the ultimate conservatism

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Advocate
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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The only interesting question in philosophy is, What is the best balance between idealism and pragmatism? Ultimately there is no free will and pragmatism is the only viable course of action, but life without idealism is a cold, heartless thing, not worth living.
Skepdick
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Advocate wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 6:22 am The only interesting question in philosophy is, What is the best balance between idealism and pragmatism? Ultimately there is no free will and pragmatism is the only viable course of action, but life without idealism is a cold, heartless thing, not worth living.
The idea(lism) most commonly used to escape nihilism - the pursuit that gives most meaning is to make life better for their children, grandchildren and great great great grand children.

Till they stick you in an old age home.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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I C
"What works" is the key idea in Pragmatism.
This is the primary reason I am attracted to Christianity. St. Paul described the human condition in Romans 7. My higher nature is attracted to what the inner path to our Source offers but also am attracted to the acquired negative emotions of my lower nature. There is a struggle between my higher and lower natures. This struggle can only be reconciled through the energy of the Holy Spirit or grace revealing a higher human perspective.

That is why socialism cannot work. It denies the reality of the human condition and the reason why Simone Weil finally left marxism. The results of pragmatism become their opposite. She discovered that inner reconcialition was impossible without grace which is denied by socialism.
"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." ~ Simone Weil
The egoism of the left denies its ability to appreciate the human condition so believes the state can be the source of reconciliation. It can't and the people have to suffer its mistakes.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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[quote=Nick_A post_id=489433 time=1610474762 user_id=7881]
[quote]"Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace." ~ Simone Weil[/quote]

The egoism of the left denies its ability to appreciate the human condition so believes the state can be the source of reconciliation. It can't and the people have to suffer its mistakes.
[/quote]

Infinite value is not an even potentially meaningful concept. Grace is likewise meaningless unless you presuppose a grace-granter.

The State must be the source of reconciliation because people don't do it on their own and there is no god.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 7:06 pm Paul described the human condition in Romans 7.
I think maybe you mean Romans 1. Romans 1 speaks about all humankind. Romans 7 deals with the tension between the old and new natures, and between Law and grace, which can only be the experience of somebody who knows God already.
My higher nature is attracted to what the inner path to our Source offers but also am attracted to the acquired negative emotions of my lower nature. There is a struggle between my higher and lower natures. This struggle can only be reconciled through the energy of the Holy Spirit or grace revealing a higher human perspective.
What Paul describes in Romans 7 is not the general human situation. It's the situation of somebody who already "agrees with the Law of God, confessing that it is good." Natural man's nature is unified, not divided. He's unrelentingly alienated from God. But Romans 7 describes somebody who's not that way.
That is why socialism cannot work. It denies the reality of the human condition
Yes, that's the main reason. The other is that it has economics completely wrong, tool
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 7:27 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 7:06 pm Paul described the human condition in Romans 7.
I think maybe you mean Romans 1. Romans 1 speaks about all humankind. Romans 7 deals with the tension between the old and new natures, and between Law and grace, which can only be the experience of somebody who knows God already.
My higher nature is attracted to what the inner path to our Source offers but also am attracted to the acquired negative emotions of my lower nature. There is a struggle between my higher and lower natures. This struggle can only be reconciled through the energy of the Holy Spirit or grace revealing a higher human perspective.
What Paul describes in Romans 7 is not the general human situation. It's the situation of somebody who already "agrees with the Law of God, confessing that it is good." Natural man's nature is unified, not divided. He's unrelentingly alienated from God. But Romans 7 describes somebody who's not that way.
That is why socialism cannot work. It denies the reality of the human condition
Yes, that's the main reason. The other is that it has economics completely wrong, tool
Romans7
14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
The same contradictions exist in the world that exist within Paul. This is extraordinary psychology and the world denies it. Paul was lucky that regardless of his previous life, he experienced the path out of Plato's Cave.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:06 pm The same contradictions exist in the world that exist within Paul.
They don't, actually. Paul was a Jewish Christian.

Most people do not want to keep the Jewish Law. So there's no tension at all for them: they can do what they want, in their thinking.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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[quote="Immanuel Can" post_id=489452 time=1610478887 user_id=9431]
[quote=Nick_A post_id=489445 time=1610478403 user_id=7881]
The same contradictions exist in the world that exist within Paul. [/quote]
They don't, actually. Paul was a Jewish Christian.

Most people do not want to keep the Jewish Law. So there's no tension at all for them: they can do what they want, in their thinking.
[/quote]

Modern Christianity is Paulism, that's not what it ever was to that point.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:14 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:06 pm The same contradictions exist in the world that exist within Paul.
They don't, actually. Paul was a Jewish Christian.

