Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Thomas is an apocryphal gospel, discovered as part of the Nag Hammadi library in 1945. It's fun, it's got some of the classic gospel energy, but it's much more infused with mystic koan energy than Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Unlike the canonical gospels, which are often narrative-heavy, it's basically a concentrated collection of cryptic teachings, broken into bite-sized pieces
I've dipped into it every now and then, for a while, but I think it would be fun to just post one or two a day (or maybe semi-weekly) and invite free-association responses, or really any sort of response.
Starting with the beginning:
[quote=Gospel of Thomas]These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.
(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."[/quote]
The first part lets you know this text is animated by esoteric or underground/samizdat vibes. Maybe it's interesting that they're supposedly taken down by Thomas, the 'doubting' disciple, but I'm not yet versed enough in new testament scholarship to have a strong intuition.
And the first teaching is kind of vague - but, from what I understand, the trope of an esoteric knowledge or experience that will let you transcend death is pretty common. There's the Eleusinian Mysteries, for one (though they famously prohibited writing down the experience) &, I'm learning, many strands of taoism aim for the same thing. Alchemy, and alchemical texts come to mind. Kabbalah. There's something like this anywhere you look.
At the same time, the question of what immortality (or 'not experiencing death') means is always complicated in esoteric or mystic registers - I get the sense that for these 'mystery' traditions, it's much less 'bodies resurrected on the day of judgment' & more 'you see that life persists despite radical - self/ego-annihilating- transformations.'
I think these two parts are sort of setting the tone, genre, register. We're talking about mysticism-inflected teachings. Or at least esoteric teachings.
On to (2)
I like the idea that seeking leads first to being troubled. In modern parlance, maybe we could call this 'cognitive dissonance.' It could also be just the common experience of something going wrong in your life, trying to get to the bottom of it, and realizing you don't understand stuff as well as you thought. In ancient philosophical terms this could be a swerve. In late 20th century post-structural terms this could be an 'event.' In any case, the first experience when you go searching is being 'troubled.' I think of this stage as when the cognitive scaffolding you've implicitly relied on is crumpling. That's scary, but when it does, you're left with a kind of beautiful feeling - "I don't know anything, but there's a powerful feeling coming in to fill that gap" and that's where the astonishment arises.
The last part is complicated. "ruling over the all." I'd like to know what 'ruling' connotes in the source language. & what 'All' is the source language too. It seems unlikely that 'ruling over the all' means like a Ceasar or a Genghis Khan exerting power, but the esoteric meaning isn't clear to me.
Ok, there's the inaugural gospel of thomas post.
I've dipped into it every now and then, for a while, but I think it would be fun to just post one or two a day (or maybe semi-weekly) and invite free-association responses, or really any sort of response.
Starting with the beginning:
[quote=Gospel of Thomas]These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down.
(1) And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."[/quote]
The first part lets you know this text is animated by esoteric or underground/samizdat vibes. Maybe it's interesting that they're supposedly taken down by Thomas, the 'doubting' disciple, but I'm not yet versed enough in new testament scholarship to have a strong intuition.
And the first teaching is kind of vague - but, from what I understand, the trope of an esoteric knowledge or experience that will let you transcend death is pretty common. There's the Eleusinian Mysteries, for one (though they famously prohibited writing down the experience) &, I'm learning, many strands of taoism aim for the same thing. Alchemy, and alchemical texts come to mind. Kabbalah. There's something like this anywhere you look.
At the same time, the question of what immortality (or 'not experiencing death') means is always complicated in esoteric or mystic registers - I get the sense that for these 'mystery' traditions, it's much less 'bodies resurrected on the day of judgment' & more 'you see that life persists despite radical - self/ego-annihilating- transformations.'
I think these two parts are sort of setting the tone, genre, register. We're talking about mysticism-inflected teachings. Or at least esoteric teachings.
On to (2)
I like the idea that seeking leads first to being troubled. In modern parlance, maybe we could call this 'cognitive dissonance.' It could also be just the common experience of something going wrong in your life, trying to get to the bottom of it, and realizing you don't understand stuff as well as you thought. In ancient philosophical terms this could be a swerve. In late 20th century post-structural terms this could be an 'event.' In any case, the first experience when you go searching is being 'troubled.' I think of this stage as when the cognitive scaffolding you've implicitly relied on is crumpling. That's scary, but when it does, you're left with a kind of beautiful feeling - "I don't know anything, but there's a powerful feeling coming in to fill that gap" and that's where the astonishment arises.
The last part is complicated. "ruling over the all." I'd like to know what 'ruling' connotes in the source language. & what 'All' is the source language too. It seems unlikely that 'ruling over the all' means like a Ceasar or a Genghis Khan exerting power, but the esoteric meaning isn't clear to me.
Ok, there's the inaugural gospel of thomas post.
Comments (129)
In Buddhism, 'the all' is the net sum of the psycho-physical constituents of being. It is everything we see, touch, feel, hear and think.
'Ruling over' means attaining detachment from 'the all':
The footnote to the above text says: 'To abandon the eye, etc., here means to abandon passion and desire for these things.'
Jesus says - in all the gospels, I think - 'he who looses his life for My sake will be saved.' This is also a reference to 'abandoning the all', i.e. giving up all attachment to the sensory domain.
(translation appears to be a group work product)
There are so many misconceptions about the Gnostic gospels whether it be that of Thomas, Mary, Judas, Phillip - whichever. Because this material is tendentious, scholars are often inaccurate and contradictory on this material too, so you need to be very careful about what you assume from these texts. Why are you attracted to this material?
Are you "attracted" to this material?
I'm attracted to - or interested in - the text because it's rich. It's a particularly good text for eliciting reactions, and interpretation - like a good poem. It's hard to say what's interest and what's attraction, or what that differentiation means, but I've just found it's a good text to get people talking irl, and I imagine that will translate to the web too. The experience is definitely enhanced in certain ways when you know the background, just as it's enhanced in certain ways if you have a broad grasp on religion and mythology cross-culturally. There's so much you can bring to it. What do you make of the first couple parts?
The biggest departure of this Gospel from the others is a matter of timing. We are in the changed place rather than waiting for it to be changed. So I am not sure if the comparison with "outside of time" hits the mark.
I don't have any views on it as I don't remember the documents well enough. I read some of them in the 1980's and I knew one of Carl Jung's offsiders when the Jung Codex was put together. We spent a good deal of time discussing their significance to early Christianity. Nothing you won't find in Elaine Pagle's famous book (The Gnositc Gospels).
Strongly agree. I think one of the things I like about this Gospel is how it fluidly skates across a lot of different domains. Now it might be foolhardy to try to bracket things in a fixed way, but I was thinking, going in, to present it as sort of a one thing at a time - advent calendar, sort of - and build from there. I think you're right to bring in the sixth verse here, but If possible I want to keep the one part at a time vibe.
Interesting, why are you attracted to this approach to the gnostic gospels (perhaps, mysticism in general?) I notice you're using autobiographical detail, proper names, and indications of your inclusion in a kind of a sanctified, certified community. What does this approach do for you?
I really like the advent calendar approach. One doesn't have to understand the whole world by looking out of a particular window.
I wouldn't assume so much. No proper names used. The tiniest of autobiographical fragments that contextualize my interest in this subject. As to 'inclusion in a kind of sanctified certified community' - sounds like you worked hard at a kind of put down, but I shouldn't assume. What does it do for me? Conversation helps me understand where others are coming from. Mysticism is the one off shoot of religion I have found most interesting over the years, probably its the use of allegory. But it is very easy to get marooned in nonsense too.
That work is a good element to bring into the discussion. While noting the difficulties of confirming texts that so much energy went into erasing from history, Pagels also presented a defense of Pauline Christianity in the face of the new information. It was her dime and I appreciate the argument. But I wouldn't hire her for the best advocate to present a different view.
I remember that time (being kind of old) but let us take up the topic as well (or as poorly) as we can in the present moment with whatever resources that are available to us now.
One of the windows is how sexuality is referred to as not being important in some passages while others call for everyone to be "male."
It sounds like a local difficulty being related to a universal one.
I don't know her, or admittedly much about any scholarship around this area. This is a new subject for me. In my first incarnation on the forums, I was much more a German Idealism/Psychoanalysis guy.
I very much invite any insights from her works that bear upon the text. (I'll trade a name - Borges' Three Versions of Judas has been a touchstone for me for a long time, along the same lines you're discussing.)
I picked up a vibe early that you were coming in with a kind of detached psychological/analytic approach - kind of therapist-used-to-probing-others-while-their-own-views-remain-safely-unspoken - that just felt deeply counter to the kind of conversation I'm interested in. I pushed back accordingly. But, if you have real interest & some extratextual insight, I'm down for it. What do you make of the first couple sections?
I'm going into pantomime mode - I only know the text presented so far, and can only work from that. Granted, it's my own idealized approach, and once a thread's out there, it's out there. But I like the fiction as a kind of interpretive heuristic.
Understood. I will take a few days to ponder the parts of the text I have in mind before opining something.
There's a Christian theme about loss and disaster being the path itself, the door. It's as if we have to be broken open, humiliated. Our pride in our knowledge of trivia and mastery of ritual blinds us and binds us. 'Astonishment' is a nice word here. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There's a vague, dark reading of that that appeals to me.
I've been reading Cioran lately (The Trouble with Being Born), and the intersection of the dark and the light seems important here. If I live in some sense like I'm already dead, if I'm not so pathetically fucking thirsty for the recognition and ultimately envy of others, there's a new kind of life in that, while it lasts. Perhaps one does not taste death because the dying ego is no longer functioning as a center. It's the space between mortals that's interesting. I cough up my boring biographical trash only as a symbol, as a bridge, and not as of inherent interest. 'I' am nothing. 'I' am already dead. 'We' know this and are therefore more alive than ever, infinitely and bottomlessly alive. But we remain mortal and faulty, without a cure for the world beyond a little graffiti that may or may not signify for others and help them get over themselves now and then and feel less alone.
He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it."
I have to watch how I come across. I certainly can be detached and analytical just as you say. The problem with forums is the conversation can feel impersonal and veiled and because philosophy and cultural studies can hit controversial subjects, it is often hard to know what tone to strike.
The interesting thing about the opening of Thomas is that it has the familiar tropes of mysticism that frankly seem designed to appeal to personal vanity. Secret knowledge/ key to personal transformation. This is right out of Hermetic wisdom or the Kabbalah. But frankly the same proposition is made in Scientology. Is it the case that secret or hidden teachings are the classic refuge of the dispossessed and marginalized? (think I first read that in Isadore Epstein's Judaism - his take on Kabbalah).
