Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Felasco]

I object in the strongest possible terms to everything ever said by anybody who ever said anything!!!!

This is my first essay. I'm quite proud of it.

[uwot]

Did you ever ask me to defend, specifically, a 'premise'?

Probably not. It's fairer to say that, while I believe that language itself is contextual, concepts themselves are independent of context. If they only make sense in an 'essay' or a belief system, they don't make sense.

I seem to remember just some grumpiness on your part, a couple of personal insults (I still am deeply cut by that of 'berk') (which my spellchecker comically desires to correct to 'jerk', a possible insult from 1) God or 2) The Devil himself as there is no possible other), and then silence.

I think I intimated that, despite it's crass etymology, berk, in common use means something like, harmless buffoon. I can't help think it's the harmlessness that hurts.

I have not so far seen you really develop any noteworthy ideas, in any full sense of the word, in the writing of yours I've read so far.

I have made no secret of my social democratic views, nor my atheism, in the sense that I do not believe in god, rather than that I believe there is no god. You might prefer to call that agnosticism. I think I have said enough to make it obvious that I am a consequentialist. In general, I am an anti-realist, but I have stated that I am an empiricist and, therefore, open to persuasion.

You seem to function within some partialities.

Do you mean things to which I am partial, or concepts which are incomplete? No matter; both are true. I imagine they are of everyone.

Always open to hearing more.

Fire away.

The problem, or a problem anyway, is that I cannot offer a completed system of thinking or of philosophy.

Frankly, I don't see that as a problem peculiar to you. The problem is that you think it is necessary to do so.

That is just a fact. My life ('the living of life' as I say) has forced me to tentative opinions and a sense of possible 'conclusiveness' in regard to certain things, and what is required of me is to construct or assemble the ratiocination that supports it. Toward that, I am working as hard as I can. It is a slow, laborious process.

You have laconophilic tendencies which, idiosyncratically, you have combined with loquaciousness. Hope that helps.

Second-rate poetry? What is first-rate poetry in your view?

I have no idea. Perish the thought that the stuff you treated us to is, though.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stoney rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.

---TS Eliot, The Waste Land.
______________________________________________________________

Uwot: Do you mean things to which I am partial, or concepts which are incomplete? No matter; both are true. I imagine they are of everyone.

GB: The problem, or a problem anyway, is that I cannot offer a completed system of thinking or of philosophy.

Uwot: Frankly, I don't see that as a problem peculiar to you. The problem is that you think it is necessary to do so.

My understanding of things, of people, of people I encounter in Internet forums, on the street: 'in general', but an increasing 'in general', runs something like this: people have lost or are losing the capacity to 'locate themselves'. It is as if the present, their present, their context, the people near them and around them, even the institutions that form them, manage them, employ them, do not make such a demand on them. That is one aspect. It is large enough an issue, in my book, to warrant concern. So I focus on it, despite anyone.

Like you in varying senses, I hold notions that are more proper to 'atheism', but when I enter into the issue or the problem of theism-atheism, notion-of-divinity vs no notion-of-divinity I have the sense that I come at it for very very different reasons. We entered into that once here. What concerns me, and I am now fairly certain that the 'importance' of such a concern is 1) not shared by you and 2) I doubt whether you can grasp the importance, has to do with the nature and the quality of one's 'metaphysical dream of the world'. That is a concept Richard Weaver uses to describe those 'worlds' of meaning and value that we hold to, that we 'envision'.

One thing I notice: it is a general trend, it is one of the symptoms of scientism and mechanism in their 'insidious' senses, is that when minds become ever-more informed by said scientism and mechanics, there occurs a 'severing' from 'imagined worlds' of many different types, but which worlds are the 'worlds' in which many men have, for centuries and millennia, lived. It is not easy to speak about that 'world' but it is more difficult when (as I imagine that I am) one is speaking with people who have a whole 'dead' inner portion of themselves; a portion that has been 'killed off'.

In the link provided to a critique of Richard Weaver's ideas, Jeffrey Gayner wrote:

• "Mythology, metaphysics, and theology previously provided men with a given structure of reality which brought meaning, coherence, and humility to man. As these bases for both the internal and external authority over man were eroded and not replaced by others, man was set adrift into a world with which he could not adequately cope. He neither knew what to do nor had he any concept of the proportion or limitation of actions taken. Weaver thus argues for a restoration of lost values; however, since the values are enduring ones, they also represent a present reality with which man should attune himself. The argument formulated by Weaver combines simple logic, historical evidence, emotional sentiments, and intuition, and thereby roughly corresponds with his concept of the various dimensions of man's faculties for perceiving reality."

Myself, I agree with Weaver in a great many areas, in others less so, in any case my understanding is that he points toward a very significant area of concern, and by understanding what happens when we are disconnected with inner 'imagined worlds', one has some additional tools with which to look first at our own selves, and then at those selves of the people around us.

