

In effect, you are arguing on behalf of the cult of mainstream society.

Do you see why I can't take anything you say seriously? Your criticisms are completely generic and have no connection to anything. As soon as one examines them, they instantly crumble and disintegrate into dust.

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AJ,

I have, in different ways of course, been through so many of the games that I see played here, including yours I might add.

It wouldn't surprise me. The first tools philosophers develop are in the areas of critical analysis, and often this means finding fallacies and other errors of reasoning in complex arguments. I don't confine this to this forum: I learned about fallacies, the structure of rational argument, and formal logic in university, not online.

This "game" you see me playing is a really simplified version of what a student might present to a professor, except without the padding (for instance, explanations of how the fallacies are applicable, which I assumed you wouldn't need to hold your hand held on). So, when you see someone playing my game, you are having your thoughts dissected critically. If this seems like a joke, a linguistic game, then you are missing out on a large part of what philosophy entails.

I don't claim to be unique. I'm trying, rather, to introduce you to something most everyone who has done a substantial amount of critical thinking does automatically. And they do it automatically because, in many cases, they have been trained.

The fact is 'it' seems far more serious than that, to me. I think there is a sort of 'general outlook' that is expressed in these pages, a way of understanding and approaching life, and if I feel I locate 'error', it is perhaps more a attitudinal error, an error of general perception, a sort of blocked approach to life.

It's a normative disagreement. Your ethics don't sync with those of people here. I've briefly mentioned this: bad faith only bothers those of certain ethical systems (for instance, an ethical system where "authenticity" is a value would consider "bad faith" to be a problem).

But this is ethics. If you are making errors in the basic structure of argument, if your reasoning ability has not developed to the level where you can follow a premise to a conclusion without introducing fallacies, then pointing out an ethical disagreement is insignificant. It is unlikely that your own ethics will be internally consistent; at best, you would have some chaotic mess of situational ethics. You see something when you look in the direction of philosophy -- everyone does -- but you see it myopically.

You will avoid any recognition of any particle of validity and lay exclusive stress on questionable tactics, and this is really par for the course around here.

If I point out 9 consecutive fallacies in a one and a half page post, I can be pretty sure the person behind the writing hasn't really thought through the issues -- and if he has, not methodically enough for his conclusions to be taken seriously. I avoid the tactics of the moderators, and try to stick to those skills I learned through formal education (you have even said you've seen them used before): if you want to call these out as "questionable", take it up with the philosophy department of the nearest university.

Bad faith as I understand it is really a major issue and it keeps people closed to other perspectives, and defended in their belief-castles.

Bad faith is an ethical issue, and whatever negative effect it has on someone's belief system pales in comparison to what poor reasoning abilities can do.

David Quinn wrote: That is how your conversation with Diebert appears to me - an old person's gabfest, without any purpose or life to it. Not on Diebert's part, I hasten to add. He has displayed remarkable kindness and patience to try and inject some life into the proceedings, and I admire him for it. Having to constantly wade through streams of henids and create some meaningful structure out of them can't be easy.

The patience is mostly based on sympathy, literally a recognizing of myself in his expression. My past journey was as well steeped in Christianity, Judaism, Don Juanism, psycho-analism, combined with involvement in poetry, music, street theatre and always participating in some community, and exploring feeling, recognizing the twisted beast inside and so on.

What happened exactly along the way? What caused the disenchantment? I think it had initially something to do with wanting to delve deep enough, thereby waking monsters that have to be slain with truth and truth alone.

But I do believe Alex indeed "confines his understanding to the distance of his imagination". And there's clearly understanding present but it's a form of seeing from the corner of the eye, fleeting shadows, hints of something big. It's something almost everyone seems to be born with anyway and the discussion then revolves if it's indeed possible to take it all to a whole different level. Once this possibility is accepted or at least not actively opposed it opens up new ways all by itself.

This is because it's the very nature of the mind to walk this path, all else becomes then a form of actively blocking out, perhaps self-preservation, perhaps even needed for survival in some circumstance but natural - in a mindful way - such opposition never is.

Alex Jacob wrote: And your arguments would make a great deal of sense, put in those terms. But the self-hatred of the early, fanatical desert Christians was truly of another order. Christianity is infected, if you will, with a kind of hatred of self that goes far beyond a taking a break from one's social attachments.

This has been said of Judaism and the Jewish core psychology as well, so be careful where you step! It could be said that some self-hatred is involved in desiring truth. And it's from Christianity and Judaism lot of important philosophical and scientific ideas developed initially. So there's some kind of hate that seems very fertile indeed.

