Adolf Eichmann: Banality of Evil

[Immanuel Can]

I suggest that one of the reasons that you and I cannot understand each other, or cannot seem to arrive at any but a very general 'sort of' stance of shared agreement of value, is because you are forced to stay within one place. You have a doctrinal stake planted. You have a ground to defend. A doctrine. You have advanced with this to a certain age from which there will occur no additional shift. Choices made ... become Fate. And certainly you have to raise a substantial defence against those pesky Gnostics who seep through the walls ... or who pop up in your breakfast cereal.

This is an interesting narrative, and certainly would support the metanarrative you would prefer us to agree upon as a prerequisite for our discussion. I will even go so far as to agree that, from a third-person perspective, it could be seen as plausible as one way of understanding our differences. But all this is a different question from its truthfulness and accuracy. I think that there it fails.

In your comments, I hear in the background the echoes of a couple of things. Firstly, there's the history of a post-Catholic, with its residual guilt and resentments that I have noticed many post-Catholics continue to work out throughout their lives. I'm sympathetic to that, as it's a truly nasty burden that really makes a lot of people genuinely miserable; and yet, since I have no such background myself nor any comparable mistreatment, I find I am removed from it in any experience of my own, and can only imagine its frustrations. Secondly, there's the myth of the stereotypical evangelical, the hard-headed, indoctrinated, nervous and contentious Southerner so beloved by secular television producers. I'm used to hearing that, as it is the routine response to anyone who expresses any measure of conviction or who has the temerity to think his/her beliefs might actually be true. And quite often you seem to overlay that onto me. I don't take it personally, because I know clichés and stock characters are powerful visions, and our society is currently extremely indoctrinated with misapprehensions about evangelicals. But, of course, neither does your recurrent reference to such stock characters move me to much concern for myself and those Christians I know.

Where do I see these two echoes, you ask?

You in a significant and notable sense---as idea structure, as conformist, as a pole of judgment---represent to me an enemy. You are something that I have had and will have to confront and also to defeat. You represent to me the backward-turning, the regression, the refusal to advance which I have to battle, and defeat, in myself.

There's both the post-Catholic anxiety and the stereotypical evangelical dogmatist united in a single paragraph. But I am not here to inflame your personal spiritual anxieties, nor am I here to stand for you as the representative dogmatist of your past or of the mass media. They are not me, though I may not convince you of that.

And then you object:

you have no way to understand nor to categorise my experience on the spiritual plane.

Perhaps. And yet do you suppose you know me? How ironic. I am perhaps not what you think I am. But I cannot convince you of that if the resonances you are hearing inside your head keep telling you otherwise. You'll have to doubt those resonances first; and that I may not do for you.

What I would like to be able to do, here and in relation to your vision of Jesus the mendicant Galilean carpenter, is to undertake a work that amounts to an attack against that thought-form, that idealisation, that distortion. But I cannot do that unless I have a direct permission. It is not my style to inject power-darts into another person's view-structure as, I have observed time and time again, they need their 'imagined world' in an intact form.

It would be very far from the first such attack I have witnessed. I have no fear of such things. And on the contrary, in a spirit of gentlemanliness, I am made cautious in speaking to you by a desire not to offend you by revealing how much of what you are floating here both is known to me from other sources and fails to strike any terror into my heart. I think you shall not "rock my world."

I say that to some degree it is if one is prepared to do a good deal of work and to accept the consequences.

This is a good axiom. I would even suggest I do aspire to live by it in regards to philosophy, in my own poor measure.

Interesting indeed.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

In your comments, I hear in the background the echoes of a couple of things. Firstly, there's the history of a post-Catholic, with its residual guilt and resentments that I have noticed many post-Catholics continue to work out throughout their lives. I'm sympathetic to that, as it's a truly nasty burden that really makes a lot of people genuinely miserable; and yet, since I have no such background myself nor any comparable mistreatment, I find I am removed from it in any experience of my own, and can only imagine its frustrations. Secondly, there's the myth of the stereotypical evangelical, the hard-headed, indoctrinated, nervous and contentious Southerner so beloved by secular television producers. I'm used to hearing that, as it is the routine response to anyone who expresses any measure of conviction or who has the temerity to think his/her beliefs might actually be true. And quite often you seem to overlay that onto me. I don't take it personally, because I know clichés and stock characters are powerful visions, and our society is currently extremely indoctrinated with misapprehensions about evangelicals. But, of course, neither does your recurrent reference to such stock characters move me to much concern for myself and those Christians I know.

