Harry Baird wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 8:30 amJust out of interest, where would they rate on the truly moronic scale compared to, say, proposing to restore -- in some unspecified manner and to some unspecified extent -- a faith system the core tenets of which one rejects, and then complaining when people ask for clarification? It seems to me to be a pretty close call to make. Hopefully you can clear this up.
You do not know what *tenets* I accept or reject so this odd *argument* falls to the ground immediately. Your diagrams were idiotic because the basis of your recent obsessive and compulsive outburst (the backdrop to your latest posts here) has very little to do
with me. I read what you wrote and dismissed it. And that is what your diagrams expressed: misunderstanding and bad-faith portrayal.
Weirdly, in your post previous to this, you left politely by the front door. Here, you come round to the
back door and seem to want to reinitiate a sort of bickering over your own misunderstandings. It is all BS.
The
actual issue here is one that is beyond your ken. Presently, today, contemporaneously, there is an on-going cultural debate about the role and importance of Christian belief in the widest sense. There is a civilizational issue resulting from the abandonment of those metaphysical principles I refer to (or the realness of metaphysical being). There has come to the surface in people's minds and their consciousness the issue of *restoration* and repair of something damaged, something degenerate, something falling apart.
What I did in this thread is to publish an excerpt from a very worthy book by a very worthy historian, written in 1960 (before all sorts of raging winds began to blow) which deals on the topic of Christian culture and, somewhat indirectly, the proposition that in it are keys, truths, medicines, and ways of acting and realizing
values, that are special and worthy. And certainly *foundational* as I say to our culture and our
trajectory. But here is the thing Harry: you mock such books and such studies.
You wrote: you inform yourself as well as you can on the issues, scouring secondhand bookshops for everything you can find on Catholicism, Christianity, and Western civilisation, and reading widely from all perspectives: defenders and detractors, progressives and conservatives, hyper-liberals and far rightists, religious zealots and fanatical secularists
and you add:
Around and around you go.
It has now been over a decade.
There is a note in this that is acutely arrogant. I have touched on this in recent posts and will avoid explaining here again.
The sort of response that you inspire,
jackass, is one of irate dismissal because what you have done recently is to allow your own inner stuff to bubble up over the top in obsessive-compulsive emails which, as I say, have very little to do with me. Yet you are blind to this, at least at present. And I ask how much longer will this recent display go on before you come around to that realization? The farther you go on, the deeper the hole you dig.
Hopefully you can clear this up.
Clearing it up is explaining to you that you do not have enough understanding of the issues that are relevant and at play because you live, sheltered to a degree, in a limited bubble that you curate and in my view, at least on one important level, because you
do not read.
proposing to restore -- in some unspecified manner and to some unspecified extent -- a faith system the core tenets of which one rejects, and then complaining when people ask for clarification?
You are conning
yourself.
con 4 (kŏn) Slang
tr.v. conned, con·ning, cons
To swindle (a victim) by first winning his or her confidence; dupe.
First, you misconstrue my own issues or intellectual struggles, expressed over the months, with what I call *the Christian picture* and the inner content that the pictures express. But as to the *core tenets* you can make no statement at all about what I align myself with or don't. In the world of my conception of things my idea has been that it is not *the picture* that is what we need to focus on -- pictures are merely diagrams to illustrate concepts or really values -- but rather on what comes through, and here I use the likely annoying term metaphysics because it is convenient and I do not know what to replace it with.
So you might say (again when you choose to carry on like a braying ass) "Ah ha! I've caught you! So you don't really believe the story and, if anything, you are one who rejects the
faith system!"
Bravo, brother! How proud you must feel ...
But you have zero idea what part of faith, or belief, or understanding actually operate in me (personally). And you should also know that a forum like this, and possibly any forum on the Internet, is not a place to reveal or talk about those things that pertain to our inner dimensions. In truth this forum is (often) a place where many brutal people come to discharge those strange poisons that have them in their grip. So the allusions I have made to my own inner life have been entirely reasonable.
Still,
I am not the issue or the topic here.
and then complaining when people ask for clarification?
There are a few angles to this issue that must be addressed. One is quite simple: Christianity is something despised and hated by many. It is attacked ruthlessly, viciously and cynically by a large faction within our cultures. This is a deeply psychological issue and it involves many different layers and motives that have to be parsed out to make the issue clear. What is there, really, at the core? That is a question I have asked and tried to answer. Presently, my view is that that hatred arises because of man's unwillingness to accept the moral system that, very much indeed, is insisted on by a strict Christianity. But that should not be taken to mean that there are not -- potentially legitimate -- aspects of acute critique that are invalid.
When you say *clarification* what you actually mean, Harry, is a sort of Reader's Digest version, preferably in a short paragraph that you will read between swigs of energy drinks, that you can stare at for a minute and then pronounce judgment on. Again, you do not have enough backgrounding in what the actual issue is. Your relationship to these social and cultural questions is superficial. And when you run out of energy and your attention wanes, you abandon the field. If you genuinely seek this *clarification* you are going to have to become willing to do a great deal more research. But you won't and you can't. It is too demanding for you.
______________________
Here is one
current example of what is being discussed at a cultural level.