What is appealing about mainstream Christianity is the surface appeal of the myth. Jesus is the least mystical of religious teachers. A key teaching is about loving the poor, the weak, the scorned - so detested by Nietzsche and so many modern sensibilities - is actually a powerful idea with far reaching repercussions. There is no need for secret teaching or initiation. That's refreshing. This to me is where orthodoxy (for want of a better term) has the edge on the more secretive Gnosticism. Making something a secret doesn't mean it is more profound, but it sure seems that way.
Perhaps the Gnostic stuff appeals more to people with hierarchical machinations on their mind. "How can I access the real wisdom and the key to ever lasting life?" (or whatever the reward underpinning the doctrines might be) Is it not interesting that the Gnostic teachings also pivot on an idea that is so prevalent now. That the world is coming unstuck and the truth is hidden by design and that only some with the right mindfulness can access this truth. It makes you wonder if QAnon is today's apocalyptic nascent religious tradition with a baroque line in hidden internet based scripture - waiting to be rediscovered in 2000 years and reinterpreted for the times.
Oops, that was more of a flight of ideas than a coherent view.
Luke and Mathew quote Thomas as length, or at least quote the same source. Scholars hypothesize a Q document that served as a repository of Christ's words, that was later added to narratives from people who knew his life's story.
Anyhow, I think the biggest misnomer with Thomas is that it is a Gnostic gospel. John has far more explicit Gnostic themes. From God as Word, (a decidedly Platonist theme), to the elevation of the spiritual above the material. Paul's letters also have more Gnostic themes. You can see how the idea.of hylics, psychics, and pneumatics could be drawn from Paul's discourse on those born of spirit in I Corinthians. He also personifies wisdom (Sophia), which became a Gnostic trope (Wisdom is even more fully personified in Proverbs).
The best way to think of the Gnostics is as a wide range of Jewish and Christian sects with overlapping beliefs. You can define Gnostic as a belief in a Demiurge, a flawed or evil creator of the material world who is below the true God of ideas and forms, or more broadly as early Christians who saw salvation as a form of holy enlightened, rather than atonement. The themes reappear later, with the Albegensians and Cathars.
I think people get led off track with the very strange cosmology of the Apocryphon of John and the Hypostasis of the Archons, which posit Yahweh as a demonic force called Yaldaboath or Secclus, who gang rapes Eve with his Archons and tries to blind humanity. Christ's main appearance is to bring the Fruit of Knowledge to Adam and Eve in the Garden. Jewish Gnostics further focused on Seth, Eve's third son, as the lineage of enlightenment.
But this is hardly a universal cosmology. That is what makes them so fascinating. The modern American Protestant churches I've been too seem to fetishize the early church a bit. I always take this in stride remembering that the early church had no bible for Sola Scriptura, indeed the New Testament quotes Enoch, and also had an active melange of Gnostic beliefs. A Gnostic was almost Pope. Orthodoxy had to be enforced after the fact, with the sword.
In this translation of The Gospel of Thomas, 'the all' appears five times in three of the 'sayings':
How this expression is interpreted is obviously the key question. What comes to my mind are similar expressions of the encounter with 'the Self' in Advaita Vedanta, or the 'to hen' of Plotinus. Of course many will say that it's just mysticism, where 'mysticism' is a byword for woolly-headedness or obfuscation. But note the extreme brevity of these expressions; they're very terse and exact. I think they indicate the visionary state of 'union with the ultimate'. They reflect, in the parlance of popular Eastern spiritual teachings, one who is a 'realised being', who sees the ultimate reality of existence.
Quoting Tom Storm
I encountered the Gnostic Gospels doing undergraduate studies in comparative religion, late 70's early 80's. At the time, I was self-consciously engaged in the spiritual quest, or so I liked to think. As such, I had been initiated into meditation by a secularly-oriented self-awareness group. I formed the view that the kind of experiential insight that purportedly arose from meditation was very much the kind of thing the gnostics understood and taught. I also felt that this had been deliberately suppressed in the mainstream tradition of Christianity, but that you could still find it in the kind of counter-cultural spirituality that had become prevalent in the 1960's.
That's why Pagel's book, Beyond Belief, appealed to me, as it confirmed this narrative. According to Pagels, Thomas' gospel was markedly different to the Gospel of John, in that it stressed the experiential nature of Christ's teaching and downplayed the idea of Jesus as an ultimate authority. But the powers-that-be coalesced around the Johannine intepretation - principally, I thought, because it is considerably easier to manage believers. Consequently, we only ever read about the gnostics through the writings of those who vanquished them, like Iraneus and Tertullian. That is why the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts was such a revelation.
During those years, I gave a paper on the 'centripental' nature of orthodox Christianity, with all power flowing to and from the central authority - the Papacy - distinguishing it from the 'centrifugal' tendencies in the more gnostic-oriented movements, which were based on the idea of empowerment and the transmission of insight (for example in Ch'an/Zen) -more like a network than an hierarchy with a titular head. I also argued that the ascendancy of the 'pistic' forms of Christianity have had grave consequences for the nature of religion in the modern West, and that had more latitude been given to the gnostic interpretation, 'religion' would have a very different meaning today.
Certainly some Gnostic schools (and early Christianity more generally) suggests that Jesus is a mortal man with Gnosis, not the Holy Spirt galvanizing him. Jesus is seen as an exemplar of the man who transitioned spiritually through knowledge, but not in a literally divine sense. But does this mean we are not to see Jesus as a type of Bodhisattva, I have never quite determined what to conclude.
I believe you chronology is a bit off. Kabbalah was developed centuries after the Gnostics were genocided by their coreligionists out of existence. Schloem has connected Kabbalah to Gnostic mysticism and Hermeticism, but it came after the heyday of the Gnostics.
Gnosticism was of course influenced by Platonism. The two have a connection there. Platonism itself had influences from older Greek traditions, as well as ones from the east and Egypt. We don't know where the idea of the transmigration of souls filtered into Greece, but it seems it could have come from India. We now know that Plato's Theory of Forms pre-dates him by generations in Memphite Theology, and the four elements, as well as the semiology of opposites also seem to come from Egypt. The Orphic Cult might have been a vehicle for eastern mysticism into the Greek world.
In any case, I don't think you're entirely correct about these being somehow more elitist traditions. The Cathars were beggars and rejected material wealth. The Gnostics as well forsake material possessions and preached amongst the poor. Indeed, it was their rejection of temporal power that paved the way for their massacre by the forces of orthodoxy.
I am going to come out of left field here and come at this from an anthropological/historical perspective..
I think the more "Gnostic" movements that influenced Hellenistic Judaism made for some interesting synthesis.
I think Judaism is/was a very community-oriented religion. The basic core is that God created the lower world of physical realm in order for there to be free-willed humans who will communally acknowledge him by practicing various commandments. Some of these were meant for laypeople, some meant for Cohen-priests, and some of these over time shifted from priests to lay-Israelites to make a "guard" against violating the commandments. It was very much about communal practice. One anoints the mundane things by following a particular commandment that raises it a holier level by doing it in a prescribed god-ordained way. One can argue historically, that this kind of strict communitarian version of the religion was created by community-leaders (like Ezra the Scribe) that returned from the Babylonian Exile under the auspices of the Persian Empire, as governors, reforming the previous (probably more Henotheistic) religion into a strict monotheism with an orthodox version of how the history came to be.. This was around the Great Assembly with the last "prophets" of Israel (like Haggai and Malachi).
Hellenism after the time of Alexander and his spreading of Greek-thought brought ideas such as Platonism (and later Neoplatonism), Aristotelianism (and emphasis on "intellect" as mystical), Elysian mysteries, Mithra/Isis mysteries, and Pythagoreans, and many more mystery schools and variations thereof. There was also mystical ideas from Zoroastrians, Babylonian mysteries, and Egyptian mysteries prior to Alexander, so there were other strands as well. These traditions were more of a direct, personal, inner aspiration to commune with a mystical godhead. There were elements of this from the prophetic period of Judaism in the prior generation, but the nature of these schools is lost. Was it more esoteric inward looking meditation or still rather communal? Perhaps there was an inward meditative technique.. Either way, since this prophetic tradition was considered to be no longer legitimate, there was probably an allure of the more inward-looking traditions of the Greeks and Eastern mystery schools. That is where I think Gnosticism came in. It provided Jews living in Hellenistic communities to combine their own traditions with Greek mystery schools, allowing there to be a synthesis. Notice, the Gnostic sects and practices were not usually found in Israel proper, but in the cities around the main Hellenistic centers like Alexandria, Antioch, etc. I don't think historically, the Jesus Movement was associated with these Gnostic sects which rather used the character of Jesus as a vehicle to explore Gnostic thought in general. Rather, the historical Jesus, I would say was probably a sect of Essenic/Ebionite Judaism (much closer to Pharisaic Judaism but with different interpretations of the Mosaic Law, and ideas about the End Times that were more pronounced).
Anyways, there are four basic branches of Gnosticism.. I believe it is the Thomas Tradition (based on The Book of Thomas), Sethian, Hermetic, and Valentinian.. They all have similarities and a lot of variation too.
That's interesting. I've had a similar experience vis-a-vis Gnosticism. Not that there isn't a focus on practical experience in churches I've attended, they certainly advocate Bible reading and prayer, but it's also bracketed by the doctrines of "saved by faith alone" and "original sin" pretty heavily.
I suppose there is a kind of presupposition that, no matter how much you learn in internal inquiry, the foundation and lens through which to sift all those experiences should always be those two doctrines.
I didn't grow up going to church so I have an outsiders view. My wife won't notice it, but the repetition of the two core doctrines, with a health dose of barbs against Catholic and Orthodox theology, has filled a line at least once every 10 minutes of sermon across a dozen plus churches on hundreds of days in my experience. You can be ignorant of theological history, but it will still surround you I guess.
Elitism doesn't necessarily have to do with wealth and worldly power.
For example, in traditionally Buddhists countries, monks are considered the elite, even though they lead materially very simple lives (or at least, they should, on principle).
Gotcha. Yes, there is a sense in which Gnosticism, or at least, some forms can be elitist, since with transmigration you are born into different bodies, and it is the ones with superior intellect that can grasp the Gnosis. Or for some forms of Gnosticism there is a hard line between psychic and pneumatic humans.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I’ve formed a pretty negative view of Luther and Calvin, and their form of Augustinianism. It practically amounts to fideism. I see it as one of the fundamental factors that gave rise to atheism in the 'secular western' sense.
