Well MC Age, that's just what a piece of mouldy cheese would say.
That's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.
Sound advice MC Age.
Well MC Age, that's just what a piece of mouldy cheese would say.
That's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.
Sound advice MC Age.
In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility. I feel that I dealt with this issue and problem quite some time ago and, I must say, it surprises me that others -- you perhaps -- do not seem to grasp why this is so.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:17 pm Right now, I'm reading J.P. Diggins on American Pragmatism. And he has a very interesting perspective. He claims, and I think with some justice, that justs as Toqueville had guessed would be the case, American social life has been actually more guided by pragmatics than by principle.
Pragmatism, you probably well know, is the belief that things like truth, ethics, value and so on are to be discovered not in looking back to some overarching principle, tradition, framework or other pre-existing structure, but are rather uncovered in the dynamic process of action, of "going forward," of experiencing not past experience (Dewey). And that makes some sense: America was, even before the Revolution, a project of leaving the ancient traditions of Europe and launching out into experiment, into innovation, exploration, something different. Why then would the American soul be drawn back to admiration of the moribund ways of Europe, it's traditions and institutions, it's ways of thinking and so on? What was the past, but a thing to be overcome and left behind? What way was there but forward, practically, looking to the future not the past?
America is, at a deep level, pragmatic. But Pragmatism has a dark side, as well. It tends to put action ahead of principle. And that means that pragmatic decisions tend to be less disciplined by moral qualms or a conservative caution about what is being lost, and instead governed by a forward-looking enthusiasm for what is yet-to-be-generated. However, in this bargain, telos is lost. Pragamatism can't really tell us what a human being is, what he/she is for, or what the ultimate meaning of his/her existence is. All that is supposed to be revealed by continued "experiencing"...
But it is not. And so Pragmatism launches people out into a speculative project of self-making, but without specifying any goal, purpose or rules beforehand. Absent any telos, any ultimate view of the good in advance, American social life offers goals instead like survival, acquisition, consumerism, comfort, expansion, and so on. Unfortunately for America, such proximal goals are far too tawrdry to fill the human soul: why should we go on -- for another day of life? for more possessions? for another meal? for 'bigger' everything? for yet another trip to the mall?
But the human soul is hungry and lonely. It deeply wants a worthy goal to pursue, and needs one in order to know how to organize itself, how to mark its progress and achievements, and to reassure itself of a meaningful and hopeful trajectory in life. Pragmatism cannot help with that: it denies, before it even starts, that such things are even available, and thus sets off in a random direction, dependent on shallow proximal "goods" and devoid of long vision.
When we consider things this way, we see that American conservatism actually laid the groundwork for American Leftism and radicalism to rise. Why? Because the Pragmatism underlying American social life left too many souls empty and hungry, and devoid of a meaningful telos. Absent a set of guiding principles from which to generate meaning, the Left has simply taken up Neo-Marxism, "social justice," BLM, CRT, and that whole package of ideological toxins -- because people must make their lives about something important, and Pragmatism just has nothing to offer in that regard.
I read the introduction and the first chapter and thought it very interesting and helpful to my own analysis. She references Tocqueville a good deal as well.And “careful reading,” as Samet provocatively (and persuasively) argues, can in fact be a matter of life or death. Glib treatments of World War II have done real harm, she says, distorting our understanding of the past and consequently shaping how we approach the future. As “the last American military action about which there is anything like a positive consensus,” World War II is “the good war that served as prologue to three-quarters of a century of misbegotten ones.”
Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”
As Weaver’s friend Eliseo Vivas, a professor of philosophy, noted, Weaver’s defining intellectual trait was “audacity of mind.” It was audacity of a decidedly contrarian stamp. In the mid-1940s, when Weaver was writing Ideas Have Consequences, America was blooming with post-war prosperity. The ideology of progress was underwritten by the joy of victory and the extraordinary dynamo of capitalism suddenly unburdened by the demands of war. Material abundance was rendered even more seductive by a burgeoning technological revolution: cars, radios, gadgets galore. Easier. Faster. Louder. More—above all, more.
Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.
I've been mulling-moulding over (I may even have dreamt about) this issue of the provenance of that cheese-culture. I wonder if the language hint you provided may help? For this reason I am now researching cheese production at the Quadripoints -- and there are more of them than I'd have thought!
This may surprise you, but so is mine.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:35 pm In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.
