Christianity

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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

Post by henry quirk »

Marxists mistake "capitalism" for a creed, because Marxism is. It's not. Unlike Marxism, it has no historicism, no teleology, no call for belief or demand for revolution; It's just a means of doing business. And all means of doing business have their liabilities, and need to be watched.
Well, capitalism (as a degraded free enterprise) does make certain philo-assumptions: man is free, to own and dispense property, to transact without oversight, to associate with whom he chooses. This may not qualify as creed but there is sumthin' *teleological there. There's an undergirdin' to it beyond just doin' business.




*if I'm usin' the word right
Dubious
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Dontaskme wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:39 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 8:06 am
Whatever choice any of us makes no one will be the loser since no loss will be felt.
I planned to watch the surgeons operate on me my while I was under Anesthesia..
But the plan failed, when nothing showed up.
It's always been amazing to me how absolutely anesthesia can close the time gap to pause one's state of existence into its complete opposite and time, no-longer felt, becomes instantaneous to every external event in the universe including its beginning and ending.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Alexis Jacobi wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 2:30 pm So again I must note that I do not find your method a good one
What "method" is that?

All I've done is point out exactly what Chomsky himself has said. That's not a "method," so much as it is simply "evidence."
What I mean is that if your argument against Chomsky's positions, or his general stance, has integrity, you would not need to refer to someone you seem to want to reference as an authority.
I did not do this.

I did not say, or suggest, "you should believe this article for its authority." You made that idea up, yourself. In pointing to the article, what I was pointing to were Chomsky's own words, some of which were quite absurd, by any standard. I was inviting you to use your own intelligence on those quotations to see the truth of the situation.

That's all.
Take for example Edward Bernays who wrote in Propaganda:
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.
Funny. Why doesn't he say "...in all societies"? Or why doesn't he add, "...and far worse in a totalitarian, Marxist society"? For both are true.

In a democratic society, at least in theory, the press is supposed to form a "fourth estate" that calls politicians and other power brokers to public account. That our press has failed in this mission is obvious and horrendous. But the Marxists' states are far, far worse in this regard. If you can't expect truth from the BBC or CBS news, how can you imagine you're going to get more from Pravda? :shock:

Is the guy shilling for Marxism?
Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
That might be right. But if it is, it's even more certainly so in Marxist societies. Democratic ones at least keep the facade of impartiality in their journalism: Marxist journalists, by their own admission, do nothing but propagandize for "the Party."
What I would say, in relation to the idea-content in this paragraph (by the man said to be the father of the public relations industry in the US and by extension in the world) is that I would recommend that all people, certainly children and youth, should be introduced to the examination of the question and problem of power-relations and also of manipulation through the various media which I do not have to name.
Yes, of course.

But that will only have possibility in a democratic society. In a Marxist, totalitarian one, it will do nobody any good to know whether or not they are being manipulated, because their opinions count for nothing anyway. The government has the power, and does what it will. Just look at China right now, and you'll see that in action.
Would this mean, let's say automatically, that I am a Marxist activist with a specific Communist agenda intent on tearing down the structures that operate in the United States?

If you were, you'd be a sad case. I don't think you are.

But the reason it's so easy to complain about the US is simple: it's only in a place like the US that your complaint has any power. It would have none in Russia or China, none in Cuba or Venezuela, and in North Korea, would get you killed.

People who complain about the US are like the Feminists who campaign for women's rights only in the tolerant West. They don't care about women in the rest of the world -- the women in Saudi, for example, can die in a ditch, so far as modern Feminists are concerned. They only protest cases in which they already have lots of power and safety, as they do in the US. Just so, people who complain about the US and never mention Marxist states are being cowardly, since every criticism about dishonesty, exploitation, poverty, suffering, the poor and so forth are immeasurably worse in Marxist states than in places like the US.