So, when you question Why it is necessary that I 'do so'---offer a 'complete system of philosophy'---I understand from this 'question', which is more a statement about your own choices, that it is possible you may not grasp the magnitude of what is going on around us as whole idea-systems shift (not necessarily for the good or the better) and people are 'set adrift'. It is quite likely, too, that you simply may not really have much insight into your own self. No one 'blames' you for this, and here we touch on an issue of causation. I suggested in commenting to Greylorn's sharp comments to Felasco that there are forces operative that desire and perhaps benefit from 'turning a man's mind to mush', which in my lexicon means: carving out of him and hollowing out of him those specific, those important, those value-rich 'inner worlds' and 'imagined worlds' of which I speak. Am I engaged in philosophy, do you think? Is this a vital area of concern to which philosophy can enter, can have something to say? I would say that it most certainly is. I would also assert that it might be one of the more important areas for philosophical engagement. So, to various cracked pots and badly informed 'pseudo-philosophers' who demonstrate a location within what I call 'partialities', but who fail to grasp a larger picture of man in his present, I don't have a great deal to say. If you are not there, in that area, working to make definitions, working to sort things out, where in the heck are you?

To speak of your 'locality' in this sense as left-of-center democratics is, in my view, to reduce your area of concern and your 'horizon' to something inane. It is almost 100% certain that one cannot peg one's philosophical, metaphysical, linguistic, sentimental, or meaning-definitions to that of an unruly mass. The core definitions that one would choose to hold to would, it seems to me, require being pegged to 'higher orders of men', higher orders of concern. In my attempts to speak about this, this has been my thrust. Neither you nor Skip nor even Harry can 'hear' this, and there are (I think) specific reasons why this is so. But none of that is my problem. I think that all one can do if one feels he is connected to a 'higher truth' is just to go on repeating it, saying it in different ways if one can. There is a hope that the ideas may reach someone anyway.

There is not a great deal more from your post to discuss. I will admit that some minor poets such as JD McClatchy, Mary Oliver and Louise Erdich might be called 'second-rate'; but Isaiah, Juan Ramon Jimenez, TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Blake and Shakespeare? Yet essentially this is 'part of the problem', and it is one to which I desire to 'call attention' in my writing: Some whole part of you, or 'potential you', has gone missing. You only have left 'partialities', and those that remain function in you and for you like 'sharp tools'. Both against your own self and against others. One *feels* in you a kind of mechanical restlessness and what I have referred in other posts to a 'destructiveness'. You are very capable of tearing down and shredding, but you have no skill at all in building up. And creativity, creativity of spirit, spiritual creativity is in you a dead inner world. The reference to poems and language-concentrations where symbol and meaning are presented in a way that point 'intuitionally' toward 'larger meanings', is lost on you. It is all second and even third-rate for you really. But it is more proper to say: the defect is in you, the death is in you. That is a much harder Rx to deal with, I assure you of that.

I am dealing, machine-gun-style, in generalities. I am not so much speaking to the specific 'uwot' but to a general sort of person. To operate in this way has notable downsides. But I think that we have to allow the use of generalities. Richard Weaver in The Southern Tradition at Bay writes:

• "It is useless to argue against generalization; a world without generalization would be a world without knowledge. The chaotic and fragmentary thinking of the modern age is due to an apprehensiveness, inspired by empirical methods, over images, wholes, general truths, so that we are intimidated from reaching the conclusions we must live by."

You have laconophilic [laconophilia] tendencies which, idiosyncratically, you have combined with loquaciousness. Hope that helps.

Shall I say 'Thanks'? (Though you might have improved the alliteration).

In some sense at least you are right. I am now interested in philosophical positions that involve 1) a definition of masculinity and masculine activity, and that clearly distinguishes itself from the female and the feminine, 2) in philosophical and existential positions that allow for an amassing of values of this sort within a man, within men, specifically for men, about men, 3) philosophical positions which integrate what one thinks with what one does and not merely abstract philosophical notions which 'float in the air'. The problem, and it is not small, is that if one places emphasis on 'imagined worlds' and 'metaphysical dreams of the world' there is very certainly possibility of careening off into some very strange territory. All that of course can be talked about. It is highly relevant too. 4) I am (and I had not ever been) interested in philosophical and spiritual traditions at the point where they intersect with martial systems of discipline, but which start at a philosophical level, and this is another area of complexity and difficulty. I think that the first order of discipline is toward oneself though. 5) I am very interested in programs of distinction: self-distinction. Almost any position, even some bizarre ones, where a man defines himself as-against the Mass Man and Mass Attitude I chose to hold in esteem. The opposite I choose to hold in contempt. A man 'should be', essentially, a soldier, but he very definitely must get clear about what it is he shall serve. Everything hinges in that...

What, really, do you serve, uwot? Have you ever thought about that?

[Felasco]

Weaver said....

Mythology, metaphysics, and theology previously provided men with a given structure of reality which brought meaning, coherence, and humility to man.

1) The meaning provided by theologies is a fantasy. It is at the very least a fantasy knowing, ie. the declaration of an ability to know which can not be proven.

2) In the western world Christianity is the theology usually referenced. An all powerful God loves you and will toss you in to hell for all eternity unless you believe in him without the benefit of him presenting himself to you. Loving? WTF? Coherent?

3) Humility? Is claiming that one knows the ultimate nature of all reality really humility? Aren't theologies by their very nature arrogant, given the scale of claims theologies are required to produce? Is teaching people that they too have The Answer really a way to nurture humility?

Do you see how easy it is to deflate such an "expert"? Do you perhaps now see why I don't spend lots of time reading such experts?

Do we want to promote mythology, metaphysics, and theology if they are built upon fantasy? Aren't almost all of them built upon the fantasy that somebody has answers to the very biggest questions? Is fantasy the kind of foundation we really want to build our civilization upon?