Perhaps you will correct me but I think that we must face the fact that a state, a nation, a larger conglomeration of persons and *interests*, will generally speaking only be able to act in the Nietzschean manner; that is, motivated by 'the will to power'.
I suppose this is both the lesson of Nietzsche and, formerly, the lesson of Machiavelli. A state cannot ever be Christian.
Of course. But here, you and I see the situation a little differently again. I think that if there's to be any moral input, any "leavening influence," if you will, in the larger culture, it will come solely the way it has always come -- namely, entirely dependent on the number and devotedness of actual people who are actual Christians. It will come indirectly, without political fiat or fanfare, and no embodied in any regime at all. It will come chemically or oganically, percolating up from the private obedience of individual Christians. And it will come that way, or it will not come at all.But within that state there can certainly be both Christian and christianesque individuals.
Ugh. No. Absolutely not.The nature of a large mass of people -- a state -- is that of an organism that must survive.
It requires classes of people who function to create the state (which involves necessary violence), to defend the state, to protect its borders, and also to expand the perimeters of the state when this is necessary.
Karma is a problematic idea. Let's not invoke it here. It requires us to believe that the indifferent universe has some interest in balancing scales throughout reincarnation cycles. That's too much nonsense to swallow, I think.All of these activities involve moral, ethical and (in the Indian sense) karmic cost.
Don't forget Nietzsche's first and most famous axiom, though: "God is dead." This is an axiom Nietzsche neither proved nor even bothered to try to prove; he just claimed everybody already knew it or should know it, and moved on.This view directly corresponds to Nietzsche's notion -- quite intuitive really, quite factual and thus true -- of the operations of 'the will to power'.
This phenomenon goes under various names. We might call it "the privatization of faith." That's one name it gets. Another is "pragmatism above principle." There's another. "Bifurcation" is a third, though less precise.But then they proposed an interesting manoeuvre. They defined an inner life for society and an outer life. Those on the inner level could indeed, within certain constraints, practice those values that we would define as 'moral' and 'ethical' (corresponding to Christian ethics). But the outer world, and the perimeters of that world, were attained for them by members of the society that broke the recognized moral and ethical laws.
"Neccesary" is what drives Pragmatism. "Good" is what orients morality. This is what Diggins was pointing to.Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”
Right. No wonder, then, that Christ insisted, "My kingdom is not of this world."Now some portentous statements:
You cannot create an empire -- and the US has and manages an empire and a military power to defend (and expand) it -- in any sense that could be defined or defended in a Christian sense. If you (if one) tried to do that you would wind up in the most convoluted sophistries. You would have to become the excellent Machiavellian liar.
Yet it is the efforts of the military and industrial elite which in a pure 'will-to-power' sense saw the advantage of entering WW2 and, winning, set the stage for the enormous prosperity of the Liberal Order through which so many things we value and honor came to be as possibilities and realities.
Yes, it is: but not onto the natural world, or the "ecological," to use your term, but onto the purely pragmatic orientation of social things in worldly affairs. To the non-Christian, it always comes as an unwelcome voice of conscience, limiting the options one might, for pragmatic or even hedonistic reasons, wish to seize. It counsels restraint and decency where methods of efficacy are more revered. It calls with the voice of the good over and against the voice of power. And that it why it is generally unwelcome.Christian ethics is an *imposition* into this brutal world (the real world) of an idealism that seems to come from *a world beyond*. And that is why what a Christian does, or the way a Christian faces reality, is always portrayed as a 'battle'.
No, definitely not. Such a thing might be alleged of the "christianesque" or the "culturally and morally Christinish," but never of a real Christian. As we see if we complete Christ's injunction: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:36)That Christian requires a warrior class...
Let us look carefully at a couple of claims here.Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.
And, EXACTLY as I SAID and POINTED OUT, in the quote words of mine you copied here, you are PROVING my words absolutely and IRREFUTABLY True, AGAIN.
Besides this just being ANOTHER DETRACTION from the IRREFUTABLE Fact and thus PROOF of the Wrong you did here, this is just ANOTHER EXAMPLE of where you make ASSUMPTIONS, and JUMP to conclusions, BEFORE you even try to begin to GAIN CLARIFICATION. And, it is for this very reason WHY you are SO Wrong, SO OFTEN, here in this forum. As evidenced and PROVED True, once more, from your writings here.uwot wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 12:15 pmThat's because you don't understand what analytical truth is.