If they meant what they said, they'd be criticizing the Marxist states first of all. They could get around to safer places like the US after the truly grotesque human rights abuses elsewhere had been dealt with.
The most obvious example I could submit here would be to imagine that the psychological and ideological method which Bernays refers to were described as part-and-parcel of a Communist or a Nazi propaganda-machine whose intention was to corral people and direct them to specific lines of action.
Well, you're obviously not one of the cowards, if you undertake to reform those first. Good for you.
So, it is often the case that we can, and with thorough dedication, examine the propaganda- and manipulation-systems of others, while we avoid examining, with equal thoroughness, our own. It is a basic and known human flaw, is it not? To see the splinter in another's eye and avoid seeing the beam in our own. [Matthew 7:5 "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.]
Well, that injunction is personal, not political. Matthew's not saying Christ taught that your own political system should be criticized first, but that your own personal conduct should be, before you judge another person. As for political systems, Christ said no such thing as that it is somehow noble to criticize your own rather than somebody else's. He actually knew (and said) that there are no political answers to problems that are always, in their deepest nature, spiritual and personal rather than collective and political.
It is obvious that a critical analysis of *power-systems* is necessary. Yet the question of who does it, and why it is done, is also necessary as well.
Maybe. And there's value in analyzing where and how power is being used. But there are greater forces at work than mere power. One would be corruption. Another would be personal sin. And before power can be analyzed, these first need to be evaluated and understood. For contrary to Chomsky, it is not power that is the basic source of problems, but mankind itself.
...what more interests me is the declaration about the use of notions of good and evil in programs of social and ideological control.
I don't believe good and evil reside in systems. Good and evil reside in people...all people. A "system" is, by all accounts, nothing but a construct that comes out of whatever is inside people, especially the people who create and perpetuate the system. That's why the problem of personal sin is deeper than any political problem. For inevitably, any political arrangement is bound to become corrupt because of the people who make it and sustain it. That corruption has to be dealt with: absent that, there are no political solutions, either on the right or on the left.
In respect to James Lindsay and his work which I regard as relevant and well-grounded (the definition of 'complicity' that you submitted here), I would respond by saying that when I speak of 'complicity' I mean it more in the sense I indicated ...Complicity in the sense that I use the term -- and I clearly say this -- is simply an observation that the more one gets enmeshed in *worldly affairs*, the greater the danger, as in Mark 8:38 "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
We can only loose our souls individually. To be sure, one way we can loose ourselves is by trusting in politics to fix things, without any attention to our inner conditions. But the quotation in Mark is again, personal: it's "what shall it profit a man," or "a person," if you prefer, not "what shall it profit a political strategy or system."

And here's something even more important, which I shall repeat: the charge of "complicity" only makes sense if one is speaking of a known-to-be-evil thing. :shock: I can't charge you of "complicity" in feeding ice cream to orphans, because doing something nice for orphans is (almost) universally conceded to be a good thing. But I charge you with "complicity" if you are involved in beating or starving orphans, because I take the beating and starving of orphans to be objectively evil.

But if there is no objective truth to something being identified as "evil," then neither is there any evil in being "complicit" with that thing. So you need an account of objective evil to underwrite and make sense of any allegation of "complicity."

For neo-Marxists, perhaps the only sin they will recognize is "discrimination." They don't prove it's evil; they just want everybody to take for granted that it is. And that's why they feel they want to use the term "complicity": because even while denying that they believe in any objective evil, they actually do. It's just that the evil they believe to be objective is, in their case, arbitrarily chosen.

For "discrimination" is actually only a word that means, "to see a difference" between things. A discriminatory racist makes bad judgments about people based on skin colour. But a discriminating wine taster knows the difference between Chateau Lafitte and alcohol-water. So "discriminate" is actually a neutral term, but one endowed by the neo-Marxists with only its negative connotation. It's their word for ultimate evil, objective evil.

So neo-Marxists are, unrecognized to themselves, perhaps, moralists; and more, they're even presupposers of objective right and wrong...if they use the word "complicity." And, of course, they do.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 4:54 pm
Marxists mistake "capitalism" for a creed, because Marxism is. It's not. Unlike Marxism, it has no historicism, no teleology, no call for belief or demand for revolution; It's just a means of doing business. And all means of doing business have their liabilities, and need to be watched.
Well, capitalism (as a degraded free enterprise) does make certain philo-assumptions: man is free, to own and dispense property, to transact without oversight, to associate with whom he chooses. This may not qualify as creed but there is sumthin' *teleological there. There's an undergirdin' to it beyond just doin' business.