I do not feel it is a good idea to sever all our relationships and especially our closer affective relationships. I get the impression that this is what is recommended, often, on these pages by the QRS. Have I simply heard it all wrong? Have I misread?

You mean to ask what happens with us when affections are not present anymore in our life? Physical nearness, encouragements, feelings of acceptance or completeness or belonging that all kinds of relationships can supply so readily? Would you like to zoom in on this topic, the role of giving and receiving affection on the general psychological and physical health?

Anyway, I'm not familiar with any specific recommendations on "these pages". But it doesn't need much imagination to see that if even studying for an exam requires one to sit alone in a room and master the subject, thereby limiting distractions and temptations, that an attempt to become really serious about being mindful and explore truth will require a similar recognizing of the things that distract and seduce one in changing course. One really has to see how much is actively blocked and discouraged. Sabotaged! This is the type of paranoia that's just a "reality on a finer scale".

But allow me to say this: you would have to come down and actually start to talk about what you think and feel about any of this, all of this. The key is in these two 'poles'. Have I gotten it wrong or is the 'feeling' issue, on this, a forbidden area?

What do you mean by "all of this"? Isn't this already a problem? Any talk about such a vague and multi-faceted entity will remain just as vague and multi-interpretable. That's why one can try a 'bottom-up' approach, starting with the smallest elements that were taken for granted before, thereby reconstructing the whole image.

It's important really to say this. This forum is quite dysfunctional, I submit, because it is divided. It forces a division and yet supports that division with 'reason', however badly pulled off it is.

Without fully understanding and participating in ones own division, how can one even dream of the whole in any realistic way?

To risk the 'whole person' is really too much for so many, and especially those who are forcing, so dutifully working, the division between the parts of themselves, all in the name of Absolute Truth. I would only ask that you say that you say that, at the least, you understand what I mean. You don't have to agree.

Indeed it seems it already starts with leaving part of ourselves behind and submitting to a more abstract 'impersonal' process. This is not a psycho-therapeutic forum and it's no coincidence that you won't find too much personal stuff here or decorations, illustrations or color. Most of our "complete" selves, the details of our lives, and our personality are not much more than that, really.

Finally, and I ask this again: Just give me a clue what you want from me. If you spell it out, I might be able to rise to its attainment.

Nothing really. How does it feel to be unwanted in such way? :-)

David wrote:

"Kierkegaard defined a poet as someone who "confines his understanding to the distance of his imagination" - in other words, as someone who shies away from developing a concrete relationship with truth in his personal life. Having very high standards, Kierkegaard considered himself to be a poet to a large extent. So you're right in saying, Alex, that you're not really a poet, as there is currently no understanding existing in your imagination. There is nothing for you to confine."

Here you are engaging in pretty bad argumentation yourself. The appeal to authority and to his definition of what a poet is. You imply that I do not develop a 'concrete relationship with truth in [my] personal life', and then refer back to the his 'high standards; to criticize an essentially false accusation against my blessed person. Man! if Kierkegaard self-depricated himself as 'poet', and Kierkegaard is such an evolved being, then poor me! I do not even get to be a mere drunken poet!

This is really just a bunch of bullshit on your part, and it has no substance.

"A 'poetician' is probably a better term - someone who spukes endlessly about all kinds of tangential stuff, without having the slightest intention of going anywhere with it."

It's more of the same, David. A poet-politician? The -ician icould mpliy a doing, a using, but 'poet' already means 'maker', so it is redundant. But no matter,I think this is standard ad hominem. Whatever it is, it is not good argumentation and if you aren't careful, ole Trevor will soon be on your ass...

You then make reference to 'tangential stuff' which is left unspecific, so there is no way to address it, and you culminate by stating that I don't have the 'slightest intention of going anywhere with it', and yet everywhere I want to go I am going. This is all just unsubstantiated opinion, and it has been the same with you---all of you---from the beginning. But when you-plural need to, when it serves you, you make reference to the high standards of argumentation, stating that y'all actually hold yourselves to these standards, which appears false. I think this is called 'hypocricy'.

"As for your desire to bring the "whole person" into proceedings, that is so funny as to be laughable. Alex, there is no point trying to bring in anything - whether it be the whole person or something else - if the desire to understand isn't there. It can only degenerate into an old person's gabfest, at best."

Here is another wild assumption. You imply that you only have an interest in 'understanding'. No one else's quest for understanding could ever be as real and as meaningful as your own. Yet---and this is important---you never, ever really and substantially back up your claim. Or rather, when you do, it is merely a boy's insistance with no effort to support it 'logically' or by any other means. You simply say 'I understand, you don't'. This is nothing more than pure game!