I was raised in a secular-Jewish non-practicing household and the closest I came to Judaism when growing up was some very weak shabbat ritualism at JCC summer camps. Jewish mother remarried to an entirely secular Jewish professional, my step-father, who likely never had a religious or spiritual thought pass through his head. (My own father is non-Jewish). I had no religious training at all, and definitely no Christian influence of any sort, much less Catholic. I certainly encountered Christianity through my undergraduate education ... but was not really prepared to process it. I became quite interested in Christianity about 6-7 years ago mostly through my initial readings of Nietzsche. Following those traces has led me toward the exploration of the sources I reference.

So, when you 'hear' these things in the background (a siddhi of clairaudience? Are you sure you're not a Gnostic?!), I would naturally ask What are you hearing? Or perhaps Who.

Just FYI I do not now nor did I ever see you as a stereotype. Not in the way that you seem to think. I think I would have to say that you appear to have been wrong on both counts.

My only 'complaint' about you is that you apply some labels, and begin to enforce them, which polarise a conversation unnecessarily. This happened early on in our PM conversation with your Gnostic label. I think it possible that you might notice how your clairaudience ... seems to have picked up another broadcast!

Retune, and listen again ... I'm coming in on KDIA 'Lucky 13". (When growing up in the Bay Area, although we lived on the other side of the Bay, I would occasionally tune in to this Black/Soul station).

The conversation that I wish to have is non-personal and has to do with larger idea-structures and modes of viewing and interpreting Reality. It is just fine that, to get there, some cleaning of house is necessary: a cleaning off of the table as it were.

And too please keep in mind when I speak of:

• "What I would like to be able to do, here and in relation to your vision of Jesus the mendicant Galilean carpenter, is to undertake a work that amounts to an attack against that thought-form, that idealisation, that distortion. But I cannot do that unless I have a direct permission. It is not my style to inject power-darts into another person's view-structure as, I have observed time and time again, they need their 'imagined world' in an intact form"

That I really do not mean that I have an issue with you personally. I am trying to define things and gain understandings that are more impersonal. They have to do with trends that function in our world. I am glad to hear that you are, also, non-offendable.

I am perhaps not what you think I am. But I cannot convince you of that if the resonances you are hearing inside your head keep telling you otherwise. You'll have to doubt those resonances first; and that I may not do for you.

Speak to me or 'resonances', brother!

It is not at all a crime to have 'heard' something rather off. One thing that we all must take as a given is that in forum environment everything is 'blind'. It is a ripe environment for our projections. In this case though, yours.

You have yet to reveal how I have seen you or interpreted you incorrectly. If you are not as I think you are, how are you really?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

While you are confessing your many, many sins, and 'getting right with God', I wish to recite this Prayer to the Hyperborean Apollo, my Lord & King, my Guide, my Goal & End:

• Oh Chilly Chilly North Wind Blow!
  Over ferocious Rhipaion Mountains
  To Spring Blessed! Garden of Apollon!
  
  Mighty Northern Master!
  Heal Emmanuel's Stained Vision!
  Make a Wisdom Incision
  To reinvision Sunny Gustav!
  Child of Nimble Griffin!
  
  Gloom-embraced Shall He Lie No More,
  By The Flickering Shades Obscured,
  But Seized By New Desire,
  To Higher Union Be Lured!
  
  Join All the Sweet Song Circling,
  Ye White Hyperborean Swans!

[Immanuel Can]

I was raised in a secular-Jewish non-practicing household ... I had no religious training at all, and definitely no Christian influence of any sort, much less Catholic. ...I became quite interested in Christianity about 6-7 years ago mostly through my initial readings of Nietzsche. Following those traces has led me toward the exploration of the sources I reference.

Ah. Now I see. I had thought you had a mind to advocate Catholicism as the true "Christianity" because you had some residual association with it and felt obliged to it. But now I see your purpose was quite different. A Nietzschean? Then it suits your view that Catholicism is "Christianity" because it makes it a plump target. The RC organization has been responsible for an awful lot of blood and tears. But if they must answer for that, Christianity most certainly does not.