How about building the foundation upon reality instead? When it comes to the kinds of questions theology addresses, the simple obvious fact is that we don't know the answers (you too atheists!) Why not start there? Why not build the foundation upon a simple obvious fact?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

(I wrote this to you in the second person but then thought it better to switch to the third-person mode of address. It reads a little odd therefor. You are not obligated to respond in the same 'person'. But I hope that you will approach your responses in more of an essay-from. Again, I can only ask. Do as you see fit).

[Clears throat...]

I have discovered, and I have also 'determined', that Mr Felasco doesn't fully understand to what degree we exist and function within symbolic worlds. In him, apparently, there are two intersecting understandings: one is the degree that he also functions within symbolic worlds, and so it is less an 'understanding' and more a basic operative fact, but one unexamined; and then, on the other side, his constant reference to a 'real world', which is also a reference to an 'imagined world' (because he holds it in an imaginal space and use it as a symbol). This is an area that he can, if he desired, investigate. But I can do no more than what I have already attempted to do to draw his attention to it. I accept, unconditionally, that he has no interest or motivation to 'go there'.

What I have found is that since he doesn't understand, not really, the issue and the problem of 'imagined worlds'---the way that we hold to and 'envision' the world in which we imagine ourselves---which is also connected to 'a metaphysical dream of the world', which is a specific usage (and not exactly mine) of a specific philosopher (Weaver), he approaches the topic with a very real limitation. And so, like so many others, he will begin to dissect specifics within a group of symbolic images, which, in his mind---that is, in his imagined space---cannot make sense. And he is completely free to do this. I don't think that many will attempt to stop him or inhibit him in this endeavor.

My impasse in relation to him (and others here) is that I see these issues from another point of view and it is one that, in his pragmatism and from within a limited philosophical background (which is also a literary limitation) (and possibly more), he cannot wrap your mind around. He does not see himself as lacking any specific thing. If a deficiency is not perceived, there would be no good reason to take remedial action, now would there? (Along this line I will mention that we desire to see ourselves as complete, and sometimes we force the issue and possibly shut away a sense of something missing or lacking).

So for example when I brought to his attention the difference between different ways that things are 'seen':

This life's five windows of the soul
Distorts the Heavens from pole to pole,
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.

These ideas have no elements in him to which to correspond. It goes in one ear and straight out the other. Even as a remote intimation it just doesn't 'strike' any inner string. There is a whole, other and further dimension to this Question, and it is above and beyond the specificities that he, and so many other 'literalists', will only reduce to what grates in their ears: for example the notion of a God that punishes eternally. He is 'stuck' within a form of literalism that corresponds to earth-sciences, to specific measurement, and to the determination of 'facts'. In this sense he too is very much a child of his age.

I also presented this, the below, as a way to attempt to build a conceptual means toward an understanding of a function of the imagination, but there was no comment at all. It is as if these ideas cannot be received, as if they were not presented.

Doubtless this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirit by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns,
As we our food into our nature change.
From their gross matter she abstracts their forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light, on her celestial wings.
Thus does she, when from individual states
She doth abstract the universal kinds;
Which then re-clothed in divers names and fates
Steal access through our senses to our minds.

From S. Coleridge Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV.

I completely see how in his mind and in his imagination he has the ways-and-means to 'defeat an expert'! I completely agree. I absolutely agree. He has the means to 'defeat' not only what is referred to by 'metaphysical dream' but also all that is encapsulated within many other symbols, all symbols, and symbolic language, and poetic image, in imagination, and what 'truth' is gleaned through intuition and other non-literal and non-quantifiable forms of perception and analysis. What he is unable and perhaps unwilling to recognize is that, though an aspect of this is useful and necessary in life, it also connects to a form of 'applied ignorance': that is, what he does not understand he shoots down, uncomprehendingly. I suggest that a whole other approach and set of skills is necessary. And much of what I write is an attempt to fill this out.

This is not, in truth, my problem to solve. Yes, I see it as a problem. No, he does not. We know this. There is no way to build a bridge! This MUST be seen! I could point out that his mistake as to what 'humility' refers to, both what Weaver means and what it could mean in a 'higher' sense. Felasco mistakes the outer form of a symbol with the inner content of a symbol. It is a vain exercise to point this out to him because he does not desire to be moved to consider other means of perception and other means of organizing what is perceived.

So, a specific, point-by-point conversation with him, on this, is futile. He surely must see this by now? I appreciate, I really do, his efforts to engage. It gives me a platform to express my views and also to clarify them. But the specifics, the hammering through of specifics, this is indeed futile.

So, I suggest that he independently build his case(s) toward his 'real world'. I have a feeling that if he does this he will see that his 'real world' is actually far more an imagined world than he ever seemed to have thought, but this is not my domain in any case. No one can do this for another.

Therefor, no part whatever of his simplistic attempt to help me to see whatever it is that he sees and understands has had an effect. His effort is substantially wasted on me as I assume mine is on him. But others may relate to it so it is part of 'The Conversation'. But let he and I avoid direct conversation. It will get us nowhere.

[Felasco]

One might ask no one in particular....

Is the meaning provided by theology a fantasy, or not? Yes, or no?

Are theologies coherent, or not? Yes, or no?

Do theologies encourage humility, or not? Yes, or no?

