That post-nietzschean post I said I would write

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1

Two things here: what I planned to do and what I did. I planned to find the barrier that Nietzsche had come up against, and break through it.

Well, I found that wall, and it’s name is the Valuation Pyramid of Christiandom.

Throughout the complex magico-philo-socio-phsycho-economico-historical phenomenon that has been Christiandom, one thing (among many) was achieved: the top of the scale of the pyramidal scale of values of all things is an allmighty, omniprescent, all loving god.

That is why “human,” for example, has always been such a favourite level to hate on by people who feel closer to that god.

This is a spawn of Christiandom, understanding Christiandom as it is: far beyond a cult.

And so, there it is, the ultimate rebellion against Christiandom because it objectifies the most personal of its “truths.”

(Now think about it: Am I, and some millions of people like me all throughout Christiandom, rebelling against some hobo cult leader from the who-gives-a-shit corners of the Roman empire who died thousands of years ago?)

Beyond this wall is a realm of potentiality that inspires a fear which has remained unchallenged for an age…

Fuck it, I’m down.

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Down for what?

O:)

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This is great, you’ve gone from the Nietzsche-Anselm synthesis to the Dun Scotus-Heideggarian synthesis. Unfortunately, Nietzsche too knew of this and even out maneuvered Heideggar on this one as well on Dasein-Haecceity- something most every scholar I’ve read has failed to pick up on as Nietzscheans are notoriously single minded in their philosophical research to a few timeframes and cultures in philosophy.Nietzsch based alot of his thought on the Occam-Marsilius paradigm. Pay attention when he quotes the catholic authors! He leaps around dramatically, and doesn’t much care for which sect he’s pillaging, which leads to these logical queefs you hit upon. He was a sloppy thinker. However, none the less as your aim was… you’ll need to try it again. You’ve not overcome him, but only a portion of his thought that is sloppily indulged in Dominican philosophy, and of that, of a short time frame in history… Nietzsche himself took more heavily from christian theologians who noted what you just noted and pushed well past this.

I’ll give you a hint- the subjective-objective divide in perception is NOT the direction to go in, as Christians already solved this in the middle ages in both the Orthodox Churches and in Catholicism (centering prayer- the thomas merton pray I told you about comes from this same era). This wise but still far too short observation of yours was a hiccup in the objectification in Aristotle’s & Anslem’s thought process in contrast to the later Cartesian synthesis. Now, most of the forum is going to side with the Cartesian emphasis, as that’s what pop philosophy these days deal with. However, both are quite correct, just sits in different parts of the cognitive cycle of processing facts- facts NOT from immediacy from sensory or from ideals- there isn’t a fact we can claims as a verb or a noun that begins in either of the regions of the mind these two schools fight so bitterly. Wittgenstein would pick up on this immediately… I have his lecture notes right in front of me, his fascination with the 7th Cranial Nerve in comprehension is impressive… but he too was a Christian and at times a Freudian and a Nietzschean. So… keep digging, cause you gotta overcome him as well.

None the less, I do congratulate you in noting a structure to this. Abraham Maslow via Alfred Adler’s version of Will to Power developed a similar synthesis, with self actualization as the pinnacle. It has historic, religious roots, and comes through Nietzsche.

Most Nietzschians are too uninvented to note something like this. Your echoing back to Gnostic-neoplotonic anti-archon/anarchist superstructures. The archetype your dealing with is rather complex, and it’s complete formation in the mind has eluded me, as I’ve only recently managed to map out Jacob’s Ladder via the Aloadai Insurrection http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GigantesAloadai.html and their worship of the then three muses for figuring what parts of the brain lights up the Ladder… the gnostic transcendental pyramid is three dimensional, incorporating elements from it, but does other stuff I can’t map out yet. It’s a underlining image to a lot of hierarchical logic, our idea of Ponzi Schemes and Occult Super-entities like Masons and the scare over the pyramid on the US dollar are a similar phenomena, but on the other hand, a lot of transcendental meditation used pyramidal steps as the underlying basis to their program of progressive liberation… Nietzsche echoes this at times in his overman and caste system, and surely knew of it. The pyramids in central america have 365 steps and represents the universe, and the sacrifice victims had to march up them to renew the universe under their particular god. Greek temples used exactly THREE steps, and only three steps, the steps turning massive over time to accommodate the increased size of temples, making them very difficult to climb. The Tower of Silence in the Zoroastrian religion stair’s spiraled around the temple, and the body had to be left exposed to the sun to be purified for one year.