Getting an understanding of Christianity through Nietzsche is a bit like trying to get to Judaism through The Protocols...not the definitive route, to say the least. And you asked me how I'm different: well, people who believe what you think Christianity believes signed the Concordat with Hitler. People who believe what I believe refused to sign and had their churches shut down. Then they hid Jews anyway -- and went to Auschwitz when they got caught. I'd say that counts as a difference, wouldn't you?

So my first guess was incorrect. Well, it was only a guess. Perhaps I got the agenda wrong: and yet I may yet have gotten the emotion right...there's an equally authoritative religious tradition in your past, one you've abandoned...interesting.

But Nietzsche? If you've got any Jewish heritage, I must say I think it odd you'd pick up the philosophical progenitor of the nasty little man with the moustache. I've read him too, but with mild amusement rather than any credence. Why a person would be a rightful inheritor of Torah and prefer Nietzsche would escape me. That's like inheriting gold and opting instead to play with tin. Nietzsche is a ranter and a rager, but he was so contemptuous of Christianity and Judaism both that he never troubled himself to investigate either in any great depth. It was "Judeo-Christian" morality he hated above all (his wording, not mine). So I don't think Friedrich would have liked you much more than he would have liked me.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

So my first guess was incorrect. Well, it was only a guess. Perhaps I got the agenda wrong: and yet I may yet have gotten the emotion right...there's an equally authoritative religious tradition in your past, one you've abandoned...interesting.

Projection reallocation ...

Where there's a will, there's a way ...

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

A few comments

This is a nice juncture for us as it will help bring out into the open at least some part of the core which must be revealed before a necessary conversation occurs. (I do not only mean our conversation, I mean 'the conversation'). And isn't 'bringing out into the open' secret things, unknown things, unconnected aspects, and both the lower world and the upper world as it pertains to 'our world', necessary? Even the language itself which prefaces the concepts dealt with will reveal the terrible underbody, the determining overbody, Our World where mercurial idea meets stubborn, lumpy flesh.

I desire to help with your psychological mapping project, but let me say that exploration and mapping are always the first efforts by conquerors, are they not? An unknown territory has to be approximated conceptually. Here I would mention Christian psychologics and it would not be possible to mention such a psychology and not speak to the efforts of the Catholic psychologies of the Early Roman Church. I may have a simplistic vision of it but the imposition of Christianity on pagan Europe has as much to do with physical conquest as it does with mental conquest. Now, with that said, I would again mention to you that 'you' in a certain sense represent 'an enemy' if only because you will be associated with a process of mental and spiritual conquest. Yet it is a mistake to imagine, that is if you are, that I am necessarily opposed to 'your project'. I only say that to understand ourselves we have to understand 'what happened to us'. That is, we have to be able to see a sweep of history. We have to be able to separate coercive processes (mind-fuck) from the very different assent of the will. You ('you': a process by which Europe was tamed) might be able to hypnotise me and so dazzle and confound me that I follow your will like a zombie, but in that dysfunctional relationship there is always the danger that the zombie will snap out of it. Thus, to achieve 'real morality' a man must assent to, and give his own will to, a given choice. I have the strong understanding that Christianity does not seek truly moral men but obedient men, and there is a very real difference here. I am of course speaking generally and not specifically and I am speaking about The Mass of men.

So, in my own case, I have a Jewish parent: on my mother's side. And indeed I can connect back through that physical and mental lineage all the way to Old Judea. That is sort of a trip in itself. But, and this I think makes it more interesting (and here come the psychological tid-bitties), on my father's side there is a lineage of old European nobility with written records back to 800 AD. Prior to that, legend (and thus my griffin-self). What that means---at least in symbolism---is a connection to the oldest blood of Europe, and the ruling and noble families of Europe, for good and for evil. It would mean too (at least in symbolism, in imagination) a connection to much older mythologies, and their pure strains.