Do we wish to build a conceptual framework for civilization that is built upon fantasy, incoherence and arrogance, or not? Yes, or no?

These are reasonable questions. They are logical questions. They are questions which can be analyzed, dissected, considered, and debated. They are questions directly relevant to the topics some posters among us very much wish to discuss.

These are not easy questions, but they are simple in the sense that anyone who feels a conceptual foundation is important will eventually have to answer them with a yes or a no.

If a such philosophers wish to be serious, and be seen as serious, they will eventually have to escape the endless wandering around and round and ever endlessly round the mulberry bush, and find their bottom line. It's not the number of books they read, or the number of words they write that matters, but whether they are willing and able to find their bottom line.

If a foundational framework is important, it's important to decide whether it should be built upon fantasy or fact. It will be one, or it will be the other, and whoever creates such a framework will have to have the courage to decide which they prefer.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

One would begin an answer by probing within the area designated by the word meaning. One would simply refer Dr Felasco to the enormous complication that immediately opens up when the word 'meaning' is used.

I would focus in this area.

This is all one could do. Dr Felasco would have to spend time in a 'good faith' investigation of the question.

One would suggest the same in relation to the similarly complex term coherence, specifically in its philosophical and linguistic sense.

And here is that area.

The issue of facts is also ever-so-slightly charged.

I don't think it needs to be pointed out, except of course to Dr Felasco, that all these topics concentrate themselves toward the question and also the meaning of truth.

Though the questions proffered appear logical, in fact they only seem so because, without awareness of the understructure of complexity involved, they do not allow for a 'logical response'.

Or, he that poses the question is not qualified for the ensuing response.

Also, the possible responses will totally thwart the initiative of the questions, formed as they are within 'ignorance'.

If Dr Felasco will make no effort to establish an epistemological base for conversation, the whole thing becomes ridiculous and circular.

Some further 'interpretation':

One understands, oh so very clearly, that Dr Felasco has no need for any of these definitions, nor are they of use to him, nor is the problematical recognized. One has determined that for Dr Felasco it has all been reduced to the utterly simple. One imagines this is because, as some have asserted, his position is essentially religious, possibly specifically Jesusonian: All you need is love. If the answer, to anything, is not 'all you need is love', and if it is not expressed in simple language, intelligible to an 11 years-old, it is 'complex' and unnecessary and must be further reduced…

To sort through all this, or to do the work that Felasco can do/should do for himself, is of no interest to me, and so, again, there is no other option but to exit the haggling over details. But those dealt with so far are relevant to aspects of my ideas and my posts, and so again, it has been valuable and useful.

[Felasco]

Simple = clarity.

Walls of wandering words = confusion.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Contempt.

Syn: contempt, disdain, scorn imply strong feelings of disapproval and aversion toward what seems base, mean, or worthless. Contempt is disapproval tinged with disgust: to feel contempt for a weakling. disdain is a feeling that a person or thing is beneath one's dignity and unworthy of one's notice, respect, or concern: a disdain for crooked dealing. Scorn denotes undisguised contempt often combined with derision.

• In particular, contempt involves the judgment that, because of some moral or personal failing or defect, the contemned person has compromised his or her standing vis-à-vis an interpersonal standard that the contemnor treats as important.

• Therefore, contempt is a response to a perceived failure to meet an interpersonal standard. Contempt is also a particular way of regarding or attending to the object of contempt, and this form of regard has an unpleasant affective element. However, contempt may be experienced as a highly visceral emotion similar to disgust, or as cool disregard.

• A characteristic of contempt is the psychological withdrawal or distance one typically feels regarding the object of one’s contempt. This psychological distancing is an essential way of expressing one’s nonidentification with the object of one’s contempt and it precludes sympathetic identification with the object of contempt. Contempt for a person involves a way of negatively and comparatively regarding or attending to someone who has not fully lived up to an interpersonal standard that the person extending contempt thinks is important. This form of regard constitutes a psychological withdrawal from the object of contempt.

There is an unusual form of contempt: when you 'sort of like' the object of contempt, or when you recognize redeeming features. So, contempt moves from one pole to the other; from distain to toleration. In the end though contempt becomes a form of disgust. The worst situation to find oneself in is where you also feel a 'sort of pity' for the contemned one and, because you recognize some defect in him that will never be surmounted, you are forced to 'accept' that that is just the way he is, like the neighborhood retard. You make peace with contempt and it softens to irony.

Troll. This doesn't quite fit, though parts do.

Heckler?

[Felasco]

Contempt

Not contempt. A simple, concise and accurate analysis. No wall of words required.

[uwot]

My understanding of things, of people, of people I encounter in Internet forums, on the street: 'in general', but an increasing 'in general', runs something like this: people have lost or are losing the capacity to 'locate themselves'.

Who; mass man or a fortunate few who would be amenable to your message, if only you could find the right medium?

It is as if the present, their present, their context, the people near them and around them, even the institutions that form them, manage them, employ them, do not make such a demand on them.

So people need to be told what to do, even if the reasons for doing so are based on fantasy.

That is one aspect. It is large enough an issue, in my book, to warrant concern. So I focus on it, despite anyone.

You tell 'em, Gus! Actually, as I'm sure I have said, your disdain for mass man, the hoi polloi, plebs, is nothing new. Nor is your attempt to create a conservative 'dream world' in which you can maintain a distance between yourself and reality.

