Nice take. I hadn’t come at it like that, and man I have come at it from a lot of angles. Yes, it is a very left brain set of demands and that might explain some of the behavioral issues, since the left brain has trouble with context. A really good book on left right brain stuff, and that took a different approach than other books I have read is
I thought he argued a very solid case, with ton of references and information and great tangents, that the right brain HAS to be the one in charge, though of coure they need to work together. Further that the Right brain is also primary.
For the sake of simplicity, think of the left brain as dominated by words, and the right brain by images. Religion is based on imagery. It isn’t rational in a narrow left brain sense of the word. As Carl Jung found by talking to his patients, the imagery is present in the psyche whether the person is religious or not.
But strict scientistic modernism denigrates this spontaneous aspect of human experience. Iambiguous appears to be a victim of the modern worldview that keeps him locked in Left-brain verbal abstractions severed from his own internal imagery.
Organized religion also systematizes these experiences into tightly defined boxes. Further, religions require that people believe the unbelievable in order to be fully fledged saved members. Iambiguous understandably protests against these tendencies of religious institutions.
A middle path involves entertaining one’s own internal imagery as a means of getting in touch with the depth of oneself. Literal belief in the images isn’t required. This includes awareness of nihilism in oneself, by the way. An integrated consciousness balances the personal with the impersonal, meaning and meaninglessness.
Iambigious, with his understanding of the function of religion as limited to providing “comfort and consolation” to the believer is in denial about the “comforts and consolations” of nihilism. They are there. And not just for mass murderers. I experience them myself. These are present within me in an internal dialectic with the possibility of transcendence.
Iambiguous is alienated from that possibility in himself. For him potential meaning is an external other with whom he wrestles like Jacob wrestled with the angel of God.
Back again to the argument that Biggie needs to go out into the world and become involved with Buddhists/Buddhism in order to truly understand their frame of mind in regard to morality/enlightenment here and now and immortality/salvation there and then.
Never mind that as an “old man” with a body that affords him far fewer options in regard to accomplishing such a task, it makes more sense to him to probe the things Buddhists can link him to in venues such as this. Where is the hard evidence that, among the hundreds and hundreds of additional spiritual paths to choose from out there, Buddhism really is the one true path.
And then there is the path that KT and felix are themselves on. Morality here and now and immortality there and then is no less embedded in their own sojourn from the cradle to the grave. How then are they intertwined in the behaviors that they choose in a world awash in conflicting goods?
Given descriptions of actual sets of circumstances.
And, again, with so much at stake, should they not themselves be out there going down the list of all major and minor religious denominations? Personally checking them out one by one to see if perhaps there is a better, more demonstrable path to embody as mere mortals in regard to their own life and death?
Indeed, perhaps KT and felix ought to explore the extent to which religion and spirituality themselves seem reasonable pursuits given whatever evidence there is to sustain them among and between human communities. If nothing else they can show us how to avoid all of my own transgressions in these discussions.
“Varieties of religious ecperience can count for such differences, not withal searching for it 's escathological sources, but again in rarer instances.”
Iambigious,
One does not need to go out now days, except in rare cases of panic.
Then, anything goes. Wittgenstein unabashedly went to the cinema, viewing non selectively anything on the screen.,
totally redundant , unselected flow of images, to prevent a real formation of adherance to some real or image binary formation to bind a cult of personality.
Apology- re-flection to whomever:
Such. outbursts despite meant for some reason, do not requisite to signals of ideal constructive infatuations, nor signal as tomes of infatuation of/to their source.
They are as it were, responses from heights, denigrated to the level of some uncertain depth, as arising from dreams.
Such, dreams or subterranian images can not be eternally ignored, otherwise they will cause such indolence, that can not forestall and ignore casual consequences.
After all, what “on earth” is he talking about here given that all of us who choose to interact with others can at any time be confronted with value judgments that clash such that the behaviors we choose either are or are not intertwined in that which we believe to be the fate of “I” after we die.
He’ll either examine this in terms of the behaviors that he himself chooses or he won’t. Why think, feel, say and do this rather than that? And how is what any particular individual does choose here not, in his case, the embodiment of dasein? How is it instead what science or philosophy or theology has provided him in regard to the most reasonable and virtuous behaviors to choose.