Way your picking up on isn’t so much as Christianity, but general theistic psychology, which Nietzsche adapted into it. I don’t know if Christ had it as his idea to be the extroversion symbol for Maslow’s self actualization… think he was planning on not dying that month, but shit didn’t quite go his way… still a bit fuzzy on how much he knew was happening, sometimes the stories were one where he damn well seem to know, other times rather oblivious though the threat seemed a possibility. So what your noting might be a product of Apostolic Christianity, but might not actually be a part of the teachings of Jesus persay. Again, see Spinoza’s Theological-Political Tract and see why Nietzsche went in the direction he went in.

Your goal was to surpass both Nietzsche and Christianity… you haven’t done either yet. But you’ve given it a good show none the less, and I do compliment you on this. Suggests your honestly searching your inner mind. Be careful of the underlining logic to ‘Being’ though… it’s sits in the midst of a preconditions from other parts of the mind, and has to process information a certain way. It’s still subject to Locke’s Persistence Conditions… Being ain’t what it’s cracked up to be- you can see why the Subjective-Objective Divide isn’t going to topple Christianity here, in a analysis of Heiddegar’s cognitive functions:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfwDWr8l7fY&feature=related[/youtube]

Your showing promise none the less as a philosopher though. Rare to see this on a internet forum. Keep up the good work. Don’t forget to stay Sardonic, Self Critical and Exploitative. I don’t think anyone else on this forum would of had the honesty to find their own inner projection and target it. That’s impressive, puts you in a realm above the rest here… most wouldn’t be aware of it, or would be faintly and be working around it, not knowing the method or how to express it. Now you know about it… questions arise… what will you do with this, and are you brave enough to find other such structures in your mind and root them out? Know you can’t destroy them, they ARE you, but it’s truly a honest man who acknowledges them and uses them as a differential metric. You’ve discovered your first logical archetype :laughing: =D> :laughing:

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It bothers me that an ex-soldier is able to flatter me. If I were to return the favor, I would say that your task is much bigger than mine, and that I hope you get at least half done before you stop existing.

But you are obviously right, this post is a bit of a cop out because I abandoned the pure-passion route (due to not wanting the potential spectacle of my brains all over some wall to become part of my family), and am going with a sane one. Not my first choice, but when life gives you lemons…

Now, down to the nitty gritty:

One thing that I can’t seem to figure out about you is how your form-based wisdom can penetrate into intuition-based wisdom. But it does give rise to small-yet-important errors like this one. Maslow was just using a shape, like the food pyramid. What I am talking about doesn’t have clear cut, one-on-top-of-the-other levels. Maslow used a pyramid to explain a list, I am trying to describe an (archetype I guess, I haven’t read enough) as precisely as possible, no metaphors.

As you say, this pyramid is not Nietzsche’s barrier, but simply an obstacle that he often dealt with (and became more obsessed with as he grew). To me, it is absolutely essential to keep this pyramid in mind, because it is to acceptable human psychology today what math is to numbers.

The CVPyramid is more like Parmenide’s sphere. Christiandom’s ideal shape is the pyramid. If a priest were able to honestly plough through atomic theory, he would expect to find that the smallest molecule is a pyramid. It is Christiandom’s perfect shape.

