That’s it? That is the point you want to make in a topic on “Secular Existence & Transcendence”? What does that even have to do with the topic?
Who told you that you can eradicate bias? That is impossible and the reason why humility and compassion is part of the equation. I can honestly say that I fail to see the reason why you interrupt a discussion on a completely different subject to make this “point”. Make your point to authoritarians if you want, you won’t find that Felix or I are in any way authoritarian. We are people learning as we go along, basing our decisions on lessons that seem to have eluded you.
Then take your complaint to them and stop interrupting other discussions to make that same dreary point over and over again. Life isn’t fair, Felix and I have noticed that as well, but our effort is towards finding a way through our mad society, despite feeling (as you do) uncomfortable with the whole situation. What are you doing other than whining?
Again, where have you seen this position taken in what Felix and I have posted? What does it have to do with us? What does it have to do with what we are discussing?
I see nothing that you have said is anything I would like to share. Spiritual transcendence is available to those who engage, otherwise you are outside looking in. But my diagnosis was at least correct, and your strategy isn’t going to help you. I don’t want to go into your hole, and if you want to come out, then do so. The first thing is to stop the alibis and look at your situation as straightforwardly as possible. Drop the philosophical baggage and look for help.
Yes. Music is a source of transcendent experience. It can take one beyond oneself. There is a sense of order in the patterns of pitch, harmony and rhythm that can put us in touch with the deepest emotions. It is non-rational in the narrow sense of linguistic logic. It has the power to heal. If not absolutely universal it at least approaches universality. The magic of Johann Sebastian Bach’s religious music is accessible to the most certain atheist.
And then there is the self forgetfulness of the performer. I get lost in it when I’m playing music. That is the intrinsic motivation that keeps me doing it. And I think that’s why we practice a religion. If one has experienced Transcendence, one wants to do so again. So we repeat whatever we think may have produced it. That is the meaning of ritual in a large sense.
I write fiction and poetry, and have been published, and I also am a visual artist and have sold many works. I find that when I write, the process is a mixture of satisfaction and agony, and my brain is always working rather feverishly. When I create a picture, however, while in the process of doing that, “I” simply cease to exist. I feel nothing except unity with the picture. It is exactly what Van Gogh said when asked why he makes art. He said, words to the effect, “when I make art, I stop thinking.” I have no idea why this is, and why drawing and painting is different from writing, but it certainly is for me. During the process my ego is gone and thinking stops. I don’t know if this is transcendence or not, but it’s certainly real to me.
We’ll need a context of course. Given the assumptions you make about both a secular existence and transcendence.
Exactly. That’s my point. It depends on the “situation” and the complexities that can revolve around the existence of any particular friendship. The truth about what given the value of the friendship itself. Its sheer importance in your life. If you find out your friend is a serial rapist do you turn him in? Are you morally obligated to turn him in? Or suppose he is just a serial shop-lifter.
Well, something seems objective to me if in fact it can be demonstrated to be true to all rational men and women. Your friend is in fact a serial rapist or shop-lifter. But: are you, in fact, objectively, obligated to turn him in? As for the modern secular society and the traditional religious society, objective reality itself doesn’t change. Only the historical, cultural assessment of particular behaviors.
Bottom line [mine]: we still need a context understood from a particular perspective, the parts of which we either are or are not able to establish as in fact true objectively.
This is so lost on many people today, or they don’t make the connection. With regard to religion, they make it about fact or fiction, looking for a literal reality that is only part of the picture. People require life to fit in the box they’ve constructed, they need history that leaves no questions open, they want a materialist/mechanistic view of the world, or otherwise they try to blank out the questions that arise, whether with alcohol, drugs, sex, sleep, and any other form of distraction or preoccupation. I think that this is one reason that people become obsessed with material wealth or complicate their lives so obsessively.
The world we engage in often misunderstands our motivations and tolerates spirituality insofar as it doesn’t get in the way. You can pursue transcendence in your free time, but don’t talk about it and keep it out of work. I was fortunate enough to have been able to enhance my professional life with spiritual subjects, especially through my contacts with the dying. It also helped the staff cope with the situation, having to a large degree, lost any religious bearing they had.
If you are actually unable to grasp that, we are so far removed in our thinking about both, it would be futile for me to explain further.
Hint: It revolves around our separate understandings of this:
That is precisely who my arguments are addressed to: the authoritarian objectivists who insist that their own moral and political and spiritual prejudices are not biases at all! On the contrary, they’ll insist, they reflect the obligation of all rational and virtuous human beings.