When I imply that a 'whole person' must appear in a conversation, in any conversation, and in philosophy, religion and spirituality, I really mean it, and I know (at least) WHAT I am referring to. And in many places and in many different ways I make reference to this. But what you do---and this is 'par for the course'---is to dismiss it all as very far beneath you, and your very sophisticated 'understanding' of grand things. It seems to me that all this is more of the same---absurd game, conducted with essential bad faith.

"That is how your conversation with Diebert appears to me - an old person's gabfest, without any purpose or life to it. Not on Diebert's part, I hasten to add. He has displayed remarkable kindness and patience to try and inject some life into the proceedings, and I admire him for it. Having to constantly wade through streams of henids and create some meaningful structure out of them can't be easy."

'An old persons' gab-fest' is a pure rhetorical barb. Some old people blather endlessly about nothing, you say. You most certainly do not. Because AJ speaks about things I do no agree with or don't accept (or that aesthetically I am opposed to) he must be an 'old gabber'. If anyone were to agree with him, as opposed to challenge him, they would likely be such irrelevant, spent, old people.

But Diebert (bless his kind heart!) shows admirable sympathy (you 'hasten to add'), and is 'injecting' like through a doctor's needle remarkable kindness and patience---kindness like one might show to a mangey dog and patience like on would offer to a child. Now, David, what kind of argumentation is this? The purpose, I submit, of such statements is really essentially 'political': to work a wedge between dear Diebert and myself (however I too, Diebert, wish to take a moment to thank you for your carefully masked condescension to show me favor by speaking to me, a very Christian thing it was! *snif*)

And finally we come to the term 'henid', a word that does not even appear in my Webster's Seventh dictionary. A search on Google reveals no defintion for 'henid', and I find it pretty revealing, pretty apropos! The working definition of this word is only found on an Absolute.net page! You dug-up the terms, you have possessed the term, and you also weild the term. To respond to this completely arbitrary term that you et al have essentially invented, and which is NOT a term of discourse, brings me onto your platform. You make a sharp---a deadly!---criticism, perhaps it is the word that will cinch you whole (psuedo-) 'argument' to discredit me, but it is with a term that is no part of common discourse! I therefor call you a 'shnood'! Ha ha! Don't you know? A shnood trumps a henid at every turn! I win!

Seriously though folks...

David, your use of this term is completely metaphysical. "An unclarified, sub-conscious "feeling". A vague, unformed, foggy or confused idea. A disorganized, undifferentiated thought. A proto-thought." This sums it up, down to the very bottom, and up to the very top. It runs through all the ideas you express here. The world you have defined and live in is circumscribed by this definition. This notion of yours, this weilding of words, this assumption of your essential superiority to anyone and everyone who comes into this little forum-web of your weaving, resolves to the view expressed in that pithy definition. It seems to me that all else follows from this.

With this, you can be as vague as you want or need to, you can engage in the worst of the worst argumentation tactics, but you can beat anyone who comes before you simply by stating, by insisting! Your ideas are vague, unformed, foggy and confused. Your thoughts are disorganized and undifferentiated, they are really proto-thoughts'.

It is the ultimate arbiter's position!

.


Henid

Greg Shantz in reply to Kevin Solway:

The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3688&p=64249

(This is in Worldly Affairs - Music thread)

Thanks to Greg Shantz :-)


.

Diebert wrote:

"The patience is mostly based on sympathy, literally a recognizing of myself in his expression. My past journey was as well steeped in Christianity, Judaism, Don Juanism, psycho-analism, combined with involvement in poetry, music, street theatre and always participating in some community, and exploring feeling, recognizing the twisted beast inside and so on."

I get the impression you also see yourself in a special category---how luscious that position must be! The luxury of conversing with someone 'mostly based on sympathy'. And excuse me for speaking so boldly, but I don't see any significantly advanced thinking on your part, and certainly no refutation whatsoever of any specific or general point we have been discussing so far. But here you imply that you are merely seeing yourself as you were at another time, an echo, a phantasm, when in your youth---the distant past!---you were 'steeped' in Christianity, Judaism, Don Juanism, psychology, poetry, music, street-theatre, community and feeling. On the basis of sympathy for those of us who still might refer to these things you have engaged in this conversation? And with me too? You do know, I hope, that if you operate from the same basic stance of an a priori superiority as the QRS-tians that I can't quite take it seriously, right? Though I have no particular active link in the sense of operational dogmatic attachment to any 'ism', I nevertheless think that we can avail ourselves of the ideas that arise from them to express our existential grasp of life. But again, everything depends on 'good faith' and if one has it or doesn't.

