Otherness, Forgiveness, And the Cycle of Human Oppression
Hi all,
I used to mainly lurk over at philosophyforums.com (I guess it shut down?). I recognize some of you from there, so I joined here, and in an effort to flesh out some thoughts of mine, I'm starting this thread.
I’m politically independent and avoid politics most of the time (this thread isn't really about politics, although that's initially what I have to talk about to get to my concept), but with all of these issues involving the DAPL, Trump's election, systemic racism, Syria, other problems in other countries like Brexit, and the sheer depth of ideological division in the US right now, it has my mind churning with thoughts about oppression, suffering, and division.
Please hang in there past the initial politics, if you can. Apologies to those outside the US who might not be interested in our political problems. This post isn’t ultimately about those problems. Slog through if you can.
In broad strokes, the courtroom-language of Protestantism, which provides the backdrop for how the Conservative right thinks about the world, is one of possibly many seeds that has given birth to current forms of oppression. What I mean by that is the Protestant metaphor of "God as judge", mankind as "on trial”, depraved by nature and deserving eternal conscious torment. In this mythos of the Gospel, Jesus is a sacrifice offered in place of us. Now the onus is on us to "accept Jesus" to avoid the eternal conscious torment we deserve. God throws us a bone. This is the unconscious way of viewing the world that fuels politically conservative Protestants in the US. This framework has lead to a disintegration of the ability to empathize with suffering because of a conditional/punitive conception of Christian Love that encourages avoidance of other's suffering for the sake of self-preservation; it’s the fear-driven impulse to remain "in the fold". The view begins with humanity as depraved, rather than sacred. Here we see an example of the "Us vs. Them", or "Fear of the Other" mindset that permeates virtually all cultures throughout history up to the present.
Which leads to the other side of the political aisle. "Fear of the Other" still holds sway on the left as well. This time, The Other is the political right, with their inability to empathize, their greed, their apathy about social issues. The result of this form of Otherness is a strangely religious fanaticism that gives birth to a self-righteous spirit of disdain for their political rivals. Conservatives are the last stragglers who haven’t climbed the last rock face to the plateau of equality. The irony here is that equality should require no effort from anyone. Merit based equality is a sham. So the progressive left, the champions of many forms of equality - racial, sexual, socioeconomic - don't succeed in freeing themselves from the bondage of Otherness. While striving to champion the oppressed, they vilify the oppressor. This type of aggression always comes from fanaticism, and fanaticism always leads to oppression. Both political sides are at once oppressors and oppressed, they dynamically move within this dichotomy. Ultimately this is always true because Otherness is the true esoteric bondage that lies beneath the exoteric bondage of social oppression. Both oppressor and oppressed are equally in bondage to Otherness.
Just like conservativism, progressivism has it’s roots in Christianity. While conservativism still drags around the corpse of God while being unable to enact Christian love, progressivism left the corpse far behind while trying to enact Christian love without the inner spiritual life that gave birth to the concept. The atheistic conception of human equality has no real metaphysical basis, and so it naturally distills into a watered down emotionalism, or gives birth to laughable fads like the new atheists, all under the banner of a triumphant humanism. Again, the progressive liberal call for equality has no living basis, only a dead Christian one. But the call for equality is still something felt deeply by many people; maybe the basis for equality is not dead but just lies dormant. But the tragedy of the age is that there seems to be no inner spiritual foundation for the call to equality, and this poverty of the spirit leads to a perpetuation of Otherness, of Us vs. Them. Humanism as a secular view of life has no means of overcoming Otherness. Instead the energy of the humanistic spirit has been directed at generating countless scientific and technological means that have no apparent ends because of the lack of a spiritual foundation for understanding oppression and the human condition. But I should be careful not to equate humanism with progressivism. Capitalism plays a profound role in the humanistic project of technological innovation. Again, the lines between oppressor and oppressed become blurred.
True equality means the abolition of all punishment of the oppressor by way of forgiveness; equality is possible only through forgiveness. This is not something handed to us from on high, but something acted out in the human person. And yet the coming of the Christ is the mythical generation of this process. Some early church fathers saw this, but were gradually overshadowed by the crystallization of courtroom Christianity. In our age, the entry-point into forgiveness is apophatic: we see the lack of forgiveness first. With our imaginations, we can envision a world transfigured by forgiveness, but we may have no experience of that world. This is forgiveness: Otherness is dissolved and the divide between oppressor and oppressed is destroyed, and this transfigures the spiritual identity of both. Forgiveness is a turning-inside-out, or rather a turning-outside-in. The outer side of oppression carried by the oppressed becomes the inner side of forgiveness that transfigures the oppressor. The outer side of hate that fuels the oppressor becomes the inner side of freedom that transfigures the oppressed. Only the oppressed themselves can facilitate this mutual transfiguration.
The question for me is how forgiveness can be brought about in the real world; does it lie dormant as the kindling beneath humanism? If so, humanism would have to rediscover the inner divine life of humanity and rebuild a new spiritual structure. If this happens, it will look different than both Christianity and humanism/atheism/transhumanism, etc.
I used to mainly lurk over at philosophyforums.com (I guess it shut down?). I recognize some of you from there, so I joined here, and in an effort to flesh out some thoughts of mine, I'm starting this thread.
I’m politically independent and avoid politics most of the time (this thread isn't really about politics, although that's initially what I have to talk about to get to my concept), but with all of these issues involving the DAPL, Trump's election, systemic racism, Syria, other problems in other countries like Brexit, and the sheer depth of ideological division in the US right now, it has my mind churning with thoughts about oppression, suffering, and division.
Please hang in there past the initial politics, if you can. Apologies to those outside the US who might not be interested in our political problems. This post isn’t ultimately about those problems. Slog through if you can.
In broad strokes, the courtroom-language of Protestantism, which provides the backdrop for how the Conservative right thinks about the world, is one of possibly many seeds that has given birth to current forms of oppression. What I mean by that is the Protestant metaphor of "God as judge", mankind as "on trial”, depraved by nature and deserving eternal conscious torment. In this mythos of the Gospel, Jesus is a sacrifice offered in place of us. Now the onus is on us to "accept Jesus" to avoid the eternal conscious torment we deserve. God throws us a bone. This is the unconscious way of viewing the world that fuels politically conservative Protestants in the US. This framework has lead to a disintegration of the ability to empathize with suffering because of a conditional/punitive conception of Christian Love that encourages avoidance of other's suffering for the sake of self-preservation; it’s the fear-driven impulse to remain "in the fold". The view begins with humanity as depraved, rather than sacred. Here we see an example of the "Us vs. Them", or "Fear of the Other" mindset that permeates virtually all cultures throughout history up to the present.
Which leads to the other side of the political aisle. "Fear of the Other" still holds sway on the left as well. This time, The Other is the political right, with their inability to empathize, their greed, their apathy about social issues. The result of this form of Otherness is a strangely religious fanaticism that gives birth to a self-righteous spirit of disdain for their political rivals. Conservatives are the last stragglers who haven’t climbed the last rock face to the plateau of equality. The irony here is that equality should require no effort from anyone. Merit based equality is a sham. So the progressive left, the champions of many forms of equality - racial, sexual, socioeconomic - don't succeed in freeing themselves from the bondage of Otherness. While striving to champion the oppressed, they vilify the oppressor. This type of aggression always comes from fanaticism, and fanaticism always leads to oppression. Both political sides are at once oppressors and oppressed, they dynamically move within this dichotomy. Ultimately this is always true because Otherness is the true esoteric bondage that lies beneath the exoteric bondage of social oppression. Both oppressor and oppressed are equally in bondage to Otherness.
Just like conservativism, progressivism has it’s roots in Christianity. While conservativism still drags around the corpse of God while being unable to enact Christian love, progressivism left the corpse far behind while trying to enact Christian love without the inner spiritual life that gave birth to the concept. The atheistic conception of human equality has no real metaphysical basis, and so it naturally distills into a watered down emotionalism, or gives birth to laughable fads like the new atheists, all under the banner of a triumphant humanism. Again, the progressive liberal call for equality has no living basis, only a dead Christian one. But the call for equality is still something felt deeply by many people; maybe the basis for equality is not dead but just lies dormant. But the tragedy of the age is that there seems to be no inner spiritual foundation for the call to equality, and this poverty of the spirit leads to a perpetuation of Otherness, of Us vs. Them. Humanism as a secular view of life has no means of overcoming Otherness. Instead the energy of the humanistic spirit has been directed at generating countless scientific and technological means that have no apparent ends because of the lack of a spiritual foundation for understanding oppression and the human condition. But I should be careful not to equate humanism with progressivism. Capitalism plays a profound role in the humanistic project of technological innovation. Again, the lines between oppressor and oppressed become blurred.
True equality means the abolition of all punishment of the oppressor by way of forgiveness; equality is possible only through forgiveness. This is not something handed to us from on high, but something acted out in the human person. And yet the coming of the Christ is the mythical generation of this process. Some early church fathers saw this, but were gradually overshadowed by the crystallization of courtroom Christianity. In our age, the entry-point into forgiveness is apophatic: we see the lack of forgiveness first. With our imaginations, we can envision a world transfigured by forgiveness, but we may have no experience of that world. This is forgiveness: Otherness is dissolved and the divide between oppressor and oppressed is destroyed, and this transfigures the spiritual identity of both. Forgiveness is a turning-inside-out, or rather a turning-outside-in. The outer side of oppression carried by the oppressed becomes the inner side of forgiveness that transfigures the oppressor. The outer side of hate that fuels the oppressor becomes the inner side of freedom that transfigures the oppressed. Only the oppressed themselves can facilitate this mutual transfiguration.
The question for me is how forgiveness can be brought about in the real world; does it lie dormant as the kindling beneath humanism? If so, humanism would have to rediscover the inner divine life of humanity and rebuild a new spiritual structure. If this happens, it will look different than both Christianity and humanism/atheism/transhumanism, etc.
Comments (104)
A very well-written and deeply-felt post. I think you plainly have a spiritual calling. I perfectly agree in your observations about the sham Churchianity of left and right, but you have to question the motivation behind it. If it really did originate with selflessness and compassion, then would it take those kinds of forms? I think not. On the other hand, I suspect there are many pretty well invisible Christians on all sides of the spectrum, who serve without making a lot of noise about it. The 'invisible Church', as it has been called.
Now, I don't self-identify as Christian, I too have an inclination towards the spiritual but for me it has taken the form of Buddhism. One of the best books in that genre that I read was subtitled 'seeking truth in a world of chaos'. That was published in 1987, but it is more true than ever; the amount of chaos is surely growing all the time, like a feedback loop. So I think it's essential to try and find some inner simplicity and peace in all of this chaos. That may not manifest as a big deal, it might simply be receptivity and sensitivity, but also the strength which comes from realising a sense of identity beyond the simply personal. Actually something which has grown out of the meditation I have been practicing is a general sense of compassion. There is a source of that which you have to tap into. I think that is the meaning of such Christian sayings as 'drinking of the water of which I speak'. It isn't specifically Christian, any more than water itself is Christian, but it is real.
Part of the problem in the West is the 'belief vs atheism' dichotomy. The way religious belief became defined as requiring an absolute affirmation of the existence of God inevitably tended towards to the kind of Theism vs Atheism dichotomy that we see playing out in Western culture. I have the feeling that the seeds for this were laid in the formation of the Roman church and it has been playing itself out ever since. It has created a kind of cultural shadow around the whole question of religious belief in the West, which tends towards either fundamentalism on one side and atheism on the other. But I recall as an undergrad, I formed the view that much of modern philosophy is built around the systematic attempt to replace God as the foundation of culture - like an 'anything but God' (explored by Terry Eagleton in Culture and the Death of God)
It might be worth reading up some on the original renaissance humanists - Pico Della Mirabella, Ficino, and Erasmus are three that come to mind. (I don't mean, reading their works in entirety as they are large and require considerable scholarship). But the point about the original humanists is, while they were very critical of the Church (and got into strife for it), they were by no means atheist. They sought to re-invigorate the classical philosophical tradition (Ficino, for instance, translated Plato into Latin). Humanism has to be built around deep philosophical roots, it can't built around evolutionary theory in my opinion, as the only driver for that is survival (and no, I'm not an ID advocate).
I think Buddhist humanism is the best overall option, but there are others. But they have to combine spirituality and science, respect for human rights but also a genuine moral code. And it's a tall order.
You're politically independent and yet when the Right wins there is a problem (seemingly) and yet, when the Left was winning, no problem. When Obama was there, no problem. Having the Supreme Court enforce the progressive agenda, that to you, while a little bit oppressive, was good. It certainly wasn't enough to motivate a post, or motivate outrage. But Donald Trump and the conservatives around him like Mike Pence winning - oh that's outrageous! That definitely deserves a post >:O
Quoting Noble Dust
It seems you view conflict as oppressive. Not all of us equate oppression with conflict. The world is conflictual - that doesn't necessarily mean it is oppressive.
Quoting Noble Dust
You mean the CHRISTIAN metaphor of God as a judge, and of mankind as depraved and deserving of punishment.
"A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies" Nahum 1:2
Quoting Noble Dust
That's because maybe we are depraved, and should thus at least admit to it. A disease cannot be cured without recognition.
Quoting Noble Dust
And how else should it be? Should God reward people regardless of what they do, and regardless of how they behave and act?
Quoting Noble Dust
Again, you assume later in your post that we should live in equality. I disagree.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes many forms of equality - equality which puts EVIL and GOOD on the same footing. Of course, any religious person would oppose such equality. Such equality is evil, and should be opposed on all accounts. Evil is not to be trifled with, but must be dealt with with strength.
Quoting Noble Dust
Nope. I don't feel it. I don't want an equal world. An equal world would be hell as far as I'm concerned. That would indeed be an oppressive world. It seems to me you need to learn about this:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C. S. Lewis
Quoting Noble Dust
Nope. This is not Christian, nor Biblical.