*if I'm usin' the word right
Well, teleological means "an end-in-view," of course; and capitalism has no particular end-in-view. It doesn't promise utopia, like Marxism does under the name "triumph of the proletariat" or "the classless society." It doesn't tell you what the outcome of your involvement in the market ought to be at all. Rather, it just has some very basic terms on which transactions take place, and you're allowed to do what you want with the results, within the bounds of the rights of others, of course.

Capitalism is what naturally happens when exchange of goods, services and money is allowed to proceed on a free basis. As such, it can become exploitative, as when it issues in a monopoly, or if somebody abuses it. But there's no reason it has to end in monopoly or abuse, particularly if minimal fair-exchange rules are in place.

This is one of the big things Marx got wrong: he thought that "surplus value" automatically signalled that somebody was being exploited. He imagined "value" as a kind of zero-sum situation, in which for a capitalist to get ahead he had to rip somebody off. What he did not foresee, and what has become very clear since, is that surplus value can be created by way of things like investing, inventing, marketing, technological innovation, increasing efficiency, eliminating costs, and so on...none of which inherently involve any exploitative class relation at all.

Marx's imagination was just way too small. He couldn't foresee what would happen in the West, and how that capitalism itself would prevent the revolution by raising the average income level of the workers at the same time it made money for the speculators, inventors and investors. He never imagined the affluent West. His context was the early, miserable years of the Industrial Revolution, when these things were only dimly being understood, and when the tension between worker and owner seemed obvious and egregious. He couldn't imagine where it would all end up.

And that's why the neo-Marxists had to cut ties with him, and refer to his Marxism as "vulgar." They mean that it's "too basic," or "crude." They recognize it lacks the sophistication to describe what actually happened...which we can see, now that time has passed. They'd like to think he was still "crudely right," but even that's too much to say.

In most of what he said, he was just plain wrong; and history has not been kind to him. Even they see that. They think he needs saving, by reconstituting Marxism through culture and race; because in an unrevised form, it's just too plainly wrong. But their actions of trying to save him show they've lost considerable faith in old Karl...they now know that he just didn't get it right. And sticking too close to him is going to lose them their revolution, for sure.
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henry quirk
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Re: Christianity

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Capitalism is what naturally happens when exchange of goods, services and money is allowed to proceed on a free basis
Yes, and, as I say, there are philo-assumptions undergirdin' this. It may not, as I say, rise to level of creed (and it isn't teleological [thanks, btw, for the correction]), but it's sumthin' more than just a way of doin' business.

Again: man is free, free to own and dispense property, free to transact without oversight, free to associate with whom he chooses (and, yes, free to lose his shirt).

Folks like pro & pete & B, as they frown on capitalism (more accurately, on free enterprise), by definition, frown on freedom (free men), or have cockeyed notions that freedom needs managin'.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Nick_A »

henry quirk wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 12:56 am
Capitalism is what naturally happens when exchange of goods, services and money is allowed to proceed on a free basis
Yes, and, as I say, there are philo-assumptions undergirdin' this. It may not, as I say, rise to level of creed (and it isn't teleological [thanks, btw, for the correction]), but it's sumthin' more than just a way of doin' business.

Again: man is free, free to own and dispense property, free to transact without oversight, free to associate with whom he chooses (and, yes, free to lose his shirt).

Folks like pro & pete & B, as they frown on capitalism (more accurately, on free enterprise), by definition, frown on freedom (free men), or have cockeyed notions that freedom needs managin'.
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


Capitalism is impossible without the help of grace to retain higher values essential for the success of capitalism. That is why marxism cannot accept religion. Grace opposes the natural corruption that has made it an impossible philosophy

Will our society ever remember the value of religion or Deism in your case so that capitalism won't end up being consumed and destroyed by greed? Who knows.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

henry quirk wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 12:56 am
Capitalism is what naturally happens when exchange of goods, services and money is allowed to proceed on a free basis
Yes, and, as I say, there are philo-assumptions undergirdin' this. It may not, as I say, rise to level of creed (and it isn't teleological [thanks, btw, for the correction]), but it's sumthin' more than just a way of doin' business.