I can only once again challenge him to bring the discussion “down here”. To the existential parameters of spirituality in his life.
Instead, if the past is any indication, watch him wiggle out of that with yet another “world of words”, purely speculative intellectual/spiritual contraption.
As for the function of religion, my point is that comfort and consolation revolve more around the extent to which religion becomes the font for differentiating moral and enlightened behavior from immoral and benighted behavior here and now…and for differentiating immortality and salvation from oblivion there and then. You can’t have one without the other, right?
Meanwhile, over and again on various posts I have noted the extent to which nihilism can in turn provide comfort and consolation to those who come to embody it. How? By starting with the assumption that in a No God/No Religion world, one does not have to choose between the enlightened/moral things and the benighted/immoral things to do. On the contrary, any and all behaviors can be rationalized such that one’s own self-gratification alone can be the deciding factor.
But: there’s a price to be paid. For me it is a “fractured and fragmented” self getting closer and closer to oblivion.
Now, watch him a week or a month from now ignore the points I raise here and make the very same ones all over again. Let’s look for that, okay?
Once again I have no clear understanding of what “on earth” you mean to convey here. In fact, I’m still not entirely certain if that isn’t your intention.
Anyway, you know my own approach to religion:
1] one either believes in or does not believe in a spiritual/denominational path
2] if one does then it either does or does not sustain a moral narrative he or she has come to embody
3] if it does sustain a moral narrative then in any particular context it will propel/compel the believer to choose particular behaviors in a world bursting at the seams with conflicting goods
4] if one does choose what “spiritually” is the right thing to do then this dot in turn either is or is not connected to the one revolving around the fate of “I” on the other side of the grave
And, then, in whatever one believes here, they either are or are not able to go beyond a leap of more or less blind faith in order to actually demonstrate that what they do believe is in fact that which all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to believe as well.
Now, you will either take the discussion here or you won’t. And Wittgenstein may or may not be relevant if you do choose to take it there.
No, I do want to. Except, and again i consider You an exception mentioned earlier, of potential gifts which can be shared.
Except, the bind is very strong, within and without the basic choice, and i surmise it signifies IT to be intended, unawares or not.
Within these bounderies, it is near impossible to inflect through even the mirror stage.
In leaving to Utah on a panic, givies time to reflect on the severity of possible fracture.(s)
At this moment it is impossible to realise rationally., except by aforementioned images, the significance of tying positively to Wittgenstein. ( except by aphorism)
Will comment time to time to the best , as it indulges ,and pertains to this I beg Your pardon if perhaps a more immediate ready reply. was expected.
Okay, I missed that you stated that “over and again.” Your assessment of course ignores the whole realm of human/mammalian social empathic and compassionate feelings common to all but the sociopath or psychopath. Of course, I expect you will make the perfect the enemy of the good in your quest to deny humanistic values.
You have your reward.
Why not? You address your points to a third party, the “They” of your own imagination. Take it up with Them.
I double dare you to note a particular context relating to the main components of Buddhism relating to your own personal conceptions regarding the existential relationship between morality here and now and immortality there and then. Allowing you to clear up misconceptions that relate to both premises and conclusions as the exchange unfolds.
Double dare did not occur to me, not even a single one, as You bring it up. It appears to a show and tell type devolution into a truth and dare kind of debatable issue.
If that, then some rules of engagement must be prefaced and I dont think that this may ne appropriate or not. If You go along with such a scheme, rather then an informal , mutual discussion , then that should be made clear.
This should not be a combat type situation excluding one point of view from the other , with a jury forming a conclusion regarding a winner and a looser, but a joint effort to avoid the fractures and possible oblivion.
Does not conflict resolution entail the type of things Buddhism suggests? It is adverse to matters of ego. Rather the opposite matters, that of finding balance with disattachment old such actions.
It attains a simple quietness , a Zen-hush, where grievences are not fueled by denied fears.
A number of posts back Iambiguous challenges me and Felix to demonstrate a number of things. A reader joining the thread in the middle might think this reasonable and of course would not realize that these arguments
have been countered and responded to many times before in this and other threads