And anyway, it's me whose opening the gates to Zion and I who will guide y'all to the Promised Land!

"What happened exactly along the way? What caused the disenchantment? I think it had initially something to do with wanting to delve deep enough, thereby waking monsters that have to be slain with truth and truth alone."

I think you are making your own way off on a tangent, but there too one discerns some steps, covered in imaginary foliage, that could lead up to the Heavenly Path. First, you had a relationship with those things you mentioned, but something 'happened' along the way, there was a 'disenchantment' (unique to yourself Diebert?) Then, it seems to me, you move into another sort of metaphysical territory: in the quest for 'Truth', and resulting from a deep delving, 'monsters' were awakened that could only be slain with 'truth and truth alone'. You have entered into sacred ground, pilgrim! You have 'arrived'! All you need is a harpoon...

Mother Maria ascended to heaven too!

"But I do believe Alex indeed "confines his understanding to the distance of his imagination". And there's clearly understanding present but it's a form of seeing from the corner of the eye, fleeting shadows, hints of something big. It's something almost everyone seems to be born with anyway and the discussion then revolves if it's indeed possible to take it all to a whole different level. Once this possibility is accepted or at least not actively opposed it opens up new ways all by itself."

I can only suggest to you that you may not in fact actually know to what or where I 'confine my understanding', but also that this is not really the point. It doesn't (or rather 'it may not') really matter what my understanding is or isn't, it may turn out you are not really interested in it. But more important that that, as I see things, is to begin to attach certain labels and definitions to the ideas I present, and to the whole class of person I represent, for example: [my seeing] 'is a seeing out of the corner of one's eye'. An incomplete seeing of 'fleeting shadows' that hint of big things but do not embody them. It seems possible at this point, with a hand up, you might make it onto the Cloud on which the QRS-tians float about! A glorious means of transport! It does remain all in the vaguest of vague insinuations, completely unsubstantial and insubstantable (with no desire to make it at all concrete, conversable), but that doesn't matter. What we seem to be talking about here is joining a private club of belief, obtaining a special knowledge, a seeing all of it from way up above. And could it be Diebert (excuse the rhetorical question which is yet sincere at least in half) that you have begun to distinguish 'henids' as well?

My head begins to swim with all this! I find myself not among men but in the company of spiritual beings! (*Bows, submissive hand gestures*)

;-)

"This is because it's the very nature of the mind to walk this path, all else becomes then a form of actively blocking out, perhaps self-preservation, perhaps even needed for survival in some circumstance but natural - in a mindful way - such opposition never is."

But it is also the 'very nature' of spiritual and religious and rather typical hubris to 'walk the paths of intellectual arrogance'. One could, I suppose, access a sort of Patanjalian argument that everything that happens in us is all 'modifications of the mind' and that when the modifications cease all these 'monsters' also disappear or come to rest, yet it is a pretty fantastic position to assume, and it is a pretty fantastic stance to take vis-a-vis other people generally.

I personally have the impression that the QRS-tians 'take up residence' in such a position (as I keep repeating in different ways).
_________________________________________________

From the Oxford 2:

"According to Weininger, the henid is the form of perception known to the lower types of organism. In mankind development from the henid to the completely differentiated form of perception and idea is possible."

Well, I tried it out, I'll have you know. My dogs are asleep on the library floor, legs and muzzles twitching. I calmly pronounced the word 'henid' for about 20 seconds, and when they woke up, I asked them what, if anything, they'd experienced. Jasper said he dreamed he was in a European city, Berlin it seemed to him, and he hurried along in the drizzle with an 'unbearable weight in his chest'.

Lemondrop, I thought, wanted to say something, an idea or image seemed to rise in her, but she was unable to give it expression. She sits out on the balcony and seems a little melancholy...

More when I know more...
________________________________________________

Diebert pronounced:

"Indeed it seems it already starts with leaving part of ourselves behind and submitting to a more abstract 'impersonal' process. This is not a psycho-therapeutic forum and it's no coincidence that you won't find too much personal stuff here or decorations, illustrations or color. Most of our "complete" selves, the details of our lives, and our personality are not much more than that, really."

This is a marvellously arrogant statement, Diebert, and for that I really sort of love it! I don't know if you have picked up that so much of my exaggeration and rhetoric is contrived to mirror the pretensions on reads 'on these pages'. Read with just a little sardonic humor, and pushed just a wee bit, the things you folks say are extraordinary. The above statement, truth be told, requires a deflation almost. In your bright arrogance of phrasing, you imply that I do not understand what an 'impersonal process' might be or might demand, or what its usefulness might be. Yet, this is not what I was talking about, and it is not what I am talking about. Then, you imply that I desire or wish to bring to this forum something like 'psychotherapeutics' or am recommending a sort of men's-group style therapy, but this is not at all what I mean.