Besides another IRREFUTABLE Fact that 'you', "uwot" have been attempting to be deceptive and misleading by NOT quoting me EXACTLY, previously, AND by only copying and pasting some my words mid sentence, and replying to those ones only, without adding the rest of my words, you ALSO do NOT answer my CLARIFYING questions posed to you, for fear of CONTRADICTING "yourself" or for some other reason, like you are completely UNABLE TO, which is just DISHONEST in itself, what is ACTUALLY WORSE is that you are becoming SO DECEPTIVE and MISLEADING that you are now ACTUALLY adding your OWN WORDS, with MINE, and THEN 'trying to' PASS them off as though it was ME who wrote them. Could you even get MORE deceptive?
In the days when this was being written 'you', adult human beings, could NOT even come to an agreement NOR acceptance of what just the word 'christian' meant or referred to, EXACTLY. So, ANY thought about coming to a "christian nation" would just be ABSURD in and of itself. And, to PROVE my CLAIM here is True, all I would have to do is ask 'you', adult human beings, to provide your OWN definition/s for the word 'christian', and then ask 'you' to come up with just one definition, which 'you' ALL agree with AND accept.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm Well, well...so much to think about.
Before I say anything else, let me reassure you that I find you a very engaging, interesting and thoughtful interlocutor. And it seems to me that we have far more in common, particularly in our social concerns, then we have basis for disagreement...though some fundamental differences do remain, of course. But I think we have a fair degree of sympathy in our interests, and in the reading we're doing as well. We certainly share an admiration of Weaver, among others.
Please be reassured, therefore, that if, in the process of making distinctions between my view and yours, it ever appears as though I mean to misrepresent, insult or otherwise mistreat you here, that is simply not the case. I accept in advance that a particular statement is more likely than not to be a product of my own lack of tact or understanding, not of deliberate unkindness.
That being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.
Fair enough?
This may surprise you, but so is mine.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:35 pm In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.
I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now.
Great, here is some semblance of sanity. But, what is a "christian", to you, EXACTLY?Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm It's actually an absurd expression. The term "Christian nation" makes as much sense as (to borrow a quip from EC, "accountancy dancing.") So one thing for sure: I'm not arguing in favour of such a ridiculous and contradictory idea...never mind that the means to bring it about would be likely to be authoritarian. No part of that appeals to me as "Christian."
Well considering ALL of the 'greedy' and 'judgmental' attitudes expressed and followed within "christian" teachings, then, for the sake of 'this world', let us ALL hope this part of "christianity" is utterly doomed, and VERY SOON.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm But the difference between your current thinking and mine, it seems to me, keys on whether a nominal or pseudo-Christian cultural renassiance is a viable alternative, and can be looked to to save the culture. It appears to me you think it might be; but I think that's an utterly doomed hope.
To ask and say this is ANOTHER GREAT EXAMPLE of ABSURDITY, at its best.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm Who, today, especially in our secular age, wants to be a "pseudo-Christian?" Christians don't want to be that.
The reason WHY so MANY human beings grow up NOT wanting to be a "christian" is because of the Falsehoods "christian" follow and because of the Wrong "christians" do.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm The Atheists and agnostics certainly don't aspire to be that. The Muslims, the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, the Sikhs...and so on, none of them have any reason to want to be pseudo-Christian. So what is their motive to take on "Christian" morality and "save" the culture?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pm Who would now willingly be "christianesque"?
Perhaps you will correct me but I think that we must face the fact that a state, a nation, a larger conglomeration of persons and *interests*, will generally speaking only be able to act in the Nietzschean manner; that is, motivated by 'the will to power'.
Well, that's because all the above are mere collectives. It's only the individual who has a soul, or who can respond to moral imperatives, or to any vision of things as they do not now exist. Institutions, nations and states, along with "conglomerations" are not personal agents, and have no eyes, ears or consciences of their own at all. They are pushed around by "powers," but the forces of circumstance, or finances, or contingencies...with no ability, as collectives, to do anything at all about that.
I suppose this is both the lesson of Nietzsche and, formerly, the lesson of Machiavelli. A state cannot ever be Christian.
Absolutely right. There's no such thing. Never has been.