Now, I tend to understand The European as a melding of the 'worlds' of Greece, of Rome, of Judea, all refracted into and through an 'Alexandrian' lens. The alchemical project that is us, is a process of melding of these strange, competing, compelling, trends and influences. I would say that to understand ourselves we would very definitely have to be able to understand where we have come from. Also to protect ourselves we would have to understand how it is that all that comprises us---unique, strange, powerful (indeed this 'us' has totally shaped everything about our world, and I mean the entire Earth)---has come to take shape as it has. And this of course points back to Alexandria. You, Oh Reverand Professor, have jollily hopped over Alexandria and your Protestant Project seems to sharpen its focus only in the Gospels, the Epistles, and as it appears you seem to dismiss ... so much that has gone between. You say that my vision is 'Catholic' and you hold up your barren cross in protection against your Gnostic Demon. But what I am really speaking toward is the very processes by which the European and the Mediterranean 'soul' has come into existence. I am thus speaking, perhaps, to an essence, to something essential, and yet too something that has imaginal reality: Self.

Drool your way, Eminence, back through whatever limited and limiting history as floats your boat, but I assert my project is quite different from what you think it to be. (My contempt is mock contempt but it would be a natural reaction against the smug judgmentalism of 'typical Christianity'. When did you first drink that brew? Can you be cured?).

If you did a smirking reading of Nietzsche as you say, you did not read Nietzsche. In my own view it is not really possible to rely on Nietzsche, just as you cannot rely on a poet. To understand the content in Nietzschean thought is an endeavour in itself. I would describe Nietzsche as the necessary unfolding of deep conflicts that must come to the surface in European ideation, or the European soul. 'I am dynamite' and all that. On one hand a young mind could easily be corrupted by a surface reading of Nietzsche (CG Jung said N is only for a mature mind). But a more mature---and better prepared---person seems to be able to harnass the Nietzschean dynamo. I think that a depth reading of Nietzsche is completely necessary in order even to give life---real life---to Christianity itself. You know, the grape juice, the blood, the wheat itself: the most basic and elemental things in man have to be revisualized. The weak imago of Jesus, a spiritless Jesus, a womanless Jesus, and such a specific cultural Jesus has to be ... rewritten. In someone else's mouth this might be disrespectful blasphemy and could have a negative reprecussion against some part of 'Self' (as I define it above). But I mean it in a very different sense, and I mean it with a true and really quite sincere desire to help. You say 'I have Jesus and am connected with Life therefor'. I say that Jesus is a suicide and that---in symbolic language (which I admit has two stark poles)---the Jesusonian trip can be and often is a death-trip. YOU may not be on that death-trip, but there is an aspect of Evangelical Christianity that deadens like death deadens. This all has to be reborn of course, vivified and brought back from a dry, lightless, tomb existence. Well, that is some glimpse at least into what I think Nietzsche is on about.

Whatever it is that you 'do' with your non-denominational religious practice, or understanding, can only be fine and dandy. If your only source though turns out to be the Gospels themselves, or the Epistles, and everything revolves strictly around that, I think this is a mistake. I mean personally. In order to understand---really just to get somewhere near the threshold of understanding---it seems to me that one has to examine many different sources. Taoist magic, the strange intricacies of Vedic mantra, the horrors of extreme ecclesiasticism, absurd ritualism, the negation of 'god', carvaka, shamanism, and so much more that could be named. The whole idea that 'I am going to set my mind to be guided by the Creator of Existence' is of course a rather bold proposition, but not necessarily one to be dismissed. Do we go backward for that? Or forward? What does it mean? In my own view it is the questions that have more power than the 'answers', but the same-old same-old answers of a frozen Protestantism, I think, need especial resurrection.

[Immanuel Can]

it would not be possible to mention such a psychology and not speak to the efforts of the Catholic psychologies of the Early Roman Church.

Well, not if you insist that the RCs are representative Christians...otherwise, no problem.

we have to be able to see a sweep of history.

Explain to me the force of this "have to." We "have to" because it's true? We "have to" because it's right? Or just we "have to" because it would be convenient for our theory if we could?

Thus, to achieve 'real morality' a man must assent to, and give his own will to, a given choice.

How very Protestant of you.

I have the strong understanding that Christianity does not seek truly moral men but obedient men

Good theory, if you're talking about the RCs. It might be true, there because in Catholicism men can be saved collectively. In Islam, men can actually be "forced to Heaven against their wills" (to quote Locke) simply by submitting to power. But in Protestantism, to cite Locke again, you cannot. An artificial, collective or forced choice is no choice at all, at least in Lockean Protestantism. You really should read Locke on this.