Like you in varying senses, I hold notions that are more proper to 'atheism', but when I enter into the issue or the problem of theism-atheism, notion-of-divinity vs no notion-of-divinity I have the sense that I come at it for very very different reasons. We entered into that once here. What concerns me, and I am now fairly certain that the 'importance' of such a concern is 1) not shared by you

There really shouldn't be any residual doubt.

and 2) I doubt whether you can grasp the importance, has to do with the nature and the quality of one's 'metaphysical dream of the world'.

I'm not entirely clear what you are claiming, but any such failure on my part, I think, is to my credit. Don't kid yourself, 'metaphysical dream of the world' and 'fairytale' are synonyms.

That is a concept Richard Weaver uses to describe those 'worlds' of meaning and value that we hold to, that we 'envision'.

Ah, the appeal to authority.
The thing that I doubt you understand is that I fully appreciate that we live in essentially a dream world. We live behind a veil of appearance, our entire experience is smoke and mirrors. That is precisely why there is no consent about what reality is, much less what matters. You have made your mind up, for essentially aesthetic reasons about the things you choose to care about. In this you are no different from anyone else. The difference between us is that I am entirely comfortable entertaining any hypothesis that is consistent with what we see and hear. You though have stated:

Science is not now and likely will not form the basis of a general philosophical-spiritual-religious grasp of existence and it does not seem capable to provide much real insight into ethics and morality.

What matters to you is how we conduct ourselves and you are prepared to delude yourself in the name of self discipline. Each to their own.
The thing people like you dislike about science is that it is democratic, the rules that govern reality are the same for everyone. It happens from time to time that some piece of irrefutable evidence is discovered that explodes whatever loony agenda is being peddled, at which point, people who cannot suffer change throw their toys out of the pram.

One thing I notice: it is a general trend, it is one of the symptoms of scientism and mechanism in their 'insidious' senses, is that when minds become ever-more informed by said scientism and mechanics, there occurs a 'severing' from 'imagined worlds' of many different types, but which worlds are the 'worlds' in which many men have, for centuries and millennia, lived.

Scientism is one part of your 'dream world', it does not exist, not amongst scientists. What does your spell checker try and change that to?

It is not easy to speak about that 'world' but it is more difficult when (as I imagine that I am) one is speaking with people who have a whole 'dead' inner portion of themselves; a portion that has been 'killed off'.

That 'dead' bit of me is simply the aesthetic possibilities that you embrace and to which I am indifferent. Just as the 'dead' bits of you are aesthetic choices that do not move you.

In the link provided to a critique of Richard Weaver's ideas, Jeffrey Gayner wrote:

"Mythology, metaphysics, and theology previously provided men with a given structure of reality which brought meaning, coherence, and humility to man."

Indeed. And in every case it was untrue. It is one thing to live in a dream world, quite another to live in a lie.

As these bases for both the internal and external authority over man were eroded and not replaced by others, man was set adrift into a world with which he could not adequately cope.

So mass man is a modern phenomenon. I'm sure I am repeating myself, but this is the story of the fall. If you eat from the tree of knowledge, you will see your nakedness. In your opinion, it is 'higher' or 'nobler' to live a well structured lie, than to grow up and face reality as it is.

Am I engaged in philosophy, do you think?

Tragically, yes. I don't know how well you know Plato's Republic, for instance. It's basically a handbook for people like you, with instructions on how to control mass man, including a number myths for that purpose. It is a laughable fact that some people still believe that Atlantis was a real place.

Is this a vital area of concern to which philosophy can enter, can have something to say? I would say that it most certainly is. I would also assert that it might be one of the more important areas for philosophical engagement. So, to various cracked pots and badly informed 'pseudo-philosophers' who demonstrate a location within what I call 'partialities', but who fail to grasp a larger picture of man in his present, I don't have a great deal to say. If you are not there, in that area, working to make definitions, working to sort things out, where in the heck are you?

On the other side with my finger in the dijk.

To speak of your 'locality' in this sense as left-of-center democratics is, in my view, to reduce your area of concern and your 'horizon' to something inane. It is almost 100% certain that one cannot peg one's philosophical, metaphysical, linguistic, sentimental, or meaning-definitions to that of an unruly mass.

Again; this is ordinary people as viewed from your dream world. You are a glass half empty sort, aren't you? It is not the wish of social democrats to slob around with the hoi polloi, much less sneer, it is instead the struggle to enhance everybody's lives to help them achieve their potential, precisely so that fewer minds are turned to mush. It is not simply woolliness, nor even altruism. If I am to judge myself by others, it will be on equal terms. And you talk about discipline.

The core definitions that one would choose to hold to would, it seems to me, require being pegged to 'higher orders of men', higher orders of concern.

Really? And how then is higher man to contain mass man? Are you so naïve not to have an answer? What will it be? One lie for you and 'higher orders of men', another for mass man?

In my attempts to speak about this, this has been my thrust. Neither you nor Skip nor even Harry can 'hear' this, and there are (I think) specific reasons why this is so.

Those specific reasons are part of your dream world. We hear well enough, some of us just think you are talking bollocks.

But none of that is my problem. I think that all one can do if one feels he is connected to a 'higher truth' is just to go on repeating it, saying it in different ways if one can. There is a hope that the ideas may reach someone anyway.

You really think this is the place to do that? How many have you reached so far?