If you read the early history of the Church, you realise it was actually a riot of competing sects, ideas, and dogmas. People would brawl in the street over ‘the nature of the Son’. The Nicene Council was designed to bring an end to all that by assembling bishops from all over the early Christian world (plus a number of pagan authorities, which is significant) and hammering out the statement of what they all should accept. That’s the Nicene Creed that exists to this day.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That was the main complaint against gnosticism - that it was only available for the elite, for the very few who could follow its strictures. Orthodox Christianity was on the other hand open to all - that was what was radical about it, especially in the ancient world.
I think this will be more clear when we read (3)
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
The Socratic axiom states "Know Thyself". The human organism doesn't have inner unity but is many separate parts. When a person making efforts to know thyself experiences he is many and actually lives in opposition to himself, he becomes troubled. In the process of being troubled he makes the necessary efforts towards inner unity and these efforts produce a quality of consciousness which makes it become possible to become "master of himself." This quality of consciousness attracts an even higher quality of consciousness which strives to support it
A person cannot become master of himself while serving his source rather than his ego without the help of the Holy Spirit. If he insists on trying his ego he will attract a quality of help not intended.
The Cathars! I forgot all about them. I still think it is correct to make a connection between the appeal of a secret teaching and a powerless group. It can make them feel special when all manner of shit is raining done on them. In this way, I suspect there is an overlap with conspiracy theories held by community members who feel left out but by 'elites'.
The notion of secret wisdom has always been fascinating too. The Holy Grail is one later symbol of this, but dumbed down as a crass materialist trinket of 'everlasting life.'
In relation to Gnosticism (and yes, it was not monolithic) I was galvanised years back when I read the idea that there was once an additional piller added to the more conventional Christian traditions of Faith and Reason. The third piller of Gnosis (loosely the idea that we are all divine). It sounds as though the early organised church got Faith and Reason together to beat up on Gnosis (in the words of one commentator I read).
But tropes fill the air again - can there be anything more encrusted in clichés than the notion that a venerable early tradition was overtaken by the imperious forces of an organized tradition. The Name of the Rose picks up this theme in medieval times when the church is betraying itself yet again. I won't mention Dan Brown. This theme is on rince and repeat
If we see gnosis as, perhaps, a more venerable answer to faith (no small thing) as a pathway to personal salvation (is that the right word when applied to gnosis?) can anyone tell me what gnosis might look like when applied now to the Christ story - Gnosticism being very much a part of a first century epoch.
Absolutely right - this was my point before - recondite knowledge is the poor person's pathway to an elite status. I suspect this is behind the pursuit of much mysticism.
Nice summary of those early years, W. I think the hallmark fo a secure faith is the lack of proselytizing.
Why??
Yep, we both agree that the opening plays with common mystical tropes.
Ok, I think I get where you're coming from. The text itself is an annoying gnat - let's get to the brass tacks - desire for power.
The basic idea, if I understand you, is that the canonical gospels are democratic - Jesus is a radically non-hierarchical guy - and gnosticism wants to think it's tuned in to the real shit. It's more valuable because it's secret. That's how the gnostic thinks. The gnostic sees power in secrecy.
I appreciate your navigating niceties with me but you're still saying the same thing: 'why are you attracted to this? (with the obvious subtext : I know why! you want power (as I did/do) )
Listen, tom, I have all the insecurities you imagine and more. I have a great oodling tower of insecurities. I'm sure you're a much more decorated and successful man than me. I'm not trying to angle at scientology sceptres, faux-sanctity by proxy, or anything else. I like reading the gospel of thomas, along with a lot of other things. Much comes up talking about them, they're fun. It might be hard for such a patently secure person as yourself to understand. But it comes down to:
The text is rich. Talking about it, if you're in the right mindset, can bring you anywhere. Yes, people abuse mysticism for personal gain. It's a good thing to keep in mind. But I think you're - i mean, i don't know what you're doing, but you're not on board with what this is, while posting on it.
Brass tacks: if you're interested in the text, say something about what you think of it.
Otherwise, let's get on with it.
That sounds kind of crazy until you compare it to:
Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth.
How do you inherit the earth? What do you do with it once you've got it?
That is what I think of it. Sorry.
A person comfortable in their spirituality (as opposed to their religion) does not need to proselytize or harangue others to prove the strength of their faith.
I’m nowhere close to being informed on religion, so my thoughts are few, but this reminded me of Socrates’ midwife analogy, where being troubled=labor pains. It makes me think that people of the era in which this is written had a different conception of “knowledge” than we do today. Knowledge itself seems to be divine, mystical, and difficult to obtain. Hence all the literary devices used to describe it. Whereas today obtaining knowledge seems much more straightforward via scientific method, logic, reason, etc. So lacking the ability to apply these methods to knowledge caused them to seek it through other, more spiritual/mystical, means.
I think you're beginning with a false assumption here; "knowledge" as a concept in the 2nd century is not the same concept as "knowledge" in the modern age. It's not that "knowledge" exists ideally, and ancient vs. modern conceptions of that concept are different. They're completely different concepts from the beginning; their goals are completely anathema to each other.
I think there's a genuine sense in which what we are capable of seeing and knowing is deeply conditioned by the kinds of people we are. And the people here (self included) are mainly WEIRD (White, Educated, Industrial, Rich, Democratic.)
There's the famous Huxley saying, 'If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite.' But it is a big 'if'.
I have had arguments over the years about whether there is really such a thing as 'higher knowledge'. Mostly that is seen as a preposterous idea - because 'higher' is a value judgement, and value judgements are by definition personal in nature. Which is another way of stating the is/ought dilemma.
Quoting Tom Storm
Very much like a 'new religious movements', probably not a well-known one. Maybe something a little like Eckhardt Tolle, or others of that ilk.
Quoting Tom Storm
:up:
Thank you that was interesting and helpful. I haven't explored this material in detail since the late 1980's
I'd be careful to ascribe Buddhist meaning to a 1st or 2nd century Christian text, even if it's non-canonical, "gnostic" one. It would better be understood from its Jewish and Hellenistic roots where salvation is knowledge that frees one from the material world to return to the spiritual source in the heavens. I suppose one could consider that a transformation, but it's more of a freeing the divine spark from its material shell, not so much an ego death.
I don't know that Jews thought of annihilation-transformation of the self, although Judaism, like early Christianity, was quite diverse back then.
In the Gospel of Judas:
[quote=https://www.gospels.net/judas]Judas said to him, "I know who you are and where you've come from. You've come from the immortal realm of Barbelo, and I'm not worthy to utter the name of the one who's sent you."[/quote]
There were these platonic ideas of God emanating beings or spiritual realms with eventually the material world being created by some of the more distantly related and foolish ones. And at least some humans had a divine spark in them. Jesus came to remind them of where they came from. Or something along those lines, although Gospel of Judas was a different text from Thomas.
This sounds like Rumi: Muslim platonism.
People don't necessarily proselytize to "prove the strength of their faith".
Some do it "to share the joy with others".
Some others do it out of a sense of entitlement to do so.
Some do it out of a sense of superiority over others.
In fact, it's what religion/spirituality is all about: a sense of superiority over others, a sense of entitlement over others.
All of one's religious/spiritual knowledge is in vain if one doesn't think it somehow makes him better than other people.
Perhaps one part of the question of what to make of the ruler is in verse 89:
In the other Gospels, the reference to the cup is presented more as a charge of hypocrisy. Such as Luke 11:39:
The Thomas version is more of an actual challenge than the judgement meted out in Luke. The Kingdom has a shape where both the outside and the inside are created.
Sure. I never said it was the only reason. I simply said not doing so suggested a more secure faith. That has certainly been my experience of Christians. Maybe I should have said It can be the sign of a secure faith. One is not always precise in typing.
Sounds about right. This can take complicated forms, of course, which look like humility to the unwary. Also seems important that people want to share in that feeling of superiority. It's not much fun to be enlightened or sanctified alone.
I do get @Tom Storm point though. People don't sell drugs. Drugs sell drugs. In other words, the real stuff shouldn't need advertisement. In general good things are difficult and exclusive. What is casting pearls before swine but being suspiciously thirsty?
"Casting pearls before swine" -- that's a way to keep up the appearance of one's worthiness and the worthiness of one's ideas. Because if (some) other people are demoted to swine, then one's ideas, however lowly they might be, instantly look more elevated, pearly ...
I relate a lot to this. Being broken open and humiliated sucks - and the natural move is to sweep the thing under the carpet and move on flashing the self you want people to see. I had something like that with this thread. I posted it inebriated, and got defensive talking to Tom, who was introducing valid skepticisms. I woke up feeling like shit. and, knowing I had a scheduled phone call with my sister that afternoon, I turned over, drank some gatorade, and texted her to postpone. i had planned on our conversation involving, in part, my demonstrating that I was on top of stuff. I pushed it back a day. But still, today, I brought it up, sheepishly ['yeah occasionally I've been drinking and posting on forums] and that went into a back-and-forth of our embarassing experiences. She said 'oh i get it, you're going for fights, want to puff up your feathers' - the shame of it dissipated when it was just like - yeah this is shit people do.
To cioran, I almost want to say: everyone you know is going through the same stuff. As a literary stylist, you're doing great work; but at the same time, if the content is that you're alone with suffering -- just reach out! In a way, he's doing that, just as you say - he's posting up landmarks for people who are in the same boat he's in. It's nice, when you're smart and alone, to feel that this guy gets it too.
But the idea of being broken up and humiliated in christianity is different in kind. Christ isn't prideful on the cross. It's a really beautiful thing, potentially, if you think of it - a community of sinners witnessing and supporting one another. We all fuck up, and feel bad, and we'll help each other. I worry sometimes, with Cioran, it's about being the exemplary sufferer (witnessed, not witnessing). He's a complicated guy so it's not always that, but there is a throughline that tends that way.
Anyway, no exact moral, but those are my thoughts at the moment.
My 'scholarly' understanding of the Old testament largely comes from a single archaeology book, and traces it to Hezekiah, rather than Ezra and the expats. I don't know if it's right, could well not be. But I think we both agree that the OT is a a sort of library structured at some moment within the events being recalled. I'd be interested to hear more about the provenance of gnostic thought, and how it got tangled up with christ.
Your breakdown of how the various Hellenistic communities understood what happened is helpful. Your previous explanations of this history puts the events in the context of the people where it is happening.
One aspect that has long pestered me is that so much of the language appears in so many different ways but keeps repeating in one form or another at the same (or other) time.
It is a collection of ideas but also something else.
