Christian Civilization -- The Central Issue

[Harbal]

At least … you’re thinking!

Intuition guided me to that conclusion more than thought did.

A lazy flowing river might also. Following an adventurous fly, too. But try to arrive at the same conclusive result with an Aristotelian rigor. But (to quote Wizard) don’t strain the frail double-digits!

Don't you worry about my double digits, they can carry on like this indefinitely, old bean.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It would more or less reduce it to some kind of Buddhist-like "noble path" to follow if one wants to avoid the pitfalls of life on earth.

Now, on the other hand, if the endeavor is conducted in the spirit of attempting to extract the best features of all of the world's spiritual traditions in order to formulate a new and sensible code of conduct for all of humankind in general,...

...then that would make more sense, for nobody's belief system would be excluded from the project.

And that is something that AJ's narrow focus on just "Christian Civilization" ("Christian Nationalism") fails to consider.

Exclusion, selection, valuation, placing one thing either above or below another; decisiveness, discernment, and the power that results from choices made — these are the real things that made •civilization• (I mean that in the sense of spiritual superstructure).

If this is so, and I think it is, it is through that decisiveness that •we• (i.e. not you of course!) will move forward.

Your path results in castration on all levels. As a method, as a strategy, it turns each tradition to New Age mush. It removes from each what lends each its distinctive power.

Your psychedelic vision, which has resulted in a diagramatization of a perceptual stance and picture, is quasi-universalist or neo-universalist, it seems. But in my view it really guts the essence of whatever religious tradition it would touch, and certainly that of
Christianity (and my recommendation is to really grasp the essence of that through reading works like Newman’s Grammar of Assent). Only then could the proposition be understood.

[Atla]

Not sure if investing into the Christian civilization is the best idea as major religions will eventually nuke each other into oblivion in most worldlines. What we need is a global unified dictatorship that will force good morals on people, whether they like it or not, irregardless of their religion.

[Alexis Jacobi]

That was going to be the topic of my next post, Atla ….

[Atla]

That was going to be the topic of my next post, Atla ….

Well, I'll skip ahead and say that humanity will of course never elect a benevolent global dictatorship. No wonder I'm without enthusiasm. Maybe a gene-modified superior humanity could do it, but that's kinda another species, not us.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Well, I'll skip ahead and say that humanity will of course never elect a benevolent global dictatorship.

You keep stealing my thunder. Voleur!

[Atla]

Well, I'll skip ahead and say that humanity will of course never elect a benevolent global dictatorship.

You keep stealing my thunder. Voleur!

I guess you also know the next 3 or so steps of the argument then.. good, we don't talk about those for various reasons

[Alexis Jacobi]

If we need religion for moral, ethical and spiritual development which at best religion only provided on a very low level, it's time to take holy communion from Trump.

This statement here contains real error. I have been reading the Baltimore Catechism and other seminal documents lately. I am struck by how demanding it is to be *a practicing Catholic*.

You and others may hold these traditions in contempt, and you may have your reasons, yet you would be way off the mark if you asserted that the ethics and morals taught (inculcated) were of a low level or superficial. It is really quite the opposite.

What seems to have happened in Catholicism post-Vatican ll was a general relaxation of that rigor. Yes, the liturgy was gutted, that is one thing, but I gather the rigor of teaching was dropped many levels. In any case, the 1960s and 1970s did a number on the entire culture that could hardly have been resisted except by retreat.

[Dubious]

If that were the case I would not have a problem admitting to it. But that is not the case. My issue resolves to this: there is either a constant, ever-existing metaphysics that originated with the manifestation of this Universe and Cosmos, and there either is or there is not a supreme divinity that owns all creation and manifestation. What that is, that is to say the existence of it (the being of it), is in my conception a reality that is beyond my conceptual capacity. That is to say that I have no way to express what Existence is and no way really to comprehend it when its opposite is contemplated (no-existence). The better expression of this mystery is expressed in the Vedic language as *Sat-Chit-Ananda*. The more the mystery of existence is meditated on, the more it opens up as a puzzle, and in my own case it is there that whatever *divinity* means becomes apparent.

