One very definite thing about encountering people on fora is the probability of encountering also one's own 'projected material'.
Have you noticed that you keep replying to me, after repeatedly saying you see no further value in the exchange? You're continuing to reply to me because I'm the only one willing to play with you, you don't know where the other forums are, and you are a typoholic, just like me. That's not projection, that's one typoholic recognizing another.
I say, we are what we are, and instead of being afraid to admit it why not celebrate who we are with a dash of self-deprecating humor? You know, reason, replace shame with fun. Or not, as you wish, that's ok too.
One of the things I notice about the subject of your discourse is that it seems to preach 'unity' (which to me is a questionable goal though it is certainly in accord with PC Doctrines) but that you yourself give evidence of being in and writing from a very tendentious pole. In the end it is you who seems to split away and into a sharply defined and somewhat dogmatic position.
Yes, I agree with this. Three things: 1) the inherently divisive nature of thought at work, 2) conversations such as this depend on walking a delicate line between conflict and peace. If I simply agreed with the group consensus in a genial manner, you would find me too boring to bother reading, and 3) I can be a butthead.
Also, as someone once said, you can never really know where another person is coming from (on a forum).
Never is a big word. Sometimes you do.
You have said a few times, to those who take issue with your doctrine (or non-doctrine or anti-doctrine) that Perhaps some years later you'll get it. Now, this is not impossible of course.
Ok, yes.
But there is another possibility too: that you may require some time to 'get it' and that you just may not grasp (yet) the messages that are being brought to you.
I don't have much time left, so don't count on that.
Again my new friend, what is your age? You seem to favor a strong leading hand from masculine consciousness etc, and I believe that is what I am providing. As best I can tell, I am the ranking chest pounding ape here in terms of age, and so I am playing that role.
It is entirely appropriate that as the younger chest pounding ape that you challenge the old dog at every turn and try to dethrone him, and once you do, then you will become the old dog, and some other young punk ape will rise up to challenge you. And so it has been, since the beginning of time.
This is simply a possibility. And I say it because you don't ever focus on any of the specific content that is brought up 'as-against' your formulations. After a little while it becomes quite frustrating. Certain things (as you might say of your interlocutors) 'fall on deaf ears'.
Yes, frustrating, because you want me to accept your rules of the game, that he who does the best intellectual fancy talk wins. And I am devaluing the game that you have considerable skill at. Again, I suggest you shift to the field of science, where your natural talents would be entirely appropriate, and I would then offer no complaint or challenge to the process you wish to pursue.
But if we are to reason together in the field of religion, then I offer you a reasoned challenged to the status quo view you are presenting, and invite you to challenge my challenge in turn for as long as it pleases you to do so. And when you really are done, we can call it day, no problem.
What I have learned, and what I now desire to institute in myself, is that 'life as I understand it' and 'spiritual life' and also 'religious life' (which I define very distinctly from Catholicism or any other -ism) and even if you will 'God' in a cosmic sense, requires not the loosening or abandoning of strong definitions and defined postures, but the solidification of them. I could say concretization, definition, and may other such words.
I can not suggest a better word than concretization.
If that is your path, go for it, explore it. Don't expect me to applaud it though. However, many others will, so perhaps they would make better partners for you?
The opposite characteristic, and one that I feel strongly must be resisted, is a loosening of defined postures, or a surrendering of the field, or a relaxation of the discipline and the focus necessary to forge through the forest, if you will, of ideas. In fact I seem to be referring to two distinct Modes of being.
Yes, that's a fair summary.
If you wish please keep in mind that the real, (that place where God is proposed to exist) can not be concretized, as it eternally changes in every moment. We can be there, experience it, ride it, but we can not capture it.
Now, outside of us and surrounding us is a vast, popular culture and similarly vast mechanisms (media essentially but also the educational system in the widest sense) which, to put it in direct terms, 'seeks to have its way with us'.
Um, to put it another way, there are a great many people competing for the hearts and minds...