So that book is bringing up the reformist period of Hezekiah. I didn't want to get that detailed, but the archeology book reflects a consensus that the monotheistic reforms started taking place more-or-less around Hezekiah. Baal, Asherah, and others from the original Canaanite pantheon were starting to be banned and centralization in Jerusalem of Kohein/Levites and Temple practices seems to take place around this period. There wasn't a full fledged system yet, but there was probably something like the Deutoronomic part of the Torah a little after Hezekiah, formulated by the priests in the time of King Josiah in the 600s BCE. At the end of the day, most scholars believe the final crystallization of what become Second Temple Judaism (that later became Rabbinic Judaism and Karaite Judaism after the destruction of the Temple), would be the consensus that came back from Persia of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the Great Assembly (if this is considered not just a myth from the Perkeit Avot retelling).
Long story short, the the transformation of Israelite henotheism to monotheism didn't happened overnight and started in the prophetic schools of the "Yaweh" only around the time of Hezekiah, continued through kings like Josiah, and then the transferred to the prieistly-scribal-prophet class that were allowed to form communities in Babylonia and reform the religion when Persia let these elites come back to Israel and reform it under their new priestly based (not king based) religion.
Quoting csalisbury
I think that is an interesting thing as to just how Jesus gets mixed in with gnosticism. I think before you look into gnostic thought, you should look at some of its precursors in Jewish writers like Philo who lived in Alexandria. Pauline ideas of logos seem to be suspiciously parallel to Philos ideas. I think these ideas were in the air and came from trying to apply Greek rhetoric to Jewish thought, which was more tribal historical based on a certain people and set of practices.
This is highly speculative, but here could be a possible path that happened..
The historical Jesus became associated with the Essenic/Ebionite notion of a Son of Man who is a sort of angelic figure who was associated with the ancient figure of Enoch who was supposed to have been taken to heaven and perhaps was transformed into an angelic being (later associated with Metatron and other angelic figures). This Son of Man probably originated in speculation as to the vision of Daniel. Some groups that this was a metaphor for Israel as a whole, some saw it as a metaphor for a certain Maccabean king, and others saw it as a true blue heavenly figure. This heavenly figure then becomes associated with the notion that there would be a restoration of a Jewish king. Perhaps the Jewish king is some representative of the Son of Man on earth.. Anyways.. play with these concepts however you will... it's all speculation, what happens is proto-gnostic sects, people like Paul, take this concept of Son of Man, who is representative of heavenly ruler on earth, and makes the human who was anointed as human representative as an ACTUAL divine being that was an actual Son of God, a "god-man", etc. etc.
Anyways.. This second split from Son of Man turned into literal "Son of God", then splits again.. There are those who focus on the death/resurrection idea of a sacrifice of this Son of God who then gets even more exalted by the Book of John as the Logos (shades of Philo of Alexandria here). But then there are those who go pure "Hellenistic" and see the focus on Jesus the death/resurrection as an aberration from esoteric Hellenistic ideas of the mystery schools.
So Jesus original designation of a man who is representative of Son of Man, becomes Jesus a divine Son of God, who then becomes attached to Hellenistic groups who use this burgeoning character as a way to be a mouthpiece for the esoteric ideas that were already around in Alexandrian mystery schools, Hellenistic Judaism, Platonism, and the general synthesis of culture of that time period.
Gnostic ideas, the idea that there is something wrong with this physical world.. I can relate :D. The idea that we are exiled here and we keep being attached to it and thus perpetuate it.
No you misinterpreted me completely.
Fair, correct me. Edited: retracted: you already made your point nicely
Jesus is a real historical figure. I think he comes from some branch of Essenic Judaism around the Galilean region. End of Times was important to them. But I also think he incorporated Pharisaic Judaism as well, but not all of it. The sect Jesus was a part of was probably started by John the Baptist which was a sort of synthesis of Galilean/Essenic Judaism, if I want to get real specific. Like all sects of Judaism in Israel proper, they had an interpretation of several basic things.. Jewish Law and what to do about oppression from Rome. His interpretation of Jewish law was to follow the law very closely but that certain additions that the Pharisees advocated were not necessary.. So for example, Jesus would probably never say that one should eat un-kosher foods, but one does not have to wash ones hands ritually before consuming food like the Pharisees advocated. He seemed to appreciate the intent of the law like Hillel but sided with Shammai as far as matters of divorce. These are very specific rabbinical debates around the time of Jesus and he was putting in his two cents..
As far as what to do about Rome.. He was clearly influenced by ideas of the End of Times by Essenic-type groups. The Judaism of the time needed to be reformed in the practices at the Temple, the people had to follow the laws more intensely and with the right interpretation. Perhaps he thought he was on a mission to restore a more righteous kingdom, restoring the Davidic throne, etc. etc. The idea of a Son of Man was something floating around the time of Jesus. All I was saying is maybe the Messiah- the longed for restored Jewish king was somehow associated with Daniel's vision of Son of Man.. And thus when Jesus says the Son of Man sent him (if he did say something this at all), it could be like he was anointed by this angelic figure to restore the Davidic kingdom.. Jesus always viewed himself as a man restoring the kingship, even if he claimed to be sent from the Son of Man.. What I am saying is after his death.. figures like Paul of Tarsus turned this concept into something different.. Rather, Jesus becomes a divine figure who "dies for your sins".. and thus the gentile version of the Jesus Movement begins. This is usually attributed to Paul and his writings. The original Jesus Movement about a particular Essenic Jew trying to restore the kingdom of Israel by instilling proper interpretation of Jewish law becomes a god-man under Paul.. There is a lot to unpack but that is a very brief understanding.
The original Jewish movement that Jesus started continued for only 100 years or so and mainly led by his actual brothers (James, Judas, Simeon, etc.), But eventually, the Pauline gentile communities became associated with what is "Christianity" and this original movement also started getting pushed out of mainstream synagogues in the Levant..
But, at the same time, I find myself thinking - everything you're saying is just geared to proving 'it isn't true.' That doesn't hit any chords with me. I don't care if jesus was god or not, at all. Analogically: I could talk napoleon with someone, but if that person was bent on proving one thing I wasn't super invested in, idk, that napoleon was gay, I'd be like 'damn, this guy knows a lot, but we're just not approaching this topic on the same wavelength.' I respect your research, but all I'm learning is that you know a lot of details that tend toward jesus not being the son of god. Ok, sure, but I don't feel like I'm learning anything more about the text.
I mean maybe you're just randomly interested in this, but why not be interested in turkish government from 200 ad to 700 ad, right?
Anyway, That's not what I'm interested in, though I truly think you have mastered what you've set out to master.
Well, I did warn you that I was coming at this from an anthropological/historical angle. I understand, you are more trying to analyze the sayings of the group(s) in question, and not necessarily the context for the formation of the groups and where it fit in historically/anthropologically. Granted, we are interested in two different things here.. To jump more into your interests.. Even though I think gnosticism was not really related to the historical Jesus (as I explained who I thought he was), tangentially, my own philosophies of antinatalism/philosophical pessimism very much align with these views, so it interests me as a philosophy, even if its mythical aspects are simply historical contingencies converging on certain ideas and even though a main spokesperson (Jesus) was used as a mouthpiece rather than being something the historical person even knew about let alone said.
Thank you. Simply because Jesus is such a huge part of Western Civilization, I think it important to understand the origins of all this. Religion needs to be put in its historical context. In fact, a lot of things should be understood in its historical context.. but religion especially goes out of control when it just becomes layers of layers and layers of its own bullshit and isn't put into context of how it developed.
Actually there is no certainty on this. Some suggest the character may have been based on a real person - there were numerous itinerant messianic teachers at the time it is stated. There are branches of mythicists who argue he is a total fiction - Dr Richard Carrier is an exponent of this.
I personally don't care if he was based on a real man or not. The question is what status do we give the claims made in the stories about yeshua ben yosef - those from outside and inside the tradition.
Analogically: I know more about breaking boxes at the homestead restaurant than you could ever know. I know which boxes they get the most of, how certain boxes fit etc. I know it inside and out. I broke boxes there for years in high school. But what is the horizon of that? It's just a kid breaking boxes for money. I think you're breaking the OT for pessimism. I respect the craft, but I just - what am I supposed to learn from it?
OT does this refer to Off Topic or Old Testament?
He is, that's the name I was grasping for - but at the end of the day, why's he doing it? I've watched many interviews with him, when I was reading the OT with a friend, who was a fan. He's cagy, and isolated. As are many people who are pushing heterodox ideas...but you just get a feeling that his impulse is based on religion, and he's trying to get a comeuppance. It's very tantaiizing if you grew up in a strong religious community; it's kind of weird otherwise. To put it into context: imagine Richard Carrier giving a lecture, with the same vibe, on the role of mana in polynesian tribes.
Proferssor Bart Ehrman is probably more nuanced. He thinks YbY was probably real but few of the stories are.
I guess I've just always come to the usual conclusions - why should I care what is written in any holy book?
The tantalizing proposal is that early Christian tradition may not have seen Jesus as divine nor risen from death. The later vulgar superhero twist to the story avoids engaging with the idea that this particular hero's journey may have been about self-knowledge, not everlasting life.
Sociologist and religious scholar John Carroll wrote an interesting book on Mark, with Jesus as an existential figure. The point was more (and I am putting this crudely) that Jesus ( traces of this are in Mark, the oldest Gospel - around 70 AD) was not interested in God and doctrine but in exploring the self - he died in despair and his rising again is tentative. There is a later end tacked onto Mark that tries to make it seem more glorious. Gnosis is perhaps an existential Jesus' answer to Camus' absurdity, to touch on another discussion.
I don't think you should care about any of it.
And I should check myself here. If you grew up in a problematic religious community, then I have no right to talk about these texts vis-a-vis your relationship to them. I can only talk about them from my perspective: slightly secular - raised half catholic, half protestant, (which one depended on which parent, in a messy marriage, had the upper hand in any given year) but, in any case, it was primarily a social thing. Believed in god, as a kid, but the rest was up in the air.
I'm very much on board with the self-knowledge approach, and I think these texts potentially offer some good insight. At the same time, it would be ridiculous to pretend that they haven't been used in truly noxious power-maintaining ways. (gospel of thomas, maybe not, at least not in the modern era, but it certainly hooks back up to the full christian complex)
I resist the existentialist approach, only because I think it puts too much emphasis on the individual will (another story, but I don't oppose it for any external reason - I think that approach immanently self-destructs, naturally, according to its own logic) but I think some stuff in these texts is just good, in the same way I think a Don Delillo or Marilynne Robinson novel is good, or a book on investment is good, or a friend's advice about cooking is good- it feels, to me, like the gospel of thomas is doing its genre very well. I don't think that genre is sovereign, but it's a good genre among others (& invites power-hungry assholes, like any genre: you got your Norman Mailers & Phillip Roths in literature, take your pick in finance, Gordon Ramsey in cooking etc.)