Now, I tend to understand The European as a melding of the 'worlds' of Greece, of Rome, of Judea, all refracted into and through an 'Alexandrian' lens.

Yeah, that's fair, so far as we speak of the civilization. But how did Europe get conflated with Christian in this description? You mean the RCs again?

smug judgmentalism of 'typical Christianity'. When did you first drink that brew? Can you be cured?

How very kind of you.

If your only source though turns out to be the Gospels themselves, or the Epistles, and everything revolves strictly around that, I think this is a mistake.

That is your privilege. For like a good Protestant, I believe that your conscience is a sacred trust, and your personal orientation to the Divine has to be decided between you and God. But I also think you're wrong. That too is my privilege.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

You really should read Locke on this.

And Thou Shalt read Nietzsche without sniggering ...

[Immanuel Can]

I don't need to snigger. Nietzsche makes it too easy. What can you say about a man who writes books called "Beyond Good and Evil," and "Why I Am So Wise"?

To tell the truth, I've actually read him with some care. He is, after all, an influential adversary, if nothing else. But you're right: he's more about the poetry than the truth, and more about the ranting than the showing.

Now, I think he does quite a brilliant job of explaining what life and power dynamics would be in a universe that does not include God. His diagnosis on that is probably right. The problem is that he begs the whole question: is that the universe that actually exists?

Once you deny his premise, the rest is only a good description of how people who accept Nietzsche's premise are likely to behave with "respect" to one another. And we see an elaborate demonstration of his will-to-power in the 3rd Reich. But if that is to be the total rule for the universe, Nietzsche does not even try to prove that it is or should be...he only says he sees it that way, and thinks we ought to act as if it's that way.

The madman's speech isn't entirely successful as irony.

They say he died syphilitic and insane. That might not be true: but either way, if he was right he does not know so now; and yet if he was wrong, then he assuredly does know it. I think I would not wish to be him.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

I would say that Nietzsche become hyper-relevant to someone who DOES 'believe in' divinity, or a divine or transcendent understructure to this manifest reality. I cannot say how he would have presented his atheism, if indeed he was an atheist. What I sense that he has simply had enough of, is the distorted, ridiculous even, child's story-book version that is Christianity. It is fine for someone just growing up, and fine for a childish mind, but the Story Version no longer functions. It is silly and ridiculous. Ah, but that is not really so true, is it? It functions indeed and it will continue to function ... in Latin America, in Africa, in India. Where it no longer functions, or only dysfunctions, is in Europe. That is in my book a problem on one hand---a problem needing a resolution---and an opportunity.

You did a rather typically bad surface reading---the danger in approaching Nietzsche they say. Well, who could blame you? But a depth reading, at least as I see it, brings out again, all over again, and in rather amazing relief, the total problem that is existence and thus the Christian problem. Nietzsche in no sense at all negates the Christian view---well, at least that is fair to say in one sense. As I see it, but my reading has now had some years to assemble more around it, Nietzsche lived the problem and brought the problem 'into the body' which is, as I say, our present fate. This completely goes over your head and you seem to have little understanding what it means, and what I mean by it.

Referring to God is meaningless, relying on God is also meaningless. The whole picture has to be redefined, revisualized. According to my understanding of things that is what I suspect is an insurmountable block to people, like yourself, who see things in a certain, limited way. On one hand you hold an untamed mass from simply going over the edge in their incapacity to handle responsibility, and on the other you hinder men from forging new steps, the inevitable steps to bring religiosity (religiosity: the total relationship of man to divinity (a loaded term), to matter, to the body, to existence) into new focus. It is not going to happen be re-superimposing a silly Gospel story on manifest reality. This is what Nietzsche did for me. And look!

He is, after all, an influential adversary, if nothing else. But you're right: he's more about the poetry than the truth, and more about the ranting than the showing.

