Great Books Program

Biblical Inerrancy and Following Christ

2009-07-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

Kim:
I contend that one can follow Christ w/o believing in the inerrancy of the Bible.

William:
Well, what comes to my mind, frequently is that II Peter epistle (paraphrasing) "Paul has said some things which are difficult to understand and those who lack a foundation twist and distort those statements to their own destruction as they do other Biblical passages." Then also, Mohandas Gandhi seemed to take the Beatitudes as a plan of action, yet explicitly states in his autobiography why he rejects Christianity as his personal religion. Also, the end of "Job" where the God says "Job, tell your friends that I am angry with them because they spoke of me incorrectly." Yet, what Job's friends say are verses in the Bible.

That verse from Solomon comes to mind, "There are ways that seem good unto a man but the end thereof is death."

I am reminded of C.S. Lewis statement (paraphrased) - I believe that I am saved by the crucifixion, but as to how and why that is so, I cannot say.

Based on the above paraphrase, I think C.S. Lewis would agree with Kim.

Pelagius argued with Augustine that IF it were possible for the sin of one man, Adam, to condemn all future generations including those who never hear of Adam, then Christ's crucifixion should be able to save all, including those who never hear of Christ.

Then too, one must consider the force of "FOR my sins" i.e. did the Incarnation and Crucifixion come about as a result of the fallen human nature (which would make it a cause and effect), or is it more about the individual sins of all people past, present and future, come upon this crucified one in such a way that He who is without sin BECOMES sin itself.

Hmmm... suddenly, I wonder what Jesus would have done regarding 9/11 had He been president. Surely He would have said "if nominated I will not run and if elected I will not serve."

Well, then, what would a wise follower/imitator of Jesus done regarding 9/11. I wonder what Jimmy Carter would have done (and he is still alive to ask.)

There is the curious notion of "the unknown sin" in Eastern Orthodox Christianity (most evident in ancient daily prayers from the monastic tradition), versus a more Western notion of reason and consent being necessary prerequisites to guilt.
If I remember, the introduction to Job states that he sacrificed daily for his children lest mayhaps they had sinned unawares.

Now, inerrancy implies predication, something is asserted, and therefore something is comprehended and further there is only one correct way to comprehend it and perhaps countless ways to misunderstand it. But IF there can be an unknown sin, then what happens to the notion of inerrancy.

The possibility of an unknown sin goes right back to Solomon's "there are things which seemeth good unto a man, but the end thereof is death." Perhaps we intend only good when we formulate a new medicine, or write a new law, or engineer genes, yet unwittingly we cause great damage by our well intentioned actions.

Just the other day, I was thinking about that verse where Paul says that it is "shameful for a woman's voice to be heard" in a church, but then elsewhere we are told of a pious family with two daughters who are PROPHETESSES. Now, we do not see any women prophets in the subsequent history of the Church. One presumes that a prophet speaks not with his/her own voice, but with that of God, or at least a messenger of God.

Now, to top it all off, we know that the very first pages of the "New Testament" were the epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, written around 55A.D., which means that for a period of 15 or more years, people managed to be Christians without benefit of the New Testament.

Oh, by the way, Huckabee was asked by Newsweek about "biblical inerrancy" and he answered "Oh that just means if you follow the advice of the Bible you cannot go wrong."

I am reminded of that PRE-Babalonian captivity verse in Samuel which says that God commanded David to take a census count, and the POST-captivity verse which says that the devil tempted David to take a census. Now the Babalonians were very likely Zoroastrians seeing everything as a great struggle between a good Ahura-Mazda God and an evil Mainu devil figure. Then there are fundamentalists who feel they can reconcile such seeming conflicts of verse.

Ah, but Jesus DID write something in the sand, as the crowd debated who should cast the first stone at the adulteress. Some early Greek theologians speculate that Jesus was writing things in the sand, known only to various individuals in the crowd, reminding them of their own sins, and one by one, they walked away, until only the woman remained. If this is what happened then it would mean that Jesus is that "only knower of the heart."

I remember many of my teachers

2009-06-16T12:53:00.000-07:00

I can still remember each teacher's name from 1st grade on. Bless there souls, I am sure that some havel passed on by now.
1-Miss Duke
2.- Mrs. Napoli (she died of cancer when I was only in Junior High
3. Mrs. Legoullan
4. Miss Troy
5. Miss Troy (I had her 2 years in a row)
6. Mr. Carlyle Percival Aveni (the first male teacher I ever had.
7th grade was a drastic change of home room, and 6 periods a day. Miss Tranner was social Studies, Senior Robert Garofallo taught us Spanish. Mr. Spabo was Science. Carl Yohans was geometry, and I can still contact him in AOL!

In fact, I know Mr. Aveni lives in Milford Connecticut and I just discovered that he achieved a high rank in the masons, as "high priest" in 1974

http://www.gdoc.com/cgi-bin/_ram.cgi

The Whore Called War - Thomas Pynchon "Gravity's Rainbow"

2008-12-26T13:03:00.001-08:00

Sitaram: Ii spent all last night in Pal Talk chat... it was a room which discusses Islam, but run by Egyptian
Coptic Christians but, many were Arabic speakers

Sitaram: Pal Talk is amazing, with quality voice

Tehran_MD: ah wonderful

Sitaram: i spent some time in protestant and catholic chat rooms

Sitaram: oh, and an organization can pay to have a room open 24/7 but, if you dont pay, then your room is only open till the last person leaves it

Sitaram: but then, you must have a number of people as admins, to keep it orderly. So you must find folks in many time zones, because, part of the terms of use is that you will moderate such rooms
Sitaram: so, if you leave it unmoderated, and there is mischief, then, you may lose your privileges

Sitaram: oh, one AMAZING thing about pal talk, they have about 50 rooms just for the Kurds

Sitaram: the kurdish people are using it BIG TIME
Sitaram: I was shocked
Sitaram: i have never noticed a kurdish presence on internet
Sitaram: i am sure they have strong desires for political identity, independence, sovereignty

Tehran_MD: yes, but they wont be happier.if independent as a country.

Sitaram: that is quite understandable, looking at the centuries of their history

Tehran_MD: no natural resources.nothing for improvment

Sitaram: true, independence will not give them happiness, but, they desire it, as a matter of personal dignity, identity; it is only human

Tehran_MD: stupid.

Sitaram: although it is far better to be as Socrates, a "citizen of the world" and globally minded and multicultural and tolerant

Tehran_MD: yes

Sitaram: hmmm.... "the meek shall inherit the earth". Only just now does that phrase hit me with new meaning. It is something from Ingeel (Gospels) only just now does it dawn upon me, that if those meek enough to transcend local nationality, tribal identity and be global, transcultural

Sitaram: that is a kind of meekness. And, lacking such meekness, the world is destroyed in violence
Sitaram: most interesting
Sitaram: that is undoubtedly my great insight for today
Sitaram: there is some other good word for nationalism, but i cant remember, must google

Tehran_MD: oh interesting

Sitaram: i am searching now for synonyms

Sitaram: perhaps i am thinking of chauvenism

Tehran_MD: ah that is a right word for kurds.

Sitaram: yes! chauvinism is extreme and unreasoning partisanship on behalf of a group to which one belongs, especially when the partisanship includes malice and hatred towards a rival group.

Sitaram: one Pakistani psychotherapist on chowk.com (in Canada, in the diaspora) wrote an
article about how people must get beyond tribalism and embrace globalism

Sitaram: The term is derived from Nicolas Chauvin, a semi-mythical soldier under Napoleon Bonaparte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvinism

Tehran_MD: oh interesting really

Sitaram: are you able to access wikipedia in Iran?

Sitaram: wiki is so useful, i do hope it is not blocked

Tehran_MD: yes I am.

Sitaram: ah, wonderful!

Sitaram: as fareed zakaria of newsweek said, Iran has a young, virbrant population, open to the world

Sitaram: the world of ideas

Sitaram: he was host of foreignexchange.tv educational television broadcast
but he was replaced by Daljit Dhaliwaal who is an equally impressive intellectual

Sitaram: i rather imagine foreignexchange.tv is blocked
Sitaram: but perhaps not

Tehran_MD:

Sitaram: here is how i see it.....

Diversification and sectarianism are DEEPLY ingrained in the human psyche,.... and it was originally a
survival advantage for the species so that some would choose rainforest, others tundra, others the
desert, others seafaring

Tehran_MD: yes.different tastes.

Sitaram: so, because of our natural tendency to become diverse

Tehran_MD: that is beautiful isnt it

Sitaram: therefore, should one use weapons of mass destruction to eliminate all opposition, with genocide Sitaram: why, the remaining population would eventually become equally sectarian

Tehran_MD: I remember when I was 15
Tehran_MD: they took me to a
beautiful place .
Tehran_MD: because I was a brilliant
student.won science prize etc
Tehran_MD: and it was a very green
hill in the north of iran;.close to the
sea
Tehran_MD: but the thing is they

obliged us to wear similar clothes
Tehran_MD: I remember how it made

me angry
Tehran_MD: so even in a simple

matter like wearing clothes people

want to differ.,

Sitaram: so, if all the world, tomorrow, were to become say sunni, shia, sufi...
Sitaram: why in 100 years, there would be sectarian difference and more strife and violence
Sitaram: so, we must agree to differ
Sitaram: how interesting!
Sitaram: because, our expression of individuality, is an element of our identity
Sitaram: we validate our own existence, by our individualistic self expression
Sitaram: and, it is the very essence of free will choice

Tehran_MD: yes

Tehran_MD: what book are you

reading these days?

Sitaram: in abraham maslows pyramid

of the hierarchy of needs

Sitaram: i am reading Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Sitaram: he toured america around 1840
Sitaram: and wrote very insigtful observations about the form of government
Sitaram: and of course he was french
Sitaram: so, i had a much different

perspective

Tehran_MD:
Tehran_MD: tres bien
Sitaram: the expression "a shot heard round the world" pertains to both
French Revolution and American Revolution
Sitaram: freedom is begotten by violence, unfortunately
Sitaram: when shall we ever separate the wheat from the chaff, and have freedom without violence?

Tehran_MD: really?

Sitaram: well, look at history

Tehran_MD: I dont see any freedom

Sitaram: the French economist Proudhon, wrote "Property is theft"

Sitaram: but, stop and think, how France was in the 16th 17th century

Tehran_MD: ah you told me about it

Sitaram: there was the landed priviliged nobility class

Tehran_MD: so you are interested in politics these days?

Sitaram: and the surfs peasants who had nothing, and could never escape their status

Sitaram: well, in that context, one may easily view property as theft

Sitaram: but, in france or america today, property, ownership is a very different sort of thing

Sitaram: Henry David Thoreau was the very FIRST to use the expression "human rights"
in his essay on "Civil Disobedience"
Sitaram: how interesting, that the term did now arise from some scripture, or from some theologian
but from a secular humanist

Tehran_MD: hey can you recommend to me some books?

Sitaram: i recently made the argument that advances in the modern world may NOT be attributed to Christianity, as many right wing americans would claim...but to secular humanist philosophers, and
the framers of laws and constitutions

Sitaram: well, someone just gave me a book on Lincoln, published by CNN network, for the bicentenial
celebration

Tehran_MD: well am not much interested in politics.

Sitaram: Thomas Pynchons Gravity's Rainbow comes to mind, as a complex example of postmodernism
Sitaram: but, it is , though profound, somewhat risque in places

Sitaram: anything by Milan Kundera,

Tehran_MD: what is it about

Tehran_MD: I read kundra

Sitaram: well, Pynchon's opening line is "A missile rocket came screaming across the sky"
Sitaram: it is about London during the World war II bombings
Sitaram: and, the smoke trail arc of the bomb missiles, is what he calls "Gravity's Rainbow"
Sitaram: now, in the old testament bible, God, in anger, sends a flood to
kill all creatures, except for Noahs ark
Sitaram: and when the flood is over, a rainbow is a sign of God's peace (truce)
Sitaram: that God will never again destroy creatures with a flood
Sitaram: so the great irony of Gravity's Rainbow, is that this is a Rainbow
symbolizing human destruction

Sitaram: now, there is one passage, for example where Pynchon is really
refering to King Leopold of Belgium, and the mistreatment of the Belgian
Congo
Tehran_MD: aha

Sitaram: treating them as slaves and prostitutes

Sitaram: now, pynchon is often obscene... BUT, he uses the obscenity artistically, to make profound points.

For example, there is one passage where a woman, who is a dominatrix, summons a general (or
lieutenant), to come, and be her love slave, and do degrading things

Sitaram: BUT, you see, the woman is symbolic of WARFARE

Tehran_MD: is she?

Sitaram: so, he is writing about how WARFARE, has enslaved human spirit
Sitaram: and, just like a lover, who is drawn to be humiliated

Tehran_MD: why a woman is a symbol of warfare?

Sitaram: the military is drawn to this dominatrix woman WARFARE
aha, BECAUSE, when you understand the male vulnerability for
sexual activity then you have a metaphor
for the human vulnerability for violence, warfare, destruction

Sitaram: so, he likens warfare to a sexual passion
Sitaram: except it is not one which procreates,
Sitaram: it is one which degrades, destroys, humiliates
Sitaram: BUT, we willingly choose to humiliate ourselve, because of our passion/desire

Tehran_MD: I see
Sitaram: and it is so like Abu Graib, and the torture, the waterboarding....
Sitaram: the suspension of habeus corpus....

Tehran_MD: why you call it humiliation/

Sitaram: well, stop and think of the sado masochistic relationship
Sitaram: one person so obsessively desires the other
Sitaram: that they will pay any price to be with the other

Sitaram: now, in Pynchon's scene, the woman commands the man to do
something which is the most extreme form of degradation

Tehran_MD: is it?

Sitaram: and it is very disgusting, BUT pynchon WANTS us to be disgusted by war

Sitaram: well, you will be SHOCKED when i tell you what happens

Sitaram: the technical term is COPRAPHAGIA
Sitaram: phagia = eatiing
Sitaram: copra = excrement

Sitaram: but, you see, warfare IS as disgusting and unnatural as that
Sitaram: pynchon chooses the most repulsive act imaginable to drive
home his point about the evils of our passion for war

Sitaram: it is not at all about normal intercourse

Sitaram: and the army officer is SO EAGER to participate

Sitaram: now, obviously, such a passage is very scandalous, shocking

Sitaram: only if one can see the redeeming social value of the artists message, can one accept such a work

Sitaram: but, most definitely, pynchon is NOT a pornographer... but, a true novelist, and philosopher
who makes a radical social commentary

Sitaram: but, he is a total recluse he lives a few miles from me
in manhattan

Sitaram: but, he has never been photogrphed
Sitaram: except once, in his 20s

Tehran_MD: oh interesting

Sitaram: there are many websites about pynchon and gravitys rainbow
Sitaram: there are people who devote themselves to it, like a hobby, or cult
Sitaram: to analyze it, footnote

Sitaram: pynchon received some kind of pulitzer or nobel.... but he sent a
comedian to accept it in his place he would not appear in
public

Sitaram: and the comedian is someone i used to watch in the 1970s
Tehran_MD: haha
Tehran_MD: cute

Sitaram: who played an eccentric professor
Sitaram: and would appear on the late
night shows, Johnny Carson

Sitaram: the most beautiful novella is
pynchons "The Crying of Lot 49" Sitaram: which may be read in a weekend

Tehran_MD: what is it about?

Sitaram: and, in the first 3 pages, he describes a certain painting, and it is
one of the most beautiful passages of literature i have ever found

Tehran_MD: oh
Tehran_MD: am eager to read it
Tehran_MD: can you find that description online?

Sitaram: i am searching now
Tehran_MD: thank you
Sitaram: it will take some moments

http://www.turingmachine.org/remedios/picture11.html

Sitaram: that is the painting by a woman in mexico city
Sitaram: by Remedios Varo
Sitaram: Bordando el Manto Terrestre / Embroidering Earths Mantle ', 1961

Sitaram: that is what pynchon writes about

Tehran_MD: yes I saw it
Tehran_MD: beautiful.insprinig

Sitaram:

http://www.bookandreader.com/forums/author-discussion/1837-thomas-pynchon-2.html

Sitaram: that is what i wrote
Sitaram: i will email
Tehran_MD: thank you
Sitaram: there, pynchons page on painting is emailed to you

Tehran_MD: thank you so much
Sitaram: so, you must try to read "Crying of Lot 49" novella

Paltalk Christian Chat Christmas Eve

2008-12-25T08:32:00.001-08:00

Sitaram: one problem about the notion of A RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS, is that in the first 1000 years of Christianity, the concept of the importance of a RELATIONSHIP with Jesus was never mentioned, nor did martin Luther or John Calvin of the reformation speak in terms of a RELATIONSHIP with Jesus

Sitaram: the theology which emphasized RELATIONSHIP with Jesus is only very recent, since early 20th century

Sitaram: rapture is never explicitly mentioned in king james translation...

Sitaram: but, Jesus told one man that he could gain eternal life by observing the commandments

Sitaram: the very first pages of the new testament was an epistle by Paul, around the year 55 A.D., so that means that for the first 20 years, the Christians did NOT have the Gospels, or Epistles, but only the Old Testament

Sitaram: actually Jesus said, you are my FRIEND IF you do as I say... so, that sounds like works to me...

Sitaram: Paul said 'WORK OUT your salvation with fear and trembling", so, if the TV ministers are right, and you just say the magic words, and get eternal security of salvation... then, why would you need to WORK OUT your salvation with fear and trembling

Sitaram: the vision of prophet Ezekiel, the resurrection of the dry bones, suggests that a physical body is necessary in the resurrection

Sitaram: it is stressed that Jesus, after the resurrection, ate fish and honey,.... to stress the fact that Jesus had a physical body

Sitaram: the Jehovah's Witnesses say that there was no physical body, only a spirit

Sitaram: i am just contrasting with regard to physical body in resurrection

Sitaram: vision of Ezekiel, and Jesus eating fish and honey

Sitaram: Peter II epistle says something very interesting "Paul has said some things which are difficult to understand, and those who are weak in mind twist and distort them to their own destruction, as they do many other Biblical passages"

Sitaram: Paul said that he disciplines his flesh, lest, having led others , he should LOSE his own salvation

Sitaram: for example, the KJV correctly translates from Revelation "and TIME SHALL BE NO MORE", BUT the NIV mistranslates the Greek as "and there shall be no more delay"

bobbylips: i like this song

Sitaram: the Greek is Kai Xronos ouketi estai

Sitaram: which can only mean that time is no longer

Sitaram: so, it is just like quantum and relativity

Sitaram: time itself ceases

Sitaram: and, the heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll.... i.e. space ceases

Sitaram: that phrase about "rolled up like a scroll" appears only in one other place, in Isaiah i think

Sitaram: so, it is describing something similar to Stephen Hawking in "A Brief History of Time"

bobbylips: Isaiah 34:4 And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

Sitaram: so, time and space cease to exist

Sitaram: KJV correctly translates "time shall be no longer"

Sitaram: NIV is incorrect in saying "there shall be no more delay"

Sitaram: which implies that temporality continues

Sitaram: for the first 1000 years of Christianity, the Greek orthodox totally integrated old testament and new testament into one understanding

Sitaram: roman catholic theology is significantly different from greek orthodox, and Luther and Calvin of the reformation are radically diffent innovations

Rambo-55: DIOGR ARE YOU SAVED BY JESUS CHRIST OR ALL THESE DOCTOLOGIES OF THE DIFFERENT DENOMINATIONS.....

Sitaram: that is one sectarian theory

Sitaram: consider charles stanley's doctrine of eternal security of salvation, which is not accepted by all protestant denominations

Sitaram: but is severly criticized

Rambo-55: DIOGR OSAS IS REJECTED BY A LOT OF PEOPLE BUT CHARLES STANLEY IS NOT ONE OF THEM....

Sitaram: and, the calvinist notion of limited atonement is rejected by Baptists and others

Sitaram: so, bottom line, it is naive to speak as if there are not many sectarian differences between denominations, and to claim to be the ONE TRUE sort of Christian, who is beyond sectarianism

Rambo-55: WHO CARE WHAT THEY THINK THE BIBLE IS THE TRUTH NOT THE CALVINIST OR THE BAPTISTS OR ANY OTHER DENIMINATION OR CULT...OK???

Sitaram: i mean, if it makes you feel good (and obviously it makes many feel good) then you can say OH WE ARE TRUE Christians, and saved,.... but, you are not dealing with actual history, or the facts of the many denominations today

Rambo-55: WE ARE NOT SAVED BY HOW GOOD SOMETHING FEELS THAT IS NEW AGE....WE ARE SAVED BY GRACE THRU FAITH IN JESUS CHRIST...ONE WAY....SO YOU PEOPLE TALK AND DREAM ALL YOU WANT THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY TO SALVATION...

Sitaram: why does JEsus tell a parable about people who come to him at the judgment and say "Lord Lord, we worked miracles in your name", and Jesus says, "go away I never knew you"

Sitaram: How can you understand that parable, and the others, who are totally shocked when he says "i was naked and clothed me..." and they even say "when did we do all these things"

Sitaram: surely, the first group who said "Lord Lord", were confessing Jesus in their lives, and believed themselves saved...

Sitaram: why does Jesus describe the way as "straight and narrow, and FEW find it"

Rambo-55: THAT WAS IN THE BEATITUDES THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT AND IT WAS JESUS TELLING THE CHRISTIANS HOW THEY SHOULD SERVE HIM....

Rambo-55: WHY DONT YOU GET A BIBLE AND READ IT??? AND WHAT ARE YOU ANYWAY DIOGR ANYTHING????

Sitaram: well, I cannot imply ignore 2000 years of history and scholarship, and simply go along with your notions...

Sitaram: why does Paul say "work out your salvation with fear and trembling", if salvation is such an easy matter

Sitaram: why does epistle of II Peter say there are some who are weak in mind, and twist and distort scriptures to their own destruction

Sitaram: you see, you cannot deal with my questions intellectually, with scholarship, you can only attack or criticize me on a personal level, which is called AD HOMINEM

Sitaram: so, what do you think of Huckabee,.... is he a Christian, is he saved?

clearkat555: father come and spend time with us your children

Sitaram: i mean, he was an ordained pastor, and then he ran for presidential nomination, and you had a chance to hear him speak

Rambo-55: SEE YOU CANNOT TELL US IF YOU ARE A BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN EITHER SO WHO ARE YOU TO CONDEMN US SO DIO DO YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO ANS THE ROOM ARE YOU A BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN...???YOU LOVE TO TRY TO IMPRESS US WITH YOUR IGNORANCE....

Sitaram: so, can you say of ANY OTHER PERSON that you know, that they are saved?

Sitaram: IF you say NO, then I shall ask you how you can be so certain that you are saved

Sitaram: since, during the first 1000 years of Christianity, no one ever spoke in such terms, of "being saved"

clearkat555: born again dio born again

Sitaram: this is all a very recent theology, that began in the mid 19th century

Sitaram: but you see, the problem is, a lot of this is just rhetoric, words, slogans repeated over and over... it is not careful scholarship

Sitaram: well, i thought you were suppose to LOVE your enemies

Rambo-55: BYE DIOGR YOU MUST BE A MUSLIM......ON IGNORE...

Sitaram: so, i am not even your enemy, yet , you are unable to love me

Sitaram: but, you have to WORK OUT your salvation

Sitaram: what i personally believe is not germane

Sitaram: not pertinent

Anne49MI: dodging your question

bobbylips: diogr...work out...i reason out a math problem 2+2=4...same with our salvation...we are to reason it out...know what Christ has done on the cross for us

Rambo-55: WE DONT NEED TO WORK OUT OUR SALVATION IT IS A FREE GIFT OF GOD NOT OF WORKS LEST ANY SHOULD BOAST.....

Sitaram: you must justify your beliefs with reasoned arguments from scripture and history

Sitaram: and i doubt that many people can do that

Sitaram: you are totally missing my point

Sitaram: what i personally do or do not believe is not the issue

Rambo-55: HE DONT HAVE A POINT HE MUST BE A MUSLIM.....