The most important aspect of it from an anarchist point of view, a rebeller and breaker-away’s point of view, is the one where the god and the top of the pyramid, which are one, are so unimaginably far from human reality that even the greatest human accomplishment is closer to the most embarrassing of follies than to something that lies several orders of magnitude below the god. It is a placing of humanity as disgusting dirt, unworthy to unacceptable levels. Realizing this, one can hardly blame the priests that had no problem burning the most enlightened works of the time… Along with the authors. It is hubris of the worst kind for anybody convinced of the pyramid.

But if, like me, you consider this god to be a con, the pyramid instantly loses all credibility. It suddenly takes the shape of some disgusting and cantankerous old bastard’s revenge upon the beautiful, to put it in Nietzschean terms.

The big, BIG question a post-nietzschean must ask then is this: What now?

I shudder from fear and excitement.

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You have one hell of a ego expecting me to spend all that time flattering you.

The pyramid is damn near universal, pop’s up repeatedly with these patterns, linked to Jabob’s Ladder.

It’s quite obvious the reason why though once you figure out what part of the mind is getting the unconscious feedback loop drawn through the imagination centers of the brain. You end up with a divided rootsystem, with ‘ideas’ being processed and recombined by two very different kinds of intelligences in the mind. One is visual but unseen, the other makes use of it- THEN the stuff is ‘willed’ together into a idea, splicing it automatically into a real time reality. None of it is really seated in memory, other than expectations associated with that general shape complex. It’s just a cognitive shadow, with built in expectations referring to the limbric system. Just it’s non-linear maze is rather complex, and has great variety from story to story, despite the concrete, common features. Takes time to track down and map out every variant to a map of the brain. This isn’t the same as ‘imagining’ a image, but rather is like a not quite yet verbalized in the left hemisphere idea without name but a echo of something dreamt but not quite remembered.

Your not post nietzschean yet buddy, much less post christian… you’re bias in your slant to the pyramid given your bias within it, and I don’t think you’ve given any thought as to how it effect logical formatting in different kinds of thinking, and what other weird ass shapes and images are near or related pr share parts to it, and what parts of the mind they are in.

And no, Christianity isn’t a Pyramid. The walking on water parables suggest a 2 Dimensional emphasis in the left hemisphere, your projecting three dimensional right hemisphere ideals. Your hardly even close. The christian god is closer to Einstein’s God in many ways COGNITIVELY in how we view him generically over the old Hebrew god of ridged hierarchy. It’s why I keep trying to tell you check out Spinoza. And yes, I know he was a Jew… but he used the same parts of the brain as early Christianity after Jesus’ death put emphasis on prior to Paul. Jesus did alot to destroy the expectations of the Pyramid. It’s why the Gnostics were usually outcasts. They accepted it, and unreality via a demiurge through it. It was defined by a accident, a maze they had to get out of, their topology that wasn’t designed by reason but that necessity dictated they break out of:

The Economic Trinity wasn’t a shape, but the creator of all shapes of the created universe. He was the creator and will of all, and he had pinky toes to boot.

Your assuming this:

but Christianity wasn’t structured under that system in the least, and you should know that, it was structured on widely ranging apostolic succession- priests who went EVERYWHERE TO EVERYONE, and emphasis on doing good and accepting good as it comes, with communal relations. This is hardly a good foundation for what your expecting. Your projecting the pyramid, not examining information with acceptance the pyramid was already inside of you and that it’s a potentially corrupting influence in constructing your ideological expectations.

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I’m not going to quote every part of your post that I am answering, too time-consuming. I think you know your own ideas well enough to follow me:

I was very careful to say Christiandom instead of Christianity. I am reading The Antichrist now for the second time and the one big thing to take away from that book is Christiandom does not = Christianity by a long shot. Christiandom is the word I use now to refer to the last 1600 years or so of European history. I thought I had made that clear before.

Another thing I took from Nietzsche, from his nihilism, is to be aprehensive of things. If I am drawing out this pyramid, it is only a stepping stone. I am not taking any of this lightly enough to fall into any easy, erm, traps.

I am going to star making individual threads to discuss issues stemming from this Christiandom Vlue Pyramid thesis-thing. It is meant as a framework to explore the prejudices of the Christiandom we have inherited and not any kind of doctrine or contra-doctrine (well… maybe a little bit of a contra-doctrine).