With you, however, my interest revolves more around the extent to which you are not yourself “fractured and fragmented” as “I” am in the confronting conflicting goods. And I suspect that revolves around the manner in which you have thought yourself into believing that, re “I” in the is/ought world, transcendence is actually still possible. To the extent that revolves around a God, the God, my God, well, you tell me.
From my frame of mind, given the assumption that we live in a No God world, a “secular existence” revolves around the assumptions I make on these threads:
Clearly, if you construe the points I raise here in a philosophy venue as mere “whining”, sure, we can just agree to avoid each other. Just say the word and, as with Ierrellus, you’ll be free of me forever here. Trust me though: it is one thing to be feel spiritually and morally uncomfortable with the whole situation given a capacity to embrace one or another belief in transcendence, and another thing altogether when you come to conclude that your own infinitesimally tiny existence in the vastness of all there is is essentially meaningless and purposeless. I just suspect I get reactions like yours here when I’m getting closer and closer to tugging others down into the same hole.
Thus:
As I noted above, I am merely inviting those who wish to explore these relationships along the same lines that I do, to consider my points.
Thus:
Philosophical baggage!!!
Not to worry, Bob. We’ll just go our separate ways.
Well, provided you let me have the last word here.
And this is why I wanted to talk. Because, despite our differences, I seem to see in your words common Ground between us.
As you say, the issue of Truth telling depends on the situation and the complexities of the particular friendship, and it’s value and importance in one’s life. And, as in your example of the serial rapist versus a shoplifter, a friendship will have boundaries. And what they are may vary.
I like your definition of ‘objective’–something that can be demonstrated to be true to all rational men and women. But, I have questions about it. I mean we will never know that about anything will we? How will we ever get all rational men and women to weigh in on anything? And all the men and women I know are only rational part of the time. So to me objectivity is more of an aspiration than an achievable state of being.
As to your statement that as for the modern secular society and the traditional religious society objective reality doesn’t change, let me say again I agree. But the problem is, we are viewing the issue, in this case truth telling embedded in friendship, from our particular points of view and modern secular society. The individual in a traditional religious society would have been viewing friendship and Truth telling from their point of view in that world.
So, try as we might, how can we ever get to such an objective God’s eye view or view from nowhere as it were? And yet, isn’t that what you in your way and I in mine are trying to do?
Right. And that’s why I’m seeking common ground with everyone by identifying experiences of transcendence that are not necessarily limited to a particular conception of God, or any conception of God, or any particular religion, or any religion at all. And music seems to be one of those phenomena. In classical antiquity music was considered divine. And I think that the phenomena that people experience with it deserves that adjective. It can transport us outside the narrow limits of our ego, into a higher realm of meaning and depth of feeling. And, I would argue, this transcendent experience-- music-- makes our life better, and thereby has the potential to make us better.
There is no doubt that music is an enrichment in life, and enhances our ability to appreciate the beautiful, non-material aspects of life because it seems to cause a rising of spirit (the feeling) to a level at which we can perceive experiences that otherwise elude us.
There seems to be several expressions that refer to a similarity of experience:
“In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one’s sense of time. (Wikipedia)”
sublime
sublime (Adjective) · sublimer (comparative adjective) · sublimest (Adjective in the superlative)
of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.
“Mozart’s sublime piano concertos” · “experiences that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous”
synonyms: exalted · elevated · noble · lofty · awe-inspiring · awesome · majestic · magnificent · imposing · glorious · supreme · grand · great · outstanding · excellent · first-rate · first-class · superb · perfect · ideal · wonderful · marvellous · splendid · delightful · blissful · rapturous
antonyms: poor · lowly · ordinary
transcendent
adj.
Surpassing others; preeminent or supreme.
Lying beyond the ordinary range of perception: “fails to achieve a transcendent significance in suffering and squalor” (National Review).
Philosophy
a. Transcending the Aristotelian categories.
b. In Kant’s theory of knowledge, being beyond the limits of experience and hence unknowable.
Being above and independent of the material universe. Used of the Deity.
This emersion, inspiration, or going beyond, has been an experience of human beings for millennia it seems, and was traditionally connected with religious ceremony, where it could be repeated and used to enhance life, finding meaning and purpose, and direction for a life, or a collective. Do you think that music can achieve this? Or is it the door to further possibilities?