Quoting Noble Dust
How is it possible? How can God forgive Satan, while Satan remains Satan? That would be madness! Forgiveness is the response to repentance - to a change of heart. God forgives the thief next to Jesus on the Cross who repents. Who feels sorry for what he has done, who feels and acknowledges that he fully deserves punishment, and who, somehow, even desires the punishment.
That's who will be forgiven. That's who is deserving of forgiveness. You list Nietzsche as one of your favourite philosophers, and yet you preach equality and forgiveness in the wrong sense. Nietzsche would have found that despicable - equivalent to slave morality.
You say you are from NYC in your profile. Literarily one of the most progressive cities on the planet. It seems no wonder that your sense of morality has taken such a turn given that fact. Many people these days take religion in vain - they don't even know what their Holy Book, depending on which religion they are, teaches. Christianity is clear - only righteousness will go to Heaven, while evil and immorality is going to the fire to burn.
Quoting Noble Dust
Only when the progressives and those on the right drop their immoralities. Only then can it be realised. When they stop the debauchery, when they surrender their lives to God and to goodness, righteousness and justice. This means they stop breaking his law.
That kind of conception of God results in conflict as a matter of course, because we tend to differ in our opinions in various respects and as we think God prefers us we think those not like us are not preferred by God, but are in fact disliked by God. So, we act accordingly.
Surprisingly, this conception of God as (I think) very small, limited and something of a busybody wasn't favored by some even in ancient times when we didn't know of the vastness of the universe. So I like to think that we're not fated to worship Big Daddy.
But if anything, all this would mean is that God is obsessed with human well-being - because what you eat, how you dress, your sexual preferences, and so forth they all affect your well-being, that's their common denominator.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I don't think this is true. The reason for conflict is that some folks want their women to dress decently (according to whatever they set that standard to be, whether it's wearing hijabs, or skirts longer than knee length and so forth) - a rightful desire in its own right - and others don't, and think that's abuse (and other seemingly minor differences like that, with regards to food, sexual preference, and so forth). Therefore the two of them cannot get along, and will never get along. They cannot coexist without quarelling either, because what one does, will affect the other. There is only one sun in the sky and only one image of how it's "cool" to be in the world. If the progressive controls that image, conservatives cannot get their way. Their kids will be tempted to join in the way of life of progressives, because that's the cool thing to do. Their husbands, their wives, they will all be broken apart, slowly but surely, by an ideology which is the opposite of theirs. And the opposite also holds true. There is no solution, each must play their part in history and bat for their team. What Noble Dust suggests - that kind of forgiveness, that's basically giving the world over to progressives, and even he admits as such, for he doesn't oppose progressive ideology - only their manner of enforcing it - he does admit that's it's the "right" way.
Someone like me on the other hand, unashamedly bats for his team :D - does their duty.
So I guess my whole point is this. This "acceptance" doctrines, which include New Age, and all that nonsense - that's nothing but the progressive using a subterfuge - setting the terrain so that he may win. That's all Noble Dust is doing here. Figuring out how it's best to set the terrain, how it's best to blackmail man's moral goodness in order to get his way, and thus make a certain position - conservatism - unacceptable. Nothing more, and nothing less than the pure pursuit of a political agenda, and what upsets me isn't that he's pursuing it - it's that he's pretending to do otherwise. I'm not pretending - I fully acknowledge that I have a political agenda, and I do - I want the world to be a certain way.
Oh, so all of these are problems? Most informative.
Quoting Noble Dust
Not all conservatives are Protestants.
Quoting Noble Dust
Actually it does. It's most often materialism.
Quoting Noble Dust
It can't, without human beings fundamentally changing their nature.
On to the important stuff. I don't equate conflict with oppression. They are absolutely a dynamic dychotomy, though. Both are nessisary to bring about the Kingdom of God. Sounds like we probably agree on that. What are your thoughts on oppression?
The metaphor of God as judge isn't part of the eastern orthodox tradition. Or it's at least marginal and not central. *shrug*
I can definitely entertain the idea of us being depraved. I grew up with this view. It's something I go back and forth on. For me, I think it was detrimental to my psyche and developement. I didn't grow up with a sense of my own value or worth, thanks to my Evengelical upbringing. The existentialist in me wants to say that because it can be so detrimental to growth, it's a harmful belief. It sounds like you accept penal substituinary atonement, is that correct? I recently have been attracted to Christus Victor, I think that's where a lot of our disagreements are stemming from. How do you derive any sense of self worth from the idea that your entire eternal destiny rests on God throwing you a bone? ;( it's such an oppressive way of viewing yourself. I'm speaking from experience. You are more valuable and beautiful than that. Original Depravity seems to view human nature as worthless, moving towards value only through a fear-of-hell based acceptance of Jesus' sacrifice. Fear based views are ALWAYS, always a form of enslavement. You are absolutely enslaved to fear if you hold this view. That's the only thing I'll be firm and risk being confontational about. So on the other hand, I'm beginning to view human nature as unaware of it's divine value, and going through a painful process of waking up to and taking hold of it's value, a process jump started by Christ's impregnation of unconditional love (of which forgiveness is an essential aspect) into the world. The surpeme moment of Kairos entering Cronos. There's a mysterious divine-human link; Berdyaev says God is awaiting a revelation from man. This requires a free creative act which can only be substantiated through a conciousness that apprehends it's own inherent sacred value, formed in the bosom of the divine itself. There is absolutely no such thing as divine love if you only view God as throwing you a bone. That relationship with the divine is an abusive relationship. Uncondtitional Love is primordial in the deepest sense. Accpeting Jesus to avoid Hell is a condition; there is no room for that mythos within Unconditional Love. It's not a paradox; it's a lie that perpetuates bondage.
If you don't want equality, how do you concieve God's kingdom to be structured? I'm asking honestly. Clearly you believe in Hell. I do not, hence my emphasis on equality. If you'd like to hear my thoughts on Hell, please let me know, but please do not list off all of your reasonings and scriptures for why you think it exists, I know all of them.
As to that Lewis quote, I can't make heads or tails of it.
I don't believe in biblical innerancy, so your arguments through scripture are not convincing for me. Again, I'm very familiar with that tradition.
It's fair for you to assume that because I live in NYC I've taken the Christian faith in vain and don't know scripture. But I do, I was raised in an Evengelical church in the midwest. I can't really say right now in my life whether I'm a Christian. I'm reading and learning a lot right now and am open to a lot.
Mutual tolerance happens all the time. It requires constant reminders and reinforcement, though. I live in an area where Muslims of several generations live in mutual tolerance with white racists, feminists, reactionary Christians, hippies, black activists and quiet family people...Really, we all get along. We keep having to adjust to each other and sometimes it takes a scandal or a big legal case for big adjustments to occur -but they do. A lot of people of different persuasions just want to get along - and work at it. I think much trumpeting of people's supposed incompatibility is lazy polemics by those inactive in civil society.
True on conservatives/protestants, as I said, I'm painting in broad strokes, just looking for connections in a broad sense.
Materialism is ultimately no basis for any real metaphysic. Even the word metaphysic itself highlights this.
Agreed on your last point. Thanks for your thoughts!
I'm definitely interested in any recommendations you have on Buddist reading materials.
I'm with you on that false belief/atheism dichotomy. It seems to be born from the gradual disapearance of the concept in early Christianity of God existing outside of the created world; the gradual acceptance of God as part of the cosmos that saw it's peak in the enlightenment naturally gave birth to atheism as the physical world gradually revealed it's own workings without the need for a divine Atlas holding it all together. I think I read about this from a book you mentioned on the old forum, The Unintended Reformation.
Thanks for the recommendation on early humanists, it's on the to do list now.
I'm aware of the etymology of the word. I'm using it in the sense of a theory of the nature of the world. So materialism is one metaphysical theory.
Quoting Noble Dust
Actually it did. Look: Quoting Noble Dust
I need to read more on metaphysics. I'm not trying to win a battle here, I'm just searching for truth, friend. If you feel you've "beat" me and sufficiently dismissed my thoughts, what does that accomplish?
You did say it, but it obviously is about politics, so we shouldn't cover that up. We should admit to it. We play politics me and you when we discuss such subjects.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes I have no doubt about that - your liberal progressive NYC friends probably went to see the psychiatrist because oh it was so terrible that Donald Trump got elected... I mean can you believe it? end of the world stuff :P
Quoting Noble Dust
I am an Eastern Orthodox, born and raised that way, so it's a bit funny to be told what is and isn't part of Orthodox tradition. I can however see the influence of Berdyaev here - or a peculiarly Western misunderstanding of Berdyaev to be more clear. I'll come back to this.
Quoting Noble Dust
Okay - what do you mean a sense of your own value or worth? I could blame my upbringing for a million things, but that seems to be the wrong way to go about it. There's nothing we deserve to begin with, and therefore why should we expect something, and then claim we've been hurt by not having it? For example - say you were bullied in school, or had no friends, people teased you, etc. Would your life really have been much better if such wasn't the case? Not really - you're just attached to the idea it would have. You'd just have had a different set of problems. But peace and understanding comes from the inside, not from the world.
Your life up to this point is your life - it wouldn't be yours if it was different. What makes you uniquely you is precisely this.
Quoting Noble Dust
No I don't.
Quoting Noble Dust
Well I don't think it does depend on God throwing me a bone. It rests on me - but I must be accountable for what I do. I'm not obsessed about getting to Heaven. I should only get to Heaven if I deserve it. If I don't deserve it, then I should desire Hell. And to be entirely honest with you, I'm not so concerned with my sense of self worth. It's just not something that would matter to me. To have or not to have a sense of self-worth doesn't seem conducive to anything. Asking yourself whether you have a sense of your own worth - again, it's not conducive to anything. What is conducive is asking yourself what your goals are - and then working on ways to achieve them.
Quoting Noble Dust
But I don't view that you should do something based on the fear of hell. You shouldn't fear hell. You should desire it if that's what you deserve. You shouldn't be afraid of it. I mean could you live in a world where injustice didn't get what it deserved? I couldn't - and therefore I freely accept hell, because I feel and sense that injustice is deserving of punishment (unless there is repentance).
Quoting Noble Dust
Forgiveness upon repentance, not otherwise.
Quoting Noble Dust
Based on moral equality, not any other kind of equality. Furthermore I don't believe that we can even imagine - except analogically - what God's Kingdom is like because all we have as resources for imagining is this world. And this world is full of conflict and suffering, inherently so. Hence I conclude that Heaven is nothing like this world. I hope for it, but don't know what it is.
Quoting Noble Dust
Me neither ;)
Quoting Noble Dust
Well let's see. I find many things oppressive including:
Globalisation - the fact that people move from place to place for work, and sever their relationships and never have any roots. Instead they wander aimlessly through the world, and condemn their loved ones to equally suffer due to their absence. The fact that globalisation means that, for example, a couple would break up because one of them wants to work in another country and the other doesn't - that to me is oppression.
Feminism - the fact that some women have turned their bodies into weapons used in order to humiliate men and enslave them as mere sexual objects. The fact that women are taught that it is freedom to have no respect for their bodies, or for any decency at all, but are instead encouraged to give in to the worst passions in mankind.
Racism - the fact that the blacks are purposefully kept poor by the encouragement of poverty producing behaviours such as gang activity, promiscuity, etc. and the fact that they are dumbed down to think "oh there's a black president, thus there's nothing wrong anymore"
Affirmative action - the fact that the white heterosexual male has become the number one public enemy, and a black female lesbian gets a university professor position merely because of her skin color, her gender, and her sexual orientation, not because she's more capable than her white male heterosexual competitor.
Religious intolerance - the fact that religious people are disrespected and seen to be oppressive and unworthy. The fact that, for example, Muslim people are told that they are oppressive because they ask their women to dress a certain way, that I find oppressive. Cultures should be allowed to manifest and be proud of themselves. There's no shame in that. But the progressives want you to think the opposite - they want you to think that you should be ashamed of who you are. If you think for example, that your wife should dress decently you should be ashamed of yourself, because you are an oppressor, you have no self-esteem, and so forth. If you are worried that the cultural milieu isn't adequate for you to instil the right values in your children, suddenly you are disgusting, you are immoral and have to be socially isolated for it. The fact that the progressives have turned labeling and social isolation into a means of enforcing their immoral agenda, and such has to come to a stop. If Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, you choose your philosopher. If any of them would have heard about what the progressives are doing today, they would have been outraged beyond belief! These folks are encouraging submissions to man's worst passions - greed, lust, selfishness, and so forth. This isn't the Bible. This isn't any religion. This is a false and miserable teaching.
And I could go on, but I'll stop for now.
And finally, regarding Berdyaev. The Orthodox do believe in tradition, but tradition isn't the focus for them. The Orthodox do believe in Hell. Only that Hell is in God, and Heaven also is in God. After death we all return to God. Only that the righteous who love God will perceive God's Love as blessedness, and the sinful will perceive it as a burning fire. And that's what's happening today. Look at the progressives. You think they can live in righteousness in God, when all they do in the world is smoke drugs, promiscuous sex, and so forth? They will perceive God as the greatest evil that can befall them.
Back to Berdyaev. Berdyaev does have a point that tradition isn't all there is. Religion isn't all about rule following. There is indeed something higher than mere rule following. The creative participation in Creation. There is much beauty in the world, and the virtues are hard and difficult, while sin and everything evil is easy. To create beauty - instead of evil and sin - is difficult. Not everyone can do it, narrow is the path, and many are those who shall perish. But Berdyaev is right, fundamentally. But the folks raised in Western cultures misinterpret him. He's not saying that Church rules aren't important. He's talking to the people who lived in a society where the Church was in power, and everyone was concerned merely with rule following. We don't live in such a world anymore. In this world, the Church has almost no power. Instead people have given over to what is much worse than Church rule - that is the rule of their own selfishness and the bondage of their own lusts. They haven't achieved freedom, they have achieved a stronger form of enslavement than ever before.