That you don't allow decorations, images and color illustrates the seriousness of the place, as if I am calling for painted toenails and cuddly teddy bears, something, anything to show we are still human(!), and again this is not at all what I am talking about. Then, you reduce 'the details of our lives, and our personality' to substantially nothing, mere irrelevant details, as if I am interested in entries in your personal diary, the date of your first kiss, your mother's name, and whatnot.

When I mentioned the 'whole person' it seems I meant something that went over your head...

Alex Jacob wrote: Then, it seems to me, you move into another sort of metaphysical territory: in the quest for 'Truth', and resulting from a deep delving, 'monsters' were awakened that could only be slain with 'truth and truth alone'.

You appear to 'demonize' the whole issue before dismissing it. It's true I used some metaphors for brevity. Like I did before using the words 'sobering up' and 'alcohol'. But perhaps it's best not to feed the beast, in your case.

What we seem to be talking about here is joining a private club of belief, obtaining a special knowledge, a seeing all of it from way up above.

How could this be avoided unless one keeps roaming in the mists, not labeling, judging, valuing, or speaking from 'above'? The truth is we are all already operating from our set of 'ultimate truths' but some persons are more upfront with it than others. The only real challenge is to make sure one is well aware of them so they can be investigated.

In your bright arrogance of phrasing, you imply that I do not understand what an 'impersonal process' might be or might demand, or what its usefulness might be. Yet, this is not what I was talking about, and it is not what I am talking about. Then, you imply that I desire or wish to bring to this forum something like 'psychotherapeutics' or am recommending a sort of men's-group style therapy, but this is not at all what I mean.

Aren't you taking this a tad to personal here? I just gave my view on the forum, not on your participation as such - it was not in my mind. But I might indeed have misunderstood the 'whole being' phrase.

That you don't allow decorations, images and color illustrates the seriousness of the place, as if I am calling for painted toenails and cuddly teddy bears

Truth be told, some of your style elements and play seem of the same category. But you're not calling for it. But where are you calling for, anyway?

When I mentioned the 'whole person' it seems I meant something that went over your head...

Well, there's a time to speak in riddles and hints, and a time to speak clearly in unmistakable definitions. Why don't you define a whole person? Please note that I asked you a similar thing pages back: what do you mean by health?

No Diebert, I think I understand what you wrote very well. Will you allow me to paraphrase? and have a little fun with it, too?

We are beings formed by a society, and this society is, tragically, driven by unconsciousness, [the US seems to have the world lead right now]. But the term 'unconscious' is not quite enough. This cultural and social mass, this physical mass-being, is a roving, roaring, hungry animal that lives for its appetite, is a dangerous animal of unrestrained wants. The whole idea of 'the ancestors' could be brought up here: all those who have gone before us, all those almost pitiful existences who only in rare moments actually were able to 'think' and to 'reason', who lived lives driven by their physical nature and needs, by the kind of mind that arises to satisfy not much more than the body.

People used to 'offer sacrifice to their ancestors', but what if this 'sacrifice' is really just a way of saying 'feed the same lineage', 'feed the same pattern of error and unconsciousness'? What if you have to cut the ancestors off, so to speak? And make new offering, in new directions? Breaking the chain of which you are the existing link. That's heavy medicine.

When once a person or a people might have lived under sharply conditioned circumstances, circumstances that perhaps acted as a constraint, in modern society, in a very real sense, across the board, the whole object engineered by market forces is to satisfy every want and need the body has and that it clamours for, and if that isn't enough we'll invent new ones; and there is a decided lifting of constraints. This is called 'freedom'. It seems that all the mechanisms of society conspire and work together in the creation of the New Man [a spoof on socialism's New Man]. The television, the narratives we are programmed with, the 'ideals of love' and romance, or the lack of them when all this is swept away in favor of extremely immediate sexual desires [pornography industry]. Our schools become sort of low-end training camps where the juvenile protoplasm is trained in its hungers, a place for the tongue and mouth and not the mind, a place where society breeds not great souls with great ideas but great appetites to nibble and masticate in the Great Temples of Consumerism. Oh Brave New World that has such people in it!