I did not say that poets and poetry do not have to do with truth (or Truth or 'truth'). I said that it is hard to rely on a poet's conveyed sense. Yet it has been said, too, that Christianity, overall---I mean the Stories of Christianity---is more than anything else a poem. Within our imagination we reach back conceptually into the innards of a Story and draw out of that *meaning*. We do that in relation to poems, and the good poems are enormously evocative. Since a poet's 'conveyed sense' cannot easily, or wisely, be relied on, we need established theology. One of my most liked quotes of Ortega y Gasset, from 'Estudios sobre el amor', 1957:

• "Professional noisemakers of every class will always prefer the anarchy of intoxication of the mystics to the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church. I regret at not being able to join them in this preference either. I am prevented by a matter of truthfulness. It is this: I think that any theology transmits to us much more of God, greater insights and ideas about divinity, than the combined ecstasies of all the mystics; because, instead of approaching the ecstatic skeptically, we must take the mystic at his word, accept what he brings us from his transcendental immersions, and then see if what he offers us is worth while. The truth is that, after we accompany him on his sublime voyage, what he succeeds in communicating to us is a thing of little consequence. I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought. Theology---not ecstasy!"

It is just one piece, on angle of view into the questions we have to look at, the problems we have to confront. It is really the Questions that we need to get clear about. The phrase I most like is: "I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities." That is the stance that I most emulate. There is really a great deal of very good material on that topic. That idea alone has propelled all of my studies so far.

Once one discovers a few threads, one discovers a whole world of value and meaning. You make the terrible mistake---a willful, imposing mistake I will say, of seeing N and who knows how many others as 'adversary'. From your position, your ensconcement, that makes sense. But it doesn't have to be that way.

[uwot]

Gus! You're back. Fancy that.

[Immanuel Can]

What I sense that he has simply had enough of, is the distorted, ridiculous even, child's story-book version that is Christianity.

I think you meant to write "of" rather than "that is." Then I might agree.

You did a rather typically bad surface reading...This completely goes over your head and you seem to have little understanding what it means, and what I mean by it.

Charitable again. You would know this because....? Classic.

In fact, I think it's you who is misreading Nietzsche here. Nietzsche offers no proof that "God is dead." And by "dead" he doesn't even mean what we mean by "dead." He just means, "No longer relevant to Modernity," not "formerly living, now dead," nor "demonstrated non-living."

Referring to God is meaningless, relying on God is also meaningless

The opposite is actually true. "Meaning" is a function of a stable, purposive universe, and a stable, purposive universe is impossible to posit without reference to a deliberate Creation. In any case, most people know very well what is meant by "God." And without "relying on God," we would actually have no science today, since the supposition that the world should operate by law-like realities is an extension of belief in the Judeo-Christian Lawgiver God Nietzsche hated so much.

So much for meaning.

Honestly, the remainder of your communication above doesn't contain a predicate worthy of serious entertainment. It's very much a sort of ranting neo-Nietzschean screed, rather than a set of propositions that can be defended. I can't really see how to get a hold on it. It's not up to anything, and I find it terribly unimpressive.

But you said in closing you had particular questions we needed to get to? And they were...?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

In fact, I think it's you who is misreading Nietzsche here. Nietzsche offers no proof that "God is dead." And by "dead" he doesn't even mean what we mean by "dead." He just means, "No longer relevant to Modernity," not "formerly living, now dead," nor "demonstrated non-living."

According to my understanding, to say that 'God is dead and we killed him' is a wonderfully ironic, tricky, and purposefully subversive statement. There is a great deal of delight in it. What I take from it is that 'we' have indeed functionally 'killed God'.

We have no language, no way to express how the metaphysic of God might operate in our world. So, like those who killed God in former times, we have killed him all over again. We came to this impasse because we sought truth! 'The Truth shall set you free'. So we pursued truth and took it all very seriously and (in the 16th Century more or less) undermined the Story. The Story has died. The Story no longer functions.

In my view---and as I say I do not have any idea if or how Nietzsche would define his atheism, or if he would---the Nietzschean understanding, or the statement, opens us up all over again to explorations.

I think that it falls to you to speak about How God exists. How God functions. You say that I lack predicates but I have not set myself to predicate. How could I predicate if the ground is still being prepared? I am not interest in hard and strict predicates. I am interested in the Questions. You recently spoke of salvation and, to my ears, it sounded totally vapid. Weak. Childish and silly. I could write a paragraph describing a vision of salvation much better! Perhaps my predicates are undeveloped. But your tropes are flaccid.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Sort-of predicates:

(I could do this with each of my posts if you'd like).