There is not a great deal more from your post to discuss. I will admit that some minor poets such as JD McClatchy, Mary Oliver and Louise Erdich might be called 'second-rate'; but Isaiah, Juan Ramon Jimenez, TS Eliot, WB Yeats, Blake and Shakespeare? Yet essentially this is 'part of the problem', and it is one to which I desire to 'call attention' in my writing: Some whole part of you, or 'potential you', has gone missing. You only have left 'partialities', and those that remain function in you and for you like 'sharp tools'. Both against your own self and against others. One *feels* in you a kind of mechanical restlessness and what I have referred in other posts to a 'destructiveness'. You are very capable of tearing down and shredding,

Ta, very much.

but you have no skill at all in building up. And creativity, creativity of spirit, spiritual creativity is in you a dead inner world. The reference to poems and language-concentrations where symbol and meaning are presented in a way that point 'intuitionally' toward 'larger meanings', is lost on you.

Well, let's give it a go.

Gustav Bjornstrand began as an extra-curricular project of a bunch of pampered 15 year old boys in a single sex boarding school in Massachusetts. Their teacher, Leif Ericsson, a fan of The Cosmic Dead, chose the name from a song and attached it to a composite character the size and shape of all the unpleasant roles played by Danny Devito. To make the new boy Carlos, the nephew of a cocaine funded Bolivian general, feel included they locate Gustav in some half realised Latin American state; Carlos is still learning the language, after all. The love interest in the story of Gustav Bjornstrand only features occasionally and timidly, since none of the class has ever met a female. Leif isn't that way inclined.
To their dismay, they find that no one is paying any attention, so they invent another character, who in keeping with the South American theme and Leif's fantasies, they name after the Guyanese actor Harry Baird. Having eventually kick started interest in some actual humans, Harry Baird is dropped and in the interest of science, the class try to map the correlation between sneering contempt and outraged response. The graph drawn on Leif's buttocks with red permanent marker appears to show a linear relationship.

I could go on, indeed I could tell any number of stories, all of them consistent with the words that appear on my screen. Like I said, I am prepared to entertain any possibility that is consistent with the evidence, but I am not so stupid to believe any of them, much less mental enough to think any one of them is a sound basis for an entire philosophy. You desire to build such a story that ignores the evidence. One can only wonder at your hubris.

Assuming that there is an individual responsible for the character of Gustav, and that they genuinely believe the crap they write, they are almost certainly too vain to recognise themselves. Take a look at someone else:

A brief explanation of one element of my theory may be helpful. The brain is not the source of human consciousness. The brain contains an antenna-tuner system which connects to the entity referred to by religionists as the soul. I employ a different word for soul, "beon," a non-created physical (not material) entity that has the natural ability to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Of course it is described completely in my book.

It is described completely in two words: utter bollocks. But look at it, or any of the other pubescent, absolutist, reactionary, conservative, paranoid, religious gobbledygook posted by your fellow nutters; then look in the mirror and tell me the difference.

It is all second and even third-rate for you really.

Yeah.

But it is more proper to say: the defect is in you, the death is in you.

Whatever.

That is a much harder Rx to deal with, I assure you of that.

I have no idea what you mean by Rx. Frankly, I don't give a fuck.
Anyway:

Blah! Blah! Blah!
...What, really, do you serve, uwot? Have you ever thought about that?

No.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

As I remember now from some of your first 'responses', you make now the same mistakes as you made then. It is perhaps understandable as the medium is blind and it is easy to jump to conclusions.

Your disdain for mass man, the hoi polloi

It is not really contempt for those polloi themselves but rather about a whole group of content that is pumped into them. The distinction is crucial. 'Mass Man' means a vast, even uncontrollable appetite. It is also a distortion that is worked on man.

And when Mass Man has had taken away from him, through a whole assortment of forces, an underpinning and a structure for understanding 'reality' and his place in it, and it is not replaced with another one, or the one that replaces it is artificial and superficial, it is at that point that that Mass becomes a strange, considerable thing, and also perhaps a dangerous thing, a problem; and insofar as it is a self-willed and determining thing, since Mass Man is filled with will and energy, it is something one has to watch out for (if one can).

But in my own view the only area that one could 'watch out' in, is in one's own self. One's own immediate environment. You ascribe to me a mood in relation to this, and to 'them', that is not mine. It is far easier to respect 'common, normal people' than it is the postmodern anthropos. I live in a rural town in Colombia and everyday I come in contact with normal, decent people who are still connected with each other and their place. There is so much to admire in them and in 'what remains'. In fact, I see my own distortions through them, in their mirror so to speak.

I have said I think 5-6 times so far, in speaking of 'them' one is speaking of 'oneself', because we have all been formed by similar forces. Not to include that would be suspect. But more and more, it seems, we are being informed not by the traditions that once were present and that were 'authentic' to certain places and linked a man to the land and to a history, but by evermore strange and also remote and invisible forces, which in my view twist man. I don't see anything that will change this. So it throws a man back on himself.

This: "Nor is your attempt to create a conservative 'dream world' in which you can maintain a distance between yourself and reality" is your own material, your own projection. Who are you speaking to? Some persons in your environment, your past?

I'm not entirely clear what you are claiming, but any such failure on my part, I think, is to my credit. Don't kid yourself, 'metaphysical dream of the world' and 'fairytale' are synonyms.