Okay, but with respect to discussions that revolve around Secular Existence & Transcendence, as well as Ground or Truth, I’m more reluctant to use Capital Letter Words. If you like “[my] definition of ‘objective’–something that can be demonstrated to be true to all rational men and women”, used in conjunction with the question that most interest me here, “how ought one to live in a world bursting at the seams with both conflicting goods and contingency, chance and change”, then Capital Letter Words are few and far between for me.
Again, you either are or you are not in fact someone’s friend. They either are or are not in fact a serial rapist/shoplifter. This can either be demonstrated or not. That, in my view, is about as close as we are able to come here and now to the objective truth. Though, sure, given sim worlds and dream worlds and solipsism and the Matrix conundrums, who can ever really know with absolute certainty what is or is not in fact true objectively? That’s why I bring up thing’s like “the gap” and “Rummy’s Rule” in discussions such as this.
Instead, my point revolves around whether, philosophically, scientifically, theologically or otherwise, it can be demonstrated that in fact, objectively, you either are or are not morally obligated to turn your friend in. Deontologically as it were. Something along the lines of Kant, lying and categorical imperatives.
Yes, that’s my point. They are no less confronted with the task of demonstrating what moral obligations are embedded in friendship. What, in fact, objectively, are friends obligated to do in regard to each other given a particular set of circumstances? No different for them than for us. Only for those in different historical and cultural contests such things as customs, folkways, mores etc. may well have been very, very different from the manner in which those of us in the modern [or postmodern] world view friendships given particular situations.
Also, those like Kant who connected the dots between mere mortals and moral obligation did so only through positing a transcending font. God in other words.
Thus:
Yes, I’m trying to no less than you or Bod or others here are. Otherwise I wouldn’t be in a philosophy venue at all.
Only the frame of mind I grapple with here in my signature threads still seem entirely reasonable to me.
Yes Bob I feel quite sure of it as I have experienced it and so have many others including perhaps whoever referred to “Mozart’s sublime piano concertos” in your quoted passage.
My proposal is very much in the tradition of the transcendentalists who saw Divine experience inherent in everyday life. I’m proposing an openness to a minimalist view of transcendence. The concept of God can be either the touchstone for transcendent experience or a ceiling which blocks one from going higher.
The sublime is an experience of “excess”. It can be aroused by the boundlessness of the night sky or by high mountains or vast oceans or trackless deserts or… This experience transformed the meaning of wilderness from the traditional view for the Romantics of the late 18th and 19th century.
Out of the blue this reminded me of the scene from Footloose:
“Ariel: What’s the music?
Reverend Moore: I think it’s Haydn, chamber pieces.
Ariel: And that kind of music’s okay?
Reverend Moore: It’s uplifting. It doesn’t confuse people’s minds and bodies.”
Music that can be construed as “transcendent” and music that cannot. Music that speaks to and through the soul and music that speaks only to and through the body. Music for the “dirty dancing” crowd.
If something is “sublime” to you it passes beyond “secular existence” to that which is said to be transcending. Which, of course, most come to construe as being embedded on a spiritual or a religious path.
I’m made no distinction between genres of music nor did I propose transcending secularism. I see no reason that Transcendence couldn’t occur with any kind of music. As a matter of fact I cited Rock concerts as events where Transcendence often occurs. If by transcending secularism you mean becoming religious, that isn’t what I’m proposing.
Taking my information from Wikipedia, I have doubts about a philosophical movement from the late 1820s and 1830s in the eastern United States that hasn’t lasted and was criticised vastly, especially of being a movement of the culturally elite. I may agree in its core belief in the inherent goodness of people and nature, although I would say that humanity has a proclivity to both good and bad. I also believe that society and its institutions have largely corrupted the initial purity of children, and that we have gone down roads better not trodden. But the idealism of the truly “self-reliant” and independent human being goes a little too far, especially considering what it takes to really be “self-reliant” and independent. I too see divine experience inherent in the everyday, rather than only in a distant heaven, which is often awe-inspiring.
Problems arise when you prefer subjective intuition over objective empiricism or believe that individuals are capable of generating completely original insights with little attention and deference to past masters. I don’t believe that. We are always standing on the shoulders of the past, and we are continually sharing insights. I believe that originality has always been provoked by others and the nuance that makes something original is in many minds at the same time, and it is only that one expresses it before another. However, I would also emphasise free conscience and the value of intellectual reason. There was a yearning after intense spiritual experience in those days that I can understand, although I also value sobriety, mildness, and calm rationalism.