If beyond one's conceptual capacity then any such concept by whomever simply defaults to a psychic content within their belief system or wishful thinking which circumscribes it. That which is or remains unknown does not become divine by virtue of being unknown...one of our major fallacies. A mystery is that which remains unresolved, nothing more, while nevertheless giving one an inner feeling of vast perspectives still to ponder. It's this feeling of inner expansiveness which confers upon it an aura of divinity, doomed to devolve into some technical type of teachable metaphysic by those who seek to instantiate the experience based on general metaphysical principles.

So if my own *conceptual pathway* has any relevance to the issue that Dawson discusses in the book I quoted from, and if my processes are similar to what others of us who have been *extruded onto the shores of modernity* are going through, then what I am dealing with -- and there are many more than just myself -- the process of reconnection with our own traditions and all of that which has allowed what we are to come to be should then become more clear.

Traditions and rituals are now the ghostly remnants of old beliefs the performance of which still offers consolation to many of its practitioners. In effect, traditions survive the beliefs which engendered them because such are inherent in human nature, theistic or secular. It presupposes beliefs no-longer active while still remaining societally cohesive.

I make my commitments with those who seem better aligned with those general metaphysical principles that I have been outlining over the months and years.

Attempting to describe general metaphysical principals in any way relatable to reality is tantamount to describing non-existence itself except as a projection of the will which strives to give it credence by ritualizing it thereby reifying it; a process you describe well...the projection becoming the project.

I did that because of something René Guénon said: that in traditional Catholicism there were still vestiges of what he defines as a universal metaphysics. Timeless, constant, ever-existing. And the answer is that, yes, what I refer to as metaphysically timeless does indeed reside there. But I do have a somewhat Gnostic interpretation: the depiction, the picture, the symbols, are representations of conceptual pathways to hold onto that *concept of the divine* and to exist in and respond from a position of relationship. And relationship is intellectual, conceptual, but also (for want of the better word) emotional and spiritual.

Perfectly understandable. I've had those myself but in a different context in which any notion of a supreme divinity that owns all creation and manifestation becomes a limitation, a brick wall.

The reason many of you conflict with me (in the sense of the ideas presented) is, in my opinion, because you have been placed by cultural and social powers, and by historical processes, on the outside of a totality which, conceptually, is incomprehensible to you. It has been made incomprehensible on one hand, but you too have contributed to its incomprehensibility.

I'm as much inside that totality as you are being merely a part of it, feeling it without metaphysically trying to describe or in any way denote it, extraneous to any kind of description. Are you seriously saying that with all your reading you are somehow exempt of all the cultural, social and historical processes through which you create your own paradigms of belief? I think not!

In this sense, if I may be so bold as to present it in this way, one has to develop and rely on a *communication* with a living spiritual force. That is how I conceive of the holy spirit. If the question is "Why then do you choose to return to a Christian nexus?!" when there are other traditions and paths? I think it resolves to the issue of essences. That is a complex issue.

A living spiritual force rendered as experience, as inner emergence has no use for essences, denominations of any kind being wordless. When communicated, the experience diminishes into a metaphysic forever pondered upon philosophically or rendered as a religious event. A spiritual force is autonomous; when rendered in words it becomes contextually circumscribed, subordinate to personal beliefs or most often adjusted to the cultural values of the time...essences, in short.

If, as you proclaim, there's a metaphysic which upholds Christian beliefs, then it must be of a kind to which all others default as well. Variations based on a single theme.

[Dubious]

If we need religion for moral, ethical and spiritual development which at best religion only provided on a very low level, it's time to take holy communion from Trump.

This statement here contains real error. I have been reading the Baltimore Catechism and other seminal documents lately. I am struck by how demanding it is to be *a practicing Catholic*.

You and others may hold these traditions in contempt, and you may have your reasons, yet you would be way off the mark if you asserted that the ethics and morals taught (inculcated) were of a low level or superficial. It is really quite the opposite.

What seems to have happened in Catholicism post-Vatican ll was a general relaxation of that rigor. Yes, the liturgy was gutted, that is one thing, but I gather the rigor of teaching was dropped many levels. In any case, the 1960s and 1970s did a number on the entire culture that could hardly have been resisted except by retreat.

You sure know how to make a big hoopla out of nothing! The point is very simple: we don't need religion for moral, ethical or spiritual development. It's a disgusting idea, for that would presuppose only religion is the one vehicle to confer these qualities...which was always one of I.C.'s major talking points. Load of crap!