First, and as I have said, nothing I write is conclusive. I come into these spaces with the intention of writing as I am reading. I make this clear.

And to mention Weaver or anyone else is not to 'appeal to authority' as a fallacy of argumentation but to refer to a perspective. Weaver is just one of a group of different philosophers and religionists who seek, it would seem, a point in time in the past onto which they hang their vision---of perfection, of something better, of something, as you say, we have 'fallen from'. Weaver emulates the feudalistic social structure of the antebellum US South and try as I might I can't 'envision' myself into that 'metaphysical dream'. But, and I think this is just a part of your nature (I notice it in all your posts and in many other threads), instead of stopping to actually consider what another man is saying and to explore it at least a little, you 'jump to conclusions' which are very unfavorable. I think this is a mistake.

Too, jumping to a conclusion and determining, with no wiggle room, with no nuance, that a 'metaphysical dream of the world' must be equivalent with dread fantasy, is also a mistake.

There is a certain kind of mind, I think, that jumps too quickly to conclusions, that too quickly form specific praxes in the world. Maybe you are one of those men? The so-called educated? Who spend a year or so 'thinking' about certain things, which may mean having certain things overturned or destroyed in them, and whom, when that is done, are let loose or set themselves loose on the world? Surely that is a rather negative light to cast it in, I apologize, but it is a possibility. I describe a process that has occurred in post-industrial society.

It is my view that the notion of 'metaphysical dream of the world' is not merely fantasy, since 'fantasy' implies a baseless dream or vision: an hallucination. To speak of a metaphysical dream of the world is different insofar as the 'dream', the container if you will, holds and expresses content that may not at all be hallucination in the sense you imply. And there are so many different ways to look at 'all that': from mythological studies, to psychological, to mystical, to poetic and also theological.

Yet, I certainly do assert that there is a certain type of man, usually with a specific sort of informing, who charges into a territory that requires subtlety and 'care', and tears things up. A great part of what I am trying to do, for myself alone really, is to be able to achieve at a way of speaking about that careless process. It seems 'barbarous' to me, and as I said non-creative. It connects with destructive currents. (But that doesn't mean that every aspect of it is destructive, either). It is quite possible that I am failing at my self-assigned task!

The thing that I doubt you understand is that I fully appreciate that we live in essentially a dream world. We live behind a veil of appearance, our entire experience is smoke and mirrors. That is precisely why there is no consent about what reality is, much less what matters. You have made your mind up, for essentially aesthetic reasons about the things you choose to care about. In this you are no different from anyone else.

Why would I doubt such a 'simple' truth?

Well, you have a way and means to appreciate Upanishadic scripture then!

But again you jump to conclusions with your naturally springy mind. It is really far more accurate, in my case, to say that I did not 'make up my mind' but that 'my mind has been made up'. There is quite a difference. Certain core and non-intellectual, non-discursive, experiences are at the base of my 'understanding'. Again, I am aware of that. I cannot change it.

As to what it means to live in a world of 'smoke and mirrors', and what that may mean existentially or metaphysically, I gather that you remain somewhat inconclusive? It would seem to me that this indicates an area for continued exploration and possibly even 'revelation'. In any case, to 'be concerned' about these areas, to probe them, to desire to come to expand understandings, to make choices, I assume that you see it is 'an important area'. But even if you don't, others do. It is part of the human world.

When it comes to the problem of arriving at conclusions, or understanding 'what matters', at this point we will differ. Everything a man does, in fact, hinges out of these definitions. Like it or not. And too I am not at all convinced that these are aesthetic questions. That is a rather bold and also loaded prejudice on your part, and connected to a group of a priories. It could be something quite other than aesthetic. I am interested in exploring Traditionalism as it is called because it seems to me there is indeed a 'group of truths' that may very well be 'transcendent'. I recognize that much would depend on how a man would approach that question, that possibility. It can be carried out very crassly. But so too it can be carried out with tremendous finesse, if you'll permit me the turn of phrase. It may also ultimately be a choice. I have explored that one too.

The thing people like you dislike about science is that it is democratic, the rules that govern reality are the same for everyone.

Another 'jump' of yours. I can only, from my distance, stand in some awe of science and its attainment. It enables a vast and incredible 'space' to open for man. It occurs to me that many men utterly waste that 'space' but it doesn't change that the space is there.

'People like me' means only some persons that you hold in your 'imagined space', my friend. It is a mistake we can all make in this blind medium so I don't hold it against you.

But what science (data-amassing) cannot do is assemble those facts, and it offers no roads in se to larger interpretation and to 'meaning'. The domain of 'meaning' is a whole other one. Whole other faculties enter the picture at that point.

Scientism is one part of your 'dream world', it does not exist, not amongst scientists.

Sure, except that scientism as I meant it is demonstrated I think by your attitudes. Scientism is in this sense a false sense of understanding, an incomplete sense, a narrowing; is a group of 'sharp tools' that a man gets hold of and, without really understanding what he is doing (the note here is 'lack of wisdom') begins a cutting process, both in himself and outside of himself, around himself. It leads to 'people like you' who act as if they have a sense of 'where they are going' and who move forward with force and yet they have so very little of that sense (or so it appears to me) and wind up in no place at all. And the 'mood' that one picks up from 'them' is something immature. Unruly. Incautious. Even 'violent'. There are quite a number of people on this forum (I have noticed) who 'come across' like this. It isn't stupidity. Actually there is a whole group of forces that acts in them, that produce them. I admit that it is hard to talk about. And contentious!