I'd dare speculate that your unhappiness about the present state of the world is the result of precisely the alienation that is the result of immorality. Your soul is more sensitive and thus more capable of perceiving it in the world. With such immorality around it's hard to be happy and content.
To Meet the Real Dragon
by Gudo Nishijima et al.
Link: http://a.co/bOkHKsm
I did mention 'Unintended Reformation' on the old forum, and since got hold of it - very good but rather too specialist for a non-academic audience; one can get the general drift of what he's arguing without all the vast detail Gregory goes into. Another title along similar lines, but more to do with general 'history of ideas', was M A Gillespie's The Theological Origins of Modernity, that is definitely worth the read. I also have A Secular Age by Taylor, but can't find the required 6 months to absob it. X-)
https://essenceofbuddhism.wordpress.com/
The absolute best out of everything I have read. It actually makes sense, I could actually believe that.
If it wasn't for this guy I may possibly not have been a Christian anymore myself. But this guy - seriously the most powerful man on the planet. He is the very example - his own body, his own life. You have all those progressive gurus preaching this and that - but what do they have to show for it? Where are the fruits? I want to see the fruits, I'm doubting Thomas!
No, this is not about politics to me. Why do you insist to know what this is about for me? I have almost no political leanings.
I'm not sure why you're making fun of liberals, it doesn't mean anything to me; I'm not one.
I apologize for assuming you were part of some other tradition other than Eastern Orthodox. Apparently I misread some of your thoughts. Do you have any recommendations for reading materials on your faith? I'm interested in Eastern Orthodoxy; I started reading about it from reading Berdyaev, who I was introduced to through reading Walking On Water by Madeliene L'Engle. I'm attracted to the more mystical elements in writers like Berdyaev. His repudiation of discursive philosophy is powerful, I think.
I had in my mind from reading some stuff that the courtroom idea wasn't prevelant in Eastern Orthodoxy, so I must have been mistaken. But it seems like an anthropomorphism of God. It can't be the only way to apprehend those concepts, then.
I agree with you about peace coming from inside. It's something I'm still wrestling through on a personal level. Maybe there's no need to go too deep into upbringing and all of those factors, but I grew up with a lot of negative feelings of shame/worthlessness, etc. So your assertion that self-worth shouldn't be important sounds nice in theory, but not in practice for anyone actually struggling with those problems. It's something to be overcome, and not through simply casting it off as unimpotant. That is literally impossible for ayone dealing with it. Besides, isn't self worth an aspect of love? Maybe it's more a western neuroses, descended from Evangelicalism...
The idea of those who go to hell being repulsed by God's love has always been interesting to me, I've never dismissed it outright.
Are you familiar with David Bentley Hart? I've only read bits, but understand that he's an Eastern Orthodox and universalist. I'd be curious for your thoughts.
Globalisation, yes. I know that solitude you're talking about well. Feminism, yes, but the partriarchy equally so. Racism, of course. Vilifying the white male is definitely oppression, but it's also an inevitable result of history. Religious intolerance, yes.
I have a hard time concieving this weird, meaningless life as the only opportunity to develop a love for God. It seems totally arbitrary. So many factors go into whether a person may or may not have the opportunity to do this. I also see sin as something mankind goes through to understand these higher spiritual concepts, so your frustrated critique of progressives and what you see as their debauchery doesn't hold a lot of sway for me. I don't disagere, but mankind is going through a huge epoch of turmoil that includes those debaucheries, and I think there's a reason. I don't see it as man spiraling into godlessness. Another idea of Berdyaev's that I like is godforsakeness. Mankind is going through a dark night of godforsakeness, due as much from the impotence of the church as anything else. It's a nessisary period in history. This is behind my idea of humanism giving birth to a new religion of the spirit. The worst moments have the strongest potential for redemption. Sometimes the worst offenders become the strongest advocates for truth.
I didn't mention Berdyaev in relation to church rules, I just mentioned his idea of God awaiting a revelation from man, which you didn't address. Any thoughts?
Edit: and just saw your youtube post, I'll check it out. I'm a doubting Thomas too, at least we have that in common!
The clothes we wear, the food we eat, who we have sex with and how often we do, have little or nothing to do with our well being except in limited circumstances. So, whether we have warm clothes to wear will impact our physical well being in winter, whether we eat spoiled food will impact our physical well being, whether we have sex with someone with a sexually transmitted disease will do the same. Some religious proscriptions relating to such things may once have derived from observation of the ill effects of certain conduct, but others have nothing to do with well being, physical or otherwise.
Regardless, I think the God of the universe would be unconcerned with such things even if they were connected with our well being; I don't think the human concept of "concern" would apply to such a God.
Augustine's theory of original sin, as interpreted by Calvin. It's obviously a massive and weighty topic, subject of volumes of books so I preface these remarks with that acknowledgement.
However, the basic idea of 'original sin' is sound - I mean, people are not generally born examples of sweetness and light. We are born with all manners of inclinations, many of which are demonstrably harmful to self and other. And it takes something radical - 'of the root' - to change that, changing it doesn't come about from good intentions.
That is also understood in Buddhism, but in a different way to Calvinism. The key difference between the Buddhist view, and the Calvinist view, is that in the former, this condition is categorised as 'beginningless ignorance' i.e. beings are born with countless proclivities and tendencies towards self-harm. But this is called avidya, 'ignorance', rather than 'sin'. The key difference is that avidya/ ignorance is cognitive rather than volitional. Calvinist theology talks of the 'utter depravity of the will', because the will is corrupted, all we can do is pray for forgiveness; we're totally unable to help ourselves.
But the key difference in Buddhism is liberative insight. As 'ignorance' is cognitive rather than volitional, so too is the remedy, which is prajñ?, insight into the causes of suffering. You have to see and know; the term 'Buddha' means 'one who knows'.
Whilst faith is important in Buddhism, it's not central like it is in Protestant Christianity. That's why it is said that Buddhism is not 'religious' in the same sense that Christianity is - because it is a path of insight, of 'direct seeing'. It is religious in some ways, but philosophical in others, but the key point is always 'seeing and understanding the cause of suffering'.
Quoting Noble Dust
I've read his most recent, The Experience of God. Generally I liked it a lot although it has a lot of polemics. But I'm far nearer to Hart than to materialist philosophies even if I don't profess Christianity. I have some respect for Berdyaev also. Actually there are many Christian philosophers I have respect for - Keith Ward is another and Ed Feser. I most admire the medieval mystics, Eckhardt and Suso and the rest. Dean Inge, Evelyn Underhill. Sometimes I have to be careful of not getting 're-converted' X-)
Quoting Noble Dust
The problem is the 'image of God'. It has been used as an ultimate 'authority figure' and to underwrite a great deal of authoritarianism. (You could argue that the Christian church developed the model for authoritarianism.) But the word is polysemic, it has many meanings. Something Mother Teresa (of all people) once said in an interview really struck me: 'God is very humble, very ordinary'. That is also a very Zen way of looking at it. 'I chop wood, I draw water, how marvellous, how mysterious'. So the key is to find that in the midst of every day life, which is why one has a daily practice. You know, the word 'yoga' means 'yoking' - so 'being yoked' to the sacred.
I agree on us being born with all sorts of proclivities, etc. But the caveat to me is that we don't control that initially; a toddler is selfish, but that doesn't come from it's own concious will, in contrast to someone willingly hurting another as an adult, or willingly abusing alcohol, fully concious of the consequences. This is why I have a hard time with original sin. I don't discount it in that I don't discount that we are full of flaws from the start, but I don't peg these flaws as being the fault of the individual. If I'm not responsible for my own original sin, and if this sin is what makes me deserving of hell, how is it that I'm the one who has to make the decision to avoid hell? I suppose that question is more directed at Augustino or others. I never asked to be born. Neither did you. We all stumble into life and find ourselves trying to understand it, to understand our passions, noble and not so noble. The idea of it as a curse seems plausible. our "sin" (I'm tired of that word), or our ignorance, as you put it from a Bhuddist perspective, seems inherited. I imagine it as some sort of virus passed down in our spiritual genes. So this doesn't put the onus on me to fess up, acknowledge all of my wrongdoings...because I'm not responsible for them in an eternal or abstract sense because they are proportunate to my developement of conciousness. I guess that sounds somewhat Bhuddist? I need to do some reading.
Hart seems to have no shortage of polemics, yeah. I find that off-putting. I think I feel the same closeness to some of his ideas as you, though. Thanks for the further recs.
How do you mean that the 'image of God' has been used as an utlimate 'authority figure'? I've always thought of the image of God as something that man is created in, and never had a problem with it, even now. I realize we aren't looking at it from the same perspective, though. To think of man as having a glimmer of the divine potential in him...the potential to creatively develop that potential collaberatively with God, to extend my hand to God's extended hand...
Where should I start with Christian mystics like Echhardt and Boeme? I picked up the Cloud of Unknowing once when I was in a depressed mood, but was so put off by it that I left it on the park bench I was reading it on, lol.
It's a good analogy, except genes are physical. In pre-modern cultures, there was the belief that being born is itself a kind of misfortune; an old Indian saying is that it's better to die than to be born. That strikes us optimistic Westerners as hopeless fatalism, but then our material circumstances are very different.
I don't think modern philosophy can easily accomodate anything like the idea of 'the fall', or at least I don't see how it can be mapped against evolutionary biology. I don't read such myths literally, but they convey an essential existential truth in my view.
In Buddhism, one's predispositions are the consequence of past karma, but that is embedded in a worldview which is culturally alien to the Western tradition (i.e. the idea of samsara, the eternal round of birth and death, which is generally not part of Christian belief.)
Quoting Noble Dust
Surely that is not hard to see. Monotheistic religion has always appealed to a punitive God to underwrite their moral and political power - 'do right, according to us, or be punished'. 'Orthodoxy' means 'right belief'. Before the Reformation and then the Enlightenment, the Church was highly proscriptive of morality. You could be punished or put to death for being heretic - thousands were. And the Church also had tremendous political power; breaking that nexus was what lead to the 'separation of church and state'. Prior to that, religious authority was the source of enormous power; it still is in Islamic cultures, look at what is happening in Indonesia.
Quoting Noble Dust
There are many editions of the Sermons of Meister Eckhardt in print, they're great literature and deep philosophy. Eckhardt is well worth reading. Bohme is a bit more challenging, I would start with a few secondary sources on him. (Found this site recently. So much information! The internet - it's like trying to get a glass of water from a fire hose.)
Genes and viruses both are physical...so I should say a spiritual virus passed down through spiritual genes. Or to be more accurate, spiritual mutations passed down through spiritual genes...
I don't read myths literally either. Something like "the fall" definitely can't be mapped against modern philosophy, yes, which is why we need a re-interpretation of myth. We've projected enlightenment (in)sensibilities unto the past for too long. Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances and History In English Words, as well other writings of his, are good starting points, but I'm looking for more.
I can't say much about your descriptions of Buddhist concepts, other than I appreciate the info and I'm interested, so I'll do research. A sort of bizarre side note, but I work at a music venue in NYC that used to host a monthly story-telling type event, and a past-lives therapist told a story of a particular patient, and painted a fascinating picture of the work he does, which piqued my interest to look more into those types of things.
I guess I was confused by you saying 'the image of God' specifically. From my evangelical background, that phrase brings up scriptures like "in the image of God he created man", etc., which doesn't seem apropos to what you're talking about, unless I'm confused. If you just mean that "God" has been used as an ultimate authority figure to devastatingly horrible ends, then yes, of course I agree. I'm familiar with the Church history and definitions you describe.
That's all I meant. 'Imago Dei' is a different matter. ( I have Owen Barfield's book too, which was recommended on the old Forum. I think we have many interests in common.)
Barfield was one of my initial entry points into considering wider philosophical and theological possibilities (may seem strange, but he was a member of the Inklings along with C.S. Lewis, an agonizingly over-quoted favorite of evangelical Christians). If you haven't read Poetic Diction by Barfield, I definitely recommend it in combination with Saving the Appearances.
Not only. Eating beef for example raises the chances of colon cancer - that's why for example I never eat it. And there's many other foods that should be avoided, and that are harmful to the body.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
Yes - but include in the ill effects not only physical ones, but also psychological. For example, theft, assuming you're not caught, has no ill physical effects. And yet, psychologically, doing such a thing is harmful.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
If the God is not personal, then this would be true. But if the God is personal - like a person - then this is likely to be false. I don't mean to convince you to change your beliefs, just to be aware that the belief is not as absurd as you (and some of the Stoics/Epicureans ;) ) want to make it seem like.
Highlight/select the text you want to quote. Once you highlight it, the quote button appears. Press it, and it will enter the text you highlighted in the write post feature at the bottom. If you then highlight another piece it will add it as well.
The point I'm making is that politics is inherent in the subjects that we are discussing. We cannot discuss them without our discussion having political repercussions. Sure, you and I may not be interested in the politics, but that doesn't mean that our discourse isn't saying anything about politics. Whether we like it or not, when we're discussing such subjects we are always also discussing politics, so we should be aware of that. That's the point Plato has been trying to make from the very beginning - philosophy, life and politics are intertwined, they are not divorced, and they have to be discussed together.
Quoting Noble Dust
I don't make fun of liberals in order to make fun of you - that would be petty indeed. Why would I spend my time putting someone else down? My point isn't to make you feel down. Instead I make fun of liberals as a way to counteract a problem that exists in modern society. The liberal pretty much has hegemony over culture, and that has to be countered, and I'm simply using this as an opportunity to do that.