Of course. But here, you and I see the situation a little differently again. I think that if there's to be any moral input, any "leavening influence," if you will, in the larger culture, it will come solely the way it has always come -- namely, entirely dependent on the number and devotedness of actual people who are actual Christians. It will come indirectly, without political fiat or fanfare, and no embodied in any regime at all. It will come chemically or oganically, percolating up from the private obedience of individual Christians. And it will come that way, or it will not come at all.But within that state there can certainly be both Christian and christianesque individuals.
In contrast, if I may suppose, I think you're putting a rather strong emphasis on things like the power of nominal "Christians," pseudo-Christians, "christianesque" individuals, and so on, to contribute to the situation. And yes, there have been a lot of them around throughout what we call "Christian-civilizational history" (which is itself another fiction, really). But they are the most useless of all human beings, in truth; and were always more of a problem to real Christianity than any kind of asset. They have always been, themselves, only moral and good according to the measure by which they have sometimes being absorbing the influence coming from genuine Christianity. Take that genuine Christianity out of the culture, and the pseudos and nominalists will be the most useless, uninfluential citizens you could possibly have, since they have no real or durable commitment to any principles at all.
May I submit to you, then, that trusting those folks as contributors to culture is leaning on a staff that will bend and splinter at the first sign of stress. And realistically, I cannot even imagine what inducements you would be able to offer the larger populace to make them want to join the ranks of the "christianesque" now.Ugh. No. Absolutely not.The nature of a large mass of people -- a state -- is that of an organism that must survive.
There's nothing "organic" about a "state." It's an abstraction, a collective, impersonal. We must not draw a false analogy between the state and the "imperative" of an organism for survival. States come and states go.
It requires classes of people who function to create the state (which involves necessary violence), to defend the state, to protect its borders, and also to expand the perimeters of the state when this is necessary.
No "it" doesn't "require" anything. It's not capable of such an action. I think what you mean to say is more in the order of, "The people within the state decide they want to defend it, that (for some reason they have) it's a state worth defending, and so they do." Go on.
Karma is a problematic idea. Let's not invoke it here. It requires us to believe that the indifferent universe has some interest in balancing scales throughout reincarnation cycles. That's too much nonsense to swallow, I think.All of these activities involve moral, ethical and (in the Indian sense) karmic cost.Don't forget Nietzsche's first and most famous axiom, though: "God is dead." This is an axiom Nietzsche neither proved nor even bothered to try to prove; he just claimed everybody already knew it or should know it, and moved on.This view directly corresponds to Nietzsche's notion -- quite intuitive really, quite factual and thus true -- of the operations of 'the will to power'.
But you're right in this much: IF God is dead, and only IF He were, then it would be quite true that all relations are nothing but relations of power. And yes, that would then be not just "intuitive" but "factual" and "true" as well -- but only IF his first axiom is also true and factual, and not merely a product of Nietzsche's, or somebody else's "Intuition."
Can we show that it was? Nietzsche couldn't.This phenomenon goes under various names. We might call it "the privatization of faith." That's one name it gets. Another is "pragmatism above principle." There's another. "Bifurcation" is a third, though less precise.But then they proposed an interesting manoeuvre. They defined an inner life for society and an outer life. Those on the inner level could indeed, within certain constraints, practice those values that we would define as 'moral' and 'ethical' (corresponding to Christian ethics). But the outer world, and the perimeters of that world, were attained for them by members of the society that broke the recognized moral and ethical laws.
But we could better call it by its more common name: hypocrisy. Or perhaps "cowardice," or "selling-out," or "amorality."
"Neccesary" is what drives Pragmatism. "Good" is what orients morality. This is what Diggins was pointing to.Her book is therefore a work of unsparing demystification — and there is something hopeful and even inspiring in this. Like the cadets she teaches at West Point, civilians would do well to see World War II as something other than a buoyant tale of American goodness trouncing Nazi evil. Yes, she says up front, American involvement in the war was necessary. But she maintains that it’s been a national fantasy to presume that “necessary” has to mean the same thing as “good.”
I've thought about this idea a lot. It's always only when the "necessities" of a situation, as it presents itself before us, require of us the compromising of our morality that we discover if we are really moral people at all. So long as the "necessities" happily line up with what we regard as "moral" there is actually no moral angst or struggle at all...we simply do the expedient thing, and it turns out to be the good thing at the same time. But when what looks "necessary" savagely conflicts with what we know is moral, that's when we find out what, morally, we are made of.