Most people do not want to keep the Jewish Law. So there's no tension at all for them: they can do what they want, in their thinking.
A Jewish Christian is a label. But the bottom line is that the human organism has become a struggle between conscious will and mechanical desire. Paul experienced the vertical path to freedom not by indoctrination but by direct experience enabling him to inwardly turn towards the light or metanoia.

Many in the world are like a neurotic rhinoceros. They put their head down and attack. They don't experience contradiction between the higher and lower parts of themselves. Apparently Paul could but it was suppressed and he became a killer. Paul could awaken and experience inwardly turning towards the light with the whole of himself.

A person cannot be real conservative until they feel the value of what they wish to conserve. If they don't and are just victims of indoctrination, they fall victim to pragmatic mechanical desire leading to the struggle for power and the loss of liberty.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:07 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:14 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:06 pm The same contradictions exist in the world that exist within Paul.
They don't, actually. Paul was a Jewish Christian.
Most people do not want to keep the Jewish Law. So there's no tension at all for them: they can do what they want, in their thinking.
A Jewish Christian is a label.
Not at all. It's a descriptor of what he actually was. When he was a Pharisee, he had no tension in his life between the Law and grace...it was the Law all the way, for him.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

Post by Nick_A »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:38 pm
Nick_A wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 10:07 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jan 12, 2021 8:14 pm
They don't, actually. Paul was a Jewish Christian.
Most people do not want to keep the Jewish Law. So there's no tension at all for them: they can do what they want, in their thinking.
A Jewish Christian is a label.
Not at all. It's a descriptor of what he actually was. When he was a Pharisee, he had no tension in his life between the Law and grace...it was the Law all the way, for him.
When Paul was a Pharisee he was a mechanical animal, a creature of reaction habitually reacting to the external world. He experienced the higher conscious parts of the his essence through his experience with the Christ. In short, he woke up to the reality of the human condition and the struggle between conscious will and mechanical desire..
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Immanuel Can
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:02 am When Paul was a Pharisee he was a mechanical animal, a creature of reaction habitually reacting to the external world. He experienced the higher conscious parts of the his essence through his experience with the Christ. In short, he woke up to the reality of the human condition and the struggle between conscious will and mechanical desire..
That's what you might think, if all you read was chapter 7:724. Read on into chapter 8. (There are no chapter divisions in the original.) Follow the logic, and you'll see that what Paul was dealing with, no ordinary human deals with, but only those who know Christ.

It's not the human condition that's in view: it's the distance between a Pharisee who was desperately trying (and failing) to keep the Law, and then discovered salvation in Christ. That was his answer. See 8:1-14.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:19 am
Nick_A wrote: Wed Jan 13, 2021 12:02 am When Paul was a Pharisee he was a mechanical animal, a creature of reaction habitually reacting to the external world. He experienced the higher conscious parts of the his essence through his experience with the Christ. In short, he woke up to the reality of the human condition and the struggle between conscious will and mechanical desire..
That's what you might think, if all you read was chapter 7:724. Read on into chapter 8. (There are no chapter divisions in the original.) Follow the logic, and you'll see that what Paul was dealing with, no ordinary human deals with, but only those who know Christ.

It's not the human condition that's in view: it's the distance between a Pharisee who was desperately trying (and failing) to keep the Law, and then discovered salvation in Christ. That was his answer. See 8:1-14.
As I read it, the struggle is between the callings of the spirit and the attractions of the flesh. Where a lot of Gnostics and bigots get this wrong is that there is something evil about the flesh. This has caused a lot of meaningless condemnation and suffering. The gradual acquisition of negative emotions have corrupted the heart of Man. The problem is with negative emotions attached to the flesh and not the flesh.

Plato describes this problem in his Chariot allegory where the dark horse symbolizing our lower nature becomes corrupt and pulls the white horse and the driver down into the world. As a result Man lives upside down. In a normal Man the body serves the head or consciousness. In fallen Man it is the opposite. The reacting mind serves the desires of the body and is justified by imagination denying Man its evolutionary potential. We are unable to help a sick corrupted horse or our lower nature. We need help. This was the mission of the Christ, With the help of the spirit, to make Man normal again. Of course the world must hate this leading to the Crucifixion which Jesus knew way ahead of time had to come. He had to experience a conscious death made possible by exposing himself to the most horrible death humanity can invent. The result is the Resurrection.
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Re: the ultimate conservatism

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John Adams in a speech to the military in 1798 warned his fellow countrymen stating, "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams
America is an experiment in self government that apparently failed. Do people have to live under authoritarian rule or can they govern themselves and live under rule by law? One nation under God can adjust to self government. Its morals and ethics don't come from the state but rather from above. Apparently the world denies it.

As Nietzsche said: God is dead and we have killed him. But what do we replace him with?
“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
America is replacing the goal of liberty made possible through conservative ideals with the equality of slavery and servitude. The Great Beast has won.

God is dead. Long live the victorious Great Beast.
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