[There are all sorts of added details and references I would throw in here to jazz it up, the recitations from the 'lists of horror', all the fuck-ups of modern society and the mindless being our modernity is bent on creating. And then there's Huxley's giant backlit jars where the different classes are gestated, and the 'chemicals' that are added to the vats to modify the end-product]. But anyway, these days, it is these market-consumer driving forces that now have the greater say in what sort of man and woman is created, and what is the norm. Sure, it has likely always followed a similar pattern [in history] but something utterly strange, really and truly strange, is taking shape in our modernity. Looked at from a certain angle, what is happening 'at large' is terribly weird, frightening really in its implications, and the question arises, with even some desperation, What can we do as persons in the face of this? and what am I gonna do?

Given the enormity of what is rising around us, Moloch and his mindless servants, what is required of me to get some 'sobriety'? to get some real understanding, not of some small-fry 'social issue' or some element that has to do with my minuscule 'feelings'. No, to get to the very core of what is happening to me and why. What has formed me. Where am I, how doid I get here? Why are we like this and why am I like this? So, you go down into some depths, it has to be about depths, because surface will give you nothing, will never answer you. Pretty Cordelia with her lovely, pouty lips, is sitting moping in the corner. She laments, in full girlishness, being left alone. Fuck it, I have just GOT to take time and energy for myself, I don't care what the price is, I have got to get to the bottom of some of this, to understand.

If at one time a young aboriginal left his social context and went to a deserted mountain, starved himself, took no water even, and with all remaining force prayed to the Creator for a 'vision of understanding', and received an answer, What is my relationship to THAT? Can I do that? How can I do that when no one in my culture even seems to care for this most essential thing: a living relationship with an internal, guiding spirit? They all look like clowns to me. My parents were little more than zombies, their 'religion' a life-long ritual that only expressed and gave form to their essential unconsciousness. And what of me? Can I get beyond any of these severe limitations I see around me, the insanity of it all? How?

[And in all of that, let's face it, you are pretty much alone. Can't bring old fuzzy teddy bear with you, can't bring Mom & Dad, you can't bring your erstwhile cultural guides, the priests of your community who serve, generally speaking, unconsciousness and not an opening to consciousness. And it is probably gonna turn out that Cordelia will have to be left behind, since these inner discovery processes are so demanding, they require all your energy, all your 'wits'. Cordelia is really just looking for a daddy anyway to impregnate her anyway and help her raise the litter...and what really did I want with her in the first place?]

So, you undertake THAT...'thereby limiting distractions and temptations, that an attempt to become really serious about being mindful and explore truth will require a similar recognizing of the things that distract and seduce one in changing course. One really has to see how much is actively blocked and discouraged. Sabotaged! This is the type of paranoia that's just a "reality on a finer scale".

AJ & Diebert: The Crucible's open. Why not take this debate there? The forum was literally built for these sorts of squabbles.

Trevor Salyzyn wrote:AJ & Diebert: The Crucible's open. Why not take this debate there? The forum was literally built for these sorts of squabbles.

Actually it's not. It's built for specific differences that can be named and identified, providing structure. The squabble here hasn't defined the terms of disagreement yet. It's not even a squabble, really.

Diebert,

It's built for specific differences that can be named and identified, providing structure.

Hey, AJ's brilliant parody of something you didn't write clearly outlined something or other.

Alex Jacob wrote:No Diebert, I think I understand what you wrote very well. Will you allow me to paraphrase? and have a little fun with it, too?

Well, I don't recognize any of it. Your parodying paraphrases are thoughts of a juvenile kind, perhaps the start of a hero's journey and do not reflect anything else but your own shadowy thinking on the subject.

There's something strangely familiar to all of your thinking so far but perhaps it's not any shared intellectual background or interest but more the curse of the conman; the feminine minded Don Quichotte attacking his windmills. Conning himself and anyone around him, believing in this great struggle or drama, all adding to the great Narrative in the Sky. Hey, it takes one to spot one, so don't get insulted too quickly.

Isn't there a Great Liar lurking behind your words? Here on TV they're showing today the movie Jakob the Liar, with Robin Williams broadcasting false radio bulletins from a Polish Ghetto in WW2, all the while hiding this girl. Perhaps you're bit like that, broadcasting fakes for reasons untold in Nazi territory. I mean, your portrayed understanding of Bible, Torah, traditions, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard have all turned out to be incredibly shallow, as if you just read them on the backflap of Reader's Digest before posting your comments.

In the mean while you're still silent on the issue of your imagined "healthy, committed, vital, sane, balanced manner of living". It's like your religious icon, like the statue of a saint but even they were sometimes given horns by their sculptor, as if to say...