Again: man is free, free to own and dispense property, free to transact without oversight, free to associate with whom he chooses (and, yes, free to lose his shirt).

Folks like pro & pete & B, as they frown on capitalism (more accurately, on free enterprise), by definition, frown on freedom (free men), or have cockeyed notions that freedom needs managin'.
Yep, I think that’s it.

And you’re also right that capitalism is tied up with certain other ideas. The primary one is that people have a right to private property. Right there, the Marxists take issue. But then, it also assumes that you have the right to keep the avails you make from improving the worth of your private property. Marxists call this “surplus value,” and damn it as thievery, even though it’s not. And it assumes that the free market, private innovation, and rewarding entrepreneurial cleverness is in the public interest. Marxists think the government must own and control all means of production, and must cook the market to their agenda.

But whereas Marxism is a big, fat historicist meta narrative, there is no equivalent for capitalism. Capitalism has no particular view of history bundled into it, and no story or prophecy about how things are supposed to go from here, and no equivalent of “the triumph of the proletariat” to come at the end.

Marxism is really a religion. So it was without irony when “The Principles of Communism,” by Engels, was originally titled, “The Communist Confession of Faith.” It was a catechism for ideological Marxists, structured in 25 questions and answers, just like a Catholic catechism. Marxists would grind their teeth to hear anybody call them “religious,” so maybe “cultish” is a better word.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

Dubious wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 5:53 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:39 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 8:06 am
Whatever choice any of us makes no one will be the loser since no loss will be felt.
I planned to watch the surgeons operate on me my while I was under Anesthesia..
But the plan failed, when nothing showed up.
It's always been amazing to me how absolutely anesthesia can close the time gap to pause one's state of existence into its complete opposite and time, no-longer felt, becomes instantaneous to every external event in the universe including its beginning and ending.
👍

What happens after death is known as the state of unconsciousness. We know the concept of unconsciousness through the experience of deep dreamless sleep or anesthesia. Knowing and not-knowing are opposite sides of the same one knowing. Upon awakening from unconsciousness there is an instant conscious knowing. To know consciousness is to know unconciousness.

In reality nothing is conscious nor it is unconscious...except in this conception, this immediate knowing.

Unconsciousness is the fundamental gestalt of all reality in the same context reality is nondual. Conscious and Unconscious are the exact same reality, the concepts just differ in appearance..one appearance is knowing (ON) the other is not-knowing (OFF) and that's what nonduality means, it means not-two...it means 'one without a second'.

There is fundamentally one reality, and all springs from the oneness and returns to that oneness because oneness is all there is.


Begin and end are known as concepts only. Concepts are never our experience, our experience is awareness of concepts, and not the concepts in and of themselves.
Dubious
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Dubious wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 10:58 amBtw, your statement "didn't like Nazis apparently" is a bit out of chronology,
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 1:17 pmAll it means is that he was not, himself, a National Socialist. But no one doubts that he equipped the National Socialists with a nice stock of concepts and arguments that they were able to use.
People who are dead and no-longer available to defend or clarify their views cannot be held responsible for distortions others impose upon them as you so very much like to do. When one is as intensely resentful as you, defamation is the weapon of choice no-matter what the facts reveal.

From the link...
Nietzsche’s philosophy is easy to misunderstand and almost as easy to purposefully misinterpret. Even today, the far right is still using bad readings of it to justify their politics. Nietzsche was anti-nationalistic, considered the Jews worthy opponents, despised Christianity, and mass movements of all kinds; it takes a bad reading to consider him a goose-stepping fascist instead of the champion of individual genius that he was.
Dubious wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 10:58 amI don't know how many times you were informed that Nietzsche was anti-anti-Semitic. That's proven in his own words and just about any worthwhile biography or article written about him.
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 1:17 pm“This is precisely why the Jews are the most disastrous people in world history: they have left such a falsified humanity in their wake that even today Christians can think of themselves as anti-Jewish without understanding that they are the ultimate conclusion of Judaism.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ
How does this opinion, taken out of context, make him anti-semitic? It’s interesting how an adopted prejudice requires nothing more than the utmost simplicity to reach its conclusions, all further investigations preempted to retain one’s preferred opinion.