1) Nietzsche is not at all irrelevant for someone interested in Christianity, or religion, or ethics, or simply the notion of divinity or the ethics and morality which one may adopt to live life one Earth. Nietzsche holds a great deal that is relevant and inspiring. Indeed, he has been a great influence on the last century and continues to be so. This can be references and talked about.

2) The Story of Christianity is one for a child's mind. It needs to be 'rewritten', yet in that case it might see its 'metaphysic' undermined or done away with in the process. Or a whole other metaphysic needs to be defined and described.

3) Christianity is expanding, especially in Pentecostalism. A highly emotional and charged cultus which is very popular. It is expanding in Latin America, in Africa, and in the so-called Third World. But is it expanding because of intrinsic 'spiritual value', or that it opens a soul to 'God', or more because it is a captivating psychological phenomenon, a 'world' into which a person can submerge?

4) To speak about God through old language forms ... is meaningless. Correct that: it is not meaningless, it may be meaning-ful, but this depends on the needs of the person receiving. However it seems to be the case, for many, that the old forms hold little power and do not attract credence. If one accepts that 'we no longer have a descriptive system to reveal God or refer to God' then it is implied that we need to define one again. How?

5) Christian cultus seems to function now as a brake for a modern individual who, without that brake, might or likely would careen off the edge into overt immorality, into a sort of lawlessness, which 'law' had for so long been defined by religious structures. But on the other side, certain religious forms, and perhaps that recommended by IC who writes down on Earth on PN, may impede progress toward defining new forms, or new ways of relationship, to what must always be put in quotations: 'divinity' (since we have no way to define this). At the very least one can refer to this situation and talk about it.

6) Certain core ideas communicated by Christianity function in our minds like 'poems' function in our minds. Poetry is evocative. It uses charged sysmbols, sometimes symbols that strike us in ways we don't rationally understand, to communicate *meanings* hard to concretise. Some protestant theologians have noted that Christianity is like a poem in this sense: It alludes to tremendous things but it fails to be able to, say, bring them into the light of day. It is very hard, except in mystic circles, or among believers, to define how God functions, what God is, or what God does. Yet there seem to be no universal agreements except through vague metaphors.

7) "I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities" (Ortega y Gasset) This is an interesting statement that is certainly predicative. But what does it mean? What might it refer to? What has occurred since 1957 that would render it valid? How could one begin to speak of that? What sources would one have to refer to? And if one did 'approach a new experience of God', would it have occurred through conventional means? As in 'return to established systems'? Or by venturing 'beyond' them? Is this then Gnosticism?

[Immanuel Can]

Ah, my poor Gustav:

Your assumption, then is that "function" determines the value of things? That looks like a very human-centered universe. But since we neither created ourselves nor have any means of controlling the day of our death or the practical circumstances of our lives, that would seem to be rather a lot of hubris...and not much more.

Or is it "story"? If you like a "story," then it's true? And if you don't, it's not? Not just hubris, in that case, but total denial of reality as a concept. But the irony of this is that if I "like" the story you "hate," then my story -- by your account -- would still be every bit as "true" and "valid" as the one you prefer. But if there is a reality to arbitrate our disagreement, then it matters not at all whether or not you like the "story."

Old language forms are meaningless? Well, the ancients will be terribly depressed to hear you say so. But when you do, you drawn on their forms to say it. You try to use Aristotelian logic to disabuse me of my Illusions, but tell me all the while that Aristotelian logic is meaningless. How do you expect to succeed?

And now Europe has a "soul"? Nice metaphor...what on earth does it actually refer to? Nothing. Europe today is a cacophony of heterogeneous traditions, a babble of languages and a cacophony of cultures. It has no "soul" in any real sense, and the metaphor is just too precious to consider.

This is terribly tedious stuff, Terrance. Inflated diction, irrational flares of style, and impassioned speeches with no direction: even Nietzsche would find it a bit over the top. And self-contradictory to boot. But maybe I should leave space for someone else to talk, because you're making no sense to me, and I honestly can't find in your protracted screeds against your straw-man "Christianity" anything remotely worthy of address.

As a person, I quite like you: as a theorist, I find you entirely opaque. The ambivalence is too much for this little man.