I don't generally focus on Christianity - I'm generally much more interested in Taoism, Buddhism, and Shamanism (of which there are christian, Buddhist and Taoist variants.) It would be a full thread to explain my journey from catholicism to atheism to existentialism to post-structural relativism to ecumenical spiritualism, but the end result is ecumenical spiritualism (yes, psychedelics are involved.) It is wishy-washy, in some ways - but only if it's not grounded in general practice. Life comes first, is a base, Maslow, and then you have to learn how to ritually, rhythmically structure the rest - there's no way around it. No one should care about any holy book, only tap in if its useful.
You make a great point about the pridefulness of Cioran. As Cioran says somewhere, he's been a student all his life and is proud to have done nothing. He sees time pass. He thinks of it as the highest thing. He's too good, too splendid, to take life seriously. He's a beautiful loser. Or rather he would be a loser if he wasn't so fucking good at being a loser, at speaking from the place of loss. There's something castrating in nihilism. One identifies with the screaming void as a dark god. Or plays at it. I see Cioran as occasionally ecstatically happy. I have only read some of his work, but I'm reminded that Kafka would laugh hysterically at some of his work (according to a bio that change my way of thinking about him.) You mention Tim & Eric in another post, and some of that humor is so dark that simple laughter isn't the target. It's supposed to create some fascinating wound.
On the picking a fight issue, yes indeed that's stuff we humans do. And I wrestle with shame sometimes too, because there's the temptation to mock, challenge, subvert. Then there's perhaps the worse temptation to be above all this, to scorn all this in an even less forgiving pride (silent contempt.) If one knows this evil or aggression in one's self, it's hard to be earnest, because one expects it in others, especially in those who matter, because our pretty intellectual flowers grow in the soil of cruelty (something like that.) Messages are contorted as they are squeezed through defense mechanisms (like dream work of some kind.)
I do love the idea of sinners confessing to one another in humility. That's so not cool in our world at the moment. I'm tempted to think that Twitter/Facebook has made people worse, but perhaps it's just made the structure more naked, open to research. At least beautiful Christian collisions are possible in private. Privacy is sacred for that reason perhaps. A space to be naked and forgiving (and forgiveness itself is a public sin, excepting trivial cases.)
I've tended to view things this way. Perhaps academia is a kind of middle path. The respected researcher making 120K might feel greatly superior to the billionaire. Warriors also come to mind. I suspect that Navy seals are as proud as billionaires. Invidia, the human essence?
I would think that would be justifiable. Behind every fortune is a terrible crime (Balzac).
This touches on one of the big issues of life. Even a socialist can't help turning up his nose at some people, in his heart if not in his public actions. There are books that I know are great that I wouldn't bring up with certain people. I wouldn't recommend them. Drugs sell themselves. The good things don't need hype.
Maybe one enjoys what feels like a relatively universal cure for existence. In that case it's natural to share it, celebrate it. But humans take such pleasure in going against the grain, being contrary...Who wants to be in the club that accepts everybody? Like many people, I've been interrupted by Jehova's Witnesses and Mormons. None of them struck me as good advertisements for the faith, and a cynic might say they were selling a product, since surely a tithe would finally be involved. Worse, I was supposed to pay for a manager rather than be paid by one. In this example, I guess I'm the swine. But what I have in mind is the first-person experience of remaining silent where speech would be futile. [For instance, I don't bother nice believing mothers with my atheism. One size does not fit all here, or it wouldn't feel right to harass them, enlighten/threaten them, etc.]
I'm about to reread Cousin Bette, the only Balzac I've read. But, yeah! We all love and need money, and so all worship it to some degree, but perhaps only a few of us make it the metric. It's a universal half-god. If humans were immortal, the pursuit of wealth would be a more powerful religion perhaps. But we know that we must age and die, and this threatens every 'rational' comfort-seeking calculation.
I've never been thirsty for it myself. One of my friends has become somewhat wealthy, and it's a little awkward. Chris Rock jokes about men being willing to live in a cardboard box if it wasn't for women. Well, I'd need a cabin. But basically (perhaps you can relate), I just want a little simply security so I can read, daydream, walk in the sun, play chess, scribble now and then. Freedom from worry ! I'd happily sacrifice various expensive and complicated pleasures for that.
I'm waiting to see if he shows up in this gospel.
Beautifully put. It is like dreams. The phenomenology of posting: You're not consciously choosing to elide this, or add that, but it sort of feels right. You have an inner sense of how things will 'land' and adjust accordingly. There's the impulse - the thing you want to say - and then in posting it, the editing, the awareness of the audience, happens sort of through you - only you experience it, a little self-misleadingly, as what you meant to say the whole time. (Alcohol facilitates that, I think, but that's its own topic.)
I think the shame might come out of a sort of cognitive dissonance - e.g. ' I know that I wanted to say - and really thought I was saying - this, but now (sober) I realize that what I subjectively experienced is different than what I was objectively doing, and I want to sweep the whole thing away. The gap between the fantasy and the reality is massive, and I'll maintain the fantasy by 'deleting' the reality. With the delusion that, itndoing so, the next time around the objective and subjective will be perfectly wed, and there won't be anyone around to remember the last time, and drag me down out of the fantasy.'
You wake up with a gasp and want to delete a post - I almost did with my last one ('ecumenical spiritualism', what are you talking about dude?)- but that impulse feels like not wanting to be the individual who made that mistake. And if you made it, that's part of how you're currently operating, and that's a good thing to know! Deleting it - as I've done in the past, and have been tempted to do - is like taking the stance of 'silent contempt' as you put it, toward yourself. The 'bad' part is pushed into the cellar again, to stew and resent, while you do stuff in a 'good' way, until the cycle repeats. Original SIn gets a bad rap, in may cases rightfully so, but one way at it is just: it's a worldview that allows you to fuck up, and makes sense of it after, without recoiling from and repressing it.
Regarding Cioran, Kafka, and Tim & Eric. I think you're right about the castration, the laugh at the void, and all of it. What I want to say is that I think it is, to echo an earlier post, sort of one genre among others. There's this Joanna Newsom song where she sings - plaintively, sweetly, patiently, understandingly - 'honey, where'd you come by that wound?' - and the plaintive, sweet, understanding vibe felt so nice that for a few months, I kept playing that song again and again - the feeling of loving attention gets tied to identifying with your wound. It's a powerful complex of things (in every 'cioran' theres an offstage 'joanna newsom' singing that song. For me it maybe echoes being sick as a kid, and mom taking especial care of me) It is a powerful aspect of life and should be given a spot - refusing loving care is its own temptation - but I also feel that it is not the sovereign genre (or emotion, or stance) I want to take - or I don't want to take any genre (aspect, region, vibe, atmosphere, emotion, frame) as sovereign at all.
One thing I've been drawn to, reading about Taoism, is the refusal of any one aspect (the mechanical ritual, the normal workings of life, the philosophical frame, the ecstatic experience, etc) to be the 'real' thing - it's all part of it. We're probably on the same page there - I just don't know if Cioran, say, is. I haven't read all of him, not even close, and there is a lot of subtle stuff - but sometimes it feels like it's all sort of subservient to a beautiful suffering to be experienced.
That at least is my working model of Cioran, which is rusty. If it isn't accurate, that's good too. I guess, regardless of whether Cioran exemplifies it, I'm interested in critically approaching the impulse of raising anything into an over-valorized thing, association with which lets you partake of it. And man, I guess even that is ok too, as long as you can navigate re-entry into the profane space where you're not part of the valorization, which is inevitable. In such a case, that valorization is an ecstatic, or ritualistic thing which has value, but oughtn't diminish the value of the stuff that isn't it.
Part of the reason I come back to this I had something that I guess would be considered a manic episode - though drug-induced -in my early 20s and it was really beautiful and after I was charged with this really great energy. As it faded, I couldn't admit it was fading and the world in the absence of that experience felt really drained and ugly. But what happened is the memory of those highs became a way I structured my life, and I wanted to attach myself to things I felt 'linked back to it' while dissociating myself from things that felt like they didn't. This was a recipe for disaster, and looking back is I think basically addiction in its purest form. All the other addictions are aspects of it, so to speak.Finding a better way of relating to these peak experiences has been a big part of how I've tried to think of stuff moving forward, so these themes crop up a lot. A sluggish, slow process filled with relapses, granted, but I think the guiding light is good.
(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
It almost seems too clunky to explicitly break down the consonances, but I think it wonderfully fits with all of this!
So many good themes here, it's hard to start. I'm for [s]Shigalyovism[/s] original sin. (I'll leave in the obscure, dorky Dostoevsky joke but get back to The Possessed.)
A more targeted response: I think I learn more from online conversation because it hurts to overhear one's public self. Dead text is a terrible nudity. Maybe you are stuffed with high feeling but then the text stain sometimes looks so pathetic. If any human being is great, then I suspect such greatness is momentary. Flowers stand pretty in the manure of ordinary life. Nietzsche wrote about the higher arising from the lower. It seems like a small point in the book, but it's everything. Instead of perfect gleaming greatness being self-created and having no shameful past, there's the slow crawl out of the mud. Warhol did some book that was just 24 hours of his friends and him talking bullshit, uncensored and raw. Maybe they performed a little for the tape-recorder, but I like the aim of sanctifying ordinary life, or making peace with the banal, the lazy, the imperfect. (I wish Byron's journal hadn't been burned. It would have been nasty, sure, but illuminating even in its nastiness.)
But yeah original sin and forgiveness...these old ideas are valuable even without traditional notions of god. It's just good relationships 101, a class which is maybe never mastered, despite its priority.
Yes, we are on the same page, very much. And I like Taoism. If you want to be whole, let yourself be torn. I think you are nailing the tone, which is difficult. It's hard to talk about wisdom and spirituality without lapsing into a certain unpleasant role. It's what Zizek means when he calls wisdom obscene. I totally get that and yet it's obvious that humans want wisdom, which is something like the skill of living well where words are perhaps a secondary part of the skill. IMO, there's a playful attitude that's primary. When disaster is not forcing us to be serious, there's a creative ground state that could only play at launching manifestos. I like some of Tristan Tzara's stuff quite a bit, self-eating manifestos that (importantly!) register as joyful and not bitter. There's no definite conceptual content to be communicated. It's the attitude that matters. I project this on Zen, which I don't know well.*
*Side-issue, but I can imagine someone saying 'well, that's not Zen.' OK, Cool, I reply. But what matters to me is an attitude/realization that exists now for me, which is maybe (doesn't really matter) what someone else somewhere else called something else. Even a shared American misreading of Zen can be a bridge, or just sharing in the cloud of the concept. Koans and shit! Waking people up to something behind language. Some kind of mutated OLP boredom with mind-matter-blah-blah. Also knowing that what keeps me going might not work at all for someone else and will only work temporarily for me.