Quoting Noble Dust
Eastern Orthodoxy isn't focused on what you say or your outward discourse so much as it is focused on your practice and inner life. That's why you'll find Eastern Orthodox Christians holding many different positions in thought - it's not as regimented as Catholicism. Furthermore, it's not a Western religion - it's not like Catholicism, Protestantism and so forth. It's closer to the Indian religions than to the West in several ways.
Quoting Noble Dust
What kind of material about the Orthodox faith are you interested in? Philosophy? Theology? History? Novels? General information?
Quoting Noble Dust
I haven't read this.
Quoting Noble Dust
Well you're not mistaken, it isn't prevalent. Eastern Orthodoxy isn't legalistic by and large. This doesn't mean though that there aren't moral rules of conduct that the believers strive to hold and affirm. Just that this doesn't become an obsession or the whole of the religion as it is for many other Christians. It seems to me that in the West people only have two positions: fully authoritarian, you have to follow all the rules or else to Hell you go - or fully liberal - doesn't matter what the rules are, just do your own thing. But this distorts the Eastern Orthodox position, because it doesn't fit. Yes, you have to respect the Commandments of the Lord - but if you respect them as a way to buy your way to Heaven (out of fear), then that's not real communion with God. If you respect them angrily (as in why would God ever ask me to do such a stupid thing), then again that's not real communion. You have to respect them due to the relationship and communion you have with God - because of your faith, love and understanding that they are good for you.
Quoting Noble Dust
No but I'm making an important point. To be worried about your self-worth is precisely not to have any, because someone who does have self-worth doesn't worry about it, isn't concerned about it, doesn't care if it exists or not. You will have self-worth the day you drop it and stop worrying about it, because then you will behave and act like someone who does have self-worth. You have an image of yourself with no self-worth in your mind, and you are fighting to get rid of it. But the very fighting is what keeps it there, because that's precisely what someone who doesn't have any self-worth does - they fight to get rid of their lack of self-worth and replace it with the authentic thing.
And Western society does cause this because they set a standard for you to meet. You have to do this and that, otherwise you're not sinful, but you're sick. What's your disease? Oh you have low self esteem! You are psychologically ill, there's something wrong with you. That's what they tell you. There are young girls in schools who are being bullied, because, for example, they don't engage in sexting, they don't wear makeup and so forth. They are told they are unworthy because of this. Unless they engage in that, there's something wrong with them, they have no self-esteem. The progressives have, using psychologists and psychiatrists, developed entire theories to justify why someone who doesn't behave a certain way is sick, and requires treatment. And so they literarily make people sick - they literarily make people suffer of low self-esteem, by telling them, insinuating the idea, that if you don't do X, Y, Z it's probably because you have low self-esteem.
Just imagine for example, a young man going to a psychologist/psychiatrist and saying that he wants to be celibate. There are some people here for example who live celibate lives. I swear that if these people went to the psychiatrist, they'd tell them they have a disease, there's something wrong with them, they're abnormal, and so forth. That's why I'm bashing the progressives - their hegemony has to be shaken up and taken down.
Quoting Noble Dust
Love your neighbour as yourself. This means you first have to love yourself in order to love your neighbour, because you love your neighbour only as much as you love yourself, that is the commandment. But the person who loves themselves doesn't hammer over their own head "You're unworthy, you have low self-esteem, etc." - that person accepts themselves for who they are, they are not concerned with changing themselves. You literarily have to become who you are, once you become who you are the whole issue dissolves itself - the inner conflict you are having is the problem. The fact that there is this "you" who is inferior and unworthy, and then there's this other "you" who is upset with this inferior "you", and wants to get rid of it, wants to change it, wants to overcome it and so forth.
Kierkegaard's book "Works of Love" speaks best about all this. It's also quite possibly the best book on love there is.
Quoting Noble Dust
I think it's more like a Western neurosis descended from consumerism, materialism and selfishness. You have to be focused on your own self in order to worry about your sense of self-esteem no? Someone who doesn't have such focus on the self, in their mind, such concerns wouldn't even arise. The West is decaying not because of its history, but because of life becoming too easy, which allows the evil in men's hearts to show itself. Before, because men were concerned about earning their daily bread, there wasn't much freedom for the evil to show itself. But now there is freedom - now evil is free to run amock - the evil which existed even before, only that before it never got the chance to show itself.
Quoting Noble Dust
I've read just one book, The Experience of God. I think he has many good points to make, and attempts to rescue modern religious postmodern philosophy, but I'm left a bit cold in him. There's no "wow" factor. He is indeed a practicing Eastern Orthodox and draws on Orthodox tradition, but I'm not impressed by him. I don't think theology needs the postmodern detour via Heidegger. I don't think that's helpful. Berdyaev for that matter is a much better writer and more interesting to read.
Quoting Noble Dust
If people have no freedom, then evil cannot show itself, because evil and good presuppose freedom. As people's freedom has expanded in the West, the nature of their heart showed itself more and more. They became more and more selfish, as they needed each other less. There were no mechanisms to restrain them, and by freedom they started to understand giving in to their lusts and passions, and they started to identify anything that could restrain them as evil and oppressive, and thus deserving to be taken down. And therefore the outcome is what it is today - chaos and decadence, which will, sooner or later, bring the whole of the Western world down unless it is stopped.
Quoting Noble Dust
The Eastern Orthodox Church has never played much of a role in the outward world - unlike for example Catholicism - because it is a religion of the inner life. What the West needs is that it needs to teach the virtues in school as they are - including patience, chastity, courage, and so forth. That's what the Catholics teach. Then it needs to combine the virtues with an inner life such as the one offered by the Eastern Orthodox Church. What is happening now is that the West has been emptied of God - of the inner life - and only the virtues are left. And now the virtues are gone too. Now there is no restraint left.
Quoting Noble Dust
But the decadent secular world is born precisely out of the West's tremendous success. It's the fact that life is so easy, combined with the dissolution of social restraints - the virtues and the inner life.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes you are right, that is my mistake. However do consider that my responses to you don't occur in a vacuum. They occur within the framework of a certain society, which imposes a certain worldview on its people. That's why the way I speak sounds legalistic - it's merely countering the lawlessness of the progressives. If we didn't live in a progressive world, probably I wouldn't bother to mention the virtues, morality, and so forth. When the pendulum has swung so far to one side, a stronger antitode is required. Legalism isn't where we should end, but given where we are, it's good if we aim for it, and land instead in a free, but virtuous society.
Quoting Noble Dust
The little known Max Picard book "The Flight From God" - I think you may find that interesting given this position.
I do agree, I just consider the spiritual elements of this discussion to be the inner, foundational, primary aspect. The political is just the outer, secondary aspect, the "fruit". I'm sure you'd agree, we're pretty much talking about the same thing.
Quoting Agustino
Pretty much all of it? My perennial problem with my interest in this stuff is that I like painting in broad strokes, so something general with a wide view would be nice, at least to start.
Quoting Agustino
This is part of what attracts me. Also part of what attracts me to the mystics.
Quoting Agustino
I'm confused why you were so critical of my original comments about legalism right out of the gate, then. It seems like now you're saying similar things to my original post, including:
Quoting Agustino
Compare with:
Quoting Noble Dust
And I'd be interested to hear some feedback on the concept of Otherness that I tried to outline in my original post. It was one of the main thrusts of my post, but it hasn't really been addressed in this thread.
Your comments on self-worth are helpful, and not completely foreign to me, but they're a good reminder.
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
It's really difficult for me to express my thoughts on freedom, legalism, decadence...to start with I'm not a logical thinker in the first place, so I have a ton of different seemingly unrelated thoughts swimming around in my mind in relation to these concepts. I'm first and foremost an artist, I've been a songwriter/composer for most of my childhood and adult life, and a key ingredient in trying to understand these concepts for me is creativity. Let me try to connect the concepts. This is another reason I was attracted to Berdyaev. When I create music, I feel God, I feel Kairos entering Chronos, with me as the vessel. Something I've always felt intuitively is that the creative, artistic urge (the artistic urge seems like the purest form of the creative urge) is not trying to make a work of art, but actually a new form of being or consciousness. I couldn't consciously verbalize this until I read these words in Berdyaev. When I did, I didn't feel I was encountering a new concept, I felt that my own thoughts were given shape and form. The creative act issues from freedom, a primordial freedom that is not separate from divinity. The last 100 years have been some of the most creatively fruitful in the West, but the art of modernity is marked by that same poverty of the spirit we've both discussed. And yet the creative urge is always a divine expression. This is why I consider atheism a religion; the icons of the atheist religion are in the art museums, performed in the concert halls, sold in the bookstores. But the key to me is that God is not entirely absent; again, the concept of a necessary godforsakeness. The godless freedom that the west created for itself gave birth to a highly artistic and symbolical, religio-atheistic world, a humanistic world, a (falsely) progressive world. But again, the tragedy of that world is the poverty of the spirit, and yet western modern art contains a painful longing; Kairos is felt entering into Chronos, but the poverty of the spirit immediately calcifies the art not into meaningful religious symbols, not into new forms of being or consciousness, but into tragic, meaningless idols. And yet the meaninglessness of the idols contains a precious, significant meaning, a secret key to understanding the West's position. You can't understand the modern West without understanding it's art. Freedom is complex, tragic, and diffuse in the West. I can't stress each of those words enough. Decadence is a natural result of this complex, tragic and diffuse freedom. Decadence itself has a hint of the divine in it; giving in to decadent passions screams of the longing for the divine; the drunkard and the prostitute are indeed so much closer to God than the Protestant pastor who has no inner spiritual life. It's not possible to revoke the freedom that the West has created for itself; the West will most likely eventually cave in on itself. I don't see another outcome. The only other possible outcome is an adoption of Eastern concepts, which is beginning to happen with Buddhism becoming popular, but whether a real inner life can be built by the West from this adoption is dubious (not the fault of Buddhism, the fault of the West's inability to apprehend an inner life). But this freedom, while being far from healthy, is also not inherently evil. The depths of human suffering are being revealed through this freedom, and the tragic creative urge, born of this freedom, is an important element in revealing that suffering. The revealing of the depths of suffering through this tragic freedom is an important element in the human drama, and I think it has an eschatological significance.
Perhaps. Although I think that both levels need to be managed in concordance and harmony with each other. In other words it would be possible to have a great inner life and a terrible politics.
Quoting Noble Dust
It's hard to recommend like this, because the field is so vast. I'd say read the following to get an idea:
1. The Orthodox Church by Kallistos Ware (this is basically the most detailed that's about everything and nothing :-O )
2. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky
3. The Gospel in Brief by Leo Tolstoy
4. Brothers Karamzov by Leo Tolstoy, with special attention paid to the beginning-middle of the book at the encounters and discussions with Father Zossima
5. Book yourself a visit to Mount Athos in the greatest country on Earth, Greece, and spend some time with the monks, which is ultimately the best
I would recommend some other sources but they're not translated in English, so that's all I have for the specifics (or rather general level) that you have requested.
Quoting Noble Dust
Because I was doing politics ;) .
Quoting Noble Dust
Well I still disagree with you about the equality. Have you read Philosophy of Inequality by Berdyaev?
Quoting Noble Dust
And here I disagree as I mentioned before. The prostitute and the drunkard are closer to God in an age of legalism, not in an age of decadence. In an age of decadence the Protestant pastor is still closer. In this day and age it's not difficult to be a prostitute - talking now in the large sense of prostitute, where it doesn't mean just a woman having sex in exchange for money - but any loose sexual behaviour from both sexes. It's not difficult to be a drunk - everyone is a drunk, just go to any of the clubs. There is no "freedom" in drunkeness and sexual misbehaviour nowadays - nor is there any passion. There is just being a sheep. These folks no longer are the ones who think differently. Back in the day of Casanova, yes! Casanova was indeed closer to God than his priest. That is the great pettiness of this age, that in their immorality they aren't even one inch closer to God.
This age isn't an age of passion. The West has no passion left, it is dead. You are making a terrible mistake here. The modern day slut who fucks the cab driver, who vomits in the club's toilet and so forth - she's not committing a great sin... she's living like vermin. That may, as Kierkegaard says, be sinful - if you are a worm. She's following the dictates of her society. This is what her society is commanding her to do today, she's just as bad as the 50 year old virgin 200 years ago - in fact, even worse! She does this purely to fit in, she doesn't do this because of a spiritual longing, because of a great passion, because of anything of that sort. If when she was expected to be a virgin up until marriage, she did this, then you could say she had a great passion driving her. Then at least she would commend some degree of respect. But now, it's just so petty.
Quoting Noble Dust
Except that this isn't the suffering of a Casanova. This is the suffering of a worm, petty and insignificant. Today greatness is stopped in its tracks. Where are men like Alexander the Great, with sufficient passion to conquer the whole world? They sinned, at least they sinned properly. Where are men like Beethoven? They are nowhere in sight! The West is a desert - all passion and life has departed, and only death remains. There's a few small islands, a handful of people who are different, and who still have a sparkle of life, and of intelligence left in them. The rest has been drowned in the mass-amnesia, forgetfulness and sheepishness of mass consumerism.
I think the problem here is you're painting in too broad of strokes. Again, freedom in the West is complex. In the US in particular, there is no one theme of culture. There is decadence, wide spread, but legalistic Christianity still holds sway over large swaths of the country. And so indeed, I've noticed that those in this society most given to decadent passions are often those coming from the legalistic Christian background and rebelling against it. So no, they are, in fact, the ones with a passionate decadence, as you're describing it. And the fact that legalism decays into decadence highlights what I keep saying about this process being necessary in history; humanity is going through a process that almost mirrors Christ's crucifixion; we're in an age that mirrors the three days he spent in the grave. The potential ramifications of that analogy speak to Berdyaev's call for a revelation from man to God. Japanese culture seems to understand the need for suffering from a few bits and pieces I've gathered. The chipped tea cup is more beautiful in the tea ceremony than the unblemished cup.