[Alexis Jacobi]

If beyond one's conceptual capacity then any such concept by whomever simply defaults to a psychic content within their belief system or wishful thinking which circumscribes it. That which is or remains unknown does not become divine by virtue of being unknown...one of our major fallacies. A mystery is that which remains unresolved, nothing more, while nevertheless giving one an inner feeling of vast perspectives still to ponder. It's this feeling of inner expansiveness which confers upon it an aura of divinity, doomed to devolve into some technical type of teachable metaphysic by those who seek to instantiate the experience based on general metaphysical principles.

What you have written here is a statement and a declaration that you have repeated many times. What is its essence when broken down? I’ll leave that question open for a moment.

When I say, and many others throughout shared history have realized , that existence is incomprehensible; that we cannot conceive of how existence and existing can be when the thought of its opposite is meditated (an impossibility: being always exists and must always exist), it is more to say not that one resorts to •wishful thinking• but to different modes of understanding and knowing. Though obviously I cannot be sure about you, it is your adamancy in expressing the projection your own limitations in this area that draws my critique.

You explain away those other modes of realizing what is supernatural and trascendental and you reduce them to the inane, and also the valueless and meaningless, essentially because that is the wall you yourself face. Then, you absolutize your own limitation, that which you cannot see beyond, into a type of declaration of universal truth.

Your position is •ultra-modern• in this sense. Though dressed up in nice prose it is par for the course as far as the common understanding and assertions runs. I venture say that you have zero experience with that level of inner experience I refer to as super-rational and also spiritual. These are obscurantist terms in your lexicon, no?

Your articulations meet with a certain success (definitely in the atmosphere of a forum like this) because the minds of most of those you communicate with have been primed to receive your message, such as it is (in fact not really much of one).

That which is or remains unknown does not become divine by virtue of being unknown...one of our major fallacies.

You read into what I said not what I wished to say but the only thing you believe I could have said.

I did not mean to say that encountering incomprehensibility is then to be painted with •divinity• — your word there is fallacy: falseness — but rather that another faculty as real and as operable as our reasoning and rationality are, can then begin to function. And that is what happens in the lives of those who live their spirituality.

Of this — to all appearances — you seem to know nothing. Whatever such knowing might be, in you is quashed.

Here of course is your resumen and what you really wish to present as truthfulness. You’ve said the same thing in more or less the same terms … for as long as I’ve been reading you.

You sure know how to make a big hoopla out of nothing! The point is very simple: we don't need religion for moral, ethical or spiritual development. It's a disgusting idea, for that would presuppose only religion is the one vehicle to confer these qualities...which was always one of I.C.'s major talking points. Load of crap!

I do suggest in your case not merely a run of the mill butt plug, and not only one that vibrates, but one with a BlueTooth remote!

I can’t promise it will help but for Heaven’s sake it is worth a go!

Also

[seeds]

It would more or less reduce it to some kind of Buddhist-like "noble path" to follow if one wants to avoid the pitfalls of life on earth.

Now, on the other hand, if the endeavor is conducted in the spirit of attempting to extract the best features of all of the world's spiritual traditions in order to formulate a new and sensible code of conduct for all of humankind in general,...

...then that would make more sense, for nobody's belief system would be excluded from the project.

And that is something that AJ's narrow focus on just "Christian Civilization" ("Christian Nationalism") fails to consider.

Exclusion, selection, valuation, placing one thing either above or below another; decisiveness, discernment, and the power that results from choices made — these are the real things that made •civilization• (I mean that in the sense of spiritual superstructure).

Are you talking about the "civilization" that - due to its cultural and religious divisiveness - is crumbling right before our very eyes?

Are you talking about the "civilization" that, again, due to its cultural divisiveness, stands on the brink of self-annihilation via nuclear Armageddon?

If this is so, and I think it is, it is through that decisiveness that •we• (i.e. not you of course!) will move forward.

Move forward into what?

Describe for us what it is you think •we• (not me, of course) will move forward into.

What will it look like? And upon whose authority and "decisiveness" (judgment) will the philosophical context of this future utopia be based?

Judging from your attitude,...

(and especially judging from the fact that I can still plainly see that giant red T watermark on the pages beneath your text)

...I cannot help but think that your idea of "moving forward" might eventually involve one of these...

Your path results in castration on all levels.

What's my "path"?