Allied to that are popular and sensationalistic, perhaps 'sensualistic' in the precise sense of the term, currents of 'thought' (the term 'henid' may indeed have a good use here since popular thinking is not really thinking at all) which also ask of us that we 'join together' with a mass; think and feel like that mass; accept certain ideas as 'true' and surrender (my interpretation) some important part of our 'defining self'.
If you don't wish to be part of the mass, why not explore beyond a fixed rigid loyalty to the group consensus notion that thought is everything?
There is a way to characterize this 'pole' of influence but I will only allude to it generally here. But much is defined by that 'pole': attitudes toward the present; attitudes toward sexuality; attitudes toward gender.
Those damn hippy pinko commies!!!
There exists too another pole. It is a more classically 'conservative' pole. It defines itself in distinction to the 'other' pole and seeks to hold itself in a form of rigidity which also tends to express doctrinal conservatism, more traditional religious views, political conservatism and so much that we generally locate on the right side of the political and social spectrum. In its way it too seeks to impose itself on the general mind, 'have its way', influence, direct, etc.
Yes, ok, agreed. But it's not quite that simple. As example, I once played a leadership role in a quite conservative public safety political agenda here in my state. On the other hand, I am very liberal on social issues like gay rights.
How do we understand and define the substrata that allows existence to exist? It is in exploring such questions that one discovers the need for a group of tools of consciousness so to be able even to consider or explore 'meaning' there.
Ok, academic intellectualism and philosophy etc.
In the most ultimate sense there, in relation to that, exists 'theology' (in my view).
Yes, ok.
In relation to these poles, to these facts, to these realities, we have to orient ourselves. I say 'have to' with special emphasis.
Yes, because for you, intellectualism is everything. It appears
you have to.
If you do not define yourself (in relation to any of that, and in relation to yourself) someone will step in and do it for you.
Their opinions are their business.
This for me is Fact Number One in our world as it is. It is true, as you say, that some people can do and will do no 'work' of self-clatification and of definition in the strict sense I am referring to.
Ok, yes, agreed.
It is also true that if, say, as you seem to describe yourself, that they are 'people of love' that they can manage to get on quite well, or well enough.
Ok again.
And they do whatever it is that such 'people of love' do and perhaps 100% absent any doctrinal or ideational base. This seems to be your assertion in any case.
Yes, it's very easy to verify for oneself. I suspect most of the people any of us will meet are not very philosophical in nature, which is why guys like you and me tend to come to specialized nerd heavens such as this forum.
But truthfully, as truthfully and fairly as I can be, your enunciations lack clarity around these issues.
Ask a specific question concisely, and I will reply if I have anything to contribute.
What is the purpose, now, of taking the time to write this out?
Because you, um, like me, enjoying typing very much? Just a thought...
I would like to believe that I can demonstrate to you, even against my better judgement, that it is possible that you may have things backward.
Ok, go for it.
I would like to suggest to you that it may have been (say in my case and possibly in other's) just exactly the opposite: that the Revelation (in the mystical sense) came first and the remodeling of mental and spiritual life came later: and as a fulfillment of the former.
Um, I've been saying that the mystical is the source of the theological all along...
And that the experience of revelation, or vision, and even 'love' is a first step that is followed by many other steps and that one of those steps may be 'defining and concretizing' but not giving oneself over to looser forms of being, or as I say abandonments of structure and definition.
It seems a fact that for many people this is the way it must work. As you know, I suggest that if the moment of revelation is so powerful, why not return to it?
So then, seen from this new angle, how might one respond to the 'doctrines' that you seem to desire to represent? You present them as inevitablities into which one will come when one, like you, becomes an Ancient of Days, an Elder, a Teacher.
I meant what I said. You are an intelligent person. And so it's possible that someday your curiosity may lead you to investigate beyond the walls of the intellectual library. If you just acquired your intellectual library somewhat recently, then it may be too soon for you to have become bored with it. If that is the case, then it is my error to think that I can rush what has to unfold at it's own natural pace.
You represent your doctrines in this way, especially when push comes to shove and (a pun) one pushes off from you.