What is the alternative, I ask? Is there one? That is what I am looking for.

That 'dead' bit of me is simply the aesthetic possibilities that you embrace and to which I am indifferent. Just as the 'dead' bits of you are aesthetic choices that do not move you.

It sounds nicer, doesn't it? A somewhat less harsh judgement perhaps? But I disagree. When I speak about 'dead' parts I do actually mean 'dead spiritual parts'. And more. True, I have no way of 'proving' it. But I do connect it to nihilism, and nihilism as a real thing that (I hope?) is treatable. How to talk about that? Of that I am less certain.

In your opinion, it is 'higher' or 'nobler' to live a well structured lie, than to grow up and face reality as it is.

Yet another 'jump to a conclusion'. Determining what is higher and nobler in exactly the sense that you imply but don't seem to understand, and also in relation to a man's 'metaphysical dream' and so many other 'parts' of himself and of life, and also in regard to 'truth' with and without quotations, is what it all hinges on and in. It really seems to hinge on HOW a man undertakes that.

Facing reality 'as it is'? Hmmmmm. Tell me 'how it is'...

Still, I generally tend toward pragmatism myself. I have lived substantially as a pragmatist, for good or for evil.

I don't know how well you know Plato's Republic, for instance. It's basically a handbook for people like you, with instructions on how to control mass man, including a number myths for that purpose. It is a laughable fact that some people still believe that Atlantis was a real place.

A handbook? No shit? For People Like Me? Why was I never given one with a proper dedication?

• "For Dearest Gustav and his Metaphysical Nazification World Dream. Sieg Heil!"

[Felasco]

And when Mass Man has had taken away from him, through a whole assortment of forces, an underpinning and a structure for understanding 'reality' and his place in it, and it is not replaced with another one, or the one that replaces it is artificial and superficial, it is at that point that that Mass becomes a strange, considerable thing, and also perhaps a dangerous thing, a problem; and insofar as it is a self-willed and determining thing, since Mass Man is filled with will and energy, it is something one has to watch out for (if one can).

Ok, this part of your thesis seems clear enough, at least to regular readers. If you will forgive me, I would like to play the role of editor for just a moment, and suggest the following as an example of a tighter presentation, one more likely to engage readers.

And when Mass Man has had taken away from him an underpinning and a structure for understanding 'reality' and his place in it, and it is not replaced with another one, it is at that point that that Mass becomes a strange thing,

Half as many words, essentially the same meaning, much more likely to be read and understood, imho. Less is more.

In order to move your thesis forward, you might next address the following.

1) What structure for understanding 'reality' and our place in it do you suggest?

It will be helpful to all of us here if you would avoid another wall of words reply, and summarize each of the key elements of your structure in a single sentence. Once we understand a single sentence, we can request the details for that point.

It will also help us if you would avoid yet another distracting lecture about our laziness and shrunken intellects etc, and just get the @#$% on with summarizing your suggested structure, as best you currently understand it.

If you can't summarize your thesis concisely, you don't understand it, and thus there's no point in us reading it.

2) How do you suggest any such ideological structure might become widely adopted, so that those who aren't philosophers can follow the masculine leadership you appear to recommend?

Assume here that the perfect ideology for our age has been discovered. Please detail for us how such an ideology might be shared and sold. Point being, if you don't have a plan for selling a new or revised ideology, there is little point in developing one.

Ok, that's it, thank you!

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

A brief explanation of one element of my theory may be helpful. The brain is not the source of human consciousness. The brain contains an antenna-tuner system which connects to the entity referred to by religionists as the soul. I employ a different word for soul, "beon," a non-created physical (not material) entity that has the natural ability to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Of course it is described completely in my book.

It is described completely in two words: utter bollocks. But look at it, or any of the other pubescent, absolutist, reactionary, conservative, paranoid, religious gobbledygook posted by your fellow nutters; then look in the mirror and tell me the difference.

I am not qualified to make a judgment about Greylorn's theory---I have not read it. At first blush it looks to me to be a 'restatement' of the Christian/Catholic vision but with a significant twist. I wouldn't focus on it in the strict 'scientific sense' to determine 'veracity' but I would examine the content and make some notes on the ways that it might allow a given person to exist in their world (their cosmos) and interact with it.

I said a couple of posts earlier that I am interested in any means, even eccentric, by which a man differentiates himself from conformity to the present. Also, it is interesting to consider that the premises of an argument may all be false but the conclusion may be true. My 'intuition' is able, or I think it is, to link up with a 'greater truth' through the formulation offered by Ell, and so I appreciate it and can 'use' it.

Reaction and conservatism are things that have to be looked into, studied. There are elements in reaction that make great sense as there are indeed things to react against. Conservatism, in the original sense, is entirely worthy as an area of study and the doctrine(s) often make great sense. I have no comment to offer on 'pubescent'. Absolutism is another doctrine that can be examined. While absolutisms in man's world are problematic, aren't we to assume absolutisms in the physical world? Paranoia is an interesting subject, and is active on all sides of the political spectrum. I am not sure if paranoia decreases, though, with 'rational clarity'. History points toward a different conclusion.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Thanks for reminding me, Iwannaplato.