Sitaram: the issue is, can you defend your beliefs without making some personal referance to me

Sitaram: but, all that many people understand is ad hominem attack

bobbylips: certainly d

clearkat555: rambo no one of those educated kind

HumanMaik: High Leveled Secret discution going on here or it is hokus pohus

Sitaram: ok, let me explain more clearly.... let us pretend, that you find a bottle in the ocean, with some difficult questions about your beliefs... and you must write a book, to answer those questions

Sitaram: so, you have no individual to question, as to their personal beliefs, or their morality

bobbylips: i would show you scripture

HumanMaik: no new Bible will be Written .....

Rambo-55: RIGHT ON MILES THIS IS UNCALLED FOR..... DOT HIM AND LET HIM LEARN BY LISTENING HE ISNT HERE TO SERVE THE LORD ANYWAY....

bobbylips: yes clear...two are set up...i'm just waiting to hear the pop

clearkat555: bobby i hate traps but i hate mice more

Sitaram: so, you must take those questions, those problems, and you must write a book, like Martin Luther, or Aquinas, or Augustine.... and future generations must read your book, and be convinced

Sitaram: but, i dont think you can write that book

bobbylips: ...why would i want to write a book...the bible is enough

Sitaram: in otherwords, you must be able to defend your beliefs, which is what Paul had to do in the Roman world

bobbylips: i would just point them in the direction of the scripture

Sitaram: yes, but each of the hundreds of denominations understand those scriptures very differently

Rambo-55: WE DO NOT NEED TO DEFEND THE WORD OF GOD... BUT YOU NEED TO DEFEND YOUR IGNORANCE AND YOU WILL STILL GO TO HELL....

HumanMaik: nonesensence

Sitaram: so, how do you go about loving your enemy

rpmark5: hey sun i got the big boot uugh

clearkat555: the word can stand on its own

bobbylips: by sharing the truth with them

Sitaram: i am not your enemy, yet you seem to hate me simply because i dont agree with everything you say

Sitaram: so, many have ignored me, perhaps

HumanMaik: no need to hate, just neclect your opponents

bobbylips: ...now you are being presumptuous

Sitaram: someone once said to me "i have to LOVE my enemies, but i dont have to LIKE them"

Sitaram: it is like that question "but who is my neighbor"

Sitaram: but, you see, all you understand is how to criticize ME as an individual, which is argumentum ad hominem (against the person)... but you do not have the ability to defend your beliefs on the basis of scripture and history

On the Nature of Anarchy

2008-11-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

http://www.scribd.com/doc/338338/Edmund-Leach-Political-Systems-of-Highland-Burma-A-Study-of-Kachin-Social-Structure-introduction

For years, I naively assumed that "anarchy" meant the total absence of law, order, government. Then I read that in the Bible, the Prophet Samuel advocate a kind of anarchy when he cautioned regarding the drawbacks of choosing a king, as the other nations had. It struck me that the opening scene of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai described a feudal time of anarchy, where each clan or village was on its own, to secure defense and justice. In these times, the tribal regions and clan justice in places like Afghanistan/Pakistan seem to me to be that sort of anarchy. And the opening testimony of the introduction (above) speaks of negotiating an alliance with another clan. This reminds me of the times of Prophet Mohammad, when someone would seek the protection of a clan, as client, and where blood revenge was a major deterrent to homicide. Am I mistaken in my notions regarding the nature of anarchy?

In a desire to highlight some differences between our culture, and Arab cultures, one journalist remarked that in an a Muslim society, people's very first thought in any situation, would likely be "is it Haram or Halal (forbidden or permitted under Sharia).

I suppose one great touchstone of any society is the degree of stability and also longevity. We should easily be able to point to the most stable and enduring of cultures in history, as well as the most volatile, much as we can rank the elements in chemistry, from most to least stable.

...

I am thinking about Karen Armstrong's "A Short History of Islam." People who lacked a strong tribe or clan, or a strong defense, would forge an alliance with a strong tribe or clan, and become their client.

When the Shah of Iran fell, and the Ayatollah Komeini came to power, one change enacted was to lower the age of marriage for girls from 14 to nine, since this is the age of Aiyesha, when the Prophet Mohammad took her in marriage. I asked an engineer acquaintance in Tehran if he ever saw a nine year old bride. He said that in the cities, one would see brides as young as 13 or 14, but, only amongst the nomads would one see a nine year old bride. It occurs to me that, from ancient times, the exchange of a bride between families was one way to form a strong bond, an alliance, to to achieve a greater degree of political stability. If this is true, then, the ethics of the transaction, the moral justification, is a political consideration, rather than some subjective individual consideration of the bride or her desires, or her capacity to make choices and give informed consent.

...

Imagine, the numerous tribes of native Americans, living for millenia in this form of tribal anarchy, some loosely associated, but most not associated at all. Justice was maintained by custom and oral tradition, and not by the written word, interpreted by some organized body of authority.

...

I see the benefits of the tribal life of the native Americans to be benefits for the species or group as a whole, in a system where the individual's interests are subordinate. The group as a whole remains very hardy, with little need of medical science or antibiotics, but an individual may suffer greatly. In our modern, technological society, the comfort of each individual is maximized at the expense of the robustness of the species as a whole, since we become ever increasingly dependent upon science and medicine to survive and propagate.

...

Let us be fanciful and conjure some hypothetical situation, in ancient history, where the natives of the Americas foresee the coming of the European, and realize that their entire way of life shall be destroyed; and that they shall be enslaved by their invaders. Surely, the North American natives would consider their culture and life style to be far superior to that of the invading Europeans. The natives would most likely see the concept of private property as a perversion; and see monarchy and church as the enemy of natural liberty. Furthermore, let us imagine that the native North Americans possessed some biological weapon, to which they are naturally immune, but which would be utterly lethal to the invading Europeans. Certainly, the natives would feel it their righteous moral duty, both to themselves, and to the plant and animal kingdom under their stewardship, to methodically destroy the races of Europe and Asia, in a mass genocide.

Whenever we see an evil of the magnitude of, say, Hitler and the Nazis, then, we do not find it strange at all that a pastor such as Bonhoeffer (author of The Cost of Discipleship with its concept of Cheap Grace), should attempt an assassination.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cost_of_Discipleship

I see ethics/morality as relative, and not absolute. Many feel a desparate need to cloak duty in absolute terms of some divine scripture, or, in the case of someone like Kant, in axiomatic principles.

But, if we look at the logic of a Nixon or Bush, who sees themselves as heroes, defending the very culture itself against some demonic enemy, then, any injustice, however monstrous, becomes dignified and respectful as a means to an end, in the face of some absolute morality.

Under normal circumstances, we see both suicide and genocide as morally repugnant. In a curious way, suicide is genocide turned inside out. Each tactic has the goal to make the adversary disappear.

When the entire human species, in prehistoric times, is a mere million, then the first mitzvah or commandment becomes "Be fruitful and multiply." Yet, China, faced with demographic

In 70C.E. the Jews, besieged at Masada, saw suicide as the only option, and an acceptable, honorable option, when faced with capture by the Roman forces.

Would the Athenians have hesitated to annihilate the Persians, if they had the technological means?

Why Me? Why Not Me?

2008-11-09T09:14:00.000-08:00

We so often hear someone afflicted with misfortune exclaim "Why me?" Less frequently, and in a less obvious fashion, people with some great unfulfilled desire will, in so many words, say "Why not me?" Why don't I win the Lotto? The key word in these two questions is obviously "ME". Or is it so obvious? For the majority of people, the significant word is "WHY" and they take the word "me" for granted as a given. What I am trying to get at by mentioning the word "me" is an exploration of the illusion of "self" and the personal which gives rise to the question "why," which underscores the desperate frustration and disappointment of our unfilled desires and expectations.

Let us imagine a beautiful summer day. We gaze at the blue sky and notice a number of white clouds. We see those clouds as "INDIVIDUAL" clouds; that is, we impose upon them in our imagination separate unique identities, we count and number them (which implies separation and individuality) and we may even go further in our imagination and see them shaped as certain animals or objects, thus endowing them with characters and attributes and personalities. If we were to ascend in a plane or balloon then as we approached higher and higher to a particular cloud it would at some point lose its shape and character and uniqueness and, as we entered into it, would become for our perception no longer a white and fluffy shape but a gray, damp fog which would surround us and obscure our vision. Yet, whether we behold from afar or near or within, we are never conscious of the individual water molecules and dust particles which actually comprise the cloud nor of the wind which gives it shape and a life of its own.

Any cloud, whether a cumulus cloud on a summer day, or a nebula of galactic proportions, has a certain overall temperature which we can measure. And yet we know that some of the molecules in that cloud (or even in the air of the room in which we sit) are extremely slow and cold, of a low energy, while others are extremely hot and excited, of a high energy. The temperature of the cloud or our room is a composite of all the molecules. In fact, in a sense, room-temperature itself is an illusion. If we were to centrifuge the air in our room, and concentrate all the low energy molecules, they would be cold enough to freeze and form ice, while a concentration of the high energy molecules would cause steam and be hot enough to burn us. What if each molecule in the air were a personality saying "Why me?" Why am I a cold low energy molecule? Why am I not a high energy molecule? The reality is that each molecule passes at various times through high-energy states and low-energy states.

It is the dollar tickets of millions of unlucky losers that make one lucky winner. We understand objectively that the very nature of a Lotto is that only one in millions can win it, because of the odds and statistics and mathematics inherent in the process, yet we cannot understand why WE PERSONALLY are not that one who is lucky and wins, though we fully realize that in some LOTTO heaven, where EVERYONE wins and hits the jackpot, why the process is rendered meaningless and unfeasible. We can have ONE Bill Gates or Rockefeller per country, per century, but it defies the laws of economics for everyone to be opulently wealthy. The nature of economics and world resources cannot support such a heavenly vision of prosperity. It takes millions of loyal subjects to make one King, one Queen, one Throne. There are no rivers of honey and milk and wine in the real world, only in the imagination and in hallucinations. We understand objectively that life is not possible without the random chances which cause mutations (both beneficial and detrimental) and malfunction and misfortune and illness and death, yet we fail to understand when we ourselves become the victim of that random process of chance. Why was I born blind? Why did I develop cancer? Why did my kidneys stop functioning? Why me?

A beautiful statue such as Michelangelo's Pieta has a character and a personality and a uniqueness all its own and yet for millennia that statue remained "hidden" within a huge block of marble, until Michelangelo's skillful hands chiseled away all the marble which "IS NOT" the statue. When we view the statue in a museum, we are like someone on the ground perceiving the clouds in the "PERSONAL mode". When we think in terms of the huge block of marble concealing the Pieta (and countless other statues) in potentiality, then we are perceiving or conceiving of the Pieta and the marble in the "IMPERSONAL mode".

Each of us is an individual unique character or personality with gifts and shortcomings and a predictable nature of behaviors. But we are also like dust particles and molecules comprising a particular society and culture and nation, whether that is the USA or Iraq or the Australian Bush. Furthermore, like the cloud, we are comprised of a countless myriad of cells, molecules, electrons and quarks and muons which behave as if they are quite unaware of the person which they comprise. In fact molecules are constantly entering and leaving our body so that every 7 years we are not the same person "materially," since so many molecules have been replaced. Often we are unaware of the greater society, nation, culture, world which is comprised of so many and of which we are but an infinitesimal part.

Sometimes we focus in so much upon the "why me" of a loved one's death, or the affliction of a chronic illness which causes blindness or paralysis that we miss the "bigger picture" of life and existence and the universe. We become so focused that we are in a different sense unfocused since we loose sight of so many good things for the sake of a few bad things.

I know of a case of a woman who in old age was afflicted with a stroke and left paralyzed. She literally spent the last year of her life, her every waking moment, constantly screaming "Why, why, die, die!" Life is not heaven and is not of our own making, but sometimes hells are our own creation.

When we view God as personal, then it is only natural that we assume some relationship with God. God becomes our friend and heavenly father whom we look to for all our needs. Or when we are disappointed then the personal God becomes for us a cruel and sadistic prankster who constantly disappoints us and then sits back laughing in amusement. God can even assume a devil's mask of punisher and tormentor, angered by our sins, or possibly simply angered because we did not sufficiently "BELIEVE" in Him or pray in a certain fashion or bow in the correct direction. Perhaps each of us IS God if only in the sense that we impose such roles and natures upon God and give God a certain character and nature and personality. We are a reflection of God and God is a reflection of us. Psalm 19 curiously expresses this phenomenon of Divine Reciprocity.

In order to explore the thoughts of Psalm 19, I shall now quote an extensive passage from

Forgiveness and the Amish - Page 314

==========================

(beginning of excerpt):

Forgiveness" IS the proverbial 'light at the end of the tunnel', at least for the Amish.

It is their hope that by cultivating a forgiving nature in themselves, that they will one day enjoy God's forgiveness.

I think it is Psalm 18 which has a very interesting verse:

"God repaid me in accordance with my righteousness, according to the cleanliness of my hands before His eyes. With the devout You acted devoutly, with the wholehearted man You acted wholeheartedly, with the pure You acted purely, and with the crooked You acted perversely."

God is sort of like a mirror, reflecting back to us what we ourselves are, or have become, through our free will choices.

A mirror reflects. Meditation is often called "reflection". And a "reflex" is an action which we do not even have to think about because it arises from our nature.

If we truly see God as merciful and forgiving towards us, it is only because we see REFLECTED back at us our own merciful and forgiving, patient, long-suffering nature which we have painstakingly cultivated in the sufferings of this fire of adversity which we call life.

One of Socrates' favorite sayings in the Dialogues of Plato is:

"Chalapa ta kala" which means "Beautiful/good/noble things are difficult.

You have touched upon the very essence of what is so difficult about forgiveness of one's enemies.

The ability to forgive, taken to its extreme, to forgive even the most vicious enemy and the most heinous monster of a criminal, reaches almost supernatural proportions. Whatever faults or shortcoming one might see in Christianity as it is practiced by the hundreds upon hundreds of sectarian groups, one must always (as Gandhi did) see the divine aspect of the words of Christ and the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. When we have more than ample incomes, it is a small thing to give a few dollars to a homeless person, or even thousands of dollars to a charity, which will also provide some sort of tax write-off.

But the widow in the parable (the "widows mite") who had only one small coin (called a "mite," similar to our 'nickel' or 'dime') to her name, and contributed it to the Temple, gave all that she had, and the magnitude of her gesture did not go unrecognized.

Of course, if "forgiveness" is not "your cup of tea," then perhaps Christianity is not for you. But that is why (at least in my mind) there is such a "smorgasbord" of religions set out before us. There are other religions which do not stress forgiveness or "loving ones enemy" (in the interest of political correctness, I shall refrain from naming those religions, but you can figure it out for yourself).

In the Gita, Lord Krsna says that different people worship different things, some worship ghosts, some demons, some ancestors, some demi-Gods, and some say "Vasudeva is all". But God is a good sport (at least in the Gita) and receives all forms of worship, even from those ignorant of His nature. Furthermore, Krsna says "Whatever form they choose to worship, I grant unto them UNWAVERING DEVOTION".

Sometimes we choose to see this unwavering devotion as something else, and call it "pig-headed-ness". But there is some sublime mystical reason why there is evil in the world, and why there are people who worship devils but call them God, and why each of us does whatever we are habitually drawn to do. Everyone is born into this world (I believe again and again) to work out some kind of issues. Some work them out as criminals, prostitutes, and drug addicts. Others work them out as Mother Theresa, Gandhi and the Dali Lama.

(end of excerpt)

==========================

Can we find it within ourselves to forgive ourselves for what we are and what we are not, to forgive God for what God is not, to forgive the Lotto for it's mathematical stinginess and subatomic molecules and life itself for its less than perfect nature? Perfection is only in the imagination.

In Tulsidas' Ramayan, even the Rakshasa demons and Ravanna have their own religion. In the Gospels, Satan quotes the Bible chapter and verse. There is even honor among thieves.

The Jewish people have had great difficulty in reconciling the horror of the Nazi Holocaust with their notion of a good God and his chosen people. Some Jews have abandoned their religious practice and their belief in God out of their anger and bitterness over the Holocaust and its cruel concentration camps. We can cease to believe in the existence of God and yet continue to feel anger and bitterness towards something or someone which we claim does not exist.

Perhaps an ore of silver of gold, if it had consciousness, would view the heat of the refiner's furnace as a torment. In one instructive story from religious tradition, the ore takes on a personality and cries out to the refiner's apprentice saying "Oh, when will this terrible inferno end? (Oh, why me)?" The apprentice answers, "When you soften and melt and become so pure and tranquil and shining that the Master sees His face in your reflection, then and only then will the process of refinement be complete."

List of Virtues in Plato's Republic

2008-10-09T08:55:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours in Philosophy Chat forum.

An older crowd (30+) was present.

I mentioned a strange remark I once read, a passing remark, by Kojeve in his "Introduction to the Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology".

Kojeve wrote "... Plato (who believed that virtue can be taught)..."

I deduced, from the tenor of Kojeve's remark, that Kojeve himself did not believe that virtue could be taught.

The question has stayed with me through the years.

I feel that, as I examine my own life, I have "learned" certain virtues that were not natively present within me.

One virtue which has been imposed forcefully from without is neatness or orderliness. I was never neat or orderly by nature, but many different life experiences and acquaintanceships trained me to be neat and orderly to the degree that I now am.

In Philosopohy chat, I offered the example of the Piranha tribe in the Brazilian rain forests. They are the only aboriginals who have vigorously resisted assimilation into European society, and have withdrawn deeper into the rain forests, clinging to their unusual bird-like language, and refusing to use any other language. They have certain virtues or values, learned from their parents, and preserved as a cultural tradition. But they have no words for numbers, except "more" and "less". They have no fixed words for color, and when questioned, explain that color is of no importance ("who cares"). They do not cling to possessions or handicraft, beyond the bare essentials of cooking pots and a few tools. They have absolutely no creation myths. When questioned, they simply say "things have ALWAYS been this way."

Study of the Piranha awakens us to the understanding that certain of our notions, such as number or color, are learned rather than inherent in some a priori fashion.

One day I was walking by a Japanese restaurant, and I saw the owner
in the front devotedly tending to a beautiful little garden which he
had created. I paused to engage him in some conversation and ask his
views on life, the soul, and it's future. His answer was very simple.
He shrugged and said,

"I do not believe that there is anything more than this life, this
moment, these few years, this accidental existence and persona of
coincidence: consciousness by chance, and then it is over. But THAT
very impermanence is why one must make the very most of it while it
lasts. One must seek virtue and perfection, even though it is
transient and goes unnoticed and unrewarded, for without virtue,
excellence, this transience and impermanence has NO value. Perfection
is its own recompense. Beauty needs no adornment."

My favorite line in Milton is where Satan says "Evil, be thou my good."
This devilish aesthetic becomes interesting when examined in the light of
Socrates' proposition that "all by nature desire the good, and no one
willingly chooses what they consider to be not good", along with Plato's
Euthypro problem, "is the good good by fiat simply because it is what God
desires, or does God desire what is good for some inherent quality
residing in goodness (or substitute virtue, morality, holiness, or
righteousness for the word good,if you prefer).

I was a great fan of the cartoon series "Earthworm Jim". In one episode,
through some bizarre radioactive accident, Earthworm Jim spawns an evil
twin. They are about to battle to the death. The evil twin gives a speech
first, boasting essentially the boast of Milton's Satan, that he hates
everything that is good, and likes everything that is not good." So,
Earthworm Jim (who is not always the brightest of worms) reasons, "Well,
winning is good, and losing is bad, and since you like what is bad and hate
what is good, then surely I shall defeat you.) Of course, we know that our
hero, Jim, proceeds to dispatch his evil twin in no time flat.

To read a Platonic dialogue is to watch ideas in motion, not just any motion, but the special motion which takes place when giving birth. Socrates at times describes himself as a mid-wife, helping minds to give birth. There is a wonderful adjective for this role which Socrates plays; maiutic.

Socrates has two different nick-names in the dialogues; sting-ray and gadfly. In ancient Greek, the word for sting-ray is Nar-kay, or Narke, which is the root word for narcotic.

A sting from the tail of the sting-ray causes the body to become numb. Socrates was called narke because of his ability through a series of questions and answers, to numb his opponent into a motionless cul-de-sac, called in Greek "a-poria" which means "no way out."

Now, the gadfly nick-name denoted the very opposite of numbing. The gadfly, through its bites, could sting the lethargic horse of the state into motion. Socrates also stings up those who feel hopeless by "mytho-poiesis" or making a story or parable to give them a feeling of what it shall be like when they finally come to understand.

Someone who presumes to know is smug and complacent and does not seek or inquire. But also, those who have lost hope and given up do not seek or inquire.

Notice how these two opposite qualities of motion and rest are united in the one person of Socrates. We may better appreciate the conflict between motion and rest if we consider that Aristotle speaks of an "unmoved mover" as that one principle which somehow must exist as a source for everything else.

To understand Socrates' narcotic strategy, we must understand his theory of knowledge.

Socrates had a woman named Diotema as a mentor who instructed him in a theory of knowledge which is likened to a ladder of divine ascent, which describes an inductive ascent from love of objects, to sexual love, to love of mathematics, and finally to the love of the EIDOS of justice or beauty.

Socrates states that "God does not love wisdom, because he possesses it." Remember that the word "philo-sophia" means "love of wisdom." If we have something or believe that we possess it, then we do not go in search for it. We are smug and confident that the wisdom is ours. This smugness can be a form of illness, and the medicine to restore us to a state which is suitable for inquiry is refutation through a syllogistic chain of questions and answers which ultimately forces us to admit that we do not really possess true knowledge about a particular matter like justice or happiness.

We may see this theory of knowledge or dialectic illustrated in a well-known Sufi teaching story, made popularized in the many books of Idres Shah.

Nasrudin is a comical, sophomoric (or wise-fool) character. One day, someone sees Nasrudin frantically searching the street outside his house. When asked what has been lost, Nasrudin explains that he has lost his keys. When asked where he lost them, he explains that he lost them in the house. When asked why he is searching in the street for something lost in the house, Nasrudin explains that it is dark inside the house, and there is more light outside in the street.

Abraham Heschel illustrates something of this problem, in volume one of "The Prophets" when he writes (paraphrased) "We must learn to understand what it is that we see, and not merely see only that which we understand." Our compulsion is to search where the light is better, even if that means looking in the wrong place. Abraham Maslow put it differently: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem tends to become a nail."

Most of what I explain here will be things that I learned at St. John's College in Annapolis in the 1960s. It is worth mentioning that the teachers there prefer to call themselves "tutors" rather than "professors", in honor of this Socratic method, since a "professor" professes to already know the truth, and will convey it to students in a lecture and for a price, much like the rhetorician Gorgias in this dialogue. The term "tutor" better reflects the role of a mid-wife who aids the student during this maiutic process of giving birth.

I would like to focus in quite a bit on this notion of uniting opposites, such as motion and rest.

Socrates and Odysseus share something interesting in common. Homer describes Odysseus bodily build as a paradigm of this uniting of opposites. Odysseus had very short legs, so that when he stood amongst the other Achaians, he was the shortest. But Odysseus had an unusually long trunk such that, when he sat in council, his head was above all the rest, and his words poured forth like a flurry of snow.

Socrates unites outer homeliness with inner beauty.

Rabelais made reference to this quality of Socrates in his Prologue.

Regarding Socrates' homeliness, I am reminded of that verse from Isaiah Ch. 53,2 "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, [there is] no beauty that we should desire him."

This harmonizing or balancing of opposites is a very ancient notion. The Greeks called it the golden mean. The Buddha called it the middle way. According to legend, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha (a term meaning "Awakened One"), had tried every form of philosophy and religion, and was meditating near a river's bank, close to death from fasting. A boat passed by on the river, and Siddhartha could hear the voice of a master musician instructing his disciple as the young student strung an instrument: "Do not leave it loose, or it shall not sound, nor tighten it overmuch lest the string break." Suddenly, Siddhartha realized the wisdom of "the middle way", the mean between extremes.

I realize that I might appear to you to be jumping about a bit with all these topics, but you must remember that when I read the Gorgias, all of these notions are within me at once, as a gestalt, and I perceive the dialogue through this lens of experience.

With regard to the similarity between Socrates and Odysseus, I want to make a certain point about the position of Odysseus' ship in Homer's "Catalog of Ships" in Book II of the Iliad. I am going to use the figures at this url to assist me:

Notice how the 12 ships of Odysseus are in the exact middle of this line-up of ships, as a mean or balance between extremes.

At one extreme of the line-up of ships along the shore is Ajax, who is so massive, that his epithet is bulwark or "wall".

Achilles epithet is "swift-footed".

Achilles and Ajax possess opposite virtues which are difficult to unite or harmonize; Ajax' size, and Achilles' speed.

We see Odysseus as a mean between these two extremes of opposite but necessary virtues.

Once, in Book Eight of the Iliad, we find one verse which clarifies the logic of positioning in the catalog of ships:

Again, in Book 11, we are reminded of this same geometry:

Ajax, who is massive but slower, is placed closest to Troy so that, during an attack, the approaching enemy will first encounter Ajax' massive strength.

Achilles is positioned furtherest from Troy, since his virtue of speed allows him to meet the approaching enemy before anyone else.

Plato stresses this role of Odysseus as a harmonious balance in The Republic

I suppose one might say that the assortment of possible lives for rebirth, spread out before the souls which have drawn lots, resembles the assortment of facts and phenomena in reality, spread out for the mind to choose, or the assortment of careers spread out before students.

But it is not the phenomenon or fact which casts the mind into a certain state, or the career which shapes the student, but rather it is the harmony of the mind, the balance of the student, which conditions the choice of attention and specialization. Hence the task of the Socratic method is not to offer facts upon a platter, or sheet music, but rather to fine tune and harmonize the mind of the student as a process rather than a destination.

It is not the scenery which colors the vision, but rather the harmony or focus of vision which determines the scenery.

What follows may seem a non sequitur, but it is good for the reader to have some insight into the educational philosophy of the college which influenced me; a college which attempts to put into practice the maiutic process harmonization which I describe.

The Motto of St. John's College Motto

Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque ( I make free men from children by means of books and a balance)

This metaphor of our education as a lens which shapes our vision reminds me of a true story which I entitled "Eighth Grade Existentialism"

When studying Plato, it may be helpful to realize that, in the 20th century, Kurt Godel the mathematician was essentially a Platonist and viewed number as having some independent and mystical existence, along with Einstein, who was a personal friend of Godel. Opposite to the Platonist is the empiricist and positivist, who see number as a human instrument or construction, and a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Remember that over the entrance to Plato's Lyceum was written "Let no one enter here who has not mastered Euclid's Elements of Geometry".

After this long prelude or prologue, we may begin to look at the Gorgias itself.

Gorgias is an orator and rhetorician. Socrates and his companion arrive late upon the scene, just missing Gorgias' demonstration of expository speaking.

We should keep in mind that one of the charges against Socrates at his trial, in addition to corrupting the youth of Athens, was that he taught people the art of "making the weaker argument defeat the stronger."

I sometimes wonder if our contemporary educational system isn't corrupting the youth by heaping scores of sheet music before the symphony and never attempting to tune the instruments in the orchestra. Society shall prepare and drink its own cup of hemlock for that crime.

An offer is made to have Gorgias repeat his performance for Socrates' benefit, but Socrates convinces Gorgias to enter into a simpler dialogue of brief questions and answers. Socrates gleefully compliments Gorgias on how well he complies with the rules of this simple form of dialogue.

Socrates is leading Gorgias into his dialectic trap. I once saw a cartoon in a magazine depicting a dog, who has laid down a trail of cat food, leading to an open dryer, hiding and gleefully waiting for the cat to step inside the dryer. Once the cat is in, the dog will slam the door shut and rejoice as the cat spins round and round. Once Gorgias agrees to enter Socrates' "laundromat" of syllogisms, then poor Gorgias will find his head spinning like that cat.

For me, the age old struggle between platonists and empiricists arrives at a dizzying plateau once the question is finally asked "is reality digital or analog?" which is related to issues of holism versus reductionism. It will be helpful to read this link as a refresher on holism and reductionism:

Perhaps by now some readers are ready to throw up their hands and shout

Sitaram! Whatever does this enormous mountain of baloney that you have amassed have to do with Plato's dialogue with Gorgias?

I am only beginning to realize one excellent answer to that question just now, after hours of reading and writing. The rhetoricians and sophists, such as Gorgias, quite possibly represent the empiricism and reductionism inchoate, while the socratic method of dialect inquiry represents the holists with their model theory.

I may be quite mistaken in my notion, but it is exciting to thing of the possibilities should such a notion be plausible.

With todays science and technology, we can take images, sound, and even the human genome, and digitize it to a sequence of numbers. If we should find one day that a digitized representation of reality can exactly match reality and be indistinguishable from it, then we may conclude that reality is digital. If, on the other hand, all attempts at digitization are doomed to be mere approximations to the original, or counterfeits, in the sense that the number pi is irrational, then we may conclude that reality and being are analog.

I was struck by all of this when I stumbled one day across a casual remark by Einstein to the effect (paraphrasing) that "no one could ever have arrived inductively at a notion of relativity simply from empirical observations." What Einstein is pointing to involves a branch of mathematics called "model theory". There are numerous axiomatic systems of mathematics (e.g. euclidean, hyperbolic, ellipical and riemmanian geometries) mutually exclusive to one another in how they describe space, and all dwelling in the human imagination much like Plato's "eidei" or ideal forms. One day, someone notices that one of these axiomatic systems resembles observable phenomena. Ptolemy could account for the observed motion of the planets with epicycles, with an accuracy equal to Kepler's system of ellipses. Model theory has to do with the initial phase of stumbling upon a system which seems to match observations, as well as the later phase of asking "is this system actually the way things are (i.e. the noumena)? or is the system only an ad hoc contrivance for measurement?"

The laws of relativity and quantum and thermodynamics in no way lead inductively to the existence and nature of bunny rabbits, and yet the existence of rabbits in no way violates those laws. The laws of statistics do not inductively lead to the rules of poker or blackjack. Such games of chance obey the laws of statistics and probability, yet we would not study statistics in order to learn how to play the games themselves.

The Socratic line of questions and answers, a series of syllogisms and predications, is the tail of the sting-ray. At the end of the tail is a stinger, the numbing and silencing narcotic of "aporia" and refutation.

And now, here is the story:

Long, long ago, a demon sent forth legions of mud-dwelling creatures from the bottom of the sea to capture the scriptures and thus destroy their content. And as the dark waters swallowed the knowledge of prayer, the higher values of life also sank into the depths. People forgot the difference between good and bad and could no longer distinguish between right and wrong. As their power of discrimination faded, acts of charity and other forms of selfless service vanished.

Fear, hunger, sleep, and sex became the motivating forces for all human activities.

Trust disappeared and with it any semblance of loving relationships between men and women. The population soared while the general state of health plummeted. Striving to appease their insatiable desires, humans plundered the natural world-laying waste to forests and valleys, polluting rivers and lakes, and robbing the soil of its vitality. Life was miserable for everyone but the demon and his bottom-dwelling minions.

Seeing how severely nature had been weakened, the demon then decided to finish it off by attacking and conquering the forces of nurturing -the soil, vegetation, water, fire, air, and clouds. The angels, bright beings who are the presiding forces of nature, fled and hid themselves. With the angels gone, the demon demolished natural law and imposed his own rule, ushering in his reign with earthquakes, volcanoes, tornadoes, typhoons, wildfires, droughts, floods, and all manner of epidemics.

Chaos stalked the Earth, and the angels were in hiding, so the saints resolved to intervene. Approaching the Lord, the supreme force of protection and nourishment, they meditated on him with love and faith, asking him to come to their aid. In response the Lord told them, "With a one-pointed and disciplined mind, join forces to gather the divine knowledge once again, and while you fulfill this task I will bring the angels from their hiding place and dwell with them. Come and join
us there."

The Lord went forth and vanquished the demon.

Meanwhile the Saints had again gone into deep prayer, and had
re-discovered divine wisdom. There they asked the Lord's permission to bring the knowledge of the Vedas into practice for the benefit of all creation. In granting their request, the Lord said, "The secret of success lies in sacrifice, and the scriptures tell us how to walk this path. In every aspect of creation there is a continuous ceremony of sacrifice. Leaves decompose and nourish other organisms. It is the same with everything-nothing in creation is meant for itself. There is one sacrifice which is greatest among all sacrifices. Those who perform this sacrifice their personal desires for the sake of the larger welfare. They train and tame their mind and senses - and finally they share this harnessed energy with all living beings. This form of
sacrifice nourishes humankind and every other form of life. Let us now perform this sacrifice." So at the Lord's command all aspects of nature, the angles, their presiding forces, and the saints (the seers of divine wisdom), along with all the heavenly host, took part in this great sacrifice.

The sacrifice lasted for years, and by the time it was completed an astounding transformation was apparent everywhere. People had regained their interest in learning. They began to embrace the higher values in life and to take pleasure in performing acts of charity and selfless service. Their power of discrimination blossomed and the confusion between right and wrong vanished. Fear, hunger, sex, and sleep were no longer the motivating forces behind human activity. Relationships between men and women were now built on trust, and people once again understood the purpose of life. They remembered
how to live in harmony with the natural world, and as they did, the ecosystem came back into balance. Even the demons were
transformed: instead of trying to destroy sacred wisdom, they worked in concert with the angels and other forces of nurturing. And with the natural world once again bursting with vitality, peace and prosperity reigned. Seeing this, the saints and angels prostrated in gratitude at the feet of the Lord: "It is through your grace, O Lord, that we have been empowered and that all living beings have found their rightful place in this creation. The energy emanating from this great sacrifice has brought harmony out of chaos. For this reason we ask you to bless one sacred place of pilgrimage on earth so that it may
always be the most auspicious and powerful place on the Earth. May the energy emitting from this holy land guide humanity through all eternity. May all human endeavor undertaken here be auspicious.

May acts of charity and self-sacrifice performed here bear fruit
without limit."

The Lord readily granted their wish. "Be it so," he said. "From now on this place will also be known as "the field of pure consciousness" and "the lord of all holy places". The concentration of spiritual energy here will purify the way of the soul. By the simple act of coming here, even minds and hearts that are tainted by dreadful crimes over the course
of many lifetimes will be purified. One day's practice done here properly will bear the fruit of a decade of continuous practice
anywhere else. Periodically all the benevolent forces of creation, the energies of all holy places, the saints, and the angels will convene here. And just as darkness vanishes with the sunrise, obstacles to spiritual practices have no power to withstand the brilliance of this conjunction of time and place. Practices undertaken here at this time open the door to all possibilities."

Once during a time of material prosperity the higher virtues again fell into decline, and as a result the manna of holiness almost vanished from this earthly realm. All living beings and all aspects of nature became weak and pale. The angels and saints pleaded with the

Creator to recharge creation with fresh vitality, but were told that the sanctity in life now lay buried and obscured. People of all races and faiths joined forces to find and recover the sanctity. They set out to churn an entire ocean of words and texts, and churn they did, laboring night and day. But to their dismay the first fruit of their labor was not the sanctity they were seeking but a vial of poison so deadly that if it
were unleashed it would scorch all creation. The search could not go on until this menace was removed, yet no one had the capacity or the wisdom to dispose of it except the Lord who appeared and took upon himself all the sin.

This ceremony is known as "the spiritual gathering around the vessel."

When we attempt to procure holiness we must be ready to deal with poison; we can benefit from gathering around the vessel of holiness only when we realize that poison and manna go hand in hand.

Achieving even the noblest goal entails some degree of pain and temptation. And because our natural tendency is to avoid pain, the one who takes it on for the sake of others becomes like God, the most auspicious and benevolent of beings.

(to be continued when I find the list of virtues I collected from Plato's Republic)

============================
Here are some great study questions I found in google:

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: INTERPRETING AND APPRECIATING THE REPUBLIC

http://luna.cas.usf.edu/~demilio/2211unit2/plato.htm

-Do you accept Socrates’ reasons for shifting the discussion from the examination of individuals to a consideration of the city (p. 165)?

-Critically examine Socrates' explanations of why cities come into existence and how a division of labor arises in society (pp. 165-68).

-Should Socrates accept Glaucon's criticism (p. 169) and abandon the "city of pigs" for the "luxurious city"?

-Do you agree that dogs are lovers of wisdom (p. 173)? Why should the guardians of Socrates' city be "lovers of wisdom"?

-Why does Socrates propose to censor the stories of the poets?

-Compare Socrates' discussion of passages from the Iliad (pp. 176-77) with our own.

-How does Socrates wish the gods to be portrayed? Why?

-What does Socrates mean by a “necessary lie”? Why is it justifiable?

-What is the purpose of the story of the origins of the guardians (pp. 214-17)? Why is it important for the success of Plato’s ideal society?

-Consider the use of stories - like that of the ship of state (p. 286) or the myth of Er (pp. 415-22) in the Republic. What are their lessons? How are they similar to or different from the stories that Socrates condemned earlier in the Republic?

-The Republic concludes with the Myth of Er, a lengthy description of the afterlife and the process of reincarnation, alleged presented by a man who died and came back to life. This is the most elaborate description of an afterlife that we have encountered in the course. How does it contribute to Plato's discussion of morality and justice?

From these study questions alone, we may extract the beginnings of an outline for a storyboard.

Analysis of individual psyche vs state as "the soul written in large letters"

Division of labor and class or caste systems.

Dogs as lovers of wisdom.

City of pigs

Philosopher King

Portrayal of Gods

Noble Lie

Guardians

Ship of State

Myth of Er

+++++++++++

Here is a simply word processing extract of all lines which mention VIRTUE in the download of a translation of Plato's Republic.

I have used: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext98/repub11.txt

*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Republic, by Plato*****
Translated by Benjamin Jowett

I REALIZE THESE ARE CRUDE AND UNEDITED EXCERPTS, BUT SUCH USE OF A SEARCH ENGINE IS A POWERFUL TECHNIQUE TO FOCUS IN ON ONE CONCEPT, SUCH AS VIRTUE.

The virtues are based on justice, of which common honesty in
made to admit that justice is a thief, and that the virtues follow the
admit the still greater paradox that injustice is virtue and justice vice.

And is not the end of the soul
and then whether justice is virtue and wisdom, or evil and folly; and then
in an age when the arts and the virtues, like the moral and intellectual
and at first the comparison of the arts and the virtues was not perceived
end; good manners are both an art and a virtue; character is naturally
distinction of Aristotle, that 'virtue is concerned with action, art with
production' (Nic. Eth.), or that 'virtue implies intention and constancy of
an intimation conveyed that virtue is more than art. This is implied in
of virtue as fitness, and of freedom as obedience to law. The mathematical
of an end and a virtue directed towards the end, which again is suggested
guardians make reputation the incentive to virtue. And other advantages
festival, with garlands on their heads, enjoying as the meed of virtue a
virtue and trail behind me the fox of Archilochus. I hear some one saying
angry with others; for he knows also that more than human virtue is needed
ill; or that virtue is self-love or the love of power; or that war is the
'the homage which vice pays to virtue.'

is taken by Socrates to mean all virtue. May we not more
old question (Protag.), 'whether the virtues are one or many,' viz. that
Truth should have a high place among the virtues, for falsehood, as we were
we must first attain the elements or essential forms of the virtues, and
virtue'? But how can excessive care of health be inconsistent with an
ordinary occupation, and yet consistent with that practice of virtue which
imagines that every one is as bad as himself.

Vice may be known of virtue,
but cannot know virtue. This is the sort of medicine and this the sort of
other hand, have a knowledge of vice, but no knowledge of virtue. It may
virtue which gives an insight into vice. And the knowledge of character is
individual is certainly to be found in a life of virtue and goodness. But
the four virtues--wisdom, courage, temperance, justice.

Our second virtue is courage, which we have no difficulty in finding in
Two virtues remain; temperance and justice. More than the preceding
virtues temperance suggests the idea of harmony. Some light is thrown upon
the nature of this virtue by the popular description of a man as 'master of
describing this virtue as a harmony which is diffused through the whole,
but this was justice?

For 'every one having his own' is the great object of government;
residues. Each of the first three virtues corresponds to one of the three
If there be a fourth virtue, that can only be sought for in the relation of
virtues are eliminated, the justice and temperance of the Republic can with
difficulty be distinguished.

Temperance appears to be the virtue of a part
only, and one of three, whereas justice is a universal virtue of the whole
is a more abstract notion than the other virtues, and therefore, from
Plato (Protagoras; Arist. Nic. Ethics), 'Whether the virtues are one or
cardinal virtues (now for the first time brought together in ethical
conception of universal justice, virtue relative to others, but the whole
of virtue relative to the parts. To this universal conception of justice
the virtues of the State and of the individual are the same.

For wisdom is..
part of the soul which has authority and reason. The virtue of temperance
produce good or bad habits. And virtue is the health and beauty and well-
which overhangs the city and look down upon the single form of virtue, and
corresponds to the single form of virtue is that which we have been
a separate virtue or habit. We are tempted also to doubt whether Plato is
in his own nature to the contemplation of the absolute? All the virtues as
health, wealth, strength, rank, and the virtues themselves, when placed
other men), and is the creator of the virtues private as well as public.
of the virtues mention was made of a longer road, which you were satisfied
above the four virtues; and of the virtues too he must not only get an
reality; a man may desire the appearance of virtue, but he will not desire
Like Socrates, we may recapitulate the virtues of the philosopher. In
disguise of virtue or disinterestedness without having them, or veil
conversion; other virtues are almost like bodily habits, and may be
in virtue and wisdom, may bear rule. And the only life which is better
solid, diligent natures, who combine intellectual with moral virtues; not
is the just and good?' or proves that virtue is vice and vice virtue, and
virtue; lovers of money take the place of lovers of honour; misers of
not want remedies; they care only for money, and are as careless of virtue
but harmonizing the passions, and training them in virtue; in the timocracy
honour; this latter virtue, which is hardly to be esteemed a virtue, has
superseded all the rest. In the second stage of decline the virtues have
play, and the virtues and vices are impartially cultivated. But this
State or parts of the soul, the four virtues, the five forms of government.
them in comeliness of life and virtue!
justice as a cube, of virtue as an art of measuring (Prot.), saw no
all the arts and all the virtues, must we not infer that they are under a
forsake justice and virtue for the attractions of poetry, any more than for
And yet the rewards of virtue are greater far than I have described. 'And
hundred years--and the rewards of virtue were in the same proportion. He
afforded noble lessons and examples of virtue and patriotism, to which
chose last. But the virtue which is founded on habit is not sufficient to
enable a man to choose; he must add to virtue knowledge, if he is to act
hundred was an aristocracy of virtue. For once in the history of mankind
if we admit the physical basis, and resolve all virtue into health of body
of the relaxation of morality, but in spite of it, by virtue of a political
be forbidden. Who can weigh virtue, or even fortune against health, or
from the virtues--at least he is always arguing from one to the other. His
attained. When the virtues as yet presented no distinct conception to the
virtue is partly art, and has an outward form as well as an inward
He has long given up the notion that virtue cannot be taught; and he is
disposed to modify the thesis of the Protagoras, that the virtues are one
paradox that the virtues are one, and the kindred notion that all virtue is
moral virtues in the intellectual, and to centre all goodness in the
and virtue and good manners and good taste, that would be the best hope of
ever constitute a state more exalted in virtue, or truer or better than
successor of it, justified by the ancient virtues of the Romans and the
to a man that was once of excellent virtue or of famous glory, not only as
throughout all the world, not in bigness, but in virtue and power. Him
from those other philosophers who define virtue to be a life according to
are immediately applicable to practice, but there is a virtue flowing from
proper virtue of man?
And that human virtue is justice?

And what is your view about them? Would you call one of them virtue and
I suppose that you would call justice virtue and injustice vice?
wisdom and virtue, and justice with the opposite.
that you do not hesitate to rank injustice with wisdom and virtue.

Thrasymachus blushing.

As we were now agreed that justice was virtue and
and virtue, is easily shown to be stronger than injustice, if injustice is
consider whether justice is virtue and wisdom or evil and folly; and when
is not a virtue, nor can I say whether the just man is happy or unhappy.
highest meed of virtue. Some extend their rewards yet further; the
that justice and virtue are honourable, but grievous and toilsome; and that
about virtue and the gods: they say that the gods apportion calamity and
dwelling-place is near. But before virtue the gods have set toil,'
He proceeded: And now when the young hear all this said about virtue and
virtue to be the vestibule and exterior of my house; behind I will trail
is, as you know, sometimes spoken of as the virtue of an individual, and
sometimes as the virtue of a State.

I should prefer only to admit the pure imitator of virtue.
are the twin sisters of goodness and virtue and bear their likeness.
Or any affinity to virtue in general?
a livelihood he should practise virtue?
ourselves: Is the practice of virtue obligatory on the rich man, or can he
practice of virtue.
philosophy, and hence all practising or making trial of virtue in the
of them by himself: but when he gets into the company of men of virtue,
other; for vice cannot know virtue too, but a virtuous nature, educated by
time, will acquire a knowledge both of virtue and vice: the virtuous, and
to them, should be such as will neither impair their virtue as guardians,

And is not a similar method to be pursued about the virtues, which are also
First among the virtues found in the State, wisdom comes into view, and in
virtues has somehow or other been discovered.

The city will be courageous in virtue of a portion of herself which
Two virtues remain to be discovered in the State--first, temperance, and
Yes, I replied; I will; and as far as I can at present see, the virtue of
And so, I said, we may consider three out of the four virtues to have been
Because I think that this is the only virtue which remains in the State
when the other virtues of temperance and courage and wisdom are abstracted;
to compete with the other political virtues, wisdom, temperance, courage.
And the virtue which enters into this competition is justice?
virtue of the same quality which makes the State wise?
individual bear the same relation to all the other virtues?
And surely, I said, we have explained again and again how and by virtue of
Then virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice
And do not good practices lead to virtue, and evil practices to vice?
and act justly and practise virtue, whether seen or unseen of gods and men,
that he is not to acquire justice and virtue, or to escape from injustice
some tower of speculation, a man may look down and see that virtue is one,
virtue of his sex, but the gifts of nature are alike diffused in both; all
Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their
virtue, also know the very truth of each thing?
philosopher's virtues, as you will doubtless remember that courage,
In the first place there are their own virtues, their courage, temperance,
having proper nurture, must necessarily grow and mature into all virtue,
type of character which has had no other training in virtue but that which
is supplied by public opinion--I speak, my friend, of human virtue only;
as he can be, into the proportion and likeness of virtue--such a man ruling
justice, temperance, and every civil virtue?
justice and the other virtues?
Yes, I said, there is. And of the virtues too we must behold not the
virtues, we shall be satisfied.

And whereas the other so-called virtues of the soul seem to be akin to
implanted later by habit and exercise, the virtue of wisdom more than
will they rule who are truly rich, not in silver and gold, but in virtue
other virtue, should we not carefully distinguish between the true son and
individual a friend, of one who, being defective in some part of virtue, is
in their own nature, inclined towards virtue and the ancient order of
avaricious nature in him, and is not single-minded towards virtue, having
in a man, and is the only saviour of his virtue throughout life.
fortune the less they think of virtue; for when riches and virtue are
And in proportion as riches and rich men are honoured in the State, virtue
reputation for honesty he coerces his bad passions by an enforced virtue;
yet the true virtue of a unanimous and harmonious soul will flee far away
pauper to the cultivation of virtue.
of wisdom and virtue, may be rightly called unnecessary?
re-admits into the city some part of the exiled virtues, and does not

And as State is to State in virtue and happiness, so is man in relation to
which is under a tyrant, how do they stand as to virtue?
enter, by the criterion of virtue and vice, happiness and misery.
knowledge and mind and all the different kinds of virtue?

Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with
in beauty and virtue?
at their head,

know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as
are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not
Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the
if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.
the excitement of poetry, he neglect justice and virtue?
await virtue.

converse she seeks in virtue of her near kindred with the immortal and

How great are the rewards which justice and the other virtues procure to
as man can attain the divine likeness, by the pursuit of virtue?
collectively upon virtue; he should know what the effect of beauty is when
well-ordered State, but his virtue was a matter of habit only, and he had
follow after justice and virtue always.

Creating a Screenplay for Plato's Republic

2008-10-09T08:44:00.000-07:00

I am reposting this from a different thread, because the project strikes me as one with some merit.

The challenge is to film a reading of Plato's Republic, and yet keep it engaging and informative. I am reminded of PBS 12 hour production of "Brideshead Revisited" which seems to include every sentence and scene in the entire novel.

It would be interesting to do an outline and story board. The final book, with Odysseus in the underworld, in the Myth of Er, would be quite sci-fi. And, hey, Plato's works are certainly in public domain.

I wonder if most of the movement of "drama" is "noetic", in the development of concepts and arguments, and would not come through in a film. Which might mean that only costumes and antics would provide entertainment. I wonder if a viewer of such a film could clearly follow the reading. The Republic seems like something one needs to pour over and study. If all this is true, then a two hour video might be either dull, or fatuous in its efforts to avoid dullness. My girlfriend and I took turns reading "The Pooh Perplex" aloud, and it was fun and amusing. We tried the same thing with "Death in Venice" and it didn't work at all. It was too heavy and cerebral. Perhaps if one assembled meaningful notes, commentary, which a narrator reads with shots of paintings or statues to illustrate, and then pan to certain passages where performers narrate the actual dialogue (sort of like a Nova or History Channel documentary), then it might be entertaining and also instructive. Hmm... I wonder what a good producer and director could come uo with for The Republic. Is it proper to say "screenplay" for the production of such a documentary. A story board would be a challenging project. It would be like those cartoon books that illustrate the thought of Sartre, Kant, et al.

I am looking for outlines and synopses to help me create a story board for a movie version of Plato's Republic. This is simply a fun exercise for me, inspired by some Facebook alumni who recall a staged non-stop reading of The Republic, and muse about doing it again, and videotaping it.

Here is a useful synopsis

The movie should allude to the meaning of characters

Polemarchus, which means "leader in battle," and was the name given to the third archon;

Cephalus, meaning "head" as in head of the family; and

Thrasymachus, meaning "schemer."]

Someone like Bernardo Bertolucci would be a good director for our movie version of The Republic

Little Buddha

A crucial move in the development of the argument occurs at this point. Socrates suggests that justice will be easier to recognize and to define in a city-state (POLIS) than in an individual, particularly if we conduct what we in the 20c C.E would come to call a thought experiment. The POLIS is the individual WRIT LARGE. So the argument begins with speculation about the foundation of an ideal POLIS. Initially this will be a small, circumscribed community brought together by the economics of basic material needs. Glaucon in particular finds this vision crude and unsatisfactory: he labels Socrates' idea a "city of pigs." In response, Socrates develops the implications and effects of the introduction of more "creature-comforts" and luxuries, chief among them war. The more luxurious POLIS inevitably is at risk from its neighbors and therefore must raise an army. With luxury and enhanced trade both the threat of war (and the necessity of defense) and the subdivision and specialization of labor inevitably follow. The POLIS requires Guardians (PHYLAKES.) As the argument of the Republic develops, the the role of the Guardians assumes greater and greater significance.

Education (PAIDEIA.) What should children be taught, and when? This in turn leads to a discussion of

Censorship. Are there stories (especially about the gods) that children should not be told.?

The crucial question is:

Who should rule? Those undergoing education must be regularly tested. Only the most devoted should qualify. They must pass all the tests. The Guardian class will eventually be divided into two groups: those who will be trained to rule and their assistants. The nub of the issue is character. Socrates relates the famous myth of the metals. Among human natures there are golden, silver, bronze and iron types. Education & training must identify the golden natures. They will rule. All the Guardians (both the gold and the silver) will be charged with the defense of the POLIS against its enemies, external and internal. There will be a strict conflict of interest provision: Guardians will be prohibited from owning private property, but their needs, not to extend to profligacy or luxury, will be supplied at state expense.

Socrates inventories the

Four Cardinal Virtues:

wisdom, courage, moderation, & justice. Wisdom will be found among the rulers; courage among the guardians; moderation (SOPHROSYNE) in everyone's being content with his own role in the POLIS. Justice (DIAKIOSYNE) is, therefore, the smooth ordering of society that results from everyone fulfilling his own special role and not meddling in the proper functions of others. Injustice, by contrast, consists precisely in such meddling.

justice in the individual will be the harmonious functioning of independent parts, each fulfilling its own appropriate function.

the soul has indeed three parts (reason, spirit, and appetite) that correspond to the three basic classes in the POLIS. Justice in the individual is, therefore, the condition under which each part of the soul fulfills its own special function, governed by reason, with spirit, as reason requires, restraining the passions (appetite.) Injustice in the individual is, by contrast, the state of imbalance and disorder, in which passions and drives rebel against the wise counsel of reason.

Four such ways in which disorder and rebellion can arise in the POLIS and/or the individual.

Gender Differences.

Although men are on average stronger and more capable than women, the skills of political leadership (ruling) are not sex-linked. Thus there will be female Guardians as well as male. All Guardians will have the same responsibilities (including fighting in wars) and must share the same training & education. The traditional family & marriage are obstacles to the education, rearing, and outlook of the Guardians. They must, therefore, be abolished for this class, because they create and foster affection for particular individuals. Unions for the sake of procreation will be temporary and arranged at festivals by subterfuge under carefully guarded conditions that will ensure that the socially most desirable pairings are achieved. For this purpose a rigged balloting system will be engineered by the rulers. Parents will not know their own children. Children will be raised in common. In times of war both women and men will fight, and provisions will be made for the children to witness the fighting from a safe vantage point. Wars between Greek cities must be regarded as civil wars and prosecuted accordingly. Even with barbarians war must be conducted according to what might be called "civilized" rules.

Socrates differentiates most human beings, captivated as they are by changing sights, sounds, and pleasures, from the philosophers, the "lovers of wisdom," who seek the real, unchanging objects of true knowledge.

Imagine a ship on which the crew believes that holding the wheel is true navigating and that consulting the positions of the stars is foolish speculation. As for wickedness,

when a man or woman of great philosophic ability is seduced by power, ambition or gain, the results can indeed be dangerous.

Philosophers must be capable of the most advanced studies, the study of the Good. When asked for an account of the Good, Socrates says he can only point to things most like it. The Good, he says, is to the true world as the sun is to the visible world. This metaphor is immediately followed by another, the Line, which illustrates the upward journey of the philosopher through the ascending scale of reality and knowledge, from passing sensation to the vision of the forms.

Myth of the Cave

The chained prisoners in the dark cave spend their days predicting the order of appearance of shadow images of crude puppets paraded behind them and reflected by the light of a fire at their backs of which they are ignorant on the wall they are forced to face. One of the prisoners eventually escapes his shackles and learns the truth of the shadow theater they observe. Eventually he finds his way out of the cave and, by the light of the sun, sees the "real" world of which their shadowy procession is a pale image, several times removed. Suppose, Socrates now says, that for the sake of his people this visitor from the nether world returns to the cave. His eyes will not readily adjust to his darkened surroundings. He will no longer be adept at predicting what image will appear next. He will have lost his skill at their game. Yet if he dares try to tell his erstwhile fellow prisoners the truth of what he has seen, they will denounce him as mad, and, if he persists, may grow so tired of his tedious tales that they kill him.

Education of a Political Leader:

Mathematics, followed by logic & dialectic, followed by a fifteen year apprenticeship in the practical world of politics (from age 35 to 50.) Only then can the final stages of the education (as the French would say formation) of the philosopher-ruler begin. Book VII ends with a reminder that some of these "philosopher-kings" will be women.

Corruption:

Why the ideal POLIS should suffer decline and erosion at all. The answer, Socrates explains in extremely elevated poetic language, is that whatever is born must die, according to a mathematical principle, which is expressed here as the so-called "Myth of the Platonic number." Complicated astrological calculations will regulate the precise timings of the fertility festivals. Errors in these calculations will result in iron and bronze types mixing with the golden and silver. When this happens the harmony of the ideal city will be compromised. Civil strife (STASIS) will arise from envy and hostility. The rulers, no longer governed by their best natures, seek compromises. They distribute land and private property, and concentrate their own activities on war and defense. Society forms into economic classes: the rich own land and property, the poor become wage-earners and serfs. Emphasis is on honor and martial arts (Socrates seems to have Sparta in mind.) Art " cutlure are neglected and education deteriorates. The rulers now secretly love money, but they cannot admit that they do. In the corresponding individual, the spirited element predominates over the rational.

Greed:

Money is openly prized, desired, and sought after. Wealth is now a sign of honor, and a qualification for high office. The gap between the rich and poor widens. This type of individual must still exercise restraint of the appetites & self-control but for the wrong reasons. By the third and following stage, self-control has disappeared completely. All desires are equal. We have arrived at the stage of democracy. Like the preceding stages in the decline of the POLIS, democracy is inherently unstable. Liberty has turned to licentiousness, and this leads inevitably to tyranny and complete loss of freedom. The people name a champion dictator, and grant him bodyguards. He seizes all power and privilege for himself.

Sexual Orientation and Politics

2008-10-08T23:14:00.001-07:00

William: do you have any opinions about the presidential race,... I favor Obama... but you are in Canada, right? So, if you ignore the us politics, i understand

Canadian: I do not have a TV for many years already, but the bits and pieces that I hear about, I am anti Republicans

William: aha, so, you share my views somewhat...

Canadian: I want Obama to win, we do have an election coming up too, and I hope we will get
rid of Harper, the conservative b'stard, a brother of bush of sorts

William: oh, and Obama is pro gay rights much more so than Republicans [my Canadian friend is gay]

Canadian: well the dems are mostly

William: my granddaughter is only 14, but she is in love openly with another girl for one year. so, when i saw a political action group in the streets, asking donations, i signed up and gave them $10 (because of granddaughter). So, Ii get their interesting emails, about political issues

My grandaughters parants give her a real hard time about her orientation too

and , they call her beloved "fugly" and "gorilla" , which i feel is unkind

Canadian: it is hard for parents to understand

William: right, and this girl has been seriously in love for one whole year, with the same person... so it is not just rebellion, or a phase

Canadian: of course not

William: Ii believe sexual orientation is not a choice, but some some mystery that we are born with, and discover often as early as age 5 or 6

Her mother was pretty wild as a teen, but she was straight... she forgets how it is

Canadian: well that is easy to forget

William: and when the girl is around us, she never talks about anything or flaunts anything, so it is not some attention getting device

William: i mean, i sense that for her it is a very private thing....... well, except that she posts photos of her girlfriend

Canadian: society and parents can be idiots at times

William: but, it is like this one movie i saw, nice movie, called "Saving Face" about two Chinese gay women in flushing NY... one is out, and the other is in the closet...
The one who is out finally complains, "i want you to fall in love with me in front of the worlds eyes"
it was rather touching scene
Ii think whether we are gay or straight, we want to fall in love, and part of that is a public statement of acceptance..

Canadian: I do not have that issue anymore

William: i mean, being publicly "together"

Canadian: I do not care if society accepts me or not, I am who I am and that is what matters

William: right!

Canadian: it took me a while to get here where I am, and from now onwards I am not hiding, those days are done with

William: good for you! thats the spirit!

Canadian: I can tell an absolute stranger I am gay and it would not matter if he accepts me or not

William: this is the best policy, i think

Canadian: like today at work this Moroccan guy is looking at this magazine with Megan Fox on it in a suggestive tongue on lips picture

and he says to me she is the most beautiful woman in the world
I told him, well not for me, it is not my department I am gay
I do not like women sexually

[01:25] William: and, they just make assumptions that YOU feel the same way that THEY do

Canadian: he was shocked at my open sincerity

William: a more sensitive and perceptive person might realize your orientation BEFORE you say anything, and be more considerate in his remarks
But, then, certain cultures seem so much more homophobic than others

Canadian: no I do not "look" gay

William: i work with some people from morocco/ in morocco
i know you dont look or act gay

Canadian: I look very masculine and almost straight

William: but... some people are more sensitive and perceptive about others

Canadian: not the straight people
They do not have that gaydar thing

William: besides, it is better to wait until you know someone better, before you blurt out such things

Yes, i have heard of that expression gaydar

Canadian: as opposed to radar

William: right... i just meant that, often, you can sense the way another relates to you

Canadian: but straight guys in general do not have that sensitivity
That is why they are straight
Iit does not register with them unless you are very open and come out and say it to their face
and I have no problem with that when the situation warrants it

William: right,... rather thick-headed i suppose, presumptuous..

William: we must define ourselves, and, in so doing, defend ourselves

Canadian: I have nothing to defend
I am not guilty of anything

William: No... not in that sense

Canadian: I am gay and that is that

William: i mean, we must always resist those forces which seek to overwhelm our individuality
just as a nation defends its boundaries
not guilt, but, rather, autonomy

Canadian: when The Beatles returned their MBE's to the Queen
Buckingham Palace, when asked for comment, said
the Queen is above embarassement

William: ah, very good!

Canadian: I have been hungry all day
I can not afford to have something during my break
shortage of money is very crucial as we speak

William: ok... take care... wish i could feed you something from here

Canadian: so I have to eat something now

William: bye... see you later

Canadian: I am very hungry
Bye for now

The Climate Of Each Soul

2008-10-08T16:43:00.000-07:00

(here is my dialogue with a friend in myspace IM, edited and reprinted with her permission)

Two years ago, I spent a lot of time at literature forums...
and wrote about things like Milan Kundera "The Unbearable Lightness of Being"
and Thomas Pynchon "The Crying of Lot 49"
and "Gravity's Rainbow"

She: I read that and could not understand it - Kundera

Me: OK... well.... here is a tip about Lundera's book... (oh, and the movie on DVD is THREE HOURS) AND it has a 3 hour commentary about the movie as well

anyway.... in the middle of the book... he starts talking about their dog,... Karenin

Now, Karenin is the male form of the name in Russian, but his wife is KARENINA which is the feminine ending so, it is a allusion to Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

and the first sentence of that novel is very famous,

namely "Happy families are all alike, but each unhappy family is unique in its unhappiness"

So, I will have to read it again with new insight. I find that to be all too true!

now.... this ties in with something which Kundera states about happiness, with relation to that dog, Karenin

Kundera says that human beings were CAST OUT of paradise... but the animals were NEVER cast out...

He seemed to have trouble believing in the existence of God.

so, Kundera explains,... that happiness, for the animals, for the dog, is CIRCULAR... and involves repetition, routine, and consistency...

they play a game with the dog Karenin, holding a biscuit in their mouth, teasing him, and then letting him eat it

Kundera says that the dog EXPECTS that circular repetition...

Now, all this ties in with the very last page...

The couple vacations at a small inn/tavern, which has rooms upstairs...

in the tavern, there is music,... celebration...

A chapter earlier, we learn that they later die in an auto accident...

but, there is a flashback to the scene where they mount the stairs in the inn, to their room which i think is number SIX

SIX is the first perfect number, being the sum of its prime factors

as they open the door, and turn on the light... they startle a nocturnal moth

who slowly CIRCLES the room....

Kundera wrote some essays collected and published under the title "The Art of the Novel"

to read those essays makes clear what Kundera is trying to do with his novels...

now, the last page ties in with the first chapter, the first several pages, which is the only place that he discusses the circular nature of Nietzsche's "eternal return"....

Nietzsche speculates that everything repeats over and over, endlessly, e.g. The French Revolution (all the beheadings by Robespierre)

Do you mean the eternal moment?

so Kundera says, that if this is true, then each of us must feel like Christ nailed to the cross,... if it is the case that each of our actions shall be repeated endlessly

BUT... the opposite situation, not circular, but linear,... that everything is a straight line, happening once, and ending forever...

well that is the UNBEARABLE lightness of being....

namely that, there are no consequences,... that it happens once, and then.... nothing

complicated!

yes...

but then at the end of the first 3 pages... Kundera throws in the concepts of light and heavy that Parmenides uses...

but, Kundera says it is difficult to know which is heavy and which is light (the circular or the linear)...

I like Nietszche's concept of the eternal moment. Live each moment as if you will have to do it over and over again for eternity.

yes, that is the heaviness, the burden, the crucifixion, of action... that we have responsibility as the author of our action

puts the responsibility on us for being the masters of our own fate and its consequences, which is overwhelming

She: What do you think he meant when he said "God is Dead?" literally ?

Me: well, Nietzsche was a bit unstable, and something of a maverick, somewhat antisocial

perhaps he meant that modern man does not need god the way the ancients did

or, does not take god seriously, the way the ancients did

Alice Miller says he was an abused child. Those are good possible explanations

My favorite quotation is from psychologist Alfred Adler

after a lecture, Adler was asked by someone in the audience "And what of God, Dr. Adler, what do you say"

Adler said, "If there is a God, the I would hope he is pleased with how I have chosen to lead my life."

She: Why did he break with Freud?

Me:well, stop and think, literally everyone broke with Freud, who was anyone

especially Jung

there is a book "Years of Friendship, Years of Loss" about the Jung Freud friendship and break up

but, you see Freud was very controlling...

he wanted to be certain that his creation of psychoanalysis would live on after him

So Freudian theories have been discredited, although he is still considered the father of psychoanalysis

he feared anti-Semitism, and Jung was a Christian who could carry on without that anti-Semitism

and look at Karen Horney (pronounced Horn-eye)

she was possibly the first woman MD in Germany

Freud studied people in a society of Victorian sexual repression.... and felt that the repression caused neurosis

I have always thought of Jung as something of a mystic, a believer in the best of human potential

but, Horney came to America and realized that, in a permissive sexual environment, it was the shy people who were neurotic

And he did not believe their stories of incest. He thought it was fantasy.

yes, that Canadian scholar, who wrote of how Freud suppressed the child abuse

the cover of the book has Freud with his glasses on backwards....

My friend who took psychology in college swears Freud was addicted to cocaine

one of Freud's students, who went on to invent an orgone machine....

yes, Freud was a cocaine addict

Freud came within months of discovering the legitimate use of cocaine as a local anesthetic

but someone else beat him to the punch....

Wilhelm Reich Freud disciple

tells of being a very small boy, and of his female caretakers doing sexual things with him...

She: I like the writings of Melanie Klein and Alice Miller

Me: I never got into Klein and Miller

Alice Miller grew up in the Nazi era and she wondered why so many respectable Germans followed Hitler and obeyed his orders. She is interested in the roots of violence.

There is a book called "Hitler's Willing Assassins" ,... the first page speaks about the role played by Martin Luther of the Protestant reformation, laying down the foundation of antisemitism

the Spanish Inquisition started as the popes attack on the Talmud

I never thought Martin Luther was anti-Semitic, I knew he was against the Catholic Church, but that was all I knew he wrote against.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen "Hitler's Willing EXECUTIONERS" THAT is the title

Martin Luther wrote a pamphlet called "The Jews and their Lies"

that suggested something similar to a holocaust

Oh, my goodness, well I never learned that in school. Was it against them for not believing in Jesus or for being Jews in general?

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/luther-jews.html

there are some excerpts from Luther's pamphlets

Therefore be on your guard against the Jews, knowing that wherever they have their synagogues, nothing is found but a den of devils in which sheer self-glory, conceit, lies, blasphemy, and defaming of God and men are practiced most maliciously and vehement his eyes on them.

Wow, and he is such a respected figure in religion and history

yes,.... but....one can easily see Luther's selfish evil side.... by one simple consideration...

In the Old Testament, it is written "Better never to vow at all, than to vow and not pay"

and in the Psalms, "Make your vows and pay them to the Lord"

Luther of his own free will took lifetime vows of celibacy

but... when he could not endure that....

he changed the religion, to say that celibacy is demonic

then he married a nun and had 12 children

Well, he was obviously more complex that I had ever been led to believe. I thought he was a great reformer

well.... in Judges, or one of those books,.... Jepethah made a vow during a battle to sacrifice the first thing he saw, when he returned home...

and it was his daughter he saw...

but she forced him to keep his vow...

so there is a teaching of how grievous a vow is

but.... Luther did not want to think of such passages

Luther was correct to see corruption in the Papacy... BUT, he could have gone to the eastern Orthodox, and kept his vows

his monastic vows

but such was not Luther's hidden agenda

and, his sermons are filled with lewd references to Mary's breasts, bursting with milk, feeding the baby Jesus...

Luther was a disturbed man

very, and we all think he is the great reformer. My friend Marcus is Lutheran. I wonder if he knows all this?

, and.... consider the Epistle of 2nd Peter, Ch. 3, (paraphrased) "Paul has written some things which are difficult to understand, and those weak in mind twist and distort such passages to their own destruction, as they do with other biblical verses"

well.... look.... Mohammed the Prophet: to me it is very obvious, but those raised Muslim are blind to his faults

he was very violent and yet they say "Peace be upon him."

Stop and think,... one of the most spectacular prophets of the Old Testament was Elijah, the great wonderworker... and Elijah was celibate

and, Jesus says of John the Baptist, "No greater man is born of woman", and John the Baptist was celibate

She: so you think there is a connection between greatness and celibacy?

Me: and Jesus says to the apostles, "Some are born eunuchs, some are made eunuchs by others, and others make eunuchs of themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. For those to whom that grace has been given, let them take it up.

so there are three arguments why there is an important place for celibacy...

yet the protestants leave no role for celibacy to play....

other than to say that one need not marry, and it is not a sin...

but what does Paul say, "It is better to marry than to burn, but I would that all could be as I am (celibate"

for the Greek and Russian eastern orthodox,.... a priest may be married, but a bishop must be a celibate monastic

well, but... the tradition has been set down in the scriptures for many centuries...

so, when the church no longer resembles the scriptures, then, what can one say

Yes, but we do not respect that tradition. that it has modernized.

the first 1000 years of Christianity knew nothing, absolutely nothing, of protestant doctrine and practice

well.... i can put a lampshade on my head and declare myself grand puh-bah of the universe.... but what does it mean...

there would be no tradition, no heritage....

It means you are transforming the institution into what YOU want it to be.

well, yes... precisely

just because a nation has elections and a constitution does not make it a democracy

as one example

Many want the Catholic Church to change including most American and European Catholics

people want to have their cake and eat it too

they want a religion of convenience and the assurance of salvation with little effort

Then Catholicism will be a new religion. Precisely

Charles Stanley's son, also a preacher, gave a sermon on his dad's broadcast, entitled "The Cost of Discipleship"

saying "Salvation is free, but discipleship costs"

A religion that does not demand too much discipline and sacrifice and a promise of paradise to come

perhaps inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Cheap Grace"

Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran minister who returned to Germany and attempted to assassinate Hitler, but failed and was hanged by the Nazis

anyway... the whole argument of Charles Stanley is his "Eternal security of Salvation"

namely, that once you ask Jesus to be your savior (the magic words), then, nothing, absolutely nothing that you can do in the rest of your life can lose that salvation...

even becoming a serial killer...

there are protestants who object to Stanley's doctrine

I find that hard to believe. It lets you off the hook. It is too easy. nothing more is required of you

but, anyway, his son elaborated to say "salvation is free" (say the magic words), but discipleship costs (meaning, one day, your conscience will ask you to do something difficult

That I can accept.

one young man was suicidal, and went to his pastor and asked

"if i commit suicide will i go to hell"

that pastor preached the doctrine of eternal security of salvation

so the pastor said that there is no way to lose your salvation

not even suicide

... so, the young man committed suicide

true story

I often wonder if those who fight in wars are sinning and going to hell. That probably sounds strange, but I wonder.

aha... the movie "Zentropa"...

a German film with subtitles

a young idealistic German American returns to occupied Germany, to help with reconstruction... after WWII,

in the opening scenes, he meets a catholic priest and asks...

"Since both sides, German and allied, prayed to God for victory,... how does God decide, since only one side can win?

the priest answered, "It is written 'You are neither hot nor cold, but lukewarm, so I spew you out of my mouth

and then explained...

that it is not the absolute position of the governments, or sides... but it is each individual, on both sides.... the hmmmm... how shall i say, the "climate of their soul"

which, if it is true, makes judgment quite a subjective matter

but... consider David's 51st psalm, where he repents of coveting Bathsheba, and sending her husband Uriah, to the front lines, to certain death

Which allows us to do anything

no, not anything.... but merely that it is subjective

for example.... there is NOTHING in the actions of David which was sinful...

David was Commander of the Army, and could send whom he pleases to the front lines....

As king, he could take many wives....

Once Bathsheba was a widow, David was free to marry her....

but, the sin does not lie in the objective action....

the sin is in the wickedness of the intention...

such as a suicide bomber?

I forget the phrase just now, but there is a long motif in Old Testament about the darkness of the imagination

the wickedness of the human heart...

So if a soldier thinks his intentions are honorable, is he sinning?

well, it gets complex... and, who can know the mind of God, to have some calculus, and weigh each human life in the balance

but.... obviously, sin is not in the objective action per se, but in the intention of the imagination

So if you think your cause is righteous, your actions are justified and not sinful?

there is an old Chinese Taoist saying

When the wrong man employs the right methods, then the right methods yield the wrong results

One can see this in a way in Ursula LeGuinn's "The Lathe of Heaven"

a sci-fi story about a young man with a rare power of "effective dreams".... whenever he has an "effective dream", it changes all reality, past and present

but, a doctor of "oneirology" (the science of dreams), tries to harness that power, to "make the world right"....

but, the more the doctor tries to improve the world, the worse it becomes

until he is on the verge of destroying the universe with his megalomania ambition

you see, if things were not as I describe,... then we could have a "cookbook morality", such that

if you follow a certain recipe, you will always achieve the same results

religions which claim to be "the one true faith", fall prey to the danger of such a cookbook mentality

that one set of rules and teachings is right for all people in all times...

I once worked with a young woman who was a very modest, devout Jehovah's Witness, very proper....

One day, I said to her, "There is one circumstance in which it would be our duty to have sexual relations, and a sin if we did not" ... She was startled, but I explained, "if we were the last surviving male and female..."

and the very first commandment in Genesis is "be fruitful and multiply"

then, we would be bound by religious duty to try and produce offspring...

you see, in is not the action by itself, but the subjective circumstance, which determines the morality...

now,... in a world of six billion people.... if one million wanted to take vows of celibacy... there would seem to be no sin...

That seems to be saying there is no set morality, just changing circumstances.

but, if all six billion took lifetime vows of celibacy... then, it would be equal to a suicide of the human species

now,... if all six billion took a vow to have 20 children... then, this would be equally destructive to human life...

An act against Genesis.

now, here is a paradox.... consider the molecules in a chamber of gas....

each molecule appears to be totally free to behave in a random pattern... each with a different direction, thermal energy...

BUT, collectively, that chamber of gas, with millions of molecules, obeys very precise laws of temperature and pressure

so,.... individual people seem to enjoy a great latitude of personal freedom in their life choices...

but, collectively, an nations economy and politics obeys certain rules, and reflects the collective effects of all those individual choices

and if not-chaos?

aha, but, there is order in chaos

and there is chaos in order

on a galactic scale,.... we see very orderly movements of planets and solar systems.... but, on a subatomic quantum level, we see a frenzy of fluctuation between being/non-being, where time and space seem to lose meaning

and yet, those orderly galaxies are built up from that quantum chaos

so, chaos gives rise to order

and order harbors chaos

quantum physics is too abstract for me to get a handle on.

the details are difficult, but the conclusions are obvious, contrasting order on a galactic scale, with chaos on a subatomic scale

that makes more sense. is this the branch of mathematics called fuzzy logic?

yes, there is something called fuzzy logic.... which is specialized

but for the average person, even well educated... many things are "fuzzy"

we all use the internet, but few of us could assemble a computer, or explain how packets of information are structured

The Stroller and the Troller

2008-10-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

Here is my chat in the myspace PHILOSOPHY/RELIGION forum

Rebecca: I enjoy this chatroom, but the groups feature is very cumbersome, no way to track conversations you're following in high volume groups.

Sitaram: I have taken quite an interest over the years in writers such as Maimonides "Guide for the perplexed". Maimonides died 20 years before Thomas Aquinas was born. There are people who see Aquinas "Summa" as an attempt to do for Christianity what Maimonides did for Judaism

Rebecca: What I found most interesting is that *every* generation has had those who desire to understand and express their faiths more fully, but do not have the education to do so.

Sitaram: Maimonides, in his introduction, addresses "that one person who desires to know/understand".... Maimonides did not write to convince everyone

Rebecca: It is one place that I feel Judaism can do better, at least in the non-Orthodox movements, is opportunities for adult education. There's too much emphasis on 'waiting for enough people' to do a class or lecture, and the "one person" tends to get frustrated and give up in the meantime.

Sitaram: perhaps the Internet can make possible virtual classrooms

Rebecca: perhaps, and there are a lot of opportunities online, but it isn't the same
experience. I don't know if you have ever attended a Jewish lecture/study session, but it is a very different environment from traditional classes

Sitaram: yes, on line is not the same as in person

Sitaram: Rebecca, I read your blog, about the pain involved in artistic creation

I think it is Kierkegaard who likens the artist to the bronze bull, created by
Phaleres, mentioned by Dante... A king had the engineer, Phalares, construct the bronze bull as an oven with intricate pipes....
The groans of the victims were transmuted by the pipes into a haunting music but, the king cast the engineer, Phalares, into the bronze bull....
Anyway, Kierkegaard says that the artist is like that bronze bull....
transforming the inner suffering into something beautiful

Rebecca: please don't take this badly, but something I've been musing on lately is the human desire to validate their own thoughts and ideas by finding others who have thought the same. It seems that many don't like to share original thoughts (whether or not someone else has had the same original thought)

Sitaram: But, consider Newton who said "If I have seen farther than others, it is
because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants"/ What you describe is a problem of ego. Stop and think how impoverished our own ideas would be, if we did not have the foundation of a good education...

Rebecca: Oh I agree, wholeheartedly, but there is a difference between having an idea. . . let me give an example. As you may know, in Jewish tradition a portion of the Torah is read every week, so that the entire Torah is read in the course of a year.

We are very lucky in that we have thousands of years of commentary and insight on the Torah, from everyone from sages and Rabbonim, to the guy at the butcher shop. However, there is such a focus on studying *others* ideas, that you rarely hear people share ideas they have from the reading.

Sitaram: Consider what rabbi Kook, first Ashkanazie rabbi of Jerusalem, around
1920's, said regarding chapter 3 of Malachi in the TANAK
which reads "Those who fear Hashem converse, and it is written in a book."

Rebecca: If a discussion of alternate interpretations is found, it is usually one
luminaries opinion rather than another. Perhaps I'm just too opinionated. I have no problem saying that the idea that the. .

Sitaram: rabbi Kook comments, "We may converse with someone distant from us in history, by reading what they have written, and asking a question"
So Kook finds the entire Talmudic dialectical process in that one verse

As a young student, we begin as a slave, surrender our will, and do our
assignments,... but some of us become MASTERS of the subject
Mastery involves initial servitude.... but,.... we study what others have said,
but then make it our OWN...

Rebecca: My point is that one does not have to be a master of a subject to have valid insights. Study is important, even critical.

Sitaram: It might happen that, as you (the stroller) walk along the shore, a fish may jump out of the water and land at your feet... and so, you have caught a fish
But, who will catch more fish...
you on your casual walk...
or the person (the troller) who equips a boat, and spends every day and night on the
water?

Rebecca: Absolutely, but do you pass the fish by just because it wasn't caught by
unconventional methods?

I Do Not Think That God Desires Praise

2008-10-08T16:14:00.000-07:00

If God possesses all virtues, and humility is a virtue, then God must be humble.

God does not desire praise from us.

For God, the autonomous individuality of our free will choices is praise enough.

The nature of God's creation is the praise.

God's praise is the nature of nature.

I am appending this postscript for Bad Grace, who is that graduate student with a good mind that I met in Myspace forum chat. He asks me regarding the "nature of nature" and what I might mean.

Perhaps it is clearer to say that the "nature of nature" may be understood as a "very good" that is seen when one stands back and surveys the panorama of all of creation, is the proof and substance of praisworthyness, and is better than empty words of praise from flawed beings who congregate in vast televised amphitheatres as choruses of parrots squawking Halleluia.

We read in Genesis that at the end of each day the first five days of creation, God sees that it is "good", but when creation is complete, God sees that it is "very good."

The Talmud interprets this "very good" related to the "yetzer hara" or tendency towards evil. If a man is greedy, then that is a bad thing, BUT, there is a way for a man to harness that evil so that he is greedy for TORAH knowledge (religious knowledge), and when that happens, an evil becomes a good. We see a hint of this when Joseph's brothers come to him in Egypt, to ask forgiveness, and Joseph answers "you intended evil, but God transformed your evil into good." They had intended to murder Joseph because of their jealousy, but instead sold him into slavery. But their action lead to Joseph rising to a high position of authority, which enabled him to save his family from famine and starvation.

Hegel stood back, surveyed the history of philosophy, and saw a grand pattern of thesis, followed by refutation and antithesis, only to be followed by a synthesis of seemingly opposing notions into a new thesis, from which the same process repeats, again and again, endlessly. This "meta-philosophy" Hegel called the "flower of philosophy", in that each stage or theory, thesis, antithesis, synthesis, is one petal of a flower unfolding.

Kurt Godel had his dispute with that other mathematician around 1905 (I must google for his name since I always forget it). That mathematician stated that if something is true in mathematics, it must be provable. Godel disagreed, and ultimately PROVED that there must of necessity in any axiomatic system be truths that cannot be proven true within the context of that axiomatic system. This "incompleteness" of axiomatic systems has to do with the limits of logic and axioms and postulates. For several centuries, mathematicians assumed that Fermat's Last Theorum was one such unprovable truth. But in recent years, that Princeton mathematician proved it.

One may see a similar notion of meta-religion in such religions as Jain, and in the Pusti Marga (Path of Grace) of Vallabhachaya.

Now, is it possible to take one step further back, and behold all of these meta-ologies as a meta-meta-ology. How many levels can there be?

Perhaps it is a third level that we take when we stand back and behold the similarities of all these meta-ologies.

Stephen Hawkings recently conceded, in a bet with a fellow physicist, that it is not possible for a black hole singularity to harbor within itself another expanding time-space continuum big bang. We such a thing possible, then our universe would itself be inside a black hole, and contain within it countless other black holes harboring baby universes. The whole thing might be termed a meta-universe.

I have on my bookshelf Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh, which describes how Andrew Wiles solved Fermat's Last Theorem. It mentions that the opponent of Godel was Hilbert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert

Hilbert lived to see the Nazis purge many of the prominent faculty members at University of Göttingen, in 1933 [4]. Among those forced out were Hermann Weyl, who had taken Hilbert's chair when he retired in 1930, Emmy Noether and Edmund Landau. One of those who had to leave Germany was Paul Bernays, Hilbert's collaborator in mathematical logic, and co-author with him of the important book Grundlagen der Mathematik (which eventually appeared in two volumes, in 1934 and 1939). This was a sequel to the Hilbert-Ackermann book Principles of Theoretical Logic from 1928.

About a year later, he attended a banquet, and was seated next to the new Minister of Education, Bernhard Rust. Rust asked, "How is mathematics in Göttingen now that it has been freed of the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "Mathematics in Göttingen? There is really none any more".[5]

By the time Hilbert died in 1943, the Nazis had nearly completely restructured the university, many of the former faculty being either Jewish or married to Jews. Hilbert's funeral was attended by fewer than a dozen people, only two of whom were fellow academics.[6]

On his tombstone, at Göttingen, one can read his epitaph:

Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen - We must know, we will know.

Ironically, the day before Hilbert pronounced this phrase, Kurt Gödel had presented his thesis, containing the famous incompleteness theorem.

......

St. Paul is basically speaking of a "meta-good" which is beyond good and evil, in one of the epistles, when he says that "all things work unto good for that person who loves God".

http://rev-ed.blogspot.com/2005/08/all-things-work-together-for-good.html

Romans 8:28

And Jorge Luise Borges makes a career of portraying such meta-structures in stories like "The Library of Babel"

http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html
.....

and stories like "The Heretic" in which a righteous man (so he presumes), spends his life in pursuit of an "heresiarch" or heretical bishop (religious leader). He finally succeeds in executing the Heresiarch, and then later, dies himself, and in the afterlife learns that, in God's sight, the orthodox and the heresiarch are both cells or components in a much larger meta-organism.

Geetanjali's First Question

2008-10-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

One reader has written to me:

Dear Sitaram,

Who according to you is greater of our gods- Vishnu or Shiva and why? One personal question - who is your favorite ?

I read some time ago that one single
Ram Nama is equivalent to any 999 names of Vishnu. So
your parents, wife & children are blessed in that sense
that willingly or unwillingly they will chant Ram
Nama.

===================

Sitaram replies:

Thank you for writing and asking this excellent question.

You will notice that I entitle this post "Who Is Greatest?"

Your question pertains to Hinduism and is in regard to Lord Shiva vs. Lord Vishnu, but I am reminded of something which Jesus says in the Gospels: "The Father is greater than I."

I shall attempt to answer you, in part, by a consideration of certain aspects of Christian theology and, in part, by making reference to Tulsidas' Ramacharitamanassa ("Holy Lake of the Acts of Ram"), and Ramanand Sagar's wonderful movie version of the Ramayan.

In the Ramayan, Lord Vishnu incarnates in human form as the avatar, Ram. But Ram, in human form, must have a religion. So, whom does Ram worship? Lord Shiva!

Each child has two parents; a mother and a father. Which is greater, the mother or the father? Who loves the child more, the mother or the father? And which does the child love more. Yet, both a mother and a father are necessary. Without both a mother and a father, there is no child.

Back to the words of Jesus, "The Father is greater than I." I turned to my "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" to find this verse. But what do I notice on the cover jacket of this large book? The jacket states that the words of Jesus are in red letters. Is it not most curious that it is not the words of the Father which are in red letters, but the words of Jesus, and yet Jesus says "The Father is greater than I."

Jesus says "The Father is greater than I" in the Gospel of John, Chapter 14, verse 28. The ancient Greek theologians called this the "hypopantesis" or, roughly translated, the "placing beneath all." There is one icon depicting Christ dead in the tomb. This depiction of God's death is termed the "Extreme Humility" and symbolizes the "Kenosis", or emptying of Christ, renouncing all things, even life itself.

And yet various Ecumenical Councils and creeds of faith all stress that God is three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet one, and that all three Persons are totally equal, and no one is greater than the others.

It is said that Tulsidas had one brother who became a great devotee of Lord Krishna. One day Tulsidas went to visit his brother, who brought him to the mandir where there was a great stature of Lord Krishna. Tulsidas explained that he could worship no one except Lord Ram.

I am going to quote several footnotes from "The Ashta Chhap Poets", translated by Shyam Das.

One day, Tulsidas decided to journey to Gokul to see his younger brother. Arriving in Mathura after many days of travel, he asked some local people if a Brahmin by the name of Nandadas had come to their city. Someone advised him that Nandadas was a disciple of Shri Gusainji and that he could be found either in Gokul or near the Govardhana Hill. Tulsidas went to Gokul, but did not find Nandadas. Tulsidas, so enchanted with the beauty of the town, wondered how his brother could have ever left such a place. Hearing that Nandadas was at the Govardhana Hill with Shri Gusainji, Tulsidas headed in this direction. He found his brother in the town of Parasoli and insisted, "Come with me. If there is a beautiful town in this world, it is Ayodhya; Banares is the supreme city; of all mountains, most glorious is Chitrakuta, and among forests, the Dandkarnaya is the best. These areas Lord Ram has purified.

Nandadas replied to his brother in the following poem

If you like mountains,
live by the Govardhana Hill.

If you like towns,
then reside in Nandagam.

If you prefer cities,
live in Mathura,
an ocean of splendor,
extremely pleasing.

If you enjoy rivers,
stay by the banks of the Yamuna,
the fulfiller of all wishes.

Nandadas relishes the forest
and dwells in the land of Vrindavan.

After meeting with Suradas in Parasoli, Nandadas proceeded to Shri Nathji's temple, while Tulsidas followed behind. When Tulsidas had Shri Nathji's sight, he did not bow to Him. Nandadas then knew that Tulsidas would not bow before anyone other than his beloved Ram. Nandadas then considered, "I will show him that his Lord Ram is here as well as in Gokul. Only then will he come to know of Shri Krishna's greatness.

Nandadas then prayed to Shri Nathji.

Lord, so finely adorned,
what can I say of your splendor today?
Tulsi lowers his head only
when in your hand the bow and arrow stay.

Hearing Nandada's prayer, Shri Nathji thought, "Shri Gusainji's disciple is making a request. I should listen to him."

Shri Nathji then took on Lord Ram's form and held the bow and arrow. Tulsidas, seeing Shri Nathji as Lord Ram, prostrated himself flat on the ground. After having Shri Nathji's "darshan", Tulsidas and Nandadas went to Shri Gokul where Nandadas said to Shri Gusainji, "My brother, Tulsidas, will bow only to Lord Ram."

Footnotes:

In the Krishna Upanishad it is mentioned that once, while Rama and Sita were walking in the forest, the sages there, who were absorbed in the meditational state of Samadhi, saw Ram's divine beauty and suddenly desired to be his lover. They approached Ram, saying, "Give us the pleasure that you afford your wife, Sita."

Ram replied that in his current incarnation he was Maryada Purushottam, that is, The Supereme Personality under the bondage of scriptural restriction. Therefore, he could have only one wife. He consoled them that in his next life as Krishna, he would be Pushti Purushottam, the Supreme Personality who is dominated by grace. Then, he would fulfill all their wishes. These sages were born in Braja as Gopis during Krishna's life on earth and had all of their divine desires satisfied.

The fact that Tulsidas would not bow to Krishna reveals his single-minded devotion to his Lord, Ram, a quality so necessary in fostering bhava, devotional mood. His refusal to bow to Krishna was not disrespectful, but rather a statement of his immense and faithful love for Ram. Devotion to a single form of God is considered a sign of great grace.

Helping a Student with a Religious Assignment

2008-10-08T15:35:00.000-07:00

One Student's Religion Paper

(a college student needed to interview someone regarding their religion, so I volunteered)

KAY: If you don't mind, I'll start with the questions, and if anything offends you please let me know, I do not want to upset anyone. I don't believe any of the questions will, but you never know.

Sitaram: You will not upset me... I have been studying and discussing religions for years.

KAY: well okay, my first question is, What does being Buddhist Mean to you?

Sitaram: ok... what does being Buddhist mean to me...

Well, Siddhartha Gautama was the historical Buddha, who taught various things.

The first of four noble truths is that everything is suffering, and suffering arises from desires.

We suffer because we do not have things which we desire, and we desire things which we do not have...

The other 3 noble truths have to do with escape from suffering

By the way, Buddhism is in a curious way the opposite of Christianity.... I will explain:

Jesus said "I come to give you life, and life more abundant"

Now Jesus was said to be a carpenter in life, and Jesus said "In my fathers house are many mansions, I go there to prepare a place for you"

But Buddha (Siddhartha) was very much the opposite...

On the eve of his enlightenment, Buddha is tempted by Mara (Satan)

Buddha says to Mara, "I have now discovered you as the builder of this house (my body), and this house shall not be built again"...

What Buddha meant is that he would never again be reborn into this world.

Back to your question...

To be Buddhist means to follow the path of Buddha, to become a Buddha if possible, in conquering desire and suffering, and escaping the cycle of birth and death and rebirth.

Similarly, the Christian tries to follow Christ and become Christ, as far as possible...

We see this in the Gospels, where the man asks Jesus what he must do to be saved...

Jesus at first says,... "You have the commandments, so follow them..."

The man answers "I have obeyed the commandments from my youth... what more is needful?"

Curiously, the passage (I think Luke) says "then JESUS LOVED HIM, and said, "If you would be perfect, then give away all, take up your cross and follow me."

So, we see a clear invitation to follow Jesus in imitation of the crucifixion.

Being Buddhist means following a way of life, a practice, which transforms and changes the self, the mind, to avoid suffering, and to escape constant rebirth into material world caused by desires.

There is a story about a missionary who said to a Zen Buddhist master "Don't you want to become a Christian and be saved from hell".... the Zen master answered "as a Buddhist, I believe in the vow of the Bodhisattva, to delay my own salvation, until all other beings are saved from suffering..... so therefore gladly would I enter into hell for the sake of all the beings who suffer in hell

KAY: so a part of being Buddhist is self-sacrifice so to speak.

Sitaram: hmmm... yes, in a sense, self-sacrifice.... but... in a sense, mastering the self... in the movie Seven years In Tibet...

The European is a mountain climber...

The Tibetan woman says, "you Europeans desire to conquer a mountain, but we Tibetans conquer the self, and consider that a triumph."

Now, there is a subtle difference between the Christian sacrifice of self, to give all to the poor, to be crucified...

and the Buddhist conquest of self....

They are similar sacrifices in many ways, but they differ much also...

The Christian is promised "treasures in heaven" for the sacrifice on earth...

KAY: okay, that I know and understand

Sitaram: and correspondingly, wealthy people who are selfish, are poor in heaven...

But, in the Christian example, there is still the DESIRE for wealth... for heavenly treasures , where moth and rust do not threaten

In the Greek of New Testament it is SEIS KAI BROSIS, the words for moth and rust

whereas, in Buddhist Hindu outlook,.... the desire EVEN FOR SALVATION/MOKSHA/DELIVERANCE is an impediment to salvation, since it is a desire.

In St. John Climacus, ladder of divine ascent, we see PRIDE, as the aspect of desire for salvation which impedes salvation

KAY: What do you mean Impediment to salvation?

Sitaram: The higher the monk climbs in the latter of renunciation, the more fiercely the monastic is attacked with a sense of pride at his own achievement...

An impediment is an obstacle, a stumbling block... a barrier

So, for the Buddhist, if DESIRE of any sort is a source of suffering,... then the desire for moksha, liberation, freedom, can be a cause of pride or suffering

KAY: oh, okay. and in Buddhism suffering is good

Sitaram: consider the parable of Jesus, where at the judgment, some approach and say "Lord, Lord, we worked miracles in your name...

and Jesus answers to them "I never knew you.... go away"

So, you can see how those people were quite proud at their religious accomplishments

Whereas the other group, Jesus welcomes saying "I was hungry and you fed me, naked and you clothed me"... and they were confused and said "Lord when did we do all these things for you

and Jesus answers "When you did these for the least among your brethern, you did it for me"

Again St. John Climacus said, "You shall recognize the righteous at the judgment, for they shall hang their heads low, and say "We have done nothing worthy"

Salvation, in many religions, is like a catch-22

The closer you get, the further you get, sometimes

because of pride and desire

KAY: oh okay, I understand, most do not feel worthy, because the actions they have done seem unworthy.

Sitaram: the original meaning of the word Nirvana (or Nibbana) in ancient Pali language of Buddhist scriptures, is "to extinguish" (like a candle flame

So, the Buddhist seeks to blow out or extinguish the flame of desires, and hence, to escape suffering...

Now, St. Paul, speaks of afflictions and discipline of the body, as a suffering which can promote a proper spirit...

So, the Buddhist seeks to practice to escape suffering...

The Christian seeks voluntary suffering in imitation of Christ, to achieve a certain end

The great teacher and mentor of Martin Luther King was the Rev. Howard Thurmond.... who preached a mystical theology...

Thurmond taught that the taking up of voluntary suffering for the sake of some good cause in the world could mystically effect progress towards that cause

Thurmond and his wife went to India and spent some weeks with Gandhi

Gandhi asked them about conditions for people of color in north America

and Gandhi taught them principles of non-violent protest

These principles, Thurmon taught to King, and then were practiced during the Civil Rights movement...

Just as Gandhi fasted almost to death to bring about India's independence

So, fasting in protest for something, is a form of voluntary suffering to achieve some end...

Both Buddhist and Christian practice of asceticism, self-denial, fasting, voluntary suffering, with a goal to master the self the desires

St. Paul said, "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak"

Paul said "I master and discipline my body, to subjugate it, lest having pointed the way to others, I myself should lose my salvation"

I paraphrase from memory, but Paul definitely says something like this

The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist, Tich Naht Hahn, who is still alive, has written "Living Buddha, Living Christ" to explore the similarities and differences between Buddhism and Christianity

The first westerner to popularize Buddhism in writing was the British Alan Watts, who worked with Japanese Zen Master Daisetz Suzuki

That Japanese master said that westerners might be attracted to Pure Land Buddhism, which stresses a form of Buddha known as Amitabha (Buddha of pure light), since Pure Land practice most closely resembles Christianity

KAY: Well do you feel that Buddhism is the best religion?

Sitaram: Aha... interesting question.... regarding "best religion"

You see, eastern religions like Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, are very pluralistic, and do not stress superiority in the same way as Abrahamic religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Every Buddhist temple, in India and Asia, traditionally, has a place set aside with the deities of other religions, such as Ganesh, Shiva, etc,... so that pilgrims might worship after their own manner

Many eastern religions see a positive purpose for the many different sectarian religions, to suite different personalities

Of course, there are fanatical branches in every religions...

There is a branch of Buddhism that arose in Japan in the 1400s, the Soka Gakkai, which denounces all other forms as evil

I will give you one good example... around 1900 there was a world counsel / parliament of religions in Chicago...

So Vivekanada, the Hindu disciple of Ramakrishna, came there... and then toured the USA

Vivekananda met a Mormon missionary who tried to convert him...

Vivekanada answered, "I cannot join your religion, for you believe in having several wives, and I practice celibacy... but you should go and preach in my India..."

The Mormon was confused, "If you reject my religion, why would you suggest that I preach to your countrymen?"

Vivekananda explains... "Everyone is different, and some people find no suitable religion, so if they adopt YOUR religion then they shall know the joys of spirituality"

Religions which are tolerant and pluralistic do not think in terms of "the one true faith" or "best religion"

The Sufis are a notable exception among Muslims, and Rumi was one of their leading poets....

Rumi said, "Somewhere beyond the notions of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. You and I shall meet there"

So, of all Muslim sects, the Sufis are the most tolerant and pluralistic...

Aha,... I should illustrate for you with two bible stories....

God orders Jonah to go to Ninevah and preach

Jonah tries to run away, and boards a ship...

On that ship are people from many nations, with many different religions...

God is angry and causes a dangerous storm to arise

The sailors decide that each should pray to his own god in his own religion...

They go and fetch Jonah...

They draw lots/straws to see who might be at fault...

Jonah is chosen by the lottery,... and is caste into the sea... which then grows calm...

The sailors go away saying "Great is the God of Jonah"...

Now, those sailors are worshiping the god of Jonah, but NOT exclusively

for they are pluralistic...

In the Apocrypha, in the Books of Macabbee

there is a pagan king

his name is Antiochus Epiphanies...

He is persecuting the Jews...

There is a great battle, in which the Jews are victorious....

but some Jews are slain in the battle...

Antiochus Epiphanies becomes curious

"If the God of the Jews is stronger, then, why did some Jews get killed"

at night, in the dark, Antiochus Epiphanies sends spies to the battlefield to examine the dead Jews

They discover PAGAN AMULETS and charms upon those dead Jews...

So, Antiochus (in the biblical story) realizes that those Jews died because the did not worship their God alone... but trusted also in the magic of the pagans...

Antiochus Epiphanies is on his deathbed, and he exclaims that the God of the Jews alone is God...

Now, Antiochus Epiphanies differs from the sailors on Jonah's ship

The Greek Orthodox consider Antiochus to have made a deathbed conversion

but, consider Moses and the pharaoh and the magicians in Egypt...

the magicians were able to imitate the first 3 miracles of Moses...

but after the 4th plague, the magicians of Pharaoh could not imitate...

and the magicians several times said to pharaoh "Surely this is the finger of God"

but, pharaoh would not confess that...

These stories illustrate the difference between a pluralist acknowledgment of other religions, versus a demand for exclusive acknowledgment of one and only one religion or God

In a meeting, Pres. Bush was asked if Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews...

There was a great silence, and people feared some friction from the answer...

Bush pleased everyone by saying that Muslims and others worship the same god

BUT, the Quran does not say this...

In one of the last surahs of the Quran, entitled "Surah to the Unbeliever/Kafir"

it says "Say therefore unto the unbeliever ' The religion which you worship is not the religion which we worship' and the religion which we worship is not the religion that you worship

so unto you YOUR religion, and unto us OUR religion

It is important to understand that Buddhism does not deny the existence of a god or gods....

Buddhism sees the human problem as one which does not involve a relationship with a god or gods

KAY: How long have you been Buddhist?

Sitaram: In a way, Buddhism is a very early form of psychology called COGNITIVE THERAPY...

I was raised with no religion, in USA, and through reading, 15 years ago, gradually became Buddhist in my thinking

Is this sort of interview helpful for you...

Is this what you need for your assignment?

You see, someone who adopts a religion as an adult, through reading, is different from someone raised in a religion from childhood

KAY: oh yeah, you have given me a lot of information that I need, and some things that I find informative, so you are going in the right direction.

and you are able to cut and paste our dialogue and save it in a word processor

I can understand the differences, I am a Christian but I have adopted different thinking from different religions

KAY: So where do you worship?

Sitaram: well,... in the beginning, I went to a Korean Zen Buddhist center which was mostly American converts... and a majority of them had backgrounds in psychology, social work and counseling

Buddhism seems to attract psychologists and social workers

But, as years went by, I discovered that I did not need to participate in organized congregational activity

and that I could have a religious practice simply by writing and thinking each day... which is what I do on the Internet with blogs

Hindus define four different types of practice.... and what I am is the Jnani, i.e. one whose activity is intellectual

a different type is the Bhakti,... whose activity is devotional singing and celebration

I must think of the third.. but the third is like the social activist, who perhaps runs a soup kitchen. Perhaps that social activist is called Karma yoga

KAY: oh alright. how has being a Buddhist improved yo life?

Sitaram: ok... improving life..

Well... a great human problem is how to deal with the inescapable fact of our own mortality, that we face illness and death

One Buddhist practice is to meditate on mortality and death, to realize that the body is temporary

Christian ascetics do something similar

In the Bhagavad-Gita, it says "It is inevitable that joys and sufferings come to each person, but that person who can face both pleasure and pain with equanimity (an even keeled balance, like a ship in the waves), that soul is truly yogic (or saintly)

So, calm equanimity is a goal of many religions

Like the patience of Job in the face of misfortune

KAY: so is that how it has improved your life?

Sitaram: In the sense that Buddhism and Hinduism and other eastern religions are very tolerant, seeing truth in other religions and cultures....

Such, improves a person.... to be able to feel brotherhood with others, different religions, cultures, ethnicities, races

BUT, those religions which tend to teach their own supremacy, and superiority, and teach that other religions are evil... such teachings make us less tolerant and more bigoted

KAY: so you feel more connected to the world and others?

Sitaram: yes.... I do....

each religion speaks of the word peace, shalom, salaam, shanti, pax

but, religions can fuel wars

Jerusalem literally means "city of peace"

and the Bible mentions the "king of Salem" (Salem is shalom, peace)

and the Muslims say Salaam alekouem "peace to you

We must feel peace with our own body and appetites...

Abraham Lincoln said "when I make my enemy into my friend, have I not destroyed my enemy?"

KAY: very true, how do you feel Buddhism has shaped your life?

Sitaram: Buddhism encourage me to read and study many different things, and try to see some kind of unity among things very different

There is a joke : "what does the Zen master say to the man at the hotdog cart" ... Make me ONE WITH EVERYTHING

OF course, we ask for a hotdog with everything on it, mustard, ketchup, saurkraut

but... the joke is that the Zen master wants to be ONE with the universe...

Now, this joke arises from a modern, American understanding of what Buddhism is, and such a pop-culture understanding came about in the 1950s, with the writings of Alan Watts, to popularize Buddhism...and the manner in which Buddhism was absorbed into the Beatnik movement/era

and the Beatnik movement transformed into the Hippie movement...

and with the Hippies of the 1960s... there were forms of Hinduism which became popular like Hare Krishna

Around 400 years after the death of Buddha,... there was a great split or schism in Buddhism.... and from this split grew to great branches.... the Theravadins (Way of the Elders) centered in Sri Lanka (former Ceylon), and the Mahayana (Great Vehicle)

This split or schism exactly parallels a schism in Christianity between Faith and Works

The Mahayanists (or Great Vehicle), are named for a GREAT SHIP, like Noah's ark, which can save ALL SENTIENT BEINGS, all creatures

The Mahayanists look down on the Theravadas and call them "Hinayana" (or little vehicle)

The Mahayana believes that they can DONATE their merit or grace of their activities, to be used by other beings to achieve salvation...

The Theravadins believe that each person must work out his/her own salvation

that there can be no donation of merit or grace... that each must achieve deliverance by their own personal endeavor and practice

KAY: well does your faith in Buddhism ever stop or weaken? have you ever questioned your religion?

Sitaram:
Certainly, I personally experience vicissitudes, highs and lows, changes, times of inspiration, times of discouragement...

I think such change is the essence of the human nature... and I think that those people who deny that they change, are only fooling themselves...but there will always be people who fool themselves

It was Kierkegaard, a protestant preacher, who laid down the foundations of modern existentialism

and, in existentialist Christian thought, such as Kierkegaard, Hans Kung, Blaise Pascal,.... the human frailty of doubt and fear is considered as something which
can empower the religious person

I mean, it takes a weakness, and makes it a strength

I once rode on a bus, where there was difficult traffic, and I said to the bus driver, Oh, you must be frustrated with this traffic...

Well, the driver was a devout protestant, and he quoted Paul, from the epistles..... "I count it as gain profit, all manner of affliction..."

something like that

I am doing a google search on "I count it all joy"

KAY: Well my next Question is are you comfortable with your religion?

Sitaram: Yes, I am comfortable with who I am and what I have become, and how I perceive and deal with things

But, you must remember, I am a solitary, and my practice is my writing and thoughts.... so I do not need to struggle with political problems of a congregation, or things such as the Anglicans regarding ordinations, or Papal issues , etc

That is, much conflict in life arises from the attempt to belong to an organization:

Questions like, do I belong, am I accepted, is the organization making the right choices... do I accept every teaching, etc.

and such questions...

My beliefs are in the context of historical traditions, and various principles of systems,.... but I do not have the problems which come with corporate congregational membership

It is the flawed nature of all human organizations which in part moves me to distance myself from them

KAY: How do you feel your religion defines the way humanity is progressing?

Sitaram: I watched the Selma, Alabama service on CNN for several hours with Obama, and others...

Obama said something significant, that he chose African American protestant church because of its proven ability to effect social reform in civil rights arena

I think all religions act to shape the course of human events

Certainly, Islam is affecting world events in this era

and in past times, various religions shape various things

in the 18th century, all the world admired the success of Shaker communes, the agricultural success...

Marx and Engle's were inspired by the Shaker,... and their study of Shaker communities helped Marx and Engels to shape their notion of a communist revolution...

but, with the decline of agriculture, and the rise of industry and cities, the

SHAKER communities

yes, SHAKERS , who swore lifetime celibacy.... they were the ones that inspired Marx and Engles

Much of korea today, South Korea, is Christian, because, Korea was oppressed by Japanese Buddhists,... and as Koreans sought liberation, they associated the christian missionaries with their process of liberation from Japanese Buddhist oppressors

Hinduism inspired Gandhi with non-violent protest, and Gandhi taught this to Howard Thurmond, who taught it to Martin Luther King...

So, our American civil rights movement has an Indian Hindu influence...

The first time that the phrase "human rights" appears in print, is in Thoreau's essay 'On Civil Disobedience"

Now Thoreau was influenced by the Transcendentalists movement, and although he was solitary, reclusive, and rejected organized religion, his writings are filled with biblical references....

I would say that through the millennia, religion evolved from something organized, and authoritarian,... into a kind of individualistic subjective humanism displayed by Thoreau

And, for the first time in History, with America, we begin to see wars waged not for gain of land, or defense of ports, but in defense of the human rights of a distant people

I think this is a significant milestone

KAY: so what do you believe are the challenges, if any, to practicing Buddhism?

Sitaram: Well, what springs to mind, in the case of Tibetan Buddhism, is the form of genocide which China has practiced, since one definition of genocide is the intentional destruction of a culture and way of life...

i.e. the society which was necessary to produce the Dalai Lama no longer exists

he was chosen at age 4, from a village, and raised in ancient traditions and practices

the world which produced the Dalai Lama no longer exists

It is like the rain forests, once they disappear, you cannot get them back

So, the challenge facing all religions is how to survive in this changing world and changing technology

How can forces such as television and Internet be harnessed into something positive for religions, rather than be destructive forces?

Also, how can we make a place in life for religion, and yet preserve separation of church and state....?

Is it the place of government to safeguard the right to religious freedom,... or is it the place of the religious right to somehow safeguard government by shaping government to a religious rightist's view of right and wrong

Religion has the capacity to change the world, for good or for evil, and the world has the capacity to change religion, or drive it to extinction

KAY: that makes a lot of sense to me.

KAY: What are the important holidays and traditions of Buddhism

Sitaram: Jefferson, in a letter to a friend, wrote, "Just as no two faces are alike, so, no two faiths or beliefs are alike...

Well there is a Buddhist holiday of Vesak, which combines many things into one

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesak

KAY: is that the only one you celebrate?

Sitaram: well, I personally stay to myself, so, I am only aware of such holidays from a distance...

for me,.... everything can be a NOW, all at once, in the mind...

so, each day, as I write, different topics,.... different principles and events come to the forefront, for discussion...

but, they are always present in the mind....

KAY: okay. Well those are all the questions I have. I really appreciate your help, information and opinions. Thank you so very much.

Sitaram: here are a list of Buddhist festivals

http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma3/holidays.html

only 3 religions have a festival of lights

Judaism has Chanukah, which celebrates the oil which lasted in the temple for many days... miraculously in Maccabeus

then, Hindus have a festival of lights, in which, symbolically, the city of Ayodiyah holds lamps to welcome Ram home from exile, who is an avatar incarnation of God

Loy Krathong (Festival of Floating Bowls)

At the end of the Kathin Festival season, when the rivers and canals are full of water, the Loy Krathong Festival takes place in all parts of Thailand on the full moon night of the Twelfth Lunar month. People bring bowls made of leaves (which contain flowers) candles and incense sticks, and float them in the water. As they go, all bad luck is suppose to disappear. The traditional practice of Loy Krathong was meant to pay homage to the holy footprint of the Buddha on the beach of the Namada River in India.

The Universalist Unitarians are an interesting church

They are a church with no doctrine or dogma, where each individual is free to hold their own beliefs. The Unitarians grew out of the early American thinkers such as Emerson, Thoreau, etc.

The Seven Deadly Sins & Islam

2008-10-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Friend Cheryl Lynn asks an important question regarding whether Islam innumerates deadly sins in the same fashion that the Catholic Church reckons seven deadly sins.

I found one link explores the significance of "seven" in Islam, but makes no mention of cardinal sins.

Another link describes sloth (laziness) as the greatest sin, and mentions one Muslim's comments, but again, no reference to cardinal sins in Islam.

I shall continue to search for a list of sins in Islam, but my suspicion is that I shall find nothing which resembles the seven deadly sins of Catholicism.

I should mention that Hinduism, and the Ramayan, list five deatly sins or enemies. I always have trouble reciting all from memory. "Kam, Krodh, Lob, Mudha, Matsariya". The Shri Ram Chakra, or Krishna Chakra is a pentagram, whose five points represent those five sins, and a point at the center represents Ram/Krishna, the all attractive one, who draws us ever away from the five enemies.

Let us look at a search engine for Hadith and Qu'ran:

The word "sins" appears 178 times in 138 Hadith:

...

Narrated 'Aisha: Whenever Allah's Apostle ordered the Muslims to do something, he used to order them deeds which were easy for them to do, (according to their strength endurance). They said, "O Allah's Apostle! We are not like you. Allah has forgiven your past and future sins." So Allah's Apostle became angry and it was apparent on his face. He said, "I am the most Allah fearing, and know Allah better than all of you do."

and here is a MOST interesting Hadith:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "Whoever performs Hajj to this House (Ka'ba) and does not approach his wife for sexual relations nor commits sins (while performing Hajj), he will come out as sinless as a newly-born child. (Just delivered by his mother)."

The above Hadith asserts that a new born child is without sin. Many Christian denominations disagree, and feel that even a new born child has the capacity for sin. We see that an infant becomes angry, and is perhaps greedy and slothful, and also, a potential glutton for pleasure. We cannot blame a helpless infant for these proclivities, but neither can we call the infant sinless, since they have all the precursors to sin in their nature at birth.

.....

In the Qu'ran, Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall's translation, the word "sins" appears 36 times in 34 verses.

...
When I search the Qu'ran on "commandments" I find only one verse:
And gave them plain commandments. And they differed not until after the knowledge came unto them, through rivalry among themselves. Lo! thy Lord will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that wherein they used to differ.
( Al-Jathiya, Chapter #45, Verse #17)

...

My personal theory is that one will not find an enumeration or exposition on a list of cardinal sins PRECISELY because the stress of the Qu'ran is that if you confess that Muhammad is the seal of the prophets, and perform the actions that the Qu'ran prescribes, then you shall be forgiven all your sins, even if you continue to commit them, and therefore it matters not if you know the nomenclature and anatomy of those sins.

...

I feel it is HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT to realize this profound difference between Islam and Christianity, regarding a presence or absence of "a catalog of sins".
....

By shear chance, just now, I stumbled upon the following link, which quotes from the writings of Russian Bishop Khrapovitsky:

"But how much is mistaken the one, who thinks that Christian life is limited by the process of listening to the word of God, that the word of God by itself, without our efforts, can sanctify us. On the contrary, in the parable about the sower the Lord clearly showed that the pure acceptance of the word through faith without a struggle is not more stable than that sprout of the seed on the stony ground, which dries in the heat of the sun; that only those souls can be suitable for the Divine Kingdom, which, having accepted the word, "bring forth fruit with patience," and only that one who, listening to the teaching of Christ, fulfills it, erects the building of salvation on the good ground (Luke 6:47). The disciple of God will be the one, who continues in His word (John 8:32), who keeps it (8;52), who, having received it in meekness (James 1:21), is the doer of the word (1:22), but not only a hearer (1:23), for the Jews as well heard the word, but it is said about them: "The word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it" (Hebr. 4:2). Then among Christians appeared talkative rebels, but the apostle threatened them to come and test "not the speech of them which are puffed up, but the power" (1 Cor. 4:19). About his sermon the apostle said that "our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance" (1 Thes. 1:5)

So, the word of God gets its saving significance only with the firm decision to change own sinful life and with the strife of man to accomplish, what he had decided, what is within his powers. Let the sectarians, who calmed their conscience in pure dead faith, and who are saying that the blissful word of God by Itself creates new life in them without any efforts of theirs, become silent. The very Word teaches us, the faithful, that the Evangelic teaching saves only on the condition that man struggles against his sin."

...
I often quote this passage from the writings of Maximos the Confessor:

"Do not say that you are the temple of the Lord, writes Jeremiah (cf. Jer. 7: 4); nor should you say that faith alone in our Lord Jesus Christ can save you, for this is impossible (emphasis supplied) unless you also acquire love for Him through your works. As for faith by itself, 'the devils also believe, and tremble' (Jas. 2: 19)."

St. Maximos the Confessor, THE PHILOKALIA, Volume Two, p. 56.
[inserted on May 14, 2007]

Here is an interesting trans-cultural list of sins that I chanced upon:

Allow me to provide some examples of trans-cultural common moral law. Each of these are very similar to commandments found in the Holy Bible. The references in parentheses after the quote are strikingly similar commandments or moral teachings found in the Bible:

* "Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you." - Ancient Chinese (compare to Matthew 7:12)

* "Slander not." - Babylonian, Hymn to Samas (compare to Proverbs 10:18)

* "Utter not a word by which anyone could be wounded." - Hindu (compare to Ephesians 4:29)

* "I saw in Nastrond (i.e. hell)... beguilers of other's wives." - Old Norse, Volospa

* "Has he approached his neighbor's wife?" - Babylonian, List of Sins (compare to Exodus 20:14; I Corinthian 6:9-10)

* "And approach not fornication; surely it is an indecency, and evil as a way." - Koran, Sura 17:34 (compare to I Corinthians 6:9-11-18)

* "If a man violate the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless." - Code of Hammurabi, Verse 130 (compare to Deuteronomy 22:22-27)

* "Your father is an image of the Lord of creation, your mother an image of the earth. For him who fails to honor them, every work of piety is vain. This is the first duty." - Hindu, Janet

* "There is a duty to care for parents." - Greek (compare to Exodus 20:12, Matthew 15:3-6, I Timothy 5:8)

* "Whoso takes no bribe... well pleasing is this to Samas." - Babylonian (compare to Deuteronomy 16:18-20, Proverbs 17:23)

* "To wrong, to rob, to cause to be robbed." - Babylonian, List of Sins

* "I have not stolen." - Ancient Egyptian, Confessions of a Righteous Soul (compare to Exodus 20:15, Revelation 21:8)

* "Whose mouth, full of lying, avails not before thee; thou burnest their utterance." - Babylonian, Hymn to Samas

* "In Nastrond (i.e. hell) I saw the perjurers." - Old Norse, Volospa (compare to Exodus 20:15, Revelation 21:8).

* "With his mouth he was full of Yea, and in his heart Nay?" - Babylonian, Hymn to Samas (compare to Matthew 5:37, Ecclesiastes 5:4-6)

* "If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken... If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out." - Code of Hammurabi, Verses 196-200 (compare to Exodus 21:23-25, Leviticus 24:19-20)

* "I have given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, a ferry boat to the boatless" - Ancient Egyptian (compare to Deuteronomy 24:19, Matthew 25:31-46)

* "You will see them taken care of... widows, orphans, and old men, never reproaching them" - Redskin native Americans (compare to James 1:27)

* "There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in those who do an injury, the second in those who fail to protect another from injury when they can" - Roman, Cicero (compare to Proverbs 24:10-12 and 31:8-9)

* "Nature and reason command that nothing uncomely, nothing effeminate, nothing lascivious be done or thought" - Roman, Cicero (compare to Romans 1:18-27 and 2:14-15, I Corinthians 6:9-10, Galatians 5:19-21, Philippians 4:8)

* "Death is to be chosen before slavery and base deeds." - Roman, Cicero

* "Death is better for every man than life with shame." - Anglo-Saxon, Beowulf (compare to Daniel 3:14-18, Hebrews 11:32-38, Revelation 12:11)

The striking similarities in the moral codes of various cultures and religions and that sanctions are imposed upon transgressors are evidence of the existence of an objective right and wrong and the universal concept of justice which traverses cultural boundaries.

...
The above author is listing sins from various cultures and traditions in an attempt to demonstrate that there is an ABSOLUTE MORALITY, and that the notion of relative morality is a dangerous one.

I had a serious of dialogues some years ago with a Christian named Sean, which I posted as "The Sean Dialogues".

Western Abrahamic religions "speak from Authority" as you say, with non-relativistic Absolutes in Morality.... (Thou shalt do this and thou shalt not do that.... or else)....

whereas, in Hinduism/Buddhism/Jainism et.al ..... it is all a PROCESS, i.e. karmically the rewards and punishments are all built into the "physics" of the thoughts, words and deeds.... but furthermore.... the whole process of countless rebirths is an unavoidable process of purification... in each lifetime (rebirth), we are working out the knots and wrinkles so to speak, sometimes as a thief, sometimes as a holy renunciate... but the sum total of these rebirths, of this karmic pinball machine, ultimately leads to Moksha, Liberation, Salvation, re-union with the Divinity, no more rebirth.... and furthermore,.... ultimately all souls are "saved". This does NOT mean that Hindu/Buddhist Karma is moral relativism.... it simply means that things are not as simple or cut-and-dry as not eating pork, tithing, circumcision, praying 5 times per day, baptism, or going on Hajj pilgrimage, not farting in the Mosque, etc etc etc.....

In a sense, this karmic "process" which I am describing is very scientific.... when compared to all the circumcision/baptism mumbo-jumbo of Abrahamic religions, which seems rather arbitrary, and leaves out people like the Australian aborigines who never got to meet a priest or an imam or a rabbi until the 19th century.....

When you look at the entire history of the Hindu/Buddhist/Jain peoples, they seem far more humble and gentle than the history of Islam and Christianity, with slavery, wars of colonial aggression, genocides, crusades, inquisitions, witch burnings, religious persecutions.... When one looks at the history of Abrahamic peoples, in comparison to Hindus and Buddhists, it would seem that your ABSOLUTES and your Authority and your non-relative Morality are a huge failure.

Look at the "sinfulness" of Saul before he became St. Paul.... (Saul was present and partly responsible for the murder of very first Christian martyr, St. Stephan, a deacon)....

Saul/Paul's conversion has uncanny parallels with Valmiki, who was a thief and murderer, but repented and went on to write the Ramayan (which is sort of the Hindu version of the Gospels, except that Ram is the incarnation, not Jesus)...

And it was King David's repentance over Uriah's murder which produced the 51st Psalm...(Have mercy on me, according to thy great mercy....)..... I know you are going to be angry with me for mentioning the Bible.... but if you notice in my website... its what i do,... its my "thing".... its how my mind works.... so I hope you can be patient with me....

I am trying to point out that both in Hinduism and in Christianity, sometimes, hitting rock bottom (Immorality) can lead to repentance... which may then produce morality, and even a Saint.....

Here is a post in response to the question "What does religion have to offer?"

Religious faith offers each person, young or old, these four things:

1. Hope, Peace, Purpose and Identity;

2. Hope for the future (Eternity),

3. Peace in each present moment,

4. Purpose for one's earthly life and existence, Personal Identity, Individuality and Uniqueness in face of the question "Who am I?".

Without religious faith in a higher power or dharma underlying existence, then each person is nothing, in the sense that at the moment of death they cease to exist, there is no ultimate consequence for any action or thought, we have come into being accidentally, our individual existence has no purpose or meaning, and had never come into being in our individual consciousness, it would ultimately make no difference since we are of no inherent value even to ourselves.

HYPOTHETICAL QUESTION) could you personally be moral in a world in which there ARE NO ABSOLUTES? And what would be your MOTIVE for being moral (remaining moral) in such a world of no absolutes? This is a most interesting question.

Given the fact of human nature that "anything goes," regardless of whether society preaches moral relativism or moral absolutism, therefore I feel that the manner in which I discuss things at my website is far more honest and realistic, namely, that souls will work out these behaviors during the course of their lives, and from rebirth to rebirth. Furthermore, the scenario which I present, of everything and everyone and every experience having its purpose, and of all souls ultimately being perfected and saved, is far more reasonable and efficient and reflective of a genuinely compassion Creator, in contrast to the senselessness of eternal torment and punishment with absolutely no hope of reform, and only one brief human life in which to "pass or fail" the test.....

Recycling, whether it be of bottles, paper or souls, is more sensible and environmentally sound that making everything DISPOSABLE, use one and throw it away... even in PHYSICS, the CONSERVATION of matter/energy is ESSENTIAL, FUNDAMENTAL (i.e. nothing is ever LOST).....

I am thinking right now about my webpage "How good does one have to be?" Rabbi Harold Kushner discusses the verse "therefore be thou PERFECT before me (Tamim)". Kushner proposes his own understanding that God did not expect Abraham to be PERFECT, but rather to be true to himself, so that when he did periodically "fall down", he would always pick himself up, dust himself off, and try harder, remaining "true to himself" (I am dredging this up from my memory, so it may be inaccurate).... and then Kushner mentions Mother Theresa's words (I think)... where she says , "We are not here to be SUCCESSFUL, but to be FAITHFUL"...

And consider the parable of the prodigal son, raised (presumably) in a society of ABSOLUTE morals, who takes his "inheritance," and goes to a foreign land (where they raise PIGS!), and squanders everything. Yet, it is only when the prodigal son hits ROCK BOTTOM, that the realization also hits him "Hey, I would be better as a hired hand in my father's house, than working for this cruel master slopping pigs"...

The points I am making is that, even in societies of MORAL ABSOLUTISM, boys will be boys, and people still sin and break commandments, and FURTHERMORE, it is somehow the experience of sinning and then repenting (a learning process), that makes Sauls into Pauls, makes King David write the beautiful Psalms, and makes thieves on the cross cry out "Remember me, O Lord, in Thy kingdom"......

....

+++++ added Monday morning

Obviously, one might attempt to compose one's own list of sins in Islam. From what I know it seems that atheism would be number one, and ascribing partners to Allah (shirk) would be number two. But my question is not WHAT the list might be, but WHERE is it in Qur'an or Hadith or oral tradition, and if it is absent, then why is it absent. What might that absence indicate?

The Old Testament lists the Ten Commandments. Jewish tradition catalogs 617 mitzvahs (positive and negative injunctions) in the Torah. Jesus recites the Beatitudes in his Sermon On The Mount. The Roman Catholic Church formulated the seven deadly sins, and the seven virtues, and Dante took poetic license to embellish upon these.

Islamic tradition discourages poetry, as one may learn from this excellent article.

I sense that in this pro-Muslim article, one may find a description of the historical dynamics which discouraged the formulation of a list of sins.

The following excerpt from the above link offers profound insight:

These five axioms were cardinal to the Mu'tazilah. Contention or denial of any one of them removed the contender from Mu'tazilah rank. And yet, if we were to characterize Mu'tazilah doctrine by a single dominant idea, we are compelled to say that the whole thrust of their movement revolved around the problem of man's ethical nature, which they regarded as the central problem of the self. Their concern was a very Islamic one, since in Islam the end-all and be-all of human life – indeed, of all creation – is the realization in space-time of a divine trust. And their reasoning was clear. If God is transcendent – and the Muslim believes He is – He may not be said to invade, or be invaded by, creation. God is forever unique. Therefore, there is in Islam neither incarnation nor pantheism; neither emanation from God nor fusion into God. These are all constructs devoid of foundation. The only unquestionable, given reality is that man, the creature, stands under an imperative, namely, the command of value; that he is commanded as well as moved by value to seek its realization in the realm of the actual.

...

Perhaps one may find something akin to a catalog of sins in Sharia law:

http://www.masnet.org/history.asp?id=585

Islam developed a comprehensive law that covered the whole span of human life. This comprehensiveness flowed from Islam's conception of human life as created for the fulfillment of imperatives constituting the divine will. All acts, therefore, are seen as falling within the purview of the law and are either wajib (obligatory), mubah (permissible), mandub (recommended), makruh (recommended against) and haram (prohibited). At the same time, the law of Islam acknowledged the general welfare of humans to be its purpose. It divided that purpose as consisting of daruriyyat (universal necessities), hajiyat (personal needs), and tahsinat (desirables).

While ethics recommended the kind treatment of wife, children, and relatives, the law prescribed that feeding, sheltering, and caring for them be equal to one's treatment of oneself. In the same spirit, the law abolished all interest and instituted interest-free financing for all. It granted the captive the power to ransom himself by contract, the ignorant the right to be taught, and the deprived the right to partake of the wealth of the affluent.

The law further declared it a punishable sin to speak evil of one's neighbor even when the evil was true; to reject the neighbor's compensation and apology; to fail to visit him in sickness. One must help a neighbor in want, return his greeting with a better one, give him good counsel at all times, whether he asks for it or not; even to bless him when he sneezes. A Muslim is obliged to protect his neighbor's family and property in his absence, to attend his funeral and burial when he dies, or perform his obsequies in case of need.

Islamic law prohibits man from spying, lying, and being deceptive. It forbids speaking without knowledge, loud speech, entering another's house without knocking, and the assumption of airs of pride and superiority. It commands to keep oneself clean, to put on one's best when in congregation, to fulfill one's promise under all conditions, to maintain one's decorum at all times, and to bend one's head to parents and elders, to men of knowledge and those in authority.

Thus the corpus of laws constituting the Shari'a is usually divided into twelve departments:

1. Rituals and liturgy

2. Personal status

3. Contracts

4. Torts

5. Criminal law

6. Constitutional law

7. Taxation and public finance

8. Administrative law

9. Land law

10. Law of trade and commerce

11. International law

12. Ethics and personal conduct

Law is often said to be the mirror of civilization in the sense that when it has grown mature and complete, civilization reflects itself in its laws. This view assumes that law is a product of civilization, produced like other features of civilization by the forces operating within it. The opposite is the case with the Shari'a. Rather than being a product or reflection of Islamic civilization, the Shari'a is its first cause. Its observance by the Muslims of the world is the source that generated Islamic civilization, that nursed and protected it in history. The Shari'a was, and continues to be, the civilizing force among Muslims.

Antiochus Epiphanes

2008-10-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

The Old Testament Apocrypha relates the account of Emperor Antiochus Epiphanes' persecution of the Jews.

http://www.drshirley.org/hist/hist07.html

Tradition has it that many Jews fled to Mumbai in India, where descendants remain, to this day. They are called B'Nai Israel.

http://www.jewishtribune.ca/TribuneV2/content/view/722/53/

The Hindus graciously accepted them, and created a place for them in the complex caste system, calling them "The Saturday Oil-bearers".

http://www.hinduunity.org/jewsofindia.html

On days such as Yom Kippur, then Hindus would milk the goats and cows of the Jews, and quietly set the pails of milk on their porches. (A cow must be milked each day, or it suffers pain. In Normandy, after D-Day soldiers noticed cows in pain, left untended, unmilked).

Around 1994, I was working for Guttman Institute on 5th avenue, as a programmer. I often walked to the subway along 12th street, and passed by the "Village Temple" Reform Synagogue. I was passing by on Yom Kippur, and noticed a sign in the door that members of B'nai Israel were observing there that day. I entered and spent several hours. Fifty people from the surrounding states had come together for Yom Kippur. They were quite Indian in appearance. Some even wagged their heads back and forth slightly, after the fashion in India.

I was happy to be able to spend some time with this very ancient group.

I remember the first time I ever visited the "Village Temple." The Hispanic janitor was opening it up, and graciously allowed me to visit. I entered the empty hall, and proceeded to the front, where the Torah Scrolls are stored.

As I sat, in that silence and solitude, I heard my inner voice say something quite unusual:

"Nothing is more palpable or real than a memory in the mind of God."

Next, I heard : "You shall be remembered after the fashion and manner in which you cast yourself by your freewill choices."

I heard nothing further.

I once found a religious leaflet by that dreadful Tony Alamo, entitled "God remembered Noah."

http://bible.cc/genesis/8-1.htm

Genesis 8:1 And God remembered Noah, and every living thing, and all the cattle that was with him in the ark: and God made a wind to pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged;

I mused that if God could remember Noah, then, God must have forgotten him.

But then, if we are ever remembered, surely we are remember for who we were, and we became who we were by what we chose to say and do, as well as by our choices of silence or inaction.

Sow a thought; reap an action.
Sow an action; reap a habit.
Sow a habit; reap a character.
Sow a character; reap a destiny.

That is why so often we are called an old "so and so."

One sleepy Sunday afternoon in the 1980's, I was sitting alone in the office of Holy Transfiguration Monastery, when Deacon Fr. Barsanuphius entered to commence his "door duty" of answering the phones and greeting an occasional visitor.

Fr. Barsanuphius told me a delighful story about Antiochus Epiphanes. It seems he had wage a battle with the Jews and suffered great losses in his retreat. Yet some of the Jews had fallen in battle. Antiochus thought "Surely God is with these Jews to grant them such victory! Yet why did some Jews fall?" Antiochus sent spies into the battlefield who examined the bodies and discovered that the slain Jews had concealed pagan amulets in their clothing. Antiochus later took ill, but, upon his death-bed declared that "The God of the Jews is the one true God."

Now, the Book of Jonah tells us that, after Jonah was cast overboard, and the stormy seas grew calm, the sailors of many nationalities and religions exclaimed "Great is the God of Jonah." They acknowledged the God of the Jews, but did not acknowledge as sole God.

The Eastern Orthodox Christians consider Antiochus Epiphanes to have made a death-bed confession of faith, and become a true believer.

Changing Topics: from Economy to Ad Hominem Attacks

2008-10-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama.

In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.

But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our time.

During the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings. Overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and ultimately cost American taxpayers $124 billion.

Sound familiar?

In that crisis, John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating, played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee. The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts -- and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain.

So at noon Eastern on Monday, October 6th, we're releasing a 13-minute documentary about the scandal called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis" -- it will be available at KeatingEconomics.com, along with background information that every voter should know.

Watch a preview right now and share it with your friends.

The point of the film and the web site is that John McCain still hasn't learned his lesson.

And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.

Watch the video to see why John McCain's failed philosophy and poor judgment is a recipe for deepening the crisis:

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

It's no wonder John McCain would rather spend the last month of this election smearing Barack's character instead of talking about the top priority issue for voters.

But if we work together, we can make sure the focus stays on the economy -- and how to fix it.

Good, Evil and Ideas Which Transform

2008-10-03T21:31:00.000-07:00

http://toosmallforsupernova.org/page005.htm

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When we are wronged, we demand justice. When we are harmed, we cry out for mercy. No one doubts or denies the existence and reality of such qualities as justice or mercy or love. Yet such qualities cannot be seen, but exist only in the context of living human consciousness and discourse. There is one verse in Scripture which states: "God is love."

(I Jn 4:8. 8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. )

Yet, we are not satisfied with the notion that God is merely a personification of Love or Mercy or Justice. We yearn for a real, palpable, detectable, provable, demonstrable, existent, personal God who will relate to us as an individual.

If God is the source of being and non-being, and therefore prior to being and non-being, then what would it mean to say that God "exists"? If God is prior to good and evil, then what would it mean to say that God is "good"? We do not realize that by such language we actually demean God because we cast God conceptually into His own created realm of dualities and antinomies.

We cannot really prove to anyone else that the Universe exists, yet we do not doubt the universe because of that lack of proof, since we may touch and see and feel the universe with our senses. We tend to seek the sacred within sense perception itself.

Schopenhauer can be credited with one of the most famous opening lines of philosophy: “The world is my representation” [§1, p.3].

Schopenhauer begins one of his chapters in "World as Will and Representation" by pointing out that the swirling gases of outer space produced countless revolving and orbiting stars and planets and that upon the surface of at least one of those planets, a film or layer of water and soil formed which evolved first animal consciousness, and later human consciousness and speech, and that it is only within the context of that human consciousness and discursive speech that such notions as truth and goodness and evil abide.

The harsh vacuum of outer space may appear as an evil to biological life, which requires atmosphere and moisture and gravity in order to survive, yet such a seemingly inimical void of outer space is a nurturing womb for an evolving nebula or galaxy.

Consider the atmosphere of an ordinary room, a living room or parlor, in which we are comfortably seated. If a scientist were to place the atmosphere of that room in a centrifuge, we would discover that the comfortable room-temperature air is actually composed of a minority of very high energy molecules and also a minority of very low energy molecules. When that minority of high energy molecules are segregated by the centrifuge and concentrated into one small area, they form a heat which is hot enough to injure us, while the minority of low energy molecules segregated and concentrated in a small area, form a freezing cold intense enough to cause us discomfort.

Imagine, if good and evil were analogous to those high and low energy molecules in the atmosphere. A certain balanced measure of both constitute a normal atmosphere while an imbalance creates a moral dilemma.

I am very fond of an old saying from India: "The cow and the bee and the viper all drink the same water from a pond, and yet the cow transforms that water into soothing milk, while the bee transforms the very same water into honey, yet the viper transforms the water into a deadly poisonous venom." How may we see molecules of good and evil in the water which surrounds us, and in what manner do we personally transform the world around us as we pass through this life?

We often ignore the fact that ideas themselves are as palpably existent as matter and sense perception. We must bear in mind that the very IDEA of Christ's life as described in the Gospels, the very IDEA, notion concept that God should take human birth and lead such a life of humility, obedience, subjugation and surrender, that very IDEA ITSELF is potentially sanctifying and transformational for those who embrace it and internalize it and imitate it and become confirmed in it, quite APART from the issue of the truth or falsehood of the Gospel accounts or the actual historical Jesus.

We may doubt or deny the existence of God if we so choose, but we cannot doubt or deny the existence of such ideas as the life of Christ, and the changes which such ideas have wrought in the world and in individual lives during the past two millenia.

Einstein once pointed out, in a tribute to Gandhi, that generations hence, people might well read accounts of Gandhi's life and scarcely believe that such a person actually walked the earth in the flesh. Carl Sandberg has eulogized and lionized the life of Abraham Lincoln in several volumes with such flower speech that it becomes difficult for the reader to separate the real person of Lincoln from the legend of Lincoln. But the fact remains that such personalities as Gandhi and Lincoln did walk the earth in the flesh and the IDEA of their lives CONTINUES to walk the earth in the pages of books and in our imaginations, and that IDEA of their lives continues to inspire and transform the live of future generations.

There is a wonderful Roman Catholic scholar by the name of Boadt who wrote a large book on the study of the Old Testament. I was able to meet him once, briefly, after a lecture, some years ago. I was recently mistaken in my recollection that it was in one of the early chapters of that work that Boadt quotes a thought-provoking passage from Deuteronomy.

No, I am mistaken about Boadt and Deuteronomy. I actually read the passage in a book by George Martin entitled "Reading Scripture as the Word of God" (ISBN 1-56955-061-1) and the passage is from Isaiah, Chapter 55, and not from Deuteronomy.

Isaiah 55:10-11 "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it."

This passage raises an interesting thought with regard to some things which Moses Maimonides writes in his famous work, "Guide for the Perplexed."
Moses Maimonides is considered to be one of the greatest Rabbinical writers of all times. Maimonides died a mere twenty years before the birth of Thomas Aquinas. In some sense, Aquinas may have been attempting with his writing of the Summa Theologica to accomplish for Christianity what Maimonides had accomplished for Judaism in systematizing matters of faith and interpretation.
Maimonides, in the very middle of his "Guide for the Perplexed", emphatically states that God does not intervene in ordinary matters of cause and effect, the causal nexus, in the universe. Maimonides gives the amusing example of a man who spits, and the spit startles a frog, who jumps and splashes, causing a bird to take flight which in turn causes an archer to take aim, fire, and miss, accidentally slaying some innocent bystander. This example which I give may not be verbatim the exact example which Maimonides cites (since I am paraphrasing from memory), yet my example is very similar to his example. Maimonides makes the point that God does not intervene anywhere in this slap-stick, Rube Goldberg example of a chain of cause and effect.

Maimonides sees the created universe as something set in motion by God, operating by its own laws and principles, much like the comical Energizer Bunny which we see in the Duracell battery commercials.

Many Centuries earlier, the writings of King Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Chapter 9, Verse 11, confirmed the validity of Maimonides' notion when he writes: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Modern Orthodox Rabbinical thought agrees with Maimonides that God only intervenes in causality in the form of "Divine Overflow' in the life of a Zadek or righteous man.

But if we look back to our passage in Deuteronomy about the rain and the snow and their analogy to the "Words" which God sends into the world to accomplish a certain work, we may see some agreement and confirmation of Maimonides understanding of the role which God plays in causality.
Jesus said to "search the scriptures" (the words of God) for "therein we shall find Eternal Life", but Jesus does not point to any particular chapter and verse. When the two Apostles say to Jesus "Where do you live", He replies "come and see" (an invitation to a subjective experience) but Jesus does not give a street address. Jesus tells one man "You are not far form the Kingdom" but Jesus does not say how far or give a longitude and latitude for the Kingdom's location.

What we see, I suspect, is the invitation to a subjective individual dialectical experience.

Rabbi Kook, the first Ashkenazie Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, quotes a Rabbi of old, Nahman from Bratslav regarding the 3rd chapter of Malachi (which is the last book of the Old Testament). The verse in Chapter 3:16 of Malachi reads: "“Those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord listened and heard them. A book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who meditate on His Name.”

The Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav comments that "Two men who live in different places, or even in different generations, may still converse. For one may raise a question, and the other who is far away in time or space may make a comment or ask a question that answers it. So they converse, but no one knows it save the Lord, who hears and records and brings together all the words of men, as it is written: "They who serve the Lord speak to one another, and the Lord hears them and records their words in His Book" (Mal.3.16)

This is the Talmudic dialectical process.

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (1772-1810 C.E.)

The great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov (sometimes called Bratzlav, Breslau or Bratislava) was the founder of the Breslover Chasidic sect. Breslov is a town in the Ukraine where Rabbi Nachman spent the end of his life, but some say the name Breslov comes from the Hebrew bris lev, meaning "covenant of the heart." He emphasized living life with joy and happiness. One of his best-known sayings is, "It is a great mitzvah to be happy." Collections of his Chasidic tales (or tales attributed to him) are widely available in print.

In Genesis, we see that at the end of each day of creation, God looks and sees that "It is GOOD". But when the entire work of creation is finally completed, God looks and sees that "it is VERY GOOD". Jewish tradition sees within this "very good" the "yetzer harah", the natural human tendency or inclination towards evil which may be spiritually harnessed as an energy and redirected towards GOOD. For example, the man with a tendency towards greed may become greedy for Torah knowledge or spiritual wisdom.
R. Nahman said in R. Samuel's name: BEHOLD, IT WAS VERY GOOD refers to the Good Desire; AND BEHOLD, IT WAS VERY GOOD, to the Evil Desire. Can then the Evil Desire be very good? That would be extraordinary! But for the Evil Desire, however, no man would build a house, take a wife and beget children; and thus said Solomon:

"Again, I considered all labour and all excelling in work, that it is a man's rivalry with his neighbour." (Koheleth/Ecclesiastes IV, 4)

The translators have rendered yetzer hara literally, as "evil desire," but as a recurring concept from classic texts, I would think of it as "selfish" or "egocentric" rather than "evil" in its ordinary sense. Thus the midrash works something like this: all of creation is "good" in that it fits together in a harmonious scheme, and is beautiful, bountiful, and reflective of its Source. Basing itself on two textual variations from the other days- the "and" and the "very" - R. Nahman points out that humans have an extra or additional aspect, different from the rest of creation. We have the capacity to be altruistic or selfish, good or evil, generous or stingy. Human beings are neither inherently good nor bad, but are given the impulse and desire for either direction.

If the midrash stopped there, we'd have a fairly straightforward point: humans possess a moral consciousness that animals don't, and are thus morally responsible for our choices. R. Nahman, however, goes a step further, and points out that things that we might think of as self-centred can actually produce great things. The human drive for achievement might be based in ego, but without it, the world would be poorer.

R. Nahman in his example is acknowledging that human relationships contain elements of both selfishness and selflessness; perhaps he is even suggesting that without the personal satisfaction of intimate relationships, the hard work and emotional struggle just wouldn't be worth it for many people.

R. Nahman is certainly also challenging the views of those religions that posit poverty and celibacy as the spiritual ideal- in his midrash, God directly approves of personal fulfillment in worldly relationships. Again, this is not about hedonism, but balance. No reasonable reading of Jewish sources would produce the idea that personal, self-centred fulfillment is the ultimate goal of life. On the other hand, this reading of the story of Creation seems to teach us that we are meant to enjoy life and find it good. Hard things can happen, but the challenge is to see the world through God's eyes, making the choices and connections that raise the material world, which is good, to the level of spiritual fulfillment, which can be "very good" indeed.

From the Sufi's, we read the following:

"What is Fate?" Nasrudin was asked by a scholar.

Nasrudin answered: "An endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the other."

The scholar objected, "That is hardly a satisfactory answer. I believe in cause and effect."

"Very well," said Nasrudin, "look at that." He pointed to a procession passing in the street."That man is being taken to be hanged. Is that because someone gave him a silver piece and enabled him to buy the knife with which he committed the murder or because someone saw him do it or because nobody stopped him?"

The above is from Sufi stories about the wise fool Mulla Nasrudin. The Sufis believe that intuition is the only real guide to knowledge and use these stories as exercises. The stories can be applied to many different situations,
The source for the Sufi stories is Indries Shah's The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin (ARKANA Penguin Books, reprint edition 1993).

On page one of Hans Kung's work "On Being Christian", Kung raises a profound question:

“Why should one be a Christian? Why not be human, truly human? Why, in addition to being human, should we be Christian? Is there something more to being a christian than to being human?”

I might paraphrase Kung’s words by asking “What is there to prevent us from leading good, humane lives if the Gospels had never been written and we had no knowledge of Christ?”

The psychologist Alfred Adler was once asked by a student during a question period, after one of his lectures, “And what of God, Dr. Adler? What are your thoughts on God and Religion?” Adler simply replied, “I would hope that, if there is a God, that he would approve of the manner in which I have conducted my life.”

It has been said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that during the last years of his life, he became increasingly concerned with the a question, “What does Christ mean in our life TODAY, right NOW?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was safe in America, but chose to put his life in jeopardy by returning to Nazi Germany, and there met a martyr’s death after his unsuccessful attempt to stop Hitler. Social activism and protest was not a part of the Lutheran tradition in which Bonhoeffer had been raised.

"Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes."

"Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our church. We are fighting today for costly grace. Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like the cheapjack¹s wares. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

--Quotes from Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship, first published in 1937.

By the way, Hans Kung ends his 600 page book, “On Being Christian”, with these words:

So we have asked: why should one be a Christian? The answer will certainly be understood now if we reduce it to a brief recapitulatory formula:
By following Jesus Christ,
man in the world of today
can truly humanly live, act,
suffer and die:
in happiness and unhappiness,
life and death,
sustained by God
and helpful to men.

Playing the Game of "Goodminton"

2008-10-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

I have spent many hours today in IRC Undernet #philosophy chat. Here is my side of the conversation. There were 10 or so people posting at any one time.

I was just searching on Nagel and found this statement: "Philosophy is in general not a primary inquiry into the nature of things. It is a reflection on the conclusion of those inquiries that may sometimes terminate, as it did in the case of Spinoza, in a clarified vision of man's place in the scheme of things."

Philosophy is concerned about truth, but come to think of it, so is poker.

One must know how to live, financially, dietary, educationally... there are skills to living a life. Some are more successful, while others are less successful, or perhaps complete failures.

If we know all sorts of things, intellectually, but do not have the skills or wisdom to care for ourselves prudently, then, we are in trouble.

I am just thinking that philosophy must or should have something to offer the ordinary person for the task of living.

Someone asks "how can you know if you are an intellectual?"

I reply:

Carefully analyze the newspapers you read and the magazines you subscribe to
and, if you cannot find your bookshelf, well, you have some evidence right there
Mark Twain once said that a classic is a book everyone wants to say they have read, but no one wants to read

Nagel wrote : .I believe that there is a necessary connection in both directions between the physical and the mental, but that it cannot be discovered a priori."

I just realized something very interesting. Aristotle says that human nature LOVES to imitate things "mimesis". Now I see something Nagel said...
He argues that people can have good reason to commit acts that benefit another without the expectation of benefit for oneself and without being motivated by factors such as sympathy. - Nagel

So, here is what I just realized... that through mimesis, vicariously, sometimes we act in such a way as we WISH we would find others acting...
so, vicariously, we satisfy ourselves by becoming that person we wish to encounter...

I realize I have done that many times in my life

We intuitively know that there are various curious rocks on Venus, Mars, and other planets and moons, which exit, and pass through hour after hour for millenniua. Yet no one will ever see them. How is their existence similar to or different from, say, Napoleon's existence.

Now, none of you have every seen these rocks of which I speak, nor have any of you seen Napoleon, or even a photograph of Napoleon.

Perhaps Mars and the other planets are a hoax. How could I prove to you otherwise?

Perhaps Napoleon is a hoax and never really existed. Can you really prove that Napoleon existed, and lost the battle of Waterloo?

Yes the word "Napoleon" unquestionably exists, and an idea of Napoleon exists in your minds... which you can recognize subjectively

Ideas have existence, and words which point to them have existence, so perhaps existence is a matter of words and ideas, thoughts

Here is experiment: hit your thumb with a hammer, and then debate the existence of your thumb and the hammer

Perhaps you have never hit your thumb with a hammer. and perhaps you refuse, saying that it will hurt. but how do you KNOW that it will hurt, if you have never tried it.

But, does not such inference presume existence

So, our notion of existence is, in some way, the product of faith

I am thinking right now of Hume's gap, that no "IS" ever implies an "Ought"
and Hume awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, so Kant claimed

Even more interesting than the question "what is existence" is the question "what is non-existence or nothing"

Sartre said that if it were not for non-being, then reality would be such a plenum, such a fullness, that there would be no room for freedom

Did Sartre have a happy life. If Sartre were given the choice to relive his life, would he choose to change anything?

He was immensely popular in France. His funeral procession had 50,000 people

I once hypothesized that any advanced race would have to be pacifist, and benign, or they would have destroyed them selves long ago with their technology
it seems obvious to me that there must be some relationship between technological power, and non-violent values... that an excess of power, and a deficit of benevolence, spells extinction

One military leader once observed that we are technological giants and ethical infants

We have advanced in science so much, in the past 200 years, but emotionally, we differ not at all from Homer's Iliad
How strange that this should be the case

Mr. Eastman, the founder of Eastman-Kodak, learned, in old age, that he had a fatal disease which would involve immense suffering, so he wrote a note saying "my work is finished" and shot himself

He made the decision to choose the time and manner of his death

He was a very successful business man, a philanthropist, and considered very sound in mind

I think Camus said that "the most important philosophical decision is where or not to commit suicide on any given day" (paraphrasing from memory

One of my fellow students at St. John's Annapolis (great books program), became a physician. Last year he and I had a debate about physician assisted death. He was against it, and I was in favor.

His objection was based on a religious belief that were he to assist in death, that he would personally suffer guilt/blame for his actions

I presented him with a powerful argument in favor of assisting, based on his own religion. But he said my thinking was twisted. But if I give more detail, I may be censured for violating channel rules regarding religion

The objection to "pulling the plug & tubes" is that death by starvation, dehydration, is undignified"

I asked an agnostic secular humanist physician (a nephrologist), his opinion, and he smiled and said, "an overdose of morphine has the same effect as unplugging, so what is the difference"

Regarding my school friend, now physician and devout Christian, I pointed out how Christ himself, according to doctrines, assumed the sins and guilt of all mankind, past and future, and suffered in their place, so therefore, he as a physician, should not hesitate to assist in death simply out of fear that he would incur some karmic consequence of guilt or sin...

But he gasped and said, "oh how twisted your reasoning is"

Rev. William Coffin was despised in the 1960s for his anti war efforts, but before he died recently, had been acclaimed as a hero for many of his positions. I imagine Rev. Coffin was a decent fellow in spite of his religious side.

Religious orientation is analogous to sexual orientation. one cannot fairly stereotype or profile someone on the basis of either orientation.
Mathematician Allan Turing helped win world war 2 by decoding the "enigma machine" that the Nazis used. But he was a practicing homosexual, was persecuted as a security risk, and ate an apple dipped in cyanide to end his own life.

Turing was no more to be despised for his sexual orientation, than Rev. Coffin for his religious orientation, in my opinion

And certainly, Kierkegaard had a religious orientation, and yet contributed to Existentialist thought, as perhaps also did Blaise Pascal

There have been recent articles to the effect that there may be a "religious" gene as well as a "sexual orientation" gene

I say that if readers/students have maturity, then they may study any writing whatsoever, whether religious or secular, and take from it what they find of value, and discard what they find superfluous

My father, a vet who landed at Normandy on D day, despises William Sloan Coffin, calling him a traitor, and he despises homosexuality, so he was upset when I pointed out that Alan Turing, a gay man, helped win world war II, with his skills in cryptology

Then, I pointed out that technically, George Washington was a traitor, in the eyes of the King of England, and I found a proclamation declaring Washington a traitor
my father was really displeased with that

Jane Fonda accompanied Wm. Sloan, and Dr. Spock (the baby expert) to North Vietnam... and there were bumper stickers popular that said

"I aint fonda Hannoi Jane"

I believe in memes

I think it is philosophical to discuss memes, and there should not be some objection that it involves discussing religion

I suppose atomism was a meme, which gradually, over the millennia, became documented through experimental evidence

A meme is a pattern which dwells in the substratum/matrix of the minds of a generation, such that each individual is one cell in the meta-mind which holds the meme thought and, the meme evolves and changes over the centuries

If you observe my posts carefully, you will notice that I almost never address any individual directly, or attempt any argument with an individual

It seems that the most important attribute for survival is adaptation in a species, the ability to change, and the genetic shuffle is like a random number generator which produces a host of imperfections, but once every century or so, produces something superior for a new change in environment

The moderator posts this topic for discussion: Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.

I wonder if "one-upsman-ship" is central to the personality of the wise

or, do they rather have more equanimity, and stay in the background, making observations and writing

Whom would you classify as wise in the 20th century

Wm F. Buckley? Bertrand Russell? Sartre?

"Publish or perish" seems to fall on the side of "having to say something"

Is it possible to consider someone wise, and yet disagree with their conclusions, or is it more often the case that the people we call wise are also the people we agree with

it is noble to be able to admire "the enemy" for that which is truly admirable

In Homer, each side of a conflict seemed to truly admire the bravery of their enemy, and honor and respect them when they fall in battle
the same was true in World War I, among the fighter pilots, who gave the fallen enemy a magnificent funeral

Bravery in particular is a quality we can admire in an enemy

There is a true account of some American Indians, who rode up to a hill top, and gestured to the soldiers in a fort....

All the soldiers were killed by the Indians, but there was one unarmed soldier who carried and played a bugle (for the battle call)
with only his bugle as a weapon, he fought so valiantly that, the Indians, once they killed him, covered his corpse with a buffalo skin

whereas, they dishonored and mutilated the bodies of the other soldiers...

We are inundated in media entertainment with so many valiant fight scenes between adversaries representing abstracted "good and evil" that, perhaps the habit of admiring valor in an enemy lives on in the human heart, since the times of Homer's epics

that which we repeatedly choose for entertainment certainly is some kind of barometer or measure of our inner values

I grew up in the late 50's, and watched many a "Lone Ranger" "Hoppalong Cassidy" and "Roy Rogers" episode, and never realized until it was recently pointed out to me, that they never once portrayed a villain being shot and killed

Consider IBMs "deep thought" machine, which was pitted against a world chess champion, and won, but IBM was rather secretive, and refused a rematch

Kasparov played against the computer, here is an account http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/meet/html/d.3.1.html
"deep thought" was renamed "deep blue"

Excerpt: Deep Blue was now capable of examining and evaluating an average of 100 million chess positions per second.

Machines of necessity resort to "brute force" methods to solve/succeed

In the convention of mathematicians around 1905, one of the problems cited as a challenge for the coming century was the 4 color map problem, to prove that any map could be made with only 4 colors

Someone solved it using certain brute force computer techniques, and mathematicians criticized the proof for being too inelegant

I just found this very interesting timeline of mathematics in wikipedia while looking for the 4 color map problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_mathematics

1900, Hilbert lists 23 math problem challenges for the 20th century to tackle
we should attempt to produce a similar list of problems in philosophy, perhaps
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert%27s_problems

1976 - Kenneth Appel and Wolfgang Haken use a computer to prove the Four color theorem

The four color theorem was the first major theorem to be proven using a computer, and the proof is not accepted by all mathematicians because it would be unfeasible for a human to verify by hand (see computer-assisted proof).
The perceived lack of mathematical elegance by the general mathematical community was another factor, and to paraphrase comments of the time, "a good mathematical proof is like a poem this is a telephone directory!"

I mentioned last week that aesthetics is sometimes a consideration in mathematical proofs

We are considered "gentlemen" and our technologies produces "brutes". I find that intriguing

I was very fond of a notion, which I presumed my own, that inside each black hole is another big bang expanding time-space continuum, and all such black holes represent a "multi-verse". But apparently
apparently Stephen Hawking demonstrated that it would be impossible for such to be the case
so, I am "back to the drawing board"

In the late 60s at St Johns, when I was required to read the Iliad, I became enamored of the battlefield scene commonly referred to as the "aristeia of Diomedes"
I think each of us, on some level, yearns to be the protagonist in such an aristeia, if not in battle, then, perhaps academically, or in literature

Perhaps the pursuit of knowledge and education should be more impersonal, less ego centric

Yet, such ego is encouraged by prizes like Nobel, Pulitzer, and our educational and grading systems, the popparatzi of ideas

Popparatzo was one photographers nick name in "La Dolce Vita", it means mosquito (singular)

There is a poignant scene in the movie, where a father adjusts mosquito netting over his small children... I felt symbolically, to protect them from the evils of media voyeurism
which can sometimes cause fatalities, as we have seen graphically demonstrated

I recently subscribed to "The Atlantic Monthly", and there is a column there about grammatical correctness, and various other issues....

Someone, living in a senior center, complained that a popular movie was rejected for viewing, because it contained the "F" word...
but, here is what I found significant in the reply...
The reply of the magazine stated that we, who view media entertainment, are essentially "voyeurs" who want to see into private lives and conversations

I think that notion of us as a society of voyeurs fits in with some points about popparatzi, and tabloids

But then Heidegger, when he describes man as that creature who beholds Being "reluctantly" disrobing...

Well, it is possible to see philosophical inquiry as a tad voyeuristic

quite naughty, dont you think

I have wondered if "being, reluctantly disrobing" has some connection with that short story "Bartleby the Scrivener"

and the unlived life is not worth examining, as psychiatrist David Viscott points out

loaded statements are what differentiate the "poem" from the "phone book"

Nietzsche seems to load his philosophy with a lot of drama, more so than other philosophers

I made up an interesting test question scenario once: Imagine, a powerful genie appears and gives you 10 minutes to make a choice (and you MUST choose or suffer worse consequences)...
choose between two different lives to be born into...

One life is long, but quite boring, a farmer let us say,... with family and children, nothing dreadful happens, nothing exciting either, and he dies in his sleep in his 90s
the other life, is sort of a Humphrey Bogart life, say, in the French Underground Resistance....
One suffers greatly, but enjoys intense pleasures, dies young, a martyr, but a celebrated hero

So, each must explain why they choose as they do

aha... but, part of the scenario i paint is that the family is neither loving, nor hateful, but just "blah"

the long life gives you simply "long life", with no extremes of pleasure or pain

I suppose the point of my test question, is how much do you value plain and simple existence, living, without the drama, the tragedy, the comedy

to argue that the scenario might be otherwise, is to entirely miss the point of such what-if scenarios

If a geometer says, "imagine a point in a plane, and a line not passing through the point" and you argue "well perhaps there are some other planes over here, with different points and lines" ... well you miss the point of geometry

Its like a game, like chess

You accept the nature of the board, the pieces,... and you play by the rules
The life and writings of Hemingway, as only one example, illustrate someone who makes the Humphrey Bogart choice

One of Hemingway's sons, after the suicide, said "He would have made a nice old man. But he could not figure out how to be an old man"

now... there is one scene in "The Painted Bird" where children lie upon the railroad tracks, and experience the train, and death, rushing inches above them
the author says "only in those moments would I feel truly alive"
Jerzy Kosinsky

oh... listen to this.... I once had a question about "free will" and I downloaded an entire novel from Tolstoy (or was it Dostoevsky), into a word processor, and did a text search
it was very fruitful
but.... like that computer solution to the 4 color problem... more like a phone book than a poem

last week, I downloaded all of Plato's Republic, and search in a text editor for "the art of"

and yet,.... my endeavor of minutes was no different in its result from the endeavor of someone in the 19th century, who had only reading, and notepaper, at their disposal

now, the argument of mathematicians AGAINST the computer proof of the 4 color problem, is that no one can manually verify all the millions of calculations... but rather, we simply take it on faith that the computer and the programmer have done their jobs
whereas, in my case, of the string search, someone may verify the passages I have found, or read the entire book to find additional passages

Andrew Wiles had a mistake in his initial publication of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, and had to rework the proof over several months, until it was error free

I suppose, just like the criteria of the experimental methods, that a result be reproducible
so, others achieve the same result
time and again

Well, Andrew Wiles was only 10 when he first learned of the Fermat problem, and aspired to solving it, which took 30 years
he mentions that his wife never knew him at any period when he was not engrossed in the problem,... he told her of his project several weeks after the wedding
so,... he must have had a lot of emotions, hopes and dreams invested it the success of his proof
they say that Hilbert's tombstone has the epitaph, "We must find the answer, we SHALL find the answer" (or succeed, i forget the exact words)
but, imagine how Hilbert felt when Godel proved that there must be mathematical truths which are not provable
since Hilbert asserted "if something is true, it must be provable"

One might perhaps discuss the aspect of personal emotional involvement that a philosopher has in his philosophy, I suppose
I mean, if we were truly, objectively, concerned only with what is true, then we might be quite happy to be refuted, if we were given something more true as a consolation prize

It amazes me how Sartre abandoned his own brain child of Existentialism when it was at a height of popularity, and he might have enjoyed the lecture circuits

and, didn't he reject the Nobel prize
or some prize

Sartre seemed quite immune to the siren call of popularity and praise

but, not good for you, only good for him
not "good for us"

I simply take your words at face value "good for him", and try to understand what such a response might mean
sometimes, people say "good for him" in the spirit of that fox who thought the grapes, just out of reach, must be sour

yes, "bully" has a much different tone
a better choice

smacks a bit of the Roosevelts, but a better choice

Jacob Kline was at St. John's in the late 60s, a Greek scholar. He made a big point about the first word of Plato's Republic, "katabenein" (I WENT DOWN to the Piraeus)
Kline claimed that the choice of this one word set the stage for the end of the Republic, the myth of Er, and the descent into the underworld

someone claimed that Plato had rewritten the first page of the Republic 50 times, to achieve such effects... but I have no way to know if this is apocryphal

anyway, people like Kline, and Leo Strauss (Persecution and the Art of Writing), made a big deal about this sort of subtle interpretation

the word Katabenein indicates a "going down" or descent

Leo Strauss took the example of Solomon's metaphor that "A word of wisdom fitly spoken, is like an apple of gold in a filagree of silver"

So that, at a distance, to the general public it appears to be a silver apple, but, as you draw close, and inspect, you see a glimmer of gold, and finally, you recognize the reality, of something concealed
the book was Strauss', but he and Kline were buddies

I am simply pointing out that there was one school of thought which laid great importance to very subtle observations

one scholar there, a Latin/Greek scholar from Heidelberg, did her thesis on Lucretius' "De Rerum Natura", and actually counted all the words, to find that the midmost word was "nature"

well for example, if an author simply dashes off a page, and writes a book quickly, then, it might be doubtful that they were intentionally weaving all sorts of subtleties, for the reader to uncover...

BUT, if one could know that an author, (James Joyce, Finnegans Wake) for example, labored over each sentence, with many drafts... then the notion that such subtleties are intentional on the part of an author would be more credible

for example.... Death of a Salesman was written in 6 weeks, and Red Badge of Courage was written in a mere 10 days...

so, it is less believable that the authors, in such a brief time, wove such intricate and subtle meanings into their works

BUT, Annie Proulx spent 6 months on her 30 page short story, Brokeback Mountain, and she admits that she could write a novel in 6 months

so, one naturally asks the question, what is an author up to when they spend an inordinate amount of time writing something that is very short

of course, it is possible that the subconscious is at work, investing subtleties in a work , but that is a very Jungian point of view

Milan Kundera complains that "critics discover other people's discoveries." We might ask whether the same complaint might be lodged against those who write commentaries on the philosophers

That is exactly what Kundera objects to, that the life of the author is something separate from his work

he explores that in his novel "Immortality", in which Heminway and Goethe become best friends in heaven, and peer down to see the mischief of critics who continue to comment on their works

I feel that a comedian/director like Woody Allen is brilliant, yet I know people who refuse to watch his movies because they object to his personal life

yet, perhaps if we knew something about Shakespear's personal life, or Plato, we could have the same sort of objection... but they are shrouded in the mystery of antiquity

F. Scott Fitzgerald may have come close to writing the "great American novel" but he was such a tragic alcoholic and spendthrift

the other day the wheel was mentioning Nagel. Google reveals that Nagel wrote about "moral luck"

one example is that painter who abandoned his family, and went to Tahiti

google on "moral luck" Nagel

yes,.... i have trouble remembering names nowadays

in other words, if a scientist divorces his family, to gain more time for research, and comes up with a cure for cancer or aids... then this is called "moral luck"

since there will be people who will look the other way at his immorality, because, the end justifies the means

but for every such lucky artist or scientist,... there are hundreds or thousands of others who are "morally unlucky", since the do their misdeeds, but produce nothing to make amends

imagine if Einstein were not of Jewish ancestry, but had been a Nazi, bent upon destroying what he considered an enemy nation, and hence pursued relativity solely for the purposes of making possible an Hiroshima

without Einstein, perhaps Hiroshima would have been impossible, but then, perhaps someone else would have come up with the technology

I agree with Jung that matter has a "tendency" to produce psyche. One may see this in the theories of organic molecules forming in the prehistoric oceans on a cooling young planet

ONE PERSON ASKS ME: Are you something of a panpsychist then?

I REPLY:

our society and education conditions us to desperately search for some Greek-sounding technical term, and , once we have found that buzzword, and attached it to something, then we have achieved understanding, and earn an "A" for the marking period

If you really want to know what I am, you could read everything I have posted for 10 years, and I am sure there would be no one word to describe it, any more than there is one word to describe any of us

and if you aren't truly interested enough to read everything and know what I am, then, why ask

we will all be dead and forgotten in 100 years or less, what difference does it make, my particulars... or you persuading me of something, or me persuading any of you...

but, if mankind exists in 100 years, then people will still be discussing Sartre, Plato, Shakespeare, and their likes

when two individuals argue, one trying to convince the other, or disprove or refute the other, i see it as pointless, since mankind in several thousand years of culture has not come to unanimous unilateral agreement upon any siginicant issue (except perhaps, number theory, atomism, energy and the like)
why would I want to limit myself by some label of an ism or ology, and why would I want to label anyone else,

since most people here are probably young, and will change much during the course of their life

I think labeling with buzzwords is a bad habit instilled in us by an educational system of multiple choice testing
it.

I mention ideas.... things which I encounter in my reading, few of them are MY ideas, most of us speak of very little which is truly our own. And one can search on ideas like Nagel, Jung, etc. and read up on it, and form your own notion of what something is or is not

what I am or am not has little to do with anything of real importance

one of my pet peeves, is that one should "address ideas, and not individuals"
but, i think our education and society conditions us to crave "one-upsmanship" and confuse debate with discourse

I will give you a prime example. last week, there was something in here that I found annoying, i.e. i found it an unproductive theme to harp upon. And in PM, one person asked if this does not mean that I am "a skeptic", because I showed my disagreement...

well, i feel it is simple-minded to search for some buzzword label, to attach to someone, such as "skeptic"

I explained (I shall clean up my language here) that "poo stinks", and
asserting that poo stinks does not make me a skeptic... it just means i have some common sense

Actually, the issue had to do with someone who said "axiomatic" in every other post

but, I have no desire to argue
I have no desire to convince others, except possibly, in values which i see as an impediment to learning
I see the desire to defeat others in debate and consider it some kind of intellectual victory, as a mistake, a confusion

It would only make sense if one could point to an example of one idea (not scientific or mathematical) which came to be unanimously accepted by all peoples in all places

for me, debate is a form of violence...
I can simply express my ideas, and name books or links to articles
if someone feels like reading they will read...

if they want to form some different idea from mine, altogether different, then that is their freedom

imagine yourself on a "ship of fools", and you take a year to convince all of them something, and you become their leader, then, is all that consensus and agreement proof that you have found the truth

speaking of the metaphor of a tennis ball, I once made up an examble of a game called "goodminton"
badminton has the goal of knocking the birdie out of flight. and scoring a point

but in my "goodminton" the object is to keep the birdie in the air as long as possible
imagine a Thrasymachus trying to play a game of "goodminton"

in the interests of "goodminton" i try never to address an individual, never to nitpick on their spelling or grammar, never to attach a label to them, and a host of other things i suppose, so that "the byrdie stays aloft"

it is easier to destroy than to create

it is easier to object, than to explore, extrapolate, improvise, conjecture

when you attempt to conjecture, you crawl out upon a limb, and attract all those who only care to criticize and refute...
yet you will notice that the addicts of refutation never really produce some interesting hypothesis or conjecture, or a body of writing somewhere to read

because they fear falling victim to their own tactics

just like war, a necessary evil

but, refutation has never produced universal accord on any none mathematical/scientific issue

it seems that religions argue more than any other arena of inquiry, yet you seem to imply that lack of refutation leads to religion

then why do various sectarian group perennially try to refute each other

seems to be lots of sectarian violence, for decades, in Ireland, and now Iraq

it seems simply foolishness to claim that matters of faith are free from disputation or refutation, simply because one assumes that there is no arbitrary laboratory for conducting experiments

centuries of violence, and centuries of medieval disputation, show otherwise

stop and think how the study of comparative religions can be likened to the study of chess. The board and its pieces have no meaning, but there is a logical movement and history, almost like a mathematics. The same is true of the history