Nietzsche, on the contrary, who grew to be a passionate anti-anti-Semite, admired Diaspora Jews for their power and depth and assigned them a role as Jews in curing Europe of the decadent Christian culture that their own ancestors, the second-temple Jewish "priests," had inflicted upon Europe by begetting Christianity. The ancient corrupters of Europe are thus to be its present redeemers.

Through his masterly analysis of the writings of Hegel and Nietzsche, Yovel shows that anti-Jewish prejudice can exist alongside a philosophy of reason, while a philosophy of power must not necessarily be anti-Semitic.

https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0 ... 781-3.html

The claim that Nietzsche was anti-Semitic has long been debunked except in your mind, one so thoroughly prejudiced it cannot be trusted in anything you say. Where a hate agenda is paramount, impartiality becomes anathema and hopeless to attain.
Dubious wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 10:58 amEven Hitler, when asked by Leni Riefenstahl during filming of The Triumph of the Will, if he liked to read Nietzsche replied...
No, I can't really do much with Nietzsche...he is not my guide.
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 1:17 pm"Just as American politicians like to reference the ideas of dead American heroes like Washington and Jefferson, the Nazis sought great Germans to reference when justifying their new regime. Nietzsche, with the tweaks made to his philosophy by his sister, became the primary thinker for those Nazis looking to justify their beliefs with philosophy."
...and yet Hitler understood - inasmuch as he understood Nietzsche - there’s very little to correspond to Nazi dogma without a severe refit. It’s ironic that N’s opposition to the movement would have been opposite to that of Heidegger who succumbed to Nazism from the very beginning even though there is nothing in his philosophy, being of an entirely different order, that could be directly used or distorted to justify National Socialist creeds. Nietzsche who was obviously a far greater writer created the usable slogans most Nazis were so fond of without understanding, except for some, that it would hit them in the face if properly understood.
Immanuel Can wrote: Fri May 13, 2022 1:17 pmGerman universities taught Nietzsche as part of courses on the new order, references to soldiers being the Ubermensch were common, and the will to power was adopted by the Nazis as a key psychological insight. The philosopher Alfred Baeumler claimed Nietzsche had prophesied the rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany."-- Thinking magazine: from the same article you quoted.
What by now should be clear - as it already appears to be among the more intelligent Jews and Christians - that how Nietzsche was taught and what he wrote and meant are rarely compatible. He even prognosticated the misuse of his ideas. As for Alfred Baeumler, what would one expect from one of the top pedagogues of Nazi ideology?

That absolutely insane idea of Baeumler’s, that N prophesied the rise of Hitler goes to show how unscrupulous and desperate the Nazis were in incorporating Nietzsche into their cause. It’s not something Hitler himself could have believed after what he said to Riefenstahl.

To close from the article...
The real thing you should take away form this story is how easy it was to do it. Elizabeth Förster-Nietzsche was able to pull it off without understanding the ideas involved; all she had was the proper legal rights and some convenient events working for her. All of it happened despite Nietzsche’s friends objecting to it, and people who had lectured on his works before he went mad did nothing. It could happen to any school of thought, and that should terrify you. Always make sure you get the full story before you make any decisions, philosophically speaking.
Based on your hostility against Nietzsche, the last sentence will be forever impossible to perform. He requires nuance to be understood and like your beliefs, which remain frozen and monolithic, there is none.
Last edited by Dubious on Mon May 16, 2022 8:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Christianity

Post by Immanuel Can »

Dubious wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 8:02 am That absolutely insane idea of Baeumler’s, that N prophesied the rise of Hitler goes to show how unscrupulous and desperate the Nazis were in incorporating Nietzsche into their cause. It’s not something Hitler himself could have believed after what he said to Riefenstahl.
You don't get it, do you?