I relate to this as well. I love the offstage joanna newsom, and I adore Joanna Newsom herself. Where did we get that wound? I suppose all of us are beaten into civilized creatures and that men in particular are (most of them) beaten into a performance of masculinity. What does the little boy learn? A contempt for vulnerability. My dad used the belt, and at some point I could take the whipping without tears and that's about when they stopped. A boy who cries over a little pain deserves the belt in the first place, right? So the sissy soul of the boy goes into hiding or rather projection....and the castrated girls (actually uncastrated one might say) are more fascinating than ever. We end up with a classic system (possibly crumbling) of men insisting on 'sublimated' relationships with one another and saving some secret tender private side for women. (I know this is cis-het biased, and I just can't speak for other situations.)
Returning the The Possessed and Stavrogin's confession: why does he hate the little girl after seducing her? After her confused initial resistance, she is shockingly enthusiastic. I think he is appalled not because of her physical youth but because of her trust, because of how easy it was to deceive her and instill faith in her. He suddenly hates her, because she suddenly loves him, because he was inspired by an imp of perversity or demon of irony in the first place, and certainly not by love. In another book, Ivan talks about a child being pointlessly abused. I also recall Harold Bloom talking about Iago willing the Moor in him to suffer. Basically the little joanna newsom must be tormented, beaten into a by perhaps. There's also the judge in Blood Meridian, fantasizing about how he'd raise his sons....by throwing them in a cage with wolves. Billy Budd, and so on. Until we finally arrive back at the old cross, and 'we both know it was a girl back in Bethlehem.'
I like that quote and love the self-knowledge aspect. Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove. Different quote, but maybe related. Knowing yourself as a sinner, acknowledging the truth of the your own mother/matter/matrix/cross. Something like that. Hard to find just the right words. Probably never can or will be just the right words, which is maybe part of the lesson. I also think of Schopenhauer differentiating the philosopher and the saint. Articulation is to some degree a separate task, emotion recollected in tranquility perhaps.
This reminds me of Witt/Heid but maybe it's more like Jung's whatever is unconscious is projected. If Jung is right, then 'unconscious' is misleading. There's what we identity with and as and there's all the repressed/projected stuff that's in front of our face. Othering is self-division.
Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample them, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."
This one makes me think of honest joyful communication, beyond shame and accusation, though perhaps playing at/with them.
Quoting norm
There's a small market in the town I live in that has this free bookshelf. It's fun to browse because it's relatively small, and the selection is totally random. I sometimes get overwhelmed in book stores because there's so much that seems interesting that you have to instinctively narrow down what you're looking for, in order to carve some sort of signal from the noise. That's still the case with this free book thing, but somehow the filter loosens a bit. In any case one of the books I found there recently is an anthology of diary entries, arranged by day of the year. So part of my morning routine is reading the day's entries. And one of the diarists who pops up is Byron
On January 5th, 1821, he wrote:
"Clock strikes - going out to make love, Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. Memorandum - a new screen put up to-day. It is rather antique, but will do with a little repair."
Quoting norm
I haven't read The Possessed (would like to) but I am currently reading The Dispossessed which has this passage:
"Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed."
To my mind, both of these quotes (the possessed & the dispossessed) are at the heart of the heart of the darkness (or at least the antechamber to the heart of the heart) - I want to take a look at it, but we'll see what I can muster on a Sunday afternoon. I'm gonna try to stay afloat in it, but might prematurely post depending where I can get to.
To dovetail with what you said above, It makes sense to me that the hatred that the victimizer feels toward the victim is, first, a self-hatred for having themselves been victimized before. Certain abuses are almost like a virus - a transmission - a passing on of possession. There's a cold mechanics at the heart of the community of wounded souls - it's like a series of wires running silently and invisibly through the body of a river.
There are some permutations
(1)
The person abused learns to identify with a part of themselves that will not be abused anymore. Usually: cynical, detached, ironic. The way you talk with friends has a certain tenor - detached, archly amused, separate, mocking. I think the unconscious intent is to put up a sort of buzzy/electric vibe, to secure a psychically protected zone within the broader sea of human awareness. Maybe groups of people wounded in this way, when brought together, amplify the whole thing - if someone slips up, somebody else 'jokingly' jabs at them; in this way a weak spot in the group 'buzz' is identified and conditioned not to arise again. (Have you ever been to an open mic night at a small comedy club? It's really wild - you can see in real time how people are conditioning one another to live in this sort of environment. It's got this roiling, anxious, tense atmosphere) (another thought: one type of joy can still survive here: but an isolate joy - it has to be an irradiating ecstasy with a still humming edge of darkeness. It is joy in an exploding way that maintains a kind of barrier. Maybe The Doors vs The Grateful Dead. Maybe related: Dostoevsky's ecstasy-inducing seizures. It's all Dostoevsky territory, so to speak.)
In any case, you learn to only respect yourself insofar as you can hold to this tone, and to instinctively disrespect the parts of you can't. And part of the jokey routine of the cynic and ironist is to talk to their friends as though they were someone naive or open enough to believe this or that - it's just part of the psychic equilibrium, a staged 'pretending to be' naive and then a cold laugh - But when you find yourself in this automated habit of thought and speech, talking to an outsider who unexpectedly does buy into it, it cuts through the buzz and opens, at some level, that unprotected field - there's a breach! - and the reflex kicks in : anger and desire to punish. As in The Dispossessed quote - Men's own suppressed, silenced, bestialized inner woman is at the heart of misogyny. The misogynistic act, or jab, has long been-prepared in a self-lacerating space.
(2)
There's another form of misogyny aimed at the Joanna Newsom figure. This isn't someone who unknowingly breaches, as in (1) but who is well aware what the breach is all about and feels a tenderness.
(I never had the belt, but I was held up against a wall, shouted at with deeply cutting words face-to-face and the rest. (I can almost feel the effort at holding my face fixed against this deluge...which now that I think about is cynicism or irony in essence) It's funny, I've minimized it before, and haven't thought of it in forever, basically forgot it, but- it was really scary. I would break down, tears, and mom would come to console me - read books in bed, that kind of thing. )
So part of it is: In offering tenderness, she's dissolving the rigidity you had to assume to withstand the onslaught. Some ambivalence: She's both salving your wounds and rendering you more vulnerable to future ones, which will possibly be deeper.
And another part is: Well why is she with this monster in the first place? Because she is (or at least was) drawn, too, to his 'crying.' Which is to say, in blame-logic: It's because people like her exist (that make monsters feel better) that they can continue to hurt others. And that feels like another of those cold, wires of abuse: the tending to the wound somehow wants the wound, and allows it to perpetuate itself.
So the third, and main, part: She's quick to console you now, but will nonetheless allow the abuse to continue.
So another blame-logic: As an adult, you're drawn to 'consolers', but the person willing to console you as an adult is taking the role to you, that your mother took to your father, the very person who left you in need of consolation.
(To collapse all the nesting dolls, quickly: When I think of Cioran, I am reminded of my own calling out, my own highlighting of a wound. But at the same time, I am very skeptical of what my cry is all about. I suspect that Cioran would not lose his wound; I would. Or at least I would lose my fixation on the wound. And I think there is a way to do it. But that comes from letting down the protective 'buzz' - and that's slow, painstaking - it's a slow-flowing feeling of joy. This space is where Taoism is brilliant, but that's another post)
Ok, I had a few more to go (all my above examples involved someone encountering, rather than pursuing, so much is left out), but that stuff is hard to stay afloat in. "Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. " I'll take a break, and then try to pivot to some of the lighter parts.
Quoting norm
Yes, that's it. The 'everything is one' message can take radically different tones. I find Schopenhauer to be heavy and sodden, while Whitman is envigorating -and it seems to circle around what they make of the central paradox. Schop sees beasts eating beasts - suffocating immanance - a claustrophobic room that everyone is locked in. Whitman sees this profusion of joy that wends upward, like a river of incense incorporating all these tributaries, each flows finally into the same joyous yelp.
And at the same time, I see Whitman's 'yelp' as a joyous exultation that builds on a simple foundation. Everything lived is part of it, and at a certain time it can explode gently and expand upward.If it was always and forever that exultant yelp, it wouldn't have all the brilliant firewood he brings in to sustain the flame. I think a lot of american literature wants the yelp to be the ultimate release and flame, self-fueled ( metaphysically, miraculously, non-dependent on firewood) ----raft down the Mississippi, endlessly flowing, with no anchor or destination. A good mystic state - or even period of your life - but it can only be a part among parts (Kerouac comes to mind)
Quoting norm
Yeah, very much
I think of Julian Sorel worried about keeping a straight face on his way to the guillotine. How to breed a creature capable of making (and keeping) promises. Interiority is carved out by violence and humiliation.
Quoting csalisbury
This issue does seem central, the 'man' and the 'woman.' There's a idea attributed to Freud rightly or wrong that all jokes are about women. 'Only the exaggerations are true.' In another thread about 'rational suicide' I talk about my fantasy of walking into death, alone, fully aware. Why does that seem heroic to me? Why do we like it in Socrates and Christ? Even Joanna Newsom must be a product of violence, at least of some kind of severity of high standards. I also think of Nick in Freaks & Geeks. He's the pot-head narcissist shitty poet who hasn't been shaped by the mocking father. I guess I'm saying that some violence and humiliation is necessary and justified in order to train us into civilized animals (not defending old-fashioned belt whippings, just talking about hurting a kid's feelings sometimes, if they steal, etc.) Interiority depends on repression, of uncouth (often ultimately-selfish 'love' (lust, obsession)) and of course petty aggression. There's something undeciable for me here, though certain extremes I'd obviously reject. If the world is nasty (and my small town was tough for a misfit), then maybe 'dad' should represent the reality principle within limits.
Excellent description. I think that this can morph into a strange brew of confession-and-accusation. I am this, but I am also not this. I think of our conversation right now, which is bold! It would freak some people out in person. They don't have no woman caged up in them, no sir. Or, if they are the new sensitive man, they don't have no tyrant barbarian in them. Our analysis of this situation is aggressive but in the service of naive goodness. It's a dialectical journey. A boy is beaten into the role of a man and eventually becomes daring enough to subvert that role, if not actually relinquishing it.
The skeptic perhaps represses a desire to believe fervently, in a Cause represented perhaps by a man (some weird half-spiritual crush on a youth minister.) There's an ecstasy in debasement, and perhaps that explains the savageness (rude sexuality, superstition) of the woman repressed in a hetero-identified man. The more rational-dominant he imagines himself, the more superstitious-submissive his shadow (which means also those he compulsively misreads in the world.) (I think we agree on this repressed/projected issue.)
Quoting csalisbury
I read Whitman (narrator of Leaves) as a heroic creation of Whitman, a beautiful mask, a fresh image of the noble man.) I mean that he grabbed his strongest self and got it on the page. He's a great example of a poet who's as important as a philosopher. (Really the distinction is a joke for spiritual purposes. )
I find Cioran somewhere in the middle. 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' I recently learned that Cioran and Beckett were friends, that Beckett was a 1-on-1 guy, not a public wit. Cioran makes me believe that he's experienced the highs and lows that my vanity would claim for myself alone. He knows the great vanity of suffering, the enjoyment we can take in despair. Schopenhauer seems to lack this (without ceasing to squirt some accidentally hilarious gloom.) It's his dark cosmic vision of an irrational will at the heart of things, the world as an ultimately senseless machine for making half-sense.
You might find it interesting that Richard Maurice Bucke's book, Cosmic Consciousness, published 1901, and an ur-text of the New Age, considers Walt Whitman an example of the genre. He gives an account of his meeting with Whitman here, and says (referring to himself in the third person)
Excellent point. And this reminds me of friends who could not give the party a break, who did not do the 'banal' stuff to keep a woman* or a job (who did not grow up, who could therefore not make art for adults, or consider that making art is not all there is in life.) The firewood must be chopped, and often it's not bad to calmly chop some firewood. (I have a public-facing job, so it's more like the low-grade stress that's OK if things are functioning.) A side point, but it's also tiresome to be obsessed with making Art. I love the theme of idleness in Cioran. Yeah we are all sensitive and we love art, but maybe it's tiresome to hear about someone's self-realizing Creativity. I'm thinking of something like 'life itself and conversation is the [s]true art[/s] main thing.' Creativity is spontaneously, inescapable, doesn't necessarily need the hype. I make up goofy songs with my wife when we clean the kitchen. I make voices for our pets. I love making her laugh. It's goofy rather than grand but great. Opposed to that is the dark side of artistic vanity, which in my experience has been connected with that infinite drift down ol' miss.
Maybe it means that the part of us that understands the sayings is the universal part that we all have in common. The flame leaps from candle to candle. The candles are egos-masks-names that come and go. The best in us burns on. In that sense, death is an illusion experienced by our pettier selves. This might connect with disaster and loss as the way to the cross. When we are drunk on success and the pride of life, we're deeply identified with a face and a name, with our mortal part. It's when we fall off our horse and suffer that we soften our hearts and open our eyes to the depths of others, to our connection to them.
FWIW, I don't think in terms of soul-stuff or body-stuff, or some clean separation of the ego and the inner christ, etc. I'm OK with a continuum. I'm OK with imperfect metaphors that get some part of it right. The whole 'I can forgive death because I see myself --the important stuff-- 'reincarnated' in the next generation' speaks to me anyway, though it remains a finite consideration. Fuck, the species itself is doomed in long run! So maybe one forgives death for other reasons, or one is just too tired even to forgive or accuse.
Yes. In good and bad ways.
What are the good and bad ways?
The good way works in both directions. I read lots of old books and sometimes a line captures my reality so well on such an important point that I experience a relief that something has been said. It's as if one big shared soul has been crystallized and manifested, just a little bit more. I often think of philosophy as abstract poetry. It's about getting across a way of being, a mode, a station on the way. (I'm excluding the dreary technical stuff that doesn't interest me much anymore.) So that's me reincarnating them. But I project the process into the future.
(We could also talk about there being only a small set of 'eternal' realizations, the same old human returning to the same old insight in thousands of languages and styles. The wheel of life, reproduction and death, the old mystery.)
I also have a nephew, just learning to talk, and there's the subcultural identification of the core of all of us. Love wraps itself up in a complicated competitive exoskeleton and set of skills. What seems deepest is love, curiosity, courage, the usual fundamental virtues. These shine through details, make the diaphanous details glow with significance.
I would even include the responses to representations of virtue in TV shows, for instance. Our response to virtue is a kind of participation in it. I can only cry sentimental tears in front of screens, because someone did something sweet/noble on Downton Abby.
The bad way is catching yourself blaming or despising someone (maybe an annoying stranger) and remembering how one did that stuff when young or still makes excuses to do that same stuff at times even today. Another item: La Rochefoucauld wrote something like only vanity is offended by vanity. How dare you claim to have the secret or be special! I have it, you silly motherfucker! Very hard to talk about any of this stuff without somehow imposing, displacing, offending. It's all so pugnacious. Wisdom-talk stains the silence, but I'm glad to have read certain books....
Nice quote.
Thanks. He's cranks out all sorts of goodies. He'll put a grim smile on your face. In the most recent translation I've seen (Tancock) the quote is:
If we were without pride, we should not object to pride in others.
But the other translation used 'vanity' in some other phrase.
I don't know which is better.
Another:
Our promises are made in proportion to our hopes, but kept in proportion to our fears.
Yeah, in terms of parenting - like in terms of how one ought to parent - It's undecidable for me too. Ideally, a dad would do his best to clock what emotional space the kid was, enter that space, and talk to him directly from within it. A tall order, and obviously impossibly to do consistently - I'm not a parent, & understand that it must be very hard- but if you grant this ideal as a hypothetical, at least, then, at it's best, it has he potential to not only avoid the extremes, but kind of dissolve the framework. Realistically, even as an ideal, it could only be a kind of guiding star.
I think of my grandfather here. We'd do jigsaw puzzles - quiet and low-key, little verbal communication, he'd point out pieces, we'd organize them etc. But he would also, occasionally, ask me very direct questions or make very direct statements about this or that thing I did. They were value-judgments but they were neither mean or coddling. They were matter-of-fact. It allowed me to reflect on things, without feeling at risk. I think something about the shared project, the stillness, and the directness allowed him to get to my conscience much more effectively, than drilling his way in.
I don't think this is a wishy-washy absence of severity - I think it was quite severe in its own way. If the Reality Principle is a lion your kid's going to have to face down one day, then what he'll need to learn most of all is perception patience, timing, stillness - what you learn on the hunt. If you 'eat' your kids, the way the lion could (if you only focus on the eating)- well, they might have a leg-up on this or that coddled schoolmate, having at least some familiarity with force and violence - but they still haven't learned any of the softer, quieter, skills that are necessary face to face with the Lion. What they've really learned is a traumatic [NOT THAT] that shocks and shakes them, and only slowly, as it subsides, leaves them feeling they have to construct a defense against. Not having guidance, they assume stances & attitudes and then compulsively play them out (again, they have a leg up on the coddled kids, who have no defense against any familiarity with violence, and will experience the stances and attitudes to be sources of - rather than weak reactions against - true force. As the anthropology books all seem to say, in communities of hunter, there is a great respect for the lion, and the hunt is very intimate, and measured.)
As an adult, since I had so few of those experiences with my grandfather, and many rougher experiences with my father, I feel like I have to sort of reparent myself out of it. The dostoevskian mold (my father's, for sure) has a hold on part of me, but it seems like something worth slowly, delicately, wriggling out of, like an old skin. (& don't get me wrong, I think Dostoevsky is an incredible writer, but I mean that his morality is always at fever-dream extremes with holy men and monsters, saints and whores, resentment and absolution (or it goes 2nd order and its about regular people driven by internalized models of holy men and monsters, saints and whores) - & I guess I could plausibly be accused of going 3rd order here - but I think maybe I'm saying that as the dostoesvkian orbit oscillates from this to that extreme, its possible - if you plan right, wait patiently - to find the alignment that makes it possible to pounce on, say, Chekhov, let him pounce back, and carry on into that orbit.
Definitely. Time-traveling a second, I posted the one you're responding to after nibbling on some chocolate edibles, and I guess I nibbled more than I'd meant - I was very much surfing some inner waves - the, uh, phenomenology of it was these vivid 'pictures' (mix of images, memories, thoughts) coming to mind that were sort of being draped onto the structure of what we were talking about. I think it was something like I have been this and often still am, but somehow it came out a weird mix of pseudo-psychiatric ('the individual who undergoes this, will often go on to do this') and sort of vibe-sketching. Long story short - I do often tend to the confessional and accusational, but in this particular case was actually coming from a different primary space, one I don't usually post on here while I'm in it. Though now thisresponse is tending confessional.
You're right though, this conversation does have that same boundary-drawing buzz, in some spots, as the one I was describing. It's weird online, there's something a little different, something shifts, but I wouldn't know how to pinpoint that, at least just now.
Quoting norm
There is definitely a lot of heroism in Whitman, but I have to say I get from him a sort of rolling movement that goes well beyond him - he's just one part of it. I'd go so far as to say I don't think it's a mask at all (though of course it isn't the whole man.) Edit: But I would like to add that we may be describing the same thing in different words, I'm not sure.
Ah, yeah, you know. I believe that Beckett was great to fun to be around. Like, his stuff is funny. & Cioran too, at times, occasionally. I've found that the saddest people are the most fun to be around , at least when they aren't talking solemnly about the sad stuff.
As I was saying to norm, I had a pretty profound mystic-like experience when I was about 20 - it does kind of fill you with this desire to talk about, and to explain it to people. At the same time - that's kind of a weird thing because it sort of puts the source 'out there', it was this thing that happened to you, and now you're trying to establish its reality - which is why it's cool that that dude slowly felt it become a part of himself.
The end of that passage feels like it could either be happy or sad, depending on how he felt about it. There is something to be said for not trying to spread the good news. I read the New Testament a couple years ago for the first time (besides scattered readings at mass and sunday school as a kid) and St. Paul is intense - vain, insecure, bombastic, flattering, pressuring, grandiloquent, self-deprecating, inciting rivalry - on and on and on. I empathize, because I have been all these things, often continue to be, and never more so than when I was trying to live my life in witnessing relation to the strange experience I'd had, and convince others of it. But I found it hard to like the guy on like an object-level wavelength.
At a certain point, it feels best to stop persuading others of it, and live its ramifications. What's hard, I think, is that its ramifications are much harder to suss out than the fact of its happening. But there's something maybe compulsive in establishing it, after a while. But that's where faith comes in! You don't have to say that it is, once you can find a way to hold that it is. I think some of the tussles we've had in the past revolve around the spiritual-defining-itself-against-the non-spiritual using the trappings of scientific legitimacy. I still feel that way, I'll admit, but I think the exit from that is just ----release. Imagine Whitman citing books, establishing their pedigree etc, before feeling allowed to then write ecstatic poems. At a point, you just have to jump.
Possibly, you have your sister & your sister's kid over, you cook a meal, you put on some music. You play some games with the kid, you talk to your sister about what's going on in her life. Everyone feels relaxed and safe, and free to talk. I feel like these moments - experienced in this way - are surprisingly rare for most people, but when they happen, and really happen, tap back into old memories of stuff as a kid, and establishes this continuity that you can feel is outside death. You inherit the capacity to reach that zone, and then you continue to reach that zone, if you can. But the simplicity of saying it is misleading - its another palette or tone, that feels meaningful and simple when you're in it. As always, it bottoms out in the mystic idea of love as fundamental. What do you do with love?
Ah! somehow I missed this the first time. I really like this approach, and agree. I find myself using cultural touchstones as shorthand all the time in just this way. I like clarifying it in the way you're describing, like - 'I'm going to introduce this piece to the board, so to speak, as a temporary placeholder for this aspect' Introduced in that way, you can continue the conversation, without having to worry about the conversation degrading into others offering counterexamples for the mere sake of proving you factually wrong. If they do offer valid counterexamples, you can say: fair point, I'll give a new name for this thing I'm talking about. And if the counterexamples enrich the thing you're talking about, modify it, make you realize it was off etc all the better.
Yes, that's exactly it. And this goes back to a certain generous and open spirit that resists temptations to be boringly factually correct about what is not relevant here and now. (This fits in with the theme I harp on elsewhere about ambiguity and context and blind skill.) Perhaps you've also noted how easy and natural this is with people who don't think of themselves as intellectuals. I have great conversations with true friends that haven't read any of my favorite books. The whole I'm-smart compulsion can be such an enemy. There's a peer-to-peer attitude that people have antenna for (I'm OK, You're OK.) They can sense when the conversation is condescending or aggressive. Bit digressive, but I was just posting about pissing contests.
Just for clarification, what I was getting it was that we were/are using dragon-skills to defend the princess. I imagine you (and myself) as having sharp claws, by which I mean the psychological insight and intellectual artillery to surgically strike another ego. But instead of playing that game, we use those tools to subvert or civilize that game, showing it as essentially vulnerable. I'm not saying we're the first, but every situation is slightly new.
I feel bad about the mask metaphor. I guess I just mean that I don't remember any jokes in Whitman. It's more like he shows a part of his high self. He was probably hilarious too, but left that out.
In spades, yeah. Most of my friends aren't 'intellectuals' (i put the scare quotes because they're more interesting than most intellectuals I talk to, just haven't read the books) I guess aggression is ok, if its respectful (that classic thing of men bonding most after getting in a tussle - real, i think!) but condescension is an absolute killer. I think the whole goal is to bring yourself as well you can to a creative space where transformation can happen - there's something about a certain kind of a correction that is kind of like calling the teacher in when things get too real. That's it's core, anyway, but it gets clothed in faux-authority (i'm the teacher now!). You can feel it happen - people around a campfire, building - someone comes in 'well, but ...' and then a sort of silence that lingers until someone finds a way to start back up, slowly.
I agree. Or more specifically: what world is that kid being trained for? If he's stuck in the underclass or in some war-torn place, perhaps harshness is actually best But to rise in peacetime capitalism is very much about soft skills. Violence is done to and by poor people (though often directed by the rich.)
Quoting csalisbury
That sounds great. I wish I had had one adult who would have reasoned with me. Ham On Rye reminds me of my childhood. Or Fante's The Road To Los Angeles. I was half-freak, half-geek, athletic but alienated. My Norton anthology was a bible at 16. Now I think 'wow, team sports are great idea!.' I'd also not spank my kids if I ever had any. I'd reason with them. But then I'm getting old, while my father was just a confused person in his 20s in an unhappy marriage...and his father was far more severe than he was (told him 'I love you' just once in his life, when he was already an old man.)
The word 'intellectual' is actually hilarious. What's a better word? I can't deny being proud in some way of what I've got from books, but maybe I'm even more proud of not taking them too seriously. I clung to a certain identity tangled up with those books. I definitely annoyed people in my youth. I wince at how combative and pretentious I've been. Fante's portrait of himself in his first book is just painfully accurate. It's funny in that way that hurts.
Anyone, condescension is indeed the killer. Someone wrote that contempt inspires hate. I think that's true. I like the passing-the-half-pint-around-the-campfire image. 'Where two or three are gathered (in my name) without condescension, I am there.'
As far as the post-fight thing goes, that makes sense. Less illusion. The good stuff is a fragile shared state. Everyone is a sinner. It's about the purity of a moment.
Very true. He's a thunderstorm. Some TV shows are like that. It's hyper-dense. I do wonder if the screens will take over because of the dramatic density they offer. Novels take work. TV shows blast you out of everyday life, and the good ones are profound. It's not exactly escapism.
Nah you're good. It goes back to what we were talking about pieces introduced. I've been reading a lot about masks discussed in a certain way that was different that what I wanted to get at with Whitman, and that's where that came from. At the same time, you raise a good point about his lack of humor - I really like Whitman but my all time favorite is John Ashbery, and I think it comes down exactly to that. He can bring you to these whirling places, and then just insert this perfect low-key line that is hilarious in context.
Quoting norm
Yeah, good point. I've knocked on about my past a lot on here, so quickly: mom was poor, dad was waspy. This was my paternal grandfather, so waspy. Middle class childhood ('good kid') -divorce - dad's gone - community does a volte-face ('bad kid") and I think I've been on both sides (no idea where I am now.)
But I still think the general approach is true. I did better with even the 'rough' kids through soft skills. And I should clarify 'soft skills.' It means one thing when you're talking about knowing what beats to hit to signal class-membership in an interview - that's soft indeed. But it can also be just understanding someone from a few angles, and talking to them in a way that isn't claws first (though maybe with the implicit threat of claws)- that seems to hold across class lines in my experience. I don't mean soft like 'kid-gloves' but again in that sense that dicey real world interactions often require you to be patient, perceptive, and still (think of boxers - its less about brute force, than being able to still fear, and see the enemy) I usually wasn't good at this, I don't want to talk myself up, but when I was it worked.
This all sounds right to me. I think (I hope!) that I've learned to operate effectively, but I had to do it the hard way. I remember being singled-out in grammar school. I was given a winter jacket by a teacher, a ball with my name on it. My memories are few of this time, but I chalk it up to my parents being themselves very awkward. They didn't have good social skills to teach me. I also remember getting in trouble for stalking a little girl and busting the mouth of one of her knightly defenders. This was maybe 4th grade. But I did well on a standardized test and was put in a smart kid's class, so I went from priding myself on the badass jets I could draw to being a strong reader. I also had a mentally disabled sibling. That didn't help! I was fortunate to be a tallish mesomorph. I had the hardware but not the software. If I could do it all again,...
Oh man I love this - it's so easy to laugh at drawing badass jets, and to forget that a lot of - this - is also drawing badass jets. I was a shit drawer - still am - but there was a kid in my class who drew these wild mazes, you had to navigate. You go here to get this thing, and once you have that power up, it lets you go tho this place etc. - he was like a rockstar for those mazes, at the time. It was like he was this strange shaman. It's funny to think of how these same impulses work themselves out as you grow older.
I haven't read Ham or Rye (I've read some Bukowski, but just the poems) or Fante, but I think I'm picking up on the vibe you're describing., & I think we dovetail at the pretension in high school and beyond.
I've always had a kind of split thing with internet forums. I started posting on the imdb forums in middle school, or early high school, while my irl approach drifted into a kind of volatile mitch hedberg-y comedian vibe . Basically my whole thing on here - which is me, but not me - is an extension of the imdb thing i was trying to do, writing about 2001: A Space Odyssey at 14. Somewhere around senior year, I tried to draw the two things together, which worked for a while, but became unworkable (good enough when you're young & teenage/early 20 handsome, grating as you get older).
The forums are weird. I don't think I'll ever be able to break the foundation, when posting online, of being a socially marginal middle schooler arguing movies for self-imagined prestige. I can sort of get around it, but its basically that (now with fancy philosophers and literature!.) I've been meaning to wind down recently, actually, because I've been going through some positive changes in my life, and this forum-persona is feeling like something I need to let go for now. But I wanted to sort of bring our conversation to a good spot, because I enjoy our talks, I think it lets something beyond that forum-persona shine through. Before tonight it kind of felt like there was just something left more to say in our recent convo, and it felt weird to cut out before saying it. This feels like a good spot to me. As always, good talking, and catch you on the next orbit.
This is an excellent point, it's drawing jets, most of it, things that fly. By the way, I once drew such a sweet little jet (perfect sideview was my jam) that another kid would not believed that I drew it. I was offended and yet delighted.
Quoting csalisbury
Indeed, and may your journeys in the IRL be fascinating in the meantime!
In terms of divinely authority, I agree 100%. But the stories are great.
Why should I care if I am beheaded, or you are? But I do. I don't pretend it is rational though.
A book is holy to the extent that people do care about it in a reverential way. If one happens to care about other people, one will usually somewhat care about the things they care about. First one cares about something, and from there one can reason what one should do. One cannot reason one's way to what one should care about, not even to caring about oneself.
Yep. One can reason one's way towards an ideal, but lived experience is not purely rational.
The Bible came down as a single document at one point, but I know the individual stories are far older than the Tanakh. One of the earliest examples of writing is a clay fragment that has the Noah story on it. Some details are different, the Ark is more of a giant basket, but the animals coming "two by two," is in there.
Notably, it pre-dates historical evidence for Jews as a people existing by many centuries, going back really to the birth of writing and civilization in Mesopotamia.
The transmigration of souls, central to many Gnostic variants, shows up in Greece far earlier. It's possible it made its way into Greek thought via the Orphic Cult, which in turn was influenced by Hindu thought. Certainly there is some striking similarities between Buddhism and Gnosticism. It could be convergent evolution, or influence.
Homer's Greeks had a vision of the soul much more like early Hebrew Sheol. A shade was a place shadow of a once living man.
Sometimes I wonder how much the Greeks really Hellenized the areas they conquered, as opposed to being variously Egyptized and Hinduized themselves over time.