Quoting Agustino
I disagree, I think any godforsaken culture is always in a state of suffering; how could God be who we believe him to be if it was otherwise? Suffering is not always fully conscious. The poverty of the spirit is a form of suffering; it's not always conscious. Describing this suffering as the suffering of a worm dehumanizes the subject. Perhaps you intend that. I'm always wary of a view that allows for the dehumanization of the subject, because it allows for the possibility of oppression, the continuation of the cycle of The Other. Isn't Christ's compassion precisely an interfacing with those who have been dehumanized, with the "worms" as you call them? Isn't the "worm" who grows up in a decadent society equally the recipient of Christ's compassion as the one who grows up in a legalistic society? It's not the "worm's" fault that he grew up in the environment he did. Indeed, he's a sheep, as you say, but this doesn't damn him in any way because he's not responsible for his circumstances, at least initially in his development. And Christ went to the prostitutes, the drunkards, the demon-possessed. And the culture at the time was one of decadence, and yet Phariseeical legalism at the same time. And to go even further, legalism is it's own form of decadence. Think of the money-changers in the temple, think of the aspects of the Catholic church you were just describing.
Quoting Agustino
The desire to fit in is a spiritual longing. Maybe a socially normalized one, but still spiritual; it's a vague echo of the desire for Christian community; for communion with God and others. This fact reinforces what I said above. Even if fitting in (and not thinking for oneself) is motivated by a fear of being cast out or whatever, the fear itself is still germinated by that deeper longing for communion. The inability to think for oneself isn't deserving of criticism from those of us who can, it deserves our sympathy. Thinking less of that person devolves into another form of oppression; the thinkers begin leading the sheep, eventually off the cliff. It seems to me like your critiques of decadence don't take into account the layers of depth in even the most superficial member of society, layers that person isn't even aware of because they are socially built in. And yet, we can't think of those social norms in a vacuum; they are existential, they exist in the subject, the person.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yeah me too!
Quoting Noble Dust
To me, it shows merely the thirst for freedom of a few. It's not many who rebel against legalism within societies/places where legalism still holds sway.
Quoting Noble Dust
Indeed, and those who suffer unconsciously suffer all the more, which is the state of the present Western world, by and large.
Quoting Noble Dust
But the subject has already dehumanised itself. The issue with the Western world - the Western world's great suffering - is precisely its lack of passion, it's lack of vigor, of health. When I say they are worms - obviously their suffering, relative to the human level, is infinitely greater. To be born a human, and yet live like a worm must certainly be a great suffering no?
Also you're drawing an unwarranted conclusion. Just because they are worms, doesn't mean we should neglect them. They are worms but they really could be humans.
Quoting Noble Dust
And you are right in that, we always have to watch that we don't become inhuman to those towards whom it is easy being inhuman.
Quoting Noble Dust
No. Christ's compassion wasn't with the worms, it was with the outcasts, with the rebels, with those who did not fit in their society - with the oppressed. Christ took the whip out on the worms in the temple if you remember... He drove them out.
Quoting Noble Dust
No, the culture was one of legalism - not decadence. The Pharisees ruled and controlled the culture of the day, and they oppressed the prostitutes for example. The prostitutes were on the outskirts of society, they were the hated and abused. And you are right legalism is a form of decadence, but it's a form of decadence in the opposite end - too much emphasis on outward virtue, whereas what I have called decadence until now has been too little emphasis on outward virtue.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, the money-changers they, along with the Pharisees were the powerful and the oppressors. They were the ones who were complacent, who had no passion left, who were petty, who peddled their petty virtues, reciting this and that scripture, drinking from outwardly clean but inwardly dirty cups. They ruled the culture of that society, to be "cool" to be "accepted" meant to be like them. They too had reached a point of exhaustion, like Western culture today. That's why Jesus said take care that ye be not like the Pharisees. In today's world it's take care that ye be not like the decadent, who are the rulers of society.
Quoting Noble Dust
Maybe but it's also a betrayal of one's own self, of one's own uniqueness, of one's own person.
Quoting Noble Dust
In a way I agree. There is an inherent danger in there - if you think of them like scum, you will treat them like scum. But at the same time, one has to recognise the truth of the situation - or the gravity of it.
A lot of people like myself found Buddhism as a result of the search for an alternative form of spirituality, which is why, in the West, it has been associated with the counter-culture. What attracted me was that my own nascent spirituality always took the form of belief in enlightenment, so I sought out the books that spoke in those terms, and they were generally either Buddhist or other popular Eastern spiritual books. It turns out there's some common ground between them, but I could only see that after a lot of study.
Quoting Agustino
That's because their materialist beliefs are inherently de-humanising. Whereas the spiritual ethos is looking upwards towards the fullfilment of a glorious destiny, the best homo faber can hope for is leaving the planet and colonizing space.
Notice the ever-present threads on forums of people asking why they should believe that life is worth living. They're patient, articulate, well-argued and earnest - and nihilistic, just as Nietszche foresaw.
Agustino is most fond of oppression. What annoys him about modern culture is, above all, it's permissiveness. People get to act how they want without sanction or risk of sanction from others-- no outright protection from others expressing power over them.
For Agustino, the "great man" is the one who takes what, who expresses his authority over the world or in opposition to someone else-- The Conquer. In this respect, his opposition to modem culture is in someways more about the how than any particular immoral act itself. What irks him the most about modern culture is its rejection of the strongman and respect for his authority.
I'm not convinced by your position. I would want to be, but I'm not. This is a peculiar thing about you - you decry materialism, but yet are keenly interested in science. You think science is important to spirituality, you think science is related to spirituality, you think it can help. Your favorite book even goes along the same lines, showing the parallels between Western science and Eastern spirituality. I don't really buy that narrative as of yet though.
For one thing - I think that physics and religion have nothing to do with each other. The laws of physics and the scientific theories could be totally different, and yet the spiritual truths we know would be the same.
For another - I don't think that the root cause of today's decadence is materialism. Nope. The root cause is spiritual - materialism is merely the coverup, the justification, the sacrificial pawn put forward. Epicurus was a materialist. And yet his ethics was very much ascetic. Materialism didn't have any negative effect on him. So the root cause for decadence today lies in man's heart, materialism, consumerism, etc. are merely outward manifestations of it, that's becoming my conclusion at least, so if you think it's false and disagree I'd be curious to know why.
For example - the corrupt Wall-street speculator who does nothing productive but earns large sums of money, and then spends them on prostitutes, expensive cars, and so forth - he's not an atheist because he has read the arguments for materialism and he thinks materialism is true. No no no... he's an atheist and believer in materialism because he NEEDS materialism and atheism to be true to justify his way of life. Materialism and atheism are nothing worth ever arguing about for me. It's not worth showing materialism is false, or atheism is false. That's losing your time. That's the sacrificial pawn. Don't bite it. Let it go. Atheism and materialism is a waste of time - it's all politics. Atheism and materialism are merely the justifications for a certain type of politics. Oh I wanna make money doing nothing, spend them on millions of prostitutes, fast cars, expensive and exotic holidays and so forth - therefore I believe in atheism and materialism - it would be absurd and stupid for me to believe in God no? It would be a joke. And who would be my prostitute if I believed in God? No I have to tell her there's no God, that way she'll accept she's just an animal and follow along.
This is an interesting observation.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
So because I'm annoyed by the permissiveness of today's culture I'm fond of oppression - right.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
And according to you it is right that folks can behave in ways which are injurious to others without being sanctioned no?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
That's only ONE of the great men. There are others - like The Saint, The Poet, The Musician, The Philosopher, etc.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No, it's modern society's rejection of passion and strength of spirit in favour of deadened uniformity and monotony.
Not quite, materialism and atheism are sometimes used as political challenges (e.g. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc al. ), as some politics, culture and law is tied to religious or spirtual beliefs in some circumstances (e.g. the legal and cultural opposition to homosexually) but that's a lazy analysis of what materialism and atheism say.
Materialism and atheism are about metaphysics. They deny is the power of the infinite over the finite. Our world is not formed and constrained by God, but rather expresses God. The critics who accused Spinoza's philosophy of amounting to atheism were right, only the extent may have sometimes have been misunderstood.
Spinoza philosophy doesn't just deny the presence of God, either in our world or another world, but identifies it is impossible. The infinte (Real) can never be finite states (the illusions of time) of the world, else we commit the mistake of disrespecting God, of proclaiming our finite world amounts to the infinte.
It's the understanding existence is given itself, rather than by logical forms or images. Rather than an ethical justification, it's a metaphysic which is utterly alien to the theist or spirtualitualust.One in which meaning is an expression of existence, as opposed to something that needs to be granted by an outside image.
Broad vs. too broad. ;)
Quoting Agustino
True!
Quoting Agustino
No, the dehumanized state is inherited, at least in the example of the "worm" that we're talking about.
Quoting Agustino
Where did I draw that conclusion?
Your critiques on the Pharisees are noted, I've been out of the church for about a year and am rusty on those topics.
But again, if the "worm" suffers all the more, are they not all the more deserving (not the right word) of Christ's compassion? Regardless of what scripture says.
Quoting Agustino
Is community a betrayal of the person? Is Sobornost? This is actually a fascinating topic to me, as I find myself to be rigorously individualistic (I'm guessing most of us here are), and yet craving connection and community at the same time, and trying to understand the balance, if it exists.
Quoting Agustino
As I'm saying repeatedly, they're manifestations of a spiritual poverty. That poverty is not deserving of punishment any more than economic poverty, nor is it deserving of disgusted disdain. It's never just to vilify the impoverished, in whatever state of poverty. As you said much earlier, if any of us had been born with a different set of difficulties than we have, things would not be better or worse, just a different set of dificiencies. So how are the marginalized any better or worse than the spiritually impoverished masses?
That's because I don't see any conflict between spirituality and science! There are conflicts between religious fundamentalism and scientific materialism for sure, but I don't believe there can be an essential conflict between spirituality and scientific discovery. It's really important to understand that, otherwise the world will forever be divided into opposing camps, 'religious vs spiritual'. I'm with Einstein on that point, 'science without religion is blind, religion without science is lame'.
Quoting Agustino
Don't agree at all. Have you read anything about the debates about mysticism amongst the early quantum physicists? There were some who are entirely materialist, but many who had a deep connection to various forms of idealist philosophy and spirituality. There's a good summary account here. Also see Bernard D'Espagnat What We Call Reality is Just a State of Mind, and Richard Conn Henry, The Mental Universe.
Quoting Agustino
Epicurus, who I haven't studied in depth, still had a religious sensibility, compared to today's materialists, because he believed that happiness was only attainable through the regulation of one's conduct and maintaining equanimity. He was still part of the pre-modern sensibility, so was like a 'dissident renunciate' rather than a hedonist in the sense that any modern person would understand it.
Scientific materialism is descendant of a current of thought that has always existed in cultures both Eastern and Western. But the 'philosophy of materiallism', when applied to problems that are amenable to technological solution, is extremely important. The internet only exists as a by-product of the Cold War, and it does indeed serve as a medium for all kinds of absolute depravity and evil, but it's also the medium for this conversation. Materialism becomes a problem precisely at the point where it is treated as a replacement for religion - the 'religion of scientism'. That is the problem - neither religion, per se, or science, per se, but science that believes it is a religion. That is what the 'myth of Prometheus' was about (and it's no coincidence that the leading publishing house for scientism is called Prometheus Books.) It's a deep problem indeed, but it's not because of science as such.
You are fond of the strongman oppression because it's that which you miss in Western values-- the ability to assign a person's superiority over other people. When I say "The Conquer," I don't just mean it literally. I'm referring to your desire to say someone has the authority over everyone else-- be it in sainthood, philosophy, music or poetry. In Western culture, what you miss is the ability of the individual to proclaim they are better than anyone else.
Sure, the West might respect great poets, philosophers, musicians, saints or even literal conquers, but then they turn around and give the same or even greater adoration just about anyone-- the postmodern collapse of "low" and "high" art and culture, into something where more or less what the individual cares about matters. They don't have a standard to which everyone must aspire. Individual expressions of authority, which place one person higher than another (regardless of field), at the expense of the lower, are no longer allowed. You miss this ability to express power in culture. Internally, it is a society without a literal or metaphorical Conquer.
No there aren't any conflicts, how could there be conflicts between two fields which have nothing to do with each other?
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't think this divide exists. This divide was very short-lived, the science vs religion conflict. I don't think people are becoming irrelegious because they think there's a conflict between science and religion. I think rather that their spiritual poverty - to steal Noble Dust's metaphor - is causing them to affirm the existence of a conflict between science and religion merely as a justification for their actions.
Quoting Wayfarer
I will have to read this before I can get back to you! Thanks for the links!
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes but he believed it's all atoms and void. Nothing else. Atoms and void are all that exists, the rest is convention. Epicurus was a materialist - as materialist as anyone can be. The reason why he "had a religious sensibility" is because he was seeking after truth - he wasn't using materialism as a justification for a decadent lifestyle as people are doing today. He wasn't playing politics.
Quoting Wayfarer
Nowhere here though have you addressed my main point. My main point is precisely that people make a big deal out of materialism and believe in it not because they really think it's a religion - not because they really think it's true, or could replace the religions. They aren't depraved because they believe materialism is true and it's all atoms and void. Rather the causality is the other way - they believe materialism is true and it's all atoms and void BECAUSE they are depraved. Now what do you think about that? Do you really think materialism makes them be depraved, or is it rather because they are first of all depraved, and only secondarily use materialism as a justification for their depravity - contrary to the way Epicurus used materialism for example?
You didn't but you presumed I would be saying that - or at least that's the impression I got from your post, my apologies if I'm wrong.
Quoting Noble Dust
I agree.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, again I can't really disagree with that on any grounds. I will only say that, together with seeking for a way to cure them of their poverty, it's important to protect them from spreading and imposing their poverty on everyone else as well.