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Knock yourself out on that last part. What we’re discussing is mostly psychology and sociology in this thread… I leave the actual theology to others, unless they lie to terribly. I see great value in lies sometimes when people run wild with them… it’s only when other people start to believe and fearfull or violently reactive to them I become.

No, you didn’t. So what, your targeting the Constantine’s Dynasty’s gradual expansion of the Bishopric into secular administration? That effect isn’t a very good indicator of a pyramid… given the empire broke up and the role of the bishops in relationship to the emperor, or a lack of a emperor or significant secular authority caused Christianity to essentially diverge in this era in how the church conducted itself WITHOUT a theological schism or break up of religion. Fuck… if anything it did contribute significantly to the breakup of the orthodox from the monotheist churches… that’s not a pyramid, that’s a pie. One that had a few slices eaten out of it. Constantine’s dynasty sucked at management of the cities, Bishops gradually grew into that power, and the emperor’s of this era were too damn enthusiastic about it. You only need watch Agora (see my movie list) to see how the Emperor basically withdrew from the management of several cities.

This isn’t so much Christianity’s fault, but a structural defect in the theory of the city in that era. It was a mark of a good emperor to FOUND cities, and this went back to the Macedonian Model of civic expansion so he would have a powerbase. He would inport greeks and macedonians to newly conquered territories, drag conquered peoples together, along with nomads, and cobble a involuntary city together. They were free in every respect (unless imported to BE slaves) save for the ability to leave… like a feudalized free city. The cities were given something resembling a constitution, it varied from successor kingdom to successor kingdom, the Seleucid were not to big on it- having actual cities not their style, they prefered garrisons, Egypt more so but it was largely a joke thereafter a while. Syrians tried it successfully, and it’s why in later centuries so many greek intellectuals came from the mesopotamian region. Romans picked it up and ran with it… but their needs for centralized administration were larger than even Alexander’s, and they increasingly had a dearth of educated men capable of gaining alleigance of the populations, while being intelligent, capable, and honest enough to run affairs of state and collect and deliver taxation. As Paganism declined intellectually, the Romans began faultering- emphasis was put on the field armies, the territories divided east and west, and scapegoats such as Christians targeted. Constantine rose in this situation, and from York- a city founded under the greek model, marched and unified the empire, and replaced paganism. However, he was left with the old concept of the city, and a emperor’s household rather fucking sucked at collecting taxes. Literally- I am talking about a household here- two centuries earlier it was thought a smart and cost effective move to reduce the expenditure of government officials by using nobles related to the emperor. This system worked, but worked increasingly poorly. By the Constantine Dynasty’s time, it was outright failing, and half of the empire began fading away!

The Bishops were a natural point of attraction. They held civic allegiance, were ideologically non threatening to the idea of a imperialship, not likely to revolt and declare themselves Ceasar, were highly intellectual and competent administrators, using a legal system within their hierarchy modeled off of roman concepts (canon law would eventually evolve from this). In a few places, where the soon classical model of Church vs State in the western half of the west would emerge ideolgocially, bishops fought for their own turf from what they thought was undue interference from the imperial government. With this resistence, the emperor’s said fuck it and just gave them a shit load of authority on condition they just made the damn screwy fucking system work again. And work again is somewhat did, as dysfunctional as ever. They solved some problems, but presented others. The eastern empire settled idologically in one direction, what became of the west in another. Eastern empire died in 1453, and the millet system adopted just as the new world started opening up and the old east started fragmenting into isolated quirky little oddities in a ottoman sea of chaotic laziness.

I don’t know why you focused on this century though. So much of what was given during this era was yanked away in later years in both east and west. Infact, emphasis here would likely cause your critic to look all backwards and screwy. You still haven’t figured out a post-Nietzschean or Post-Christian Value system either… both are still more advanced than what your pimping.