Right. No wonder, then, that Christ insisted, "My kingdom is not of this world."Now some portentous statements:
You cannot create an empire -- and the US has and manages an empire and a military power to defend (and expand) it -- in any sense that could be defined or defended in a Christian sense. If you (if one) tried to do that you would wind up in the most convoluted sophistries. You would have to become the excellent Machiavellian liar.
Yet it is the efforts of the military and industrial elite which in a pure 'will-to-power' sense saw the advantage of entering WW2 and, winning, set the stage for the enormous prosperity of the Liberal Order through which so many things we value and honor came to be as possibilities and realities.
Yes and no. War always produces both huge losses and significant gains. For example, it kills millions, perhaps, but causes the economy to be run very austerely and stingily, and thus often produces a post-war economic "boom."
But "liberal" order...if that was a product of the war, how come the Soviet bloc missed it entirely? Or how did it play out in post-war China? No, I don't think that thesis is at all tenable. Wars have variable consequences.
Yes, it is: but not onto the natural world, or the "ecological," to use your term, but onto the purely pragmatic orientation of social things in worldly affairs. To the non-Christian, it always comes as an unwelcome voice of conscience, limiting the options one might, for pragmatic or even hedonistic reasons, wish to seize. It counsels restraint and decency where methods of efficacy are more revered. It calls with the voice of the good over and against the voice of power. And that it why it is generally unwelcome.Christian ethics is an *imposition* into this brutal world (the real world) of an idealism that seems to come from *a world beyond*. And that is why what a Christian does, or the way a Christian faces reality, is always portrayed as a 'battle'.
No, definitely not. Such a thing might be alleged of the "christianesque" or the "culturally and morally Christinish," but never of a real Christian. As we see if we complete Christ's injunction: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.” (John 18:36)That Christian requires a warrior class...
You quote on Weaver, as follows:Let us look carefully at a couple of claims here.Weaver wanted none of it. Ideas, he said, was not a work of philosophy but “an intuition of a situation,” namely, a situation in which the “world that has lost its center.” Weaver traced that loss back to the the rise of nominalism in the twelfth century, a familiar pedigree that is both accurate and comical. It is is accurate because the modern world—a world deeply shaped by a commitment to scientific rationality—does have a root in the disabusing speculations of nominalism. It is comical because to locate the source of our present difficulties on so distant and so elevated a plane is simply to underscore our impotence. If William of Occam is responsible for what’s wrong with the world, there’s not much we can do about it.
"The world has lost its center," says Weaver. And how has this happened? He "traced back that loss to the rise of nominalism..."
What is "nominalism"? It is the belief that general ideas and abstractions are merely labels without corresponding realities. That's it in a nutshell. And though it's a more elaborate position (full Occamism, if you will) I think that perhaps we could not make a more concise summary of the distinction between the "Christanity" in which I believe and the "christianesque" in which you seem to be most interested at present.
For me, "Christian" is a particular noun, with definite corresponding realities. And because it has definite corresponding realities, it is both real and locatable. I know what it is, and can find it wherever I need to. But for you, (and here I must risk offence) there is only the abstractions, the general ideas of "Christian culture" or "christianesqueness" that you are working to pin down. Does that seem fair?
Well, of course, I'm against "nominal" Christianity. However, to me it seems you still tend to attribute to that orientation some virtues I simply think it does not possess and never did. One such virtue is the virtue of purifying or sustaining a culture. I would again submit to you that that is a thing nominal Christianity has never been able to do. Such sustenance and purity has come solely from the ground level, from the real and practical Christianity of a large number of indvidual Christians. And that nominalism, far from being even a contributor to that, is entirely unhelpful, and always has been.
But such is the difficulty of dividing between what, in secular historiography, has been called "Christian" from what genuinely is. Yet that distinction is the most important one, I suggest, a person can make, if he/she ever wishes to make any accurate claim about "Christianity." The false "christianesque" simply cannot be justifiably melded into the genuinely "Christian." I think the facts won't bear out any such nominating.
You can proceed from the assumption that matter did not created, but has always been, and will always be.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 1:37 am , which is whether the universe had to come from an uncaused cause, or an infinite regression of a chain of causes.
The latter's impossible. So that means we have to opt for the uncaused cause explanation.
Fair enough, Cheesy. So what is analytical truth?