Nietzsche started a whole bunch of bad ideas. And there's nothing IN Nietzsche's philosophy that prevents it being interpreted that way. Once one has sold out morality, declared "the will to power" to be its subsitute, proclaimed the sovereignty of the "overman" who is brave (and bad) enough to seize the advantage of amoralism, and so on, all of which came from Nietzsche, then Hitler becomes an obvious option. And nothing in Nietzsche makes that a bad option anymore.

Nietzsche didn't know he was going to be a rationale for Hitler. He didn't even know the man. But by his philosophy, he made Hitler possible. Amoralism makes a lot of hideous things possible, of course. But the ubermensch doctrine was going to be adopted by the Nazis. The will to power was going to be their sanction. And that "God is dead" was going to give them complete fearlessness in evil. The imperious, relentless and cruel young men of the Reich were groomed on Nietzschean concepts.

So he didn't cause Hitler. But by what he wrote, he rolled out the red carpet, opened the door, held it for him, and handed him a metaphorical glass of schnapps as he marched through it.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 8:18 am
Dubious wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 8:02 am That absolutely insane idea of Baeumler’s, that N prophesied the rise of Hitler goes to show how unscrupulous and desperate the Nazis were in incorporating Nietzsche into their cause. It’s not something Hitler himself could have believed after what he said to Riefenstahl.
You don't get it, do you?

Nietzsche started a whole bunch of bad ideas. And there's nothing IN Nietzsche's philosophy that prevents it being interpreted that way. Once one has sold out morality, declared "the will to power" to be its subsitute, proclaimed the sovereignty of the "overman" who is brave (and bad) enough to seize the advantage of amoralism, and so on, all of which came from Nietzsche, then Hitler becomes an obvious option. And nothing in Nietzsche makes that a bad option anymore.

Nietzsche didn't know he was going to be a rationale for Hitler. He didn't even know the man. But by his philosophy, he made Hitler possible. Amoralism makes a lot of hideous things possible, of course. But the ubermensch doctrine was going to be adopted by the Nazis. The will to power was going to be their sanction. And that "God is dead" was going to give them complete fearlessness in evil. The imperious, relentless and cruel young men of the Reich were groomed on Nietzschean concepts.

So he didn't cause Hitler. But by what he wrote, he rolled out the red carpet, opened the door, held it for him, and handed him a metaphorical glass of schnapps as he marched through it.
I get it fine. Others as quoted also get it - including Jews of all people - that N is not responsible for how he was used and distorted and would never have agreed with...which you don't get. His philosophy made Hitler possible! What an incredibly stupid thing to say! The guy who explicitly stated he can't get anything out of Nietzsche! Events made Hitler possible. Your unceasing hatred of Nietzsche is so obvious! The ONLY thing you know about him and make him responsible for is in how the Nazis used him without wanting to know more.

Your astounding ignorance keeps the prejudice alive and burning hot.
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Dontaskme wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 6:18 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 5:53 pm
Dontaskme wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 10:39 am

I planned to watch the surgeons operate on me my while I was under Anesthesia..
But the plan failed, when nothing showed up.
It's always been amazing to me how absolutely anesthesia can close the time gap to pause one's state of existence into its complete opposite and time, no-longer felt, becomes instantaneous to every external event in the universe including its beginning and ending.
👍

What happens after death is known as the state of unconsciousness. We know the concept of unconsciousness through the experience of deep dreamless sleep or anesthesia. Knowing and not-knowing are opposite sides of the same one knowing. Upon awakening from unconsciousness there is an instant conscious knowing. To know consciousness is to know unconciousness.

In reality nothing is conscious nor it is unconscious...except in this conception, this immediate knowing.

Unconsciousness is the fundamental gestalt of all reality in the same context reality is nondual. Conscious and Unconscious are the exact same reality, the concepts just differ in appearance..one appearance is knowing (ON) the other is not-knowing (OFF) and that's what nonduality means, it means not-two...it means 'one without a second'.