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You missunderstand. There is no definite year when Christiandom started, just like there is no such year for the Renaisance or the Greek Dark Ages. A good definition of what is encompassed by the term Christiandom is “all human activity which has occured in a context in which the calendar counts the time before and after the birth of Jesus.” Why do you think the French tried to get a new calendar started?

The comment about the pyramid refers to the present state of that one phenomenon.

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Pyramids carry emotive effects as well, how we relate to it in terms of our most simplistic emotive esprite- nearly always by default. You’re targeting a aspect of time generated in the left hemisphere. Triangles- ESPECIALLY PYRAMIDS, are a clear product of a baised thinking on the part of the thinker pretending to observe, usually right hemisphere products.

Facts as we like to present them begin to fall part under this form of logic, as we have a fetish in preventing emotions from interfering with black and white facts. It’s part of the reason why society backs away from conspiracy theorists projecting a world scheme upon a pyramidal structure, and why we’re all to willing to pounce and trounce one. Our tension unfortunately results from the difficulty that this is the normal route facts MUST go once they are first constructed sensory. Usually they branch off quickly to other aspects, and the pyrimid isn’t picked up, as it’s seen as something else, but someone doing a geneology can target this when nit picking and lambast away relentlessly. It’s one of the faults of the genealogical method.

Narration via namarupa (weird how I just had to quote that in another thread) isn’t pyramidal- it’s motivator is usually tense or principle, and it’s unable to project three dimensional references without serious complication of additional feedback loops for orientation in order to reference. You end up in 6th grade shop class trying to figure out the riddle Heron of Byzantium solved in explaining to engineers how mechanics should be replicated. Ironically, this has a theological-aesthetic basis to it as well. It’s a chapter of philosophy in Mimesis that is next to never even explored in the west.

I suggest you try to grasp the nature of the narrator in this… the ‘youness’ and it’s bias, and what tools it’s grasping for in formulating- how some facts structually in terms of logic come packaged differently, and how it’s all engineered and put together. Question exactly what narration is, and why your motivated to this in the first place, and then look at how others would be when you look at a persona or other person questioning your motives having full access to yourself. Have your own internal inquisition and be honest about it. Can your beliefs stand up to their queries when they can see all that is you in your pronouncements against you? It’s so easy to say yes, of course… but we’re inherently dishonest in protecting our ego and pronouncing against others for our own immediate gain we tend not to observe this oddity of our own mind… our very nature hides ourselves.

Consider your mind a forest of ideas, and your a beakon of light staring out into the wilderness. The darkest shadows will be those that are nearest to you. It’s in the depth of the forest, under those twinkling, guiding stars of our own being we have so little understanding of that a non-dualistic understanding of each form can be understood. Shine too brightly, and it’s half engulfed by shade. It’s by our inner light that we know things. It’s by our adjusting of our internal footlamp that we can see with the highest clarity. It’s not always immediately intuitive how to do this. I find the natural way of doing it- turning the damn light off from time to time, does wonders. The light can be better appreciated in contrast.

You have the silly idea at times it seems of lighting a few of those trees on fire to have better clarity. Your risk a needless forest fire. Your perch is not imperious to the flames.

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I’m going to start using ROAC instead of saying right on all counts.

So, yeah, ROAC. Except for the counts in which I am ignorant and can only guess at how right you are (though, in the bottom line, all counts are like this to some extent or anbother).

You sound very kierkegaardian in this last post (not that I have read any K, but I was taught some by a philosopher I respect). In any case, this idea does include some personal bias exploration, my personal bias is very intentional in some places (Nietzsche was the one that introduced me to the concept of doing this, so that might explain why I am such an arsonist about it).

I wish I could simply list some of my personal biases here for everybody to see and have all later discussions include knowledge of them. However, I have already pointed out how many quacks make their rounds here and so I try to leave clues in my ideas for intellectually and psychologically honest people to see through and guess my biases.

Even you, CN, do not hesitate to use explicit biases as tools for discrediting ideas.

11

A clue for Nietzsche readers: bias is equivalent to prejudice.