The Transcendentalists were an esteemed group and many of them produced wonderful works, but I can’t help seeing that many of them were privileged. I can identify with the statement that the “transcendence of the spirit”, most often evoked by the poet’s prosaic voice, was said to endow in the reader a sense of purpose. This would indeed be a most welcome effect, but I feel that putting too much faith in the power of the individual tends to undermine the concern for the welfare of the group. Today we have a youth that is primarily concerned with personal freedom, who have to be shown the importance of responsibility and its role in a fulfilling life. We already have a society in which children grow up without fathers, relationships are seen as temporary, and people lead fractured lives. I’m afraid that this is often the consequence of individualism.
I believe transcendentalism was an mainly an individualist and idealist project. In his 1842 lecture “The Transcendentalist”, Emerson suggested that the goal of a purely transcendental outlook on life was impossible to attain in practice:
“You will see by this sketch that there is no such thing as a transcendental party; that there is no pure transcendentalist; that we know of no one but prophets and heralds of such a philosophy; that all, who by strong bias of nature, have leaned to the spiritual side in doctrine, have stopped short of their goal. We have had many harbingers and forerunners; but of a purely spiritual life, history has afforded no example. I mean, we have yet no man who has leaned entirely on his character, and eaten angels’ food; who, trusting to his sentiments, found life made of miracles; who, working for universal aims, found himself fed, he knew not how; clothed, sheltered, and weaponed, he knew not how, and yet it was done by his own hands. …Shall we say, then, that transcendentalism is the Saturnalia or excess of Faith; the presentiment of a faith proper to man in his integrity, excessive only when his imperfect obedience hinders the satisfaction of his wish.”
All the same, I also have a deep gratitude and appreciation for nature, and can follow Emerson in his emphasis the Transcendental beliefs in the holistic power of the natural landscape in Nature:
“In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
The ideal of the conservation of an undisturbed natural world is obviously a dream that a few centuries have already managed to destroy. Pollution is everywhere and the inherent scepticism of capitalism, westward expansion, and industrialization has already proved to be well founded.
As Wikipedia notes, “As early as 1843, in Summer on the Lakes, Margaret Fuller noted that “the noble trees are gone already from this island to feed this caldron,” and in 1854, in Walden, Thoreau regards the trains which are beginning to spread across America’s landscape as a “winged horse or fiery dragon” that "sprinkle[s] all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed.”
Nearly 200 years on, the extent of the damage is obviously far greater. The attitude of the critics of the day only shows the extent of their inability to appreciate what the transcendentalists were trying to protect, suggesting their position was beyond sanity and reason. Today, I feel that we could only achieve a fringe movement of people who would form around such ideals, if they are not already there, but with another name. Romantic movements have always existed and were often bruised and battered by the materialist machine, that had no qualms about following its path to “conquest the world.”
That isn’t to say that it is wrong to try to emulate some of the ideals of these people, only that we have to be wary of the mistakes made, and sober about what can be achieved.
Bob–Transcendentalism was very influential in American culture. Emerson’s concept of self-reliance is very core in the individualistic ethos of the American imagination. The transcendental movement was embedded in the larger trend of Romanticism that swept the West 19th century. And while the New England transcendentalists were not above criticism, it’s ethos has never entirely gone away.
You can see it clearly in the Beat movement of the 50s and the hippie movement of the 60s and in aspects of the New Age movement today. And of course that movement gets criticized rightly from a number of directions. It has its excesses, it’s casualties, it’s charlatans, it’s eclecticism, it’s “woo” and the list of problems goes on.
So, if what I am proposing here comes under the general aegis of Romanticism or New Age, etcetera, I suppose I need to figure out how to steer it between the rocks that brought down Transcendentalism and those other movements that it spawned.
It also had a big influence on southern Republicans, who believe that their right to have guns and fend and answer for themselves is transcendental.
Few of those people, it is worth noting, have very much money at all. Well, they are filthy rich by global standards, but relatively poor by US standards on the whole.
Ha! Love the irony my friend! They were creative elites. They were among the educated class in New England. Their excursions in pursuit of going “back to nature” we’re a little more than what we now call “vacation” going camping.
Still the word “recreation” has greater depth than we usually see in it when we say “The Department of Parks and Recreation”. To re-create is to renew to refresh to revitalize. Whether they achieve it or not, people recreate in search of transcendence.
And that is part of the tradition of Romanticism and Transcendentalism that goes on today. It’s so much a part of our culture that we don’t normally see it or question it.
I would say you are even more right than you imply. In the case of England, at least, it might be different with Emerson, I don’t believe they had an idea of “going back to nature” at all, but an aesthetic attitude towards nature that was new.