Since you and I began to converse, you seem to take issue with assertions of mine, and you counter them in a way, sometimes pointing out how something a little opposite might be true, or suggesting another angle. But the thing is, so far, I do not have the sense of receiving from you any sort of solid idea as to what you think, or what you actually do. A few posts up you referred to a list of different things you were attracted to---Christianity, Judaism, street-theatre, feelings---and then you cryptically allude to a renunciation, to a rising above it or them. But really there is nothing substantial put on the table, and yet you keep asking this of me. But from the beginning of this thread, in the posts I wrote, I mention quite specific things that I take issue with (starting from a prejudiced concept of the aesthetic). You probe me, you challenge me (and I am fine with that) but when Diebert will you actually and not allusively participate here by revealing exactly and precisely what you really think about the things we're talking about?

In regard to what I wrote, and what I write generally, the way I see it is that you have the option of communicating on many different levels, and with different styles, different tones, different voices, and different colors. To counter and compensate for a sort of dry, mathematical seriousness, that in the end doesn't really communicate all it could, I am completely committed to 'having fun' with what I write. You know, Diebert, you win some and you lose some. Some, you satisfy and the fan mail pours in; others seem to hate you and you become almost their Favorite Hated. And with them, no matter what you do, they will always dislike you---except if you say the things they say and in the way they say it. Remember? "That was a good post, Alex" when I merely repeated, perhaps a little more elegantly, what is the sum of their doctrine. It is all sort of instructive. Even if I substantially agree with certain aspects of their or your doctrine (though I have no clear idea what your 'doctrine' or views are, not yet), they and perhaps you will never, I don't think, be comfortable with the independence which is requisite from my end.

And as I have said and continue to say, come what comes, I never want to end up 'like them', that is, like the QRS-tians. As I said, I do not see their path as about freedom and free-thinking but about building a home in conditioned, cookie-cut, theological dungeons. Though it is represented as a path of freedom and growth, it looks to me that it is about shutting down. In your case, it seems to me, you can't or won't really state it as you genuinely see it. Privately perhaps, you have reservations? At some moments you allude to an independence? Other times, you seem to be defending something, but I am not sure what. Only you can reveal these things. So this is just some information to help you 'interpret' me and what I do. And it is quite simple: I do whatever the fuck I want to do; I think and express it in whatever the fuck terms I want, with whatever color, rhetoric, factuality, or fantasy that turns my crank. I wish to completely distinguish myself from them, you, any of you-plural, and to maintain complete spiritual, intellectual, psychic, moral, ethical, and personal freedom. That is the most valuable thing any human being has and it is the essential thing, in truth, that comes under assault in our world. Examine conformity in the context of this forum, that is my suggestion to you (and to my vast readership here, a whole nation of invisibles).

"There's something strangely familiar to all of your thinking so far but perhaps it's not any shared intellectual background or interest but more the curse of the conman; the feminine minded Don Quixote attacking his windmills. Conning himself and anyone around him, believing in this great struggle or drama, all adding to the great Narrative in the Sky. Hey, it takes one to spot one, so don't get insulted too quickly."

Of course you know that if you begin to talk about your life as this con-man it may all make more sense to me. And, interestingly enough, one returns to a Kierkegaardian idea: in order to save men you have to be able to seduce them. Hey, don't blame me, I didn't write it.

But in regard to what I wrote---and I did even ask permission to paraphrase and to have fun with it---I will say that, in my way of seeing things (and this can help you to locate me, to get one step closer to a solid definition, even as you fail, for good reasons, to provide this about yourself), the basic model of spiritual life, that encapsulates it all pretty much, and that one can refer to as a general model, is the 'shamanic model'. A sort of embedded ur-spirituality that is a common heritage of all humanity. It is from these roots and upon such a platform that all spirituality is constructed. That is how I see it anyway, and that was pretty much my own training.

There are infinite variations in the way the model and the process functions, from the most elemental to the most sophisticated, yet it is important to recognize and 'deflate' the gross superstitions of the primitive and the grand abstractions of the more sophisticated. Both are very possessive. Also, the whole 'reason' for the shamanic calling is to serve one's 'tribe', one's context. It all takes place on the Earth, and there is no getting away from the Earth. The implication is not to lose one's 'grounding'. Unfortunately, I read much 'on these pages' that is a losing of grounding, and that is what I write about. A shaman is called away, often very far away, to have 'dramatic' experiences [I think you don't like this word], but always returns, always. True, they most often live a little seperately, off the beaten track, and are always regarded as a little strange, but they never leave their 'context'.

Basically, that model explains or represents processes that take place in the individual, a pattern of events, that is remarkably similar from cultural context to cultural context. It can be very basic and simple---traditional---or far more nuanced, subtle, sophisticated. But it is basically the same pattern.