Well that's just typical of mouldy cheese: yer put something I never said in quotation marks and then have the cheese balls to say:MC Age wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 9:29 pm...the IRREFUTABLE Fact that you CLAIMED that in absolutely "NONE of my nearly 9000 posts include an irrefutable fact". Which WAS OBVIOUSLY False, Wrong, AND Incorrect, and just MORE of your Inaccurate CLAIMS here. Even your CLAIM that you had "asserted this", previously, was False, Wrong, AND Incorrect.
You're very much a 'do as I say, not as I do' sort of mould, aren't you?
There was a very close unity between Christianity and secular power in the late middle ages in Europe west of Constantinople. Theocracy i.e. unity between religion and secular power is not unusual and characterises regimes where social control is based on the punishment and reward aspect of religion .This may surprise you, but so is mine.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 3:35 pm
In a nutshell my view is that the notion of *a Christian nation* is an impossibility.
I don't think for an instant there's ever been such a thing as "a Christian nation," and I don't for a second suppose we're going to create one now.
It seems clear that your essential question (questions) revolve around this core concern -- Why one thing and not another? Why this assertion of value and not another?Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:38 pmDo you only see a certain element -- liberal or conservative -- as doing this? Or is it simply that liberals are turning against some types of order, while conservatives are turning against other types of order?
Which order is correct for all ... and how is it accomplished in a way that satisfies different perspectives? What kind of progress is right for all, especially when some don't see it as progress and don't want it? What kind of conventions are right for all, especially when some see them as restrictive and backward?
Nothing to worry about here. The object is to create an interesting conversation where the different viewpoints are brought out and articulated as clearly as possible.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pmThat being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.
That's not the way I'm thinking about it, no... nor is it a question I'm asking... but it's interesting that's how you frame it.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 3:20 pmIt seems clear that your essential question (questions) revolve around this core concern -- Why one thing and not another? Why this assertion of value and not another?Lacewing wrote: ↑Tue Nov 30, 2021 7:38 pmDo you only see a certain element -- liberal or conservative -- as doing this? Or is it simply that liberals are turning against some types of order, while conservatives are turning against other types of order?
Which order is correct for all ... and how is it accomplished in a way that satisfies different perspectives? What kind of progress is right for all, especially when some don't see it as progress and don't want it? What kind of conventions are right for all, especially when some see them as restrictive and backward?
Lacewing wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 5:03 pmI'm thinking that we need to consider broader views when we make our choices. It doesn't seem it should be that hard if people would stop being so polarized and think about what's reasonable for the diversity of people and life involved, and the evolved awareness of the time we live in. Again, I think there's value in looking behind the scenes of why we cling to smaller and more limited ideas. How long are we supposed to continue in that way? Do we typically think that the choices we culturally made in our past will apply and serve us forever? We need frameworks that can expand along with us.
None of the terms we use -- Liberal, Conservative (and a wide additional array) -- seem to function for us anymore. They are non-useful.I am interested as to whether you see 'liberals' as being the 'primary dismantlers' in the unravelling you speak of? This is important, because if that is your focus, then you probably are not seeing/recognizing the limited and destructive nature of conservative ideas. Similar to how you don't appear to see what I've said in the light that it's presented? Possibly meaning that your conclusions are overruling... and cannot even reasonably consider that there's anything else to consider? Logic tells me: any polarized view is false (as it is based on limited and skewed information), and it fiercely protects something that's apparently more important than logic or reason. Why aren't we asking questions about that?
This is not a problem but I notice (or believe that I notice) that you often ask the same question, with different inflections. For example:I see the truth of much of what you've carefully (and artfully) said. And I see more than that, which is what I've tried to communicate. So how much are you willing to look at and consider beyond what you've said, or does your focus/conclusion represent the only value you see? I think it's reasonable to consider broader causes that contribute to cultural unravellings, rather than trying to conclude anything from a polarized position as so many people seem intent on doing. From my perspective, polarization is one of the thickest roots of the problem. Isn't it possible to function effectively without that? Or must we always be embroiled in battle with a perceived opposition?
Actually, in various ways, they can, in fact, "refute" it.
Great.Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri Dec 03, 2021 3:30 pmNothing to worry about here. The object is to create an interesting conversation where the different viewpoints are brought out and articulated as clearly as possible.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Dec 02, 2021 7:07 pmThat being said, I propose to try to make some rather fine distinctions between what I perceive you to be saying and what I am trying to communicate. I trust they will be understood in the spirit in which they are offered. Any "I" and "you" language is not, in any way, supposed to signal antipathy, but rather to signal a point of distinction that might be worthy of our mutual examination.