Sit down please, because this is going to shock you. I am not a perfect person.
Or a perfect writer. I'm pretty good at bloviation mass production however.
Divisions in thinking are necessary and inevitable. Compare the 'thinking' of Himmler and Martin Luther King. Take any tendentious pole and note that it is required that they be 'thought through'. There is no 'unity of thinking' that will make these distinctions disappear. At this point your doctrine becomes incoherent.
The root source of both Nazism and American racism is the inherently divisive nature of thought. This statement is not beyond challenge, but it is coherent, and can be defended.
[*]A 'religion of peace' is your own pet term. In actual point of fact Christianity describes itself, and always has, as a group of people in an existential war against a satanic terrestrial rulership.
A war which will not be won by becoming like Satan.
[*]I have no idea what 'Catholics love to talk about', but the core Catholic doctrines always seem to me about defining correct ethics and the need to hold to them as a means of giving expression to religious values and service to the Savior in this world.
Yes, agreed, the core Catholic
doctrines. Like so many others, theist and atheist, you seem intent on the assumption that religion is nothing more than ideological assertions.
[*]To have a sense of what would need 'to be done', one would have to gain some grounding in the specifics of Catholic doctrine, and then one would have some material to work with.
Die to be reborn. Four words. You want it to be much more complex, because you enjoy complexities.
It may be, and I suspect that it is, possible that 'unity' is a sort of mushy dream or vague hope more suitable to the matrons of the Church.
I would have to agree that Catholic unity is most likely a dream. Catholicism is a quite thought-centric enterprise, and so it is subject to the inherently divisive properties of thought. All ideologies divide within themselves, it's only the degree which differs.
In actual point of fact it may be that an authentic and practiced Catholicism may create and accentuate 'divisions' between those who practice the ethics and those who do not. This would fit more in with the Christian notion of 'war against the rebellious world'. So, these half-baked opinions that you spout without really thinking are seen to fall on their face.
Ok, so let's have another 2,000 years of ideological violence, and see how it works out.
What outlook do you know anything about at all? What philosopher, novelist, writer, poet, thinker, mystic?
I know a bit about the real world, a greater authority than any famous person you can toss in my face.
I am ironizing here of course, but really, Felasco, I can imagine you as having long ago abandoned any sort of study that would require the use of the mind.
When in fact, I am kicking your ass in the realm of reason, which is why you're getting so annoyed with me.
Since 'thinking is divisive' you will have to engage in some other activity that allows for the 'unity' you preach about.
Explained 500 times above.
As far as I can tell you have a mind made of mush.
And my mush is clobbering your concrete. If you are done being hysterical please use your highly advanced intellectual ability to address this question...
The primary assertion of Christianity and other western religions is that God exists in the real world. Please explain why we should look elsewhere, and how doing so is being serious about understanding Christianity.
And it is saccharinely flavored with undercooked essences which seem lukewarm and spittable.
You are deep in to characterizing a challenge you can not meet.
If you really had something important and relevant to say, it would have revealed itself already.
No, it wouldn't, because I decline to do the reader's homework for them.
Or, you might have referred to other writers who have said better and more thoroughly whatever it is that you wish to express, which remains incoherent to me.
It remains incoherent because you are investing all of your considerable intelligence not in to understanding, but in resisting. And because you are a capable person, you have accomplished the goal you set out to accomplish.
You make the assumption that I have not 'explore[d] […] beyond the theological/intellectual realm', which is thoroughly incorrect and yet it is understandable to me why you conclude this, based on my focus on tangibles in this thread.
Ok, fair enough.
The notion that you are here to 'introduce' me or anyone to some special doctrines, if based on what you write, the circularity of your ideas, and your constant falling on your face when pushed, indicates to me that---just perhaps---you may do well to modify your self-view.
I am His Flatulence Sri Baba Bozo, the founder of Bozoism, the next great world religion. And you are having an ego meltdown.
It will pass. I find you to be a durable fellow, an appealing quality, and in conversations with me Sir Blowhard, a necessary one.