An individual, more often than not male, is 'called' to the path of shamanizing through upheaval, certain ominous events, a great disturbance in the psyche, powerful dreams, visitations that come from both the inside and the outside, and a 'conspiracy' of events that force him to embark on the shamanizing path. You could call that the Hero's Journey and turn it into a romantic tale from your boyhood, but that would I think be minimizing it.

In modernity, if you will permit me to speak in that way, individuals arrive into a highly structured and patterned social scene, as I wrote. But the individual, or that select individual whose destiny is self-exploration and knowledge, so frequently is an 'outsider' and has substantial issues with the existing order. This is true in primitive society and it is true today, still. When the 'spirits' come forward, when all those manifestations begin (and in our world, keep in mind, much of this takes place on very different and often more subtle levels, or more sophisticated levels, more in the world of the 'idea-spirits' if I can put it that way), the individual is cast into a process or great agitation, psychic agitation. He is pulled away from his context, his social matrix, and has to [permit me] spend time with the stars...with the waters...with the mountains. Maybe you take this as romantic imagery but I mean it completely literally. There can be no separation from out own earth, and all knowledge arises from return, in one way or another, to the earth. (And that will explain to you, dear slow Diebert, why one can never get away from one's essential relationship and context, and why I take issue with false-philosophies and mistaken philosophies that seem to recommend this).

However you want to look at it, and whatever example you may bring forward, from Eduardo the Healer to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and even Ramakrishna, the core of the process remains the same. In a sense it is really simple, and that is why it is so useful, why it is indeed a 'model', and why one can hang a great deal on it and it seems to 'work'. I say: never get fooled by any sophisticated, over-cultured rap, but always return to the most basic.

I could go on, bit by bit, and interpret what I wrote above in this light, but I think you are an intelligent fellow. I don't see the QRS-tians (and I can't talk about you because 'nothing is revealed') as being any different. If you read their individual histories, which oddly enough are stressed in their web pages, you will find exactly the same model in operation. But to make a long story short, these fellows allowed themselves to get captured [if you will permit me to say it that way, will you?] by 'possessive ancestral forces' and whereas the core model, the core need, for freedom and growth is clearly there, they begin to shut themselves down, and call on other to do the same, but all in the name of growth, etc. (I repeat these things time and time again for you and other very slow people, so look for it in all the posts I write, in one way or another)(Just taking a jab or two...)

"I mean, your portrayed understanding of Bible, Torah, traditions, Nietzsche or Kierkegaard have all turned out to be incredibly shallow, as if you just read them on the back flap of Reader's Digest before posting your comments."

Okay, them's fightin words where I come from! (Seriously, I hope that you won't mind if I take some minutes for laughter?)

But the way I see it, Diebert, is quite different. As I said, when it comes to you, 'nothing is revealed'. You imply that your understanding of these things is not shallow, but you come forward with little, or nothing. At the very least, man, I am putting it out there, and there is little holding back. When it comes to the QRS-tians, all I can say is that whatever their interpretations, I want no part of it for myself. Do you see the essential difference? Do you understand why?

You have asked me about 'health', and I will answer you through this post, but I am not going to spell it out for you necessarily. The health for you and me and those who come under the influence of the 'shamanic model' is one thing. For us, principally, it is to 'keep our roads open' [a term that comes from Afro cuban 'shamanistic' traditions]. That is a beginning of an answer for you, but please note that in all my posts I am pretty much talking about the same thing.

Alex, what's your response to the idea/possibility that a person's life, world and experiences may be the product of a "brain in a vat" scenario?

Alex wrote:I could go on,[....]

No, please don't - because I'd have to ban you just on the basis of the threat that you might.

Say something meaningful in 2 sentences or I will ban you for the same reason that Laird got banned.

Isn't it sort of the way it is? Our brain in the cranium is in a 'vat' and all that we experience, or think we experience, is happening in some strange, energetic, inexlicable 'place'?

When I mentioned Huxley's 'breeding vats' I mean those in the story Brave New World, where chemicals are applied to embryos to render either stupid thugs for manual positions or 'alpha double plusses' (like Kevin, Dan and David) who get to see the actual wiring plans of the system.

Alex Jacob wrote:Isn't it sort of the way it is? Our brain in the cranium is in a 'vat' and all that we experience, or think we experience, is happening in some strange, energetic, inexlicable 'place'?

So you think you know "the way it is" do you? You don't believe it's possible then that you are a disembodied brain in an actual vat, all the world no more than mere images flickering through your consciousness, per the conventional version of the thought experiment?

When I mentioned Huxley's 'breeding vats'

I didn't notice you wrote that, I wasn't referring to it.