There is fundamentally one reality, and all springs from the oneness and returns to that oneness because oneness is all there is.


Begin and end are known as concepts only. Concepts are never our experience, our experience is awareness of concepts, and not the concepts in and of themselves.
Yes! Awareness exists in a single domain, the one we're conscious of and sentient to which can encompass a fairly wide gamut in humans. It is a "oneness" which expresses limitation as a subset of the whole which defines the cosmos, we being merely entries in which our purpose is to define ourselves to the degree our consciousness allows.
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Dontaskme
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Re: Christianity

Post by Dontaskme »

Dubious wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:13 am
Dontaskme wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 6:18 am
Dubious wrote: Sun May 15, 2022 5:53 pm

It's always been amazing to me how absolutely anesthesia can close the time gap to pause one's state of existence into its complete opposite and time, no-longer felt, becomes instantaneous to every external event in the universe including its beginning and ending.
👍

What happens after death is known as the state of unconsciousness. We know the concept of unconsciousness through the experience of deep dreamless sleep or anesthesia. Knowing and not-knowing are opposite sides of the same one knowing. Upon awakening from unconsciousness there is an instant conscious knowing. To know consciousness is to know unconciousness.

In reality nothing is conscious nor it is unconscious...except in this conception, this immediate knowing.

Unconsciousness is the fundamental gestalt of all reality in the same context reality is nondual. Conscious and Unconscious are the exact same reality, the concepts just differ in appearance..one appearance is knowing (ON) the other is not-knowing (OFF) and that's what nonduality means, it means not-two...it means 'one without a second'.

There is fundamentally one reality, and all springs from the oneness and returns to that oneness because oneness is all there is.


Begin and end are known as concepts only. Concepts are never our experience, our experience is awareness of concepts, and not the concepts in and of themselves.
Yes! Awareness exists in a single domain, the one we're conscious of and sentient to which can encompass a fairly wide gamut in humans. It is a "oneness" which expresses limitation as a subset of the whole which defines the cosmos, we being merely entries in which our purpose is to define ourselves to the degree our consciousness allows.
Very good, well said. 👍

__________

On the topic of Nietzsche's philosophy. I've got something for you to ponder....

Nietzsche was a nondualist, these people are very misunderstood philosophers. And is why IC rejects nondual philosophy.

Nietzsche's quote: '' God is dead and we have killed him '' ... is metaphorically saying a Good God and a Sinner is incompatible. So in order for evil to exist it must kill the good. We are told by the bible that we are sinners, but in order to be a sinner we have to kill off the good.

________

Nietzsche's quote: (God is dead ~ Nietzsche) - (Nietzsche is dead ~ God) ... is metaphorically saying there is no room in Knowing / Consciousness/ Awareness Being..... for two. Either God exists and man does not. Or man exists and God does not, there cannot be two masters.

There is nothing absolutely true and nothing really objective, that is one of the most important things I have learned from Nietzsche.

This is what IC doesn't get.
Dubious
Posts: 3987
Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 7:40 am

Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 8:18 am
Dubious wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 8:02 am That absolutely insane idea of Baeumler’s, that N prophesied the rise of Hitler goes to show how unscrupulous and desperate the Nazis were in incorporating Nietzsche into their cause. It’s not something Hitler himself could have believed after what he said to Riefenstahl.
You don't get it, do you?

Nietzsche started a whole bunch of bad ideas. And there's nothing IN Nietzsche's philosophy that prevents it being interpreted that way. Once one has sold out morality, declared "the will to power" to be its subsitute, proclaimed the sovereignty of the "overman" who is brave (and bad) enough to seize the advantage of amoralism, and so on, all of which came from Nietzsche, then Hitler becomes an obvious option. And nothing in Nietzsche makes that a bad option anymore.
Nietzsche’s Value Judgments

The will to power as Nietzsche conceives of it is neither good nor bad. It is a basic drive found in everyone, but one that expresses itself in many different ways. The philosopher and the scientist direct their will to power into a will to truth. Artists channel it into a will to create. Businessmen satisfy it through becoming rich.

