Veritas
Plato wrote that “Man is a being in search of meaning.” How can Man acquire a human perspective which serves this need? Can reason alone satisfy the need for meaning? Does it for you?
What IYO creates a conscious human perspective as opposed to a conditioned animal perspective?
I agree that it is easy to speak of ideals but the process of working towards them is abused in the most harmful ways as it is with the question of God. Man creates a personal God for the sake of acquiring power. It is a distortion which creates the impression that God serves Man rather than Man serving a universal purpose within creation.
It is obvious that the concept of God as the source of creation is abused for pragmatic reasons. This doesn’t deny the connection of Man’s being with higher consciousness but rather proves the dominance of human hypocrisy.
Intellectual reason has its value. One important value often overlooked is that it protects our emotional intelligence from obvious self deception. But when it represses the needs of the heart to feel objective value, it defeats its purpose.
My impression is that your experiences with religion has made you deny the quality of emotional intelligence necessary to satisfy the needs of the heart which are a necessary part of acquiring a human perspective in which the mind, heart, and body work together rather than against each other.
A human perspective is defined by what we do, not what we think. Say for example that a person decides they must lose twenty pounds so decide to go on diet. However the body has been conditioned to like sweets. When a person is in a bad mood they support the body’s desire for sweets but when they see an attractive member of the opposite sex, they remember why they want to diet. What we do in relation to our aim changes both by external and internal circumstances. So in reality we can’t have a human perspective. We are creatures of reaction with the potential for a human perspective which feels and reflects higher values not because we are conditioned to but because it is normal for the human soul or essence.
Consider these questions of the heart Jacob Needleman refers to in this interview. Do you believe a person could have a human rather than a conditioned animal perspective without having felt such questions and understood them in a way that satisfies the needs of the heart? I don’t think so. These questions refer to soul knowledge and without understanding these deeply human needs as normal and living by them as natural, I cannot see how we can be said to have a human perspective.
https://www.northatlanticbooks.com/blog ... -question/
Jacob Needleman is describing the need for “meaning.” As opposed to factual knowledge. The head reveals facts while the heart or our emotional nature should lead to the experience of meaning. But this ability has been sacrificed for the glorification of egoistic pragmatic gain. As a result a human perspective is only possible for the minority with the need and will to become normal for human being.
It is one thing to think objectively and quite another to feel objectively. How many even know what it means? Yet without both, how can we expect to acquire a human perspective?