Please describe for me what you think my "path" is?

As a method, as a strategy, it turns each tradition to New Age mush. It removes from each what lends each its distinctive power.

Hmmm...it would seem that my "method" involves...

"...Exclusion, selection, valuation, placing one thing either above or below another; decisiveness, discernment,..."

...which, in turn, has allowed me to determine that "each tradition" appears to be steeped in mythology, and thus woefully lacking in logic, and could (and should) be replaced with a greater (hopefully, more unifying) vision of reality.

Shame on me for employing the very tools that you, yourself, feel are necessary for building a stable civilization.

Your psychedelic vision, which has resulted in a diagramatization of a perceptual stance and picture, is quasi-universalist or neo-universalist, it seems. But in my view it really guts the essence of whatever religious tradition it would touch, and certainly that of Christianity...

Oh dear, now you are making me feel embarrassed and ashamed. ...

universalist
noun
1. a person who believes that all humankind will eventually be saved.
2. a person advocating loyalty to and concern for others without regard to national or other allegiances.

...I mean, how dare I be "...a person who believes that all humankind will eventually be saved..."

How dare I be "...a person advocating loyalty to and concern for others without regard to national or other allegiances..."

Lock me in a pillory and have the good Christian Nationalists pelt me with scorn and rotten tomatoes.



Furthermore, and contrary to your misunderstanding of what I am doing,...

....I would go so far as to suggest that my "...perceptual stance and picture..." actually confirms the veracity of one of the absolute core elements of Christianity. And that core element is in reference to our literal "offspring-to-parent" relationship with the Creator of this universe.

Nevertheless, now that you've shown me the error of my quasi-ness/neo-ness ways, I must humbly thank you for re-directing me onto a path that is not of your own making but is loosely constructed from the ideas you have gleaned from others from your extensive reading.

So then, now that you've got me interested in the idea about some kind of future and perfected form of Christian Nationalism, will membership come with cool looking uniforms with symbolic patches?

Perhaps the uniforms could incorporate the use of long red ties.
_______

[Alexis Jacobi]

Describe for us what it is you think •we• (not me, of course) will move forward into.

Con Plata Baile El Perro

[Dubious]

However, stripping Christianity of its alluring "hook",...

(the promise of eternal life in Heaven)
...and of its fearsome "cudgel",...

(the threat of eternal torture in Hell if one doesn't accept Christ as savior)
...would render Christianity impotent.

That's certainly true. While there remains a lot of mysticism in Christianity, I wonder to what degree it can be improvised while retaining its denomination. Perhaps it can be transcribed into a cultural event not unlike a glass bead game, a form of discipline serving the spiritual requirements of those who are too elite to accept the old tropes of heaven and hell as too naive.

Now, on the other hand, if the endeavor is conducted in the spirit of attempting to extract the best features of all of the world's spiritual traditions in order to formulate a new and sensible code of conduct for all of humankind in general,...
...then that would make more sense, for nobody's belief system would be excluded from the project.

Such an ecumencial surge of good will and global understanding could only come about if the metaphysics proclaimed by AJ were understood enough to neutralize all differences into a common revelation...meaning when it comes to anything, we're all in the same boat instead of trying to sink each other.

Perhaps when AI soon reaches the predicted "Technological Singularity," it can assist us in bringing this new "code of conduct" into fruition.

Most desirable if that were one of its side-effects.

[Dubious]

What you have written here is a statement and a declaration that you have repeated many times.

It's also an accusation you've repeated many times. Factually, I've been far less prolix in asserting mine than you have been with your interminable essays. Just a little insight would have helped you to realize that, the failure of which, among others, calls into question what you actually know not written by mentors you unconditionally subscribe to.

Of this — to all appearances — you seem to know nothing. Whatever such knowing might be, in you is quashed.

To all appearances it seems that making stupid ignorant statements is becoming traditional with you. This from a mind that rarely judges but, with the least resistance, merely accepts what others have written...in essence, more copycat than thinker.

I do suggest in your case not merely a run of the mill butt plug, and not only one that vibrates, but one with a BlueTooth remote!

An ingenious combination! Please send me the manual! I always suspected you had it in you to eventually come up with something sensible! However, I do recommend you never blow your nose, for clearly snot is all that's left of your brain. Not certain if, in your case, they were ever interchangeable.