In "On the Genealogy of Morals," Nietzsche contrasts “master morality” and “slave morality,” but traces both back to the will to power. Creating tables of values, imposing them on people, and judging the world according to them, is one noteworthy expression of the will to power. And this idea underlies Nietzsche attempt to understand and evaluate moral systems. The strong, healthy, masterly types confidently impose their values on the world directly. The weak, by contrast, seek to impose their values in a more cunning, roundabout way, by making the strong feel guilty about their health, strength, egotism, and pride.

So while the will to power in itself is neither good nor bad, Nietzsche very clearly prefers some ways in which it expresses itself to others. He doesn’t advocate the pursuit of power. Rather, he praises the sublimation of the will to power into creative activity. Roughly speaking, he praises those expressions of it he views as creative, beautiful, and life-affirming, and he criticizes expressions of the will to power that he sees as ugly or born of weakness.

One particular form of the will to power that Nietzsche devotes much attention to is what he calls “self-overcoming.” Here the will to power is harnessed and directed toward self-mastery and self-transformation, guided by the principle that “your real self lies not deep within you but high above you.
Dubious
Posts: 3987
Joined: Tue May 19, 2015 7:40 am

Re: Christianity

Post by Dubious »

Dontaskme wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:36 am
Dubious wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 9:13 am
Dontaskme wrote: Mon May 16, 2022 6:18 am

👍

What happens after death is known as the state of unconsciousness. We know the concept of unconsciousness through the experience of deep dreamless sleep or anesthesia. Knowing and not-knowing are opposite sides of the same one knowing. Upon awakening from unconsciousness there is an instant conscious knowing. To know consciousness is to know unconciousness.

In reality nothing is conscious nor it is unconscious...except in this conception, this immediate knowing.

Unconsciousness is the fundamental gestalt of all reality in the same context reality is nondual. Conscious and Unconscious are the exact same reality, the concepts just differ in appearance..one appearance is knowing (ON) the other is not-knowing (OFF) and that's what nonduality means, it means not-two...it means 'one without a second'.

There is fundamentally one reality, and all springs from the oneness and returns to that oneness because oneness is all there is.


Begin and end are known as concepts only. Concepts are never our experience, our experience is awareness of concepts, and not the concepts in and of themselves.
Yes! Awareness exists in a single domain, the one we're conscious of and sentient to which can encompass a fairly wide gamut in humans. It is a "oneness" which expresses limitation as a subset of the whole which defines the cosmos, we being merely entries in which our purpose is to define ourselves to the degree our consciousness allows.
Very good, well said. 👍

__________

On the topic of Nietzsche's philosophy. I've got something for you to ponder....

Nietzsche was a nondualist, these people are very misunderstood philosophers. And is why IC rejects nondual philosophy.

Nietzsche's quote: '' God is dead and we have killed him '' ... is metaphorically saying a Good God and a Sinner is incompatible. So in order for evil to exist it must kill the good. We are told by the bible that we are sinners, but in order to be a sinner we have to kill off the good.

________

Nietzsche's quote: (God is dead ~ Nietzsche) - (Nietzsche is dead ~ God) ... is metaphorically saying there is no room in Knowing / Consciousness/ Awareness Being..... for two. Either God exists and man does not. Or man exists and God does not, there cannot be two masters.

There is nothing absolutely true and nothing really objective, that is one of the most important things I have learned from Nietzsche.

This is what IC doesn't get.
IC never rationalized it that way. He's incapable of being rational when it comes to Nietzsche no matter the amount of data you throw at him as has been consistently proven. He still insists that N was anti-Semitic; nothing and nobody after all the corrections offered will change his mind on that.

As for the Will to Power motive, consciousness itself is a manifestation of it and cannot exist without it. Consciousness is that which strives. One cannot strive without a will to enforce it....and since consciousness includes everything humans do in whatever capacity, the Will to Power is inherent in everyone...as much in the Hitler and Stalin types as it is in St.Francis and Jesus!
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