Quoting Noble Dust
I think community is only worth it if the individual is respected and valued. I too crave for community, community that quite often I haven't been able to find, because it simply doesn't seem to exist. There are too few good people, and they are very far apart. So I think our desire for community is indeed, as you say, a spiritual desire. But - and here's my point - it's not worth seeking to satisfy this desire if it means betraying yourself. That price is too much to pay.
Yes you will see me riding on my horse Bucephalus in a sign of superiority over everyone else >:O
Ok let me stop with the jokes now. In all seriousness, what you're saying is comical. It seems you're under the impression that current society doesn't assign superiority over other people. Yes it does. The lesbian black female is superior to the heterosexual white male. The problem I have is that skin color, sexual orientation and gender aren't or shouldn't play a role in superiority. Yes - I do believe in a philosophy of Inequality. I hate and despise the levelling effects of equality. And I have shown an equal hatred for a world which would try to make everyone into little Alexander the Greats riding their own Bucephalus as for a world trying to make everyone equally low. But now what makes for superiority certainly aren't things like gender, sexual orientation and so forth. Postmodern society is trying to make these things play a role in superiority. I dislike this. I think superiority should be about other matters. Such as ability of writting great poetry, ability of composing beautiful music, ability of managing a great many people and building societies, ability of thinking/feeling, and so forth. These are the criteria that should be used to judge superiority. Not fucking sexual orientation. Fucking gender. And other such nonsense. These things are, and should be, irrelevant to how great someone is.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes I dislike this, because it's seeking to make all of us equally low. You seem to like to be made equally low with everyone else. I don't share such a sensibility, and my soul is revolted at such a totalitarian tendency of bringing down the greatness in some men, cutting their wings, and forcing them to live in the dirt, only because, as Nietzsche said, you yourself can't fly.
I guess I'm reading a lot of frustration in your thoughts, which seem to also not be very sensitive to people's suffering, but it sounds like you do acknowledge it, and acknowledge that they deserve compassion. It seems like we're actually very much in agreement on a lot of these points, but we started out of the gate both from opposite spectrums somehow, like we're speaking different languages. An East/West divide maybe? Do you live in the East somewhere? Just curious. I agree with almost everything in your last post, except for
Quoting Agustino
Which sounds like a dangerous road that could lead to yet more oppression.
So, my original post was mainly about three interconnected things: Otherness, Forgiveness and the Cycle of Human Oppression (hey, that's the title!). We seem to agree on oppression, not on forgiveness...but no one in this thread so far has addressed the concept of Otherness. Any thoughts? Anyone?
Oh no, I'm well aware that it assigns superiority. That's like post-structuralism 101. That's why I specified strongman oppression-- the oppression of the Western culture you despise is not made on those terms.
The lesbian black female doesn't seek to subdue white men beneath her greatness. She only denies they are greater than her and acts as part of a social movement which prevents the white male from asserting he is greater than everyone else. Power isn't about individual superiority anymore. It's about how society relates to the individual.
You are wrong about race, gender and sexuality, etc. They've always been used to assign superiority. The modern equality movements are a reaction to this, to the superiority of men of women in culture, to heterosexuals over gay people, to the virgin over the person who's had multiple partners, white people over black people etc.,etc. In this respect, post-modernism seek to level these out, not bring in a new category of things which have never been relevant to superiority.
Which is my point. The oppression of inequality is what you desire most of all, to be the great man who gets more than anyone else, rather than a man who is content being great within themselves. To avoid strongman oppression, where you are valued above others for your greatness, is utterly revolting to you. For you to be great, you simply must crush others beneath your boot. Living with the greatness others is something you cannot stand. To you, it means no-one can be great.
Metaphysically, they are still thinking in theist, religious or spiritual terms. The question supposes meaning, worth and ethics have to be placed there by some presence or force.
For the atheist/materialist, the question simply doesn't make sense. Since God an expression of the world, meaning, ethics and worth are already of the world, by its very definition.
Nietzsche was wrong. Stuck within the terms of the theist, religious or spiritual which sought to overcome, he failed to realise the key atheistic/materialistic point: not only can we make it on our own, but it's all we ever do.
That it sounds a bit close to religious fundamentalism for my liking! Actually the conflict between science and religion in post-Enlightenment Europe is very well documented. You will find a Wikipedia entry called 'the conflict thesis' that lays it out in detail.
Basically, I don't see the Enlightenment impulse towards science being the ultimate 'arbiter of reality' as being 'depraved', although it is true that as a consequence, many of the moral certitudes which held the social fabric together in earlier periods are dissolved by it. A perfect statement of that is Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which triumphantly declares that Darwinism has forever dissolved the conceit that there might be a moral order in the Universe, as if it were something to be liberated from.
But there are many scientists (for example, Peter Higgs) who think that neo-Darwinian materialists are verging on fundamentalism themselves. Such scientists, and I'm sure they're the large majority, are much more circumspect about what science does and doesn't say about 'questions of ultimate value'. So I don't regard materialism as being truly characteristic of science; it's parasitic on it.
Quoting Noble Dust
During the early years of my study of nonduailsm, I thought a lot about the existential plight inherent in the human condition. My interpretation is related once again to 'the fall', but read in a more symbolic way (and in a way which I think would be compatible with Barfield.) The symbolism of the 'apple' in the Old Testament is that it is taken from 'the tree of knowledge of good and evil'. So it represents the advent of self-consciousness: the beginning of the human awareness of self and other, things that are mine, and can therefore be lost; and the advent of language and the human sense of mortality. So that is a profound theme and not one to be glossed over.
Then, the symbolic meaning of the Incarnation is that through faith in Jesus' sacrifice one overcomes that sense of separateness from 'the other', through universal forgiveness and compassion for all mankind. The parable of the Good Samaritan epitomises that - the Samaritans being representative of an out-caste, the untouchables of that society.
Buddhism did something similar by refusing to recognise hereditary caste divisions and declaring right conduct as the only true mark of nobility; and later by the ethic of the Bodhisattva, whose entire religious career is dedicated to the enlightenment of all beings.
Of course in the 'global village', we are all nowadays being confronted with 'the other' in the form of displaced people, global immigration, and the other consequences of population pressure and political break-down. It's challenging, and it's not going to get any easier.
Then let me answer it. NO! Now why are you asking rhetorical questions? >:O
Yes, I'm from Eastern Europe, but I lived in the West as well.
>:O Okay, but why do you think it's not true? (by the way I appreciate the honest talk, I take no offence from it, I always appreciate honesty)
Quoting Wayfarer
You mean this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis where I find this:
[quote="Wikipedia]A study of US college students concluded that the majority of undergraduates in both the natural and social sciences do not see conflict between science and religion. Another finding in the study was that it is more likely for students to move from a conflict perspective to an independence or collaboration perspective than vice versa[/quote]
See this is what I mean Wayfarer. It seems to me that you are stuck in time, you are stuck in your young days when people were worried about a conflict between science and religion and that's why they were dissatisfied with the religion in which they were born (Christianity) and seeking after something different. But this isn't the world anymore. You're playing an old game, where no one is playing anymore, the stakes aren't there. And no one seems to be telling you this, but I for one find it disappointing that your knowledge and talents (both which could be of much greater help to people in the world) are being spent along such directions. Maybe today this game is still being played amongst some intellectuals. But the public at large doesn't care! They really don't care about the science-religion conflict, at least from my experience, and referring mainly to the younger folks now. (and the Wiki seems to support this too)
You are still there fighting against modernism and the Enlightenment reductionism, but the battle ain't there. Post-modernism is the game in town, Post-modernism has created and shaped this decadent society to be what it is, and you're not saying a word about it. You're fighting with modernism - which post-modernism has already discarded! You will defeat modernism, and then the Great Willow of Darkness will laugh in your face, because the stakes aren't there anymore. By the time you defeat modernism the shadow will have befallen upon the world. Nihilism, atheism and materialism aren't supported by scientific reductionism, except for a few intellectuals which are of no significance anymore.
Postmodernism doesn't believe in truth anymore - and that means any kind of truth, whether it's religious or scientific - doesn't matter. Postmodernism is pure politics, and metaphysics and the rest of philosophy become purely weapons to be wielded as a distraction from their goal - and their goal isn't a certain philosophy, but the reshaping of society as you and I know it. Their denial of truth is precisely this - it's them telling you I don't give a damn what the truth is (so proving them otherwise won't do any good), the world has to be this way, and that's that. Postmodernism represents quite possibly the most dangerous ideological virus that has infected the human mind. And the source of it isn't some success of science or anything of this sort - the source of it is an attitude which comes from within the human heart. The post-modernist sees that science has succeeded in changing some of our physical circumstances. Now that success has aroused and awakened the worm from his heart. And the worm wants to make all the decadence that was in the past impossible - because, for example, from fear of disease - he wants to make ALL of that possible. In the past people couldn't or wouldn't be sexually promiscuous for example, because of the dangers of pregnancy, disease, and so forth. The post-modernist wants to use science, wield it as a weapon, in order to reshape society such that pregnancy, disease, and so forth don't stand in the way of his desire. But the motivation for this is the desire itself, its the worm from his heart. In the past he couldn't do anything about it, but now science permits him to do. This technological power has awakened him the dragon that lay dormant in his heart. It has given him the idea that truth can be manipulated and used as a means of getting what you want. Science isn't a quest of truth for him - no no no - it's a club with which to reshape the world. Philosophy also - not a quest for truth, not a search for what is Truth, Beauty and so forth - no. It's a quest for power over the world.
That's why I'm in the opposite business from postmodernism. I am for shaping the world in accordance with Truth, Beauty, and so forth. This is to counteract their ambition to shape the world according to their pure and naked selfish desire. See Wayfarer, the battle isn't over what Truth is anymore. The Postmodernist has realised, that if they were going to fight for what the truth is, they would have lost, they would never have been able to get their world. But instead they have to sideline truth, they have to render it a social construct, unimportant and insignificant, and all truth has to be so sidestepped. When you are talking with them as if they were searching for truth, you are falling in a trap. They aren't like you. They don't give a damn about the truth. You care about Beauty, Truth and so forth, but don't assume they have the same noble passions driving them, because the truth is they unfortunately don't. But you should realise that the battle isn't over Truth anymore - it's over how to reshape the world - should we do it according to Truth, or according to our selfish and naked desire? Shall we orient ourselves towards the heights, or shall we make the low equal to the high as Willow slyly proposes?
In fact, look at the WillowOfDarkness. Notice that when you speak metaphysics with him, he's just playing around, he's enjoying it. But suddenly, what irks him the most, it's politics. Just see how he denounces you - look how he denounces me in this thread - when I attack based on politics. Why? Because when we discuss Truth, we forget that he's not after that. And when we forget that, we give him free reign over the world, and that's good for him, he's winning.
So you admit, freely and openly, that there is oppression in society that isn't the "strongman oppression".
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Yes she does, she wants to do precisely this. She's not interested in just living her life the way she is. She wants to impose her way of life over everyone else, and get lauded and applauded for it. She wants to get the job instead of the white heterosexual male, not because she's more capable, but because of her gender, skin color, and sexual orientation. That is oppression.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
They're largely a reaction to imagined problems. Men weren't superior to women by and large in most societies. They just had different roles to play. Difference isn't always of the comparable kind where you can name one as superior to another. It seems to me that you postmodernists remember that only when it's useful for you.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Inequality isn't oppression. I'm not talking about moral inequality. Morally, there should be equality. Da Vinci shouldn't get to beat people up just because he's a genius and a great man. He shouldn't get to steal someone's wife, or to oppress others to be his slaves, because he's a genius. Morally there should be equality. But every other way, there should be inequality, which is the natural state of being.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Why is this about me? I believe people like Da Vinci for example should be valued and respected by society for their creative capabilities - moreso than others, yes. But they should be on the same moral standing with everyone else.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No living with greatness is something that YOU cannot do, that's why you want to cut everyone's wings, and make them your equals - equally low. You hate that some are naturally greater than others, you don't want to respect them, you want to keep them on the ground, under your control. How dare they be better than you?! That's outrageous! I'm not outraged that there's people better than me - people like Da Vinci for example. I'm happy that there are such people, I look to them with admiration and respect, and have always desired to be like them. If I meet one, I'd treat them with the utmost respect, because they deserve it. I'm for justice - for each receiving according to what they deserve.
That's a great interpretation that aligns with Barfield's ideas. Is that an original interpretation of yours? That idea in connection with Barfield is something I want to study.
Good thoughts on Otherness that I agree with. My main concept that I'm working through right now is that Otherness is the seed, or one of the seeds of oppression. Looking at Barfield's idea, and your idea about the Apple, you can imagine Adam and Eve (whether they historically existed being unimportant) being birthed into consciousness, and immediately, there is The Other. Male and Female. Two separate consciousnesses separated from the spiritual umbilical cord they had with God.
On the other end of the dichotomy of otherness is equality. Augustino doesn't want equality because he recognizes that different people have different levels of talent (from what I can tell); I recognize that as a simple fact, but that view will inevitably lead to commodifying people, an element in the Western consumerism you're so critical of, Augustino. Social equality as such, on a basic level (economic level) isn't achievable in the world, but the equality I'm talking about is spiritual, and this longing for spiritual equality is what fuels more complex social problems like gender equality and race equality. Otherness is, again, the antithesis to spiritual equality. Seeing a homosexual as 'the other', seeing a black person as 'the other', seeing a less talented person as 'the other', all lead to dehumanization of the subject, which leads to oppression. Their otherness is not a sinful state as traditional Christian ethics would avow, but just the opposite: viewing them as the other is what creates oppression, which leads to what Christians view as sin. Because humanity is so deeply entrenched in this dehumanizing nightmare-world, the only remedy is spiritual, and the only spiritual remedy is forgiveness, which has to be acted out by persons, not offered conditionally from on high. And what's more, the divine is present in all human acts of forgiveness. It's still forgiveness, not "from" God, but in collaboration with God. The oppressed is the only one who can do this. On a political level, the problem is that the progressive left doesn't have the inner spiritual life to bring about the equality they seem to want (to say nothing of their hypocrisies that I've mentioned). How can a new inner spiritual life be brought about in the West in order to enact these concepts? It's a dizzying prospect, but tying in Barfield's concept of the evolution of consciousness actually might bring a sense of hope to the situation; it's almost a superseding of progressive humanism in that it comes out of the godforsaken age we're in and reunites with God, reaches out the hand to God's outstretched hand.
I don't know if you are aware of Hegel's 'Master/ Slave' dialectic? Only the slave can work his way to freedom; for Hegel the master can never be free. Freedom is equated with recognition of one's own humanity. Only the slave recognizes the humanity of the other (the master), which means that recognition of the master's humanity is really null and void since it comes only from one who is not recognized as human by the master himself.
So. only the oppressed, even while remaining outwardly repressed, can win their own freedom. The oppressor can never achieve this without first willingly becoming the oppressed.
How so?
Quoting Noble Dust
Does this mean moral equality amongst people? Or?
Quoting Noble Dust
I'm highly highly skeptic of historical narratives which have direction. Human history, I am quite convinced, has no direction. We're not "heading" towards anything. Have you ever read anything by Eric Voegelin?
Thus spoke the slave :P Nietzsche didn't call it slave morality for no reason.
The "otherness" being referred to here isn't something the Stoics would recognize, or so I think. Each human having or being a part of the divine is to be respected and revered as a result. When we're disturbed by their "otherness" we disturb ourselves with things not in our control, which Stoicism abjures. That's not to say Stoics are indifferent to all conduct of others and would not object to certain conduct, particularly conduct which is harmful (as it would harm a part of the immanent deity and so be contrary to the divine; not "in accordance with nature"). What we do and think is within our control, and to the extent we can prevent harm we should do so. But what makes someone "other" is in many cases insignificant, and our concern with such otherness is an undue concern with things beyond our control. Stoicism emphasizes our control of ourselves, not the control of others.
I find the simplicity of Stoicism admirable. I think its modern resurgence is encouraging from a spiritual perspective.
Nietzsche was a disturbed, but nonetheless brilliant, idiot.
I'm not, thanks for the info. I pretty much agree with the concept, it's not far off from what I'm saying about forgiveness only issuing from the oppressed. The oppressed is the only one in a position of being able to offer forgiveness. To me, one of the powerful things about forgiveness in this regard is that it's an everyday concept that bridges the gap between theoretical, arm-chair ideas about oppression on the one hand, and real life on the other. Forgiveness is visceral, it's emotional in the same way that oppression itself often is.
Freedom being the recognition of one's humanity...I can get with that. I'll have to think on it. Freedom is hard to define. There's a glimmer of truth in the idea that only the oppressed can then experience freedom (whatever freedom is); but I would counter that by saying that even the oppressor is oppressed; an act of oppression is always born from oppression first experienced by the one who is now oppressing. An example is how often sexual abuse is a cycle. The abused becomes the abuser. So this is where I depart from Hegel's concept. Hegel's concept along with Marx never seem to realize this. This is one reason, Augustino, I'm in favor of a history that has a direction; these concepts to me are beginning to take shape in history. Ironically, this view of oppression leads to a more hopeful view because it defines everyone as both oppressor and oppressed, and so, if only the oppressed can experience freedom...then there's hope for a spiritual equality for all of humanity. Augustino, this answers your question about whether it's a "moral equality". I would say no, but I would ask for your definition of moral equality. And again, the apparatus by which oppression is ended is forgiveness, and since only the oppressor can offer it, in reality, this can mean essentially anyone, because again, everyone is both oppressor and oppressed. This is why the potential for this transformation of humanity lies within humanity itself, in collaboration with the divine, which needs to issue from a rediscovery of an inner spiritual life.
I think you're demonising. Certainly there are people like that, but I'm not addressing them - what would be the use? My aims are a lot more modest. Sure, I'm a traditionalist - I'm interested in the 'dialectic of the enlightenment' and other subjects.
Quoting Noble Dust
That interpretation is along gnostic lines. Apart from anything, 'the tree' is also a reference to 'the tree of life' which is a universal archetype. You can run riot with such ideas, but I think that the tree of 'the knowledge of good and evil' has a clear meaning in terms of the dawning of self-consciousness. Have a look at this article on the topic by Stephan Hoeller - he's a modern gnostic and well worth knowing about.
Barfield was a follower of Steiner whom I think was arguably a gnostic - not in the special sense of a particular lineage or spiritual movement, but the general sense of being concerned with an inner or higher knowledge.
:-}
From the Stoic perspective, I think the fact that there are people different from us (other than we are) is not in our control; what is in our control is how we react to it. We need not be angered, disturbed, concerned or alarmed by these differences. To the extent we are, we allow what isn't in our control to influence us adversely.
Certainly, we can do various things to influence others and should in some cases; whether and how we do so is a question of judgment. One of the things which distinguished Stoicism and Epicureanism in history was that Stoicism encouraged participation in public life generally (something which made it attractive to many Romans of the equestrian and senatorial class, for whom life and honors was primarily in the public realm and private life often unimportant).
Certainly. But I'm not referring to people different than us, simply to the state of society. Otherness isn't necessarily other people who happen to have different beliefs and so forth. It's also social organisation, cultural values, etc. which we may wish to alter or make better or improve.
I agree with Wayfarer in this. Postmodernism is a very small part of the problem, because very few people involved in practical life take it seriously. It is a joke to most of such people. I would hazard a guess that even the majority of philosophers today don't take it very seriously. Certainly most of those working in England and America, and probably much of Europe, at least outside of France, think in most ways against it. For, example, I nave read Zizek referring scornfully to "the Post Modern sophists". Even in France the most significant philosophers today, such as Badiou and Meillassoux, are deliberately working against and away from postmodernist tendencies.In fact the biggest problem is the objectification of spirit, which is in line with the rise of the scientific paradigm. This objectification is common to realists, anti-realists, idealists and materialists alike.
In fact ironically post modernism is the only significant contemporary philosophical movement which, although certainly not unequivocally and perhaps only by tenuous affiliation, in confined areas and in small measure, may be seen to be in opposition to the objectification of spirit. See for example the Christian phenomenology of Michel Henry (although he is arguably no Post Modernist); which can be understood to have something in common with Nikolai Berdyaev, a philosopher I very much admire, and who I have noticed you occasionally refer to favorably. Other examples are the apophatic Christian philosophers, such as Marion and Caputo, who arguably are Post modernist in orientation.
This is a psychological explanation which may or may not turn out to be true in a majority of cases. I think Hegel's point is a more phenomenological one. The point is, that from a position of complete unfreedom (which is the need to have one's humanity recognized by others, coupled with the failure to be able to recognize the humanity of others) no escape is possible.
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24
Only from the position of the poor man or slave is it possible to free oneself from this need for recognition while simultaneously recognizing the other. The Master can never do it unless he become a slave or a poor man (in that sense). The rich man needs to give away all that he has in order to be free.
I believe this is also a meaning of Christ's saying recorded in the Gospel of Matthew:
" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth".
True, it is an explanation that involves psychology, but it's also an intuitive conclusion, not a phenomenological or logical one. The problem here for me is that I have a hard time imagining oppression being something that repeatedly is born in different people without apparent prior cause, as if isolated incidents of oppression just pop up in the world. This is tied up with the concept of Otherness; imagining that people essentially just randomly develop evil, oppressive tendencies actually perpetuates otherness, because it's such a bizarre premise in the first place that evades any obvious explanation. This is a classic aspect of otherness; the other is evil, and there's no explanation as to why. Hegel's idea doesn't seem to address the problem of the origin of oppression. In other words, the dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed should be seen as dynamic and diffuse, not binary. So while I don't necessarily disagree with your explanations of Hegel's ideas, at least in theory, I still think we have to look at oppression as being a cycle. The question is what the root cause of the cycle is; I don't have an answer right now. But what I'm positing in this thread is that forgiveness is the antidote. I don't think this goes against the scriptures you're quoting, because again, the meek includes both oppressor and oppressed, viewed this way.
Edited for clarity.
Yes, but isn't the real problem that of how to escape oppression and achieve freedom? I think to do that freedom must be presupposed as primary. So, to me the concern over origins is a concern with determinism; and once you enter the deterministic circle the possibility of freedom evaporates.
Certainly I agree that forgiveness is a necessary part of the answer. The oppressed must forgive the oppressor in order to be free of him. But I don't think that necessitates making excuses for the oppressor. He can be seen as having deliberately chosen evil, and yet still forgiven nonetheless. If his actions are determined, and thus not of his own doing, then there would be nothing to forgive. Do I need to forgive the lion for eating my children, or the lightning for killing my beloved? I would say it would not be appropriate to forgive something which is merely of necessity acting according to its nature.
Yes, that is the real problem, I agree. I like Berdyaev's view of freedom as primary, the same as you're saying; he sees it as something prior even to divinity, as far as I understand. But if you take determinism at face value, as the idea that human actions are ultimately jump started by an outside force (and so at it's mercy), and if freedom is not outside the will but the foundation of it, then oppression could be seen as emanating from freedom. Seeing it this way gives meaning to oppression as a cycle. I don't see this as a problem, especially in light of ideas from people like Barfield and Teilhard de Chardin who see humanity evolving, whether strictly in consciousness (Barfield), or organically into consciousness (Teilhard).
I'm not trying to make excuses for the oppressor, but maybe I'm inadvertently doing that. The problem I keep trying to explain is simply that each of us is both oppressor and oppressed. So when we talk about the oppressed needing to forgive the oppressor, this is a non-linear process (if you will): I forgive you, you forgive me, I forgive Augustino, he forgives me, he forgives you, you forgive him...Wayfarer forgave his father, I haven't forgiven mine yet, but will in the future, etc., ad infinitum until everyone is forgiven. So I'm looking at it on at first a small scale. I'm not looking at Hitler, etc. Those are logarithmically much more massive instances of the same principle that us everyday people deal with. It's best to start existentially with myself.
Yes, but I think a Stoic would view what should be altered and how it should be altered very differently than most. A Stoic is supposed to be largely indifferent to such things as money, power, property, the opinions of others, what others desire, customs, and the more we speak of social organization and cultural values the more speak of such things as they relate to many people. So I think a Stoic would think that many--perhaps even most--of what creates conflict and disagreement among groups of people to be a function of their misguided concern for and desire for matters and things which are of no real importance, and the desire to possess or exercise control over them. I don't think a Stoic would do anything which would foster such concerns and desires and it seems our politics, at least, is entirely devoted to them.
Do you think the idea of freedom as primary is compatible with a theologically evolutionary view of spirit, though? Barfield and de Chardin I think, both entertain such views. Barfield I have read quite recently and extensively, and I am aware that he, following Steiner (who himself follows Goethe and also, somewhat puzzlingly, claims very extensive and specific clairvoyant knowledge of 'spiritual reality') does assert that there is a spiritual telos. The problem I have with this idea is that it is ultimately deterministic, and seems to deny genuine freedom and creativity; because freedom and creativity rely on the possibility that there are many ways the story of God and humanity may turn out.
The objectification of spirit that Berdyaev warns against seems to be exemplified in Steiner's notion of a 'science of anthroposophy' or 'spiritual science'. I do have a lot of respect for Steiner and Barfield and also for a man who was, early on in his spiritual development, Steiner's disciple, but who later converted to Catholicism and wrote the great anonymous spiritual classic Meditations on the Tarot; I am speaking here of Valentin Tomberg. I suspect it was this tendency of anthroposophy to objectify the spirit that turned Tomberg away from it and towards Catholicism.
I'm working through it still, but intuitively, yes. This might sound like bad philosophy, but the two ideas taken separately both resonate in my mind, so, in my thinking, a harmonization must exist. Again, I don't place primary importance on discursive reasoning for these topics. I place a lot of emphasis on intuition. Berdyaev's critique of discursive reasoning in the first chapter of The Meaning of the Creative Act has been pretty influential for me. I think I've always intuitively felt the existence of a spiritual telos. I've always had an obsession with eschatology. I guess it depends on how we're defining these various terms; "consciousness", "spirit", "evolution"...I think of Barfield's evolution of consciousness as originating primordially in myth (the positive gnostic sense of the word), in a time when there was a spiritual unity instead of metaphor; language (imbued with a spiritual power) evolved with the birth of consciousness into a dualistic split between subject and object; primordially, there was one participatory reality, and metaphoric language signifies the first split between subject and object. To say "the spirit is a breath" or "the spirit is a wind" is to remember when they were one and the same. Barfield always seems too sheepish to actually come out and say this because he was so focused on a philological approach to the topics that interested him, instead of taking a specific religious stand. He didn't seem to want to step too far outside his specialty. Anyway, taking Berdyaev into account, these metaphors become objectifications of the spirit, as Barfield's participation begins to wane, and abstract reason begins to take shape as consciousness evolves. So, all that being said, I don't see how these concepts are deterministic. It seems like you equate any sense of origin with determinism; maybe I just don't understand the academic philosophical concepts of determinism well enough, but I see no problem with viewing an evolutionary theology as stemming from a primordial freedom. A static view of consciousness actually feels more deterministic to me; God imbued mankind with one unchanging consciousness and now he's enslaved to it unless he "accepts Jesus", or some form of the usual narrative. In this view he's basically just deterministically enslaved to God's will because he's a static being. No freedom in sight.
Quoting John
This is an interesting thought that I haven't entertained before. I think there's actually wisdom in this idea that doesn't clash with the concept of a spiritual telos. There are, in a sense, many ways the story can turn out; many potential versions of a telos. You could maybe build an argument that the evolution of consciousness is pointing towards the birth of a telos, one that we don't yet know. So instead of discursively abstracting a resonable-sounding telos given the data, we can look at the evolution of consciousness and predict that "something will happen in the end", we're moving towards something, thanks to human creativity and freedom. Granted I haven't done this in this thread, I've more or less suggested my own telos. But it's an interesting idea.
Quoting John
Yes, and Berdyaev was critical of Steiner, and for good reason I think. Steiner remains an enigma, though...bioydynamic farming has been shown to be effective (I work in the wine industry; biodynamics has done wonders for the winemaking process, granted it's still on the fringe). My bigger concern about Steiner is that his followers seem to border on the cultish. Barfield's focus on language is what's important to me, as far as anthroposophy goes. But even Barfield's excessive admiration for Steiner feels a little off.
Ah, now that's a book I haven't yet read, but want to, since I am very much involved in the arts and I really resonate with Berdyaev's philosophy.
I also place a lot of emphasis on intuition; in fact I think it's indispensable even to any process of discursive reasoning. How do we know that one thing follows form another? We just see it; it is intuitively obvious or self-evident to us. Intuition is absolutely intrinsic to both analysis and synthesis, I believe.
Quoting Noble Dust
Perhaps a general telos; love, the creation of novelty or redemption perhaps? But nothing too rigid?
Quoting Noble Dust
What you have written here is suggestive; I see some interesting questions and possible directions to follow. Perhaps the reason I associate the question of origin with determinism is because of the idea inherent in it of first cause or initial determination. The models of nature are either probablistically or rigidly deterministic, both of which, excluding any other supernatural factors. seem to rule out genuine freedom. Evolution always seems to be associated with the idea of naturalistic process, and is hard to associate with any idea of an order that does not involve one thing leading to another.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a static view of consciousness" or "one unchanging consciousness". I do think spirit necessarily changes, and consciousness with it, but I tend to think of the changes as ineluctably mysterious; and so I hesitate to associate them with such a loaded idea as 'evolution'. The idea of natural evolution, it seems to me, is that given the starting conditions and the laws or invariances of nature, (whether rigid or probabilistic) it has turned out the only way it could have.
Quoting Noble Dust
Are you thinking here of something like a shared mystical understanding?
What have you read from him? It's probably his most mystical writing, in a way. He ties creativity to a bunch of different aspects of life and the world. It can get a little bewildering, but it's incredible. A quote from that book that reflects what you're saying about intuition:
"The task of philosophy is to find the most perfect formulation for truth, perceived in intuition, and to synthesize formulae. These carry conviction by the light which shines out from them, rather than by demonstration or conclusions."
Quoting John
Are you asking me? I think love and redemption are certainly part of the end, I'm not sure about the creation of novelty, you'd have to expand on that. An interesting side thought is how much western culture loves great stories; novels, movies, the golden age of TV, etc...in a sense, eschatology permeates all of Western society in that way, and I wonder if our obsession with stories is descended from the Gospel. I'm not making any kind of claim, just making the observation.
Quoting John
I guess I was thinking if there's no evolution of consciousness, then humanity has always had the same modes of thinking; discursive reason, intuition, imagination, along with emotions, memories, sense data...and I don't think that's true. I think a lot of complex factors (many of them spiritual) lead to changes in consciousness over the course of history. So I don't really think in Teilhard's terms of consciousness being connected to material evolution.
Quoting John
This is a nuanced idea that I can entertain.
Quoting John
Not necessarily, I was just trying to describe a mindset of accepting teleology without knowing what it will be as being a tenable position.
If you can't reconcile origins with freedom, how do you view both concepts?
Good convo, just want to toss in a parenthetical aside about Hegel's Master/Slave dialectic, partially to refresh myself.
The reason the master can't recognize the slave's humanity is because he can't even recognize his own. For Hegel, freedom arises out of self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is a recognition of one's essential negativity. Negativity, in this context, doesn't mean 'evil,' but the negation of everything 'determinate' about oneself (To make this more concrete, it's a bit like smelting one's identity by melting away everything that comes from one's contingent lifeworld - Who am I? Am I a Mainer? A US Citizen? A dispatcher? A brother? Importantly the same process has to be done with reference to what one desires too. What remains is not simple nothing, but the absolute freedom of self-relating nothingness.)
The slave, in Hegel's strange parable, is a slave because he has experienced the fear of total annihilation. He was utterly at the mercy of one who could kill him, but was spared and made into a slave. In experiencing this fear, says Hegel, he has experienced immediately his inner nothingness.
Then he is set to work, shaping the world not according to his desires, but to the desires of another. In (a) experiencing the nothingness of his identity and (b) acting upon the world with no determinate purpose of his own, he comes to understand, so the story goes, the essence of freedom, of what a man really is. His 'in-itself' has become 'for-himself' The Master can't understand this, because he's still totally immersed in his life world, acting out blindly inherited desires he's never questioned, but feels as his own.
He requires the recognition of the slave because he is not able himself to confront and work upon the world, but requires a mediating workman. Since he has not made his identity's in-itself for-himself, and since, for Hegel, an in-itself always needs to express itself, he must seek the for-itself in another. The slave, on the other hand, has freed himself from such a dependence (though this, too, is just the beginning of a much longer process.)
I have read Slavery and Freedom , Spirit and Reality and am reading Freedom and the Spirit
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, the story is generally conceived as having a definite beginning and ending and in that sense seems most consonant with the Western view of cosmology and history. However, The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, among many others, do predate the Gospel.
Quoting Noble Dust
That's a novel way of thinking about it for me. I had always thought of the evolution of consciousness as consisting in different ways of reasoning discursively, intuiting, imagining, emoting, remembering, sensing and so on. I hadn't thought of it in terms of other modalities altogether. I'll have to think some more on that.
I do agree with you about spiritual factors (meaning non-material factors) leading to changes in consciousness.
Quoting Noble Dust
I do tend to think it all starts with freedom; so I have no problem with the idea of origin per se, but rather with the idea of origins as being ultimately determinative.
Quit playing around, and read Philosophy of Inequality by him ;)
I haven't considered that book yet. You seem to be suggesting it is his magnum opus. If so, why would say it is?
You've reminded of some interesting elements of Hegel's dialectic here. I particularly like the idea of "self-relating nothingness" which I think ties in with a non-objectifying conception of spirit, and the Christian idea of 'dying before you die'.
As an aside, inexplicably I am reminded of Heidegger's thinking of authenticity as 'being towards death' which if I remember right, he says is orienting towards 'the possibility of the impossibility of Dasein's being'.
I don't have anything more to say about that right now, so I'll leave it there.
Because that's the book he wrote when it was very likely he was going to die - so the gloves came off. That's him at his most honest.
It's interesting you should say that, I searched the book on Amazon earlier and found this in the lone review of it:
"It is written with a more unrestrained style than is usually found in Berdyaev's books. It is Berdyaev with the gloves off, fighting mad. (Berdyaev in a later postscript disavowed its angry tone, although he did not repudiate its ideas.)".
Anyway, it sounds interesting, I'll probably read it after Destiny of Man and The Meaning of the Creative Act.
I have found more sympathy in general with Berdyaevs philosophical writings, than with those of most other philosophers. I find that what he says is mostly exactly what I have already thought, only crystallized and elaborated more fully, obviously. So reading him is a fascinating exercise for me.
I did NOT write that review >:O
Regarding the angry tone, it is a political book, and the imminence of death forced Berdyaev to be authentic and true. That's what I like about it. It's truthful - there's no mish-mashing that is present in some of his other, more intellectual and less political works.
I'm not sure but I first looked into him as part of my interest in Russian thinking, along with authors like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Lossky, Ivan Illyin, Solovyov, etc. What attracted me to him was his focus on religion (as I also am an Eastern Orthodox), and I first started by reading whatever I could get my hand of online from him mostly from here (the shorter works - the essays which interested me):
http://www.berdyaev.com/
Then I read two books - Philosophy of Inequality and The End of our Time, both of which I liked, and looked into a third - Spirit and Reality, which I've never finished. As for how I found out about Berdyaev - I'm really not sure, I can't remember to be honest. It may have simply been after googling Eastern Orthodox thinkers/philosophers.
Quoting csalisbury
I guess it's my interests. I looked into works which interested me, mostly those which had political and religious elements interlinked in them.
Are you sure? Seneca was the richest man in Rome. I'd say that rather than indifferent to money, they should be indifferent to the loss of money. If he was the richest man in Rome, he obviously had quite a large estate, which must have taken time to adequately manage. So he certainly invested that time, one wouldn't invest the time if they were completely indifferent to money - nor would they acquire the money-making skills.
Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor - he couldn't have been Emperor if he wasn't interested in power. The difference was just that he wouldn't sacrifice virtue for power - he had the right hirearchy of values.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
In relation to virtue they are of no real importance. But not absolutely.
Quoting Ciceronianus the White
I agree - a Stoic would be opposed to our consumerist society, which is built on greed and lust.
I would start with The Meaning of the Creative Act if you want to get an overall sense for his ideas. (Or have you read him already?) It's his earliest work that gives a broad sense of his philosophy. It's rambling and brash, but it's brilliant.
I agree with what you say about authenticity; that it may take the form of emulating, but not slavishly imitating, a hero.
To be a valid expression of the spirit of the times quite probably entails quite unself-consciously being yourself, free of concerns about how your actions or works will fit in or not fit in with history, influence people or not, or even be recognized or not. I think there can never be any guarantees and the desirability of avoiding hubris demands that the degree to which sheer luck (or providence if you prefer) comes into it be whole-heartedly acknowledged.
Seneca wrote wonderfully of Stoicism, but his accumulation of riches and power has always made Stoics and aspiring Stoics somewhat uncomfortable. I'm more sympathetic towards him now than I was in the past. It seems to me he became more truly a Stoic as he fell out of favor with Nero. Then, he offered to transfer all his fortune to the Emperor, but this was refused. After the death of his partner in trying to govern Nero, Burrus, he began to divest himself of power and became less and less a figure in government. According to Tacitus, when he became implicated (as well as his nephew, Lucan) in a conspiracy to assassinate Nero and was told to kill himself or be killed, he died in a manner worthy of a Stoic and a philosopher.
Marcus Aurelius was born to be an emperor and groomed to be one. I think being an emperor was in many ways a matter of expected duty to him; all would have thought him likely to become emperor whether he grasped at power or didn't. I'm sure he wasn't immune to the lure of power, though.
Remember, I referred to what a Stoic is supposed to think, believe, feel. Being a Stoic isn't easy.
Okay, but why shouldn't a Stoic be concerned about money for example? I agree such a concern shouldn't overpower their concern for virtuous living, but why should there be no concern at all? What's wrong with the concern so long as it doesn't get in the way of virtuous living, and so long as it doesn't become an obsession or a source of worry?
I think that for a Stoic there is nothing admirable about making money or possessing it; one should be indifferent to it in that sense. It isn't something to be desired or pursued, because normally we do so to acquire things, property, power and status, regarding which we should also be indifferent. Note that I'm not referring to need here. I'm not aware of any Stoic who was critical of doing what we must do to survive. But I think for a Stoic seeking money or property or possessing them has nothing to do with virtuous living and generally would be contrary to it.
But what if someone were to need money, status, power and so forth in order to be able to better help his society? After all, the service we can render to our society is limited by the resources we have on the one side, and by our will to do good on the other.
I aspire to be a Stoic, but may be something of a cynic as I think it's very unlikely anyone has ever needed or ever will need to acquire money, status and power in order to help others or society in general. People don't become rich and powerful in order to help others let alone feel the need to do so for that purpose. Or, at least, the likelihood of that happening I so small that it can't be deemed a possibility which would sanction such a desire to acquire riches and power.
Then how would you suggest they go around helping people? Isn't social organisation - which takes both money and influence - the place where the greatest good can be done? I mean if that was properly done, we'd surely have a lot less troubles - both economic and social - than we do today.
Ideally? By doing the best we can with what we have, to paraphrase Epictetus, and not seeking power over others and to possess things we don't have. By living in accordance with nature, which is to say reason. Ideally, none of us would be consumed by envy, ambition, hate, fear, anger, etc., because what causes us to feel those emotions would no longer be of significant concern to any of us.
But we won't ever all be Stoic Sages, of course. So, we do what we can to counter those negative emotions and the havoc they cause. That may well include acting together in pursuit of that goal in various respects, but I don't think it would include doing what generally causes them in ourselves and others.
Typically, punishment is little more than wishing to will away a past affront to a socially constructed convention. Since we can't change the past, we try to affect the future by steering society by using harm, which generates fear. This seems more prominent than rewarding people for not doing bad things, since resources are limited and the value of state issued hugs have somehow lost value. When someone does do something they think is bad to another, and wish to be forgiven, penance must be accepted by the harmed party AND the person must be able to forgive themselves, to be able to find respite from remorse. It isn't enough for someone to forgive themselves if they are not forgiven; just as it is not enough for someone to be forgiven but still haunt themselves. Although, it should be mentioned that remorse may be healthy, and self-forgiveness may just be something of a luxury for the forever sinful. As an aside, I believe in penance. I think that people can change and that self-grief is capable of modifying someones actions and beliefs. I think that burning bridges is an overall detriment to society, but also value individual rights to steer clear of violators. Losing trust in each other and in ourselves does not tend to increase the agency of the whole; but getting a faction to distrust another faction does seem to make divisions more clear in order to root out the latter faction; which seems like increasing agency if the premise is that the latter faction are decreasing agency of the former faction.
Humanism was brought up quite a bit at the beginning of the thread. Perhaps we can do a better job of humanism if we look towards post-humanism. If we open empathetic channels to animals and computers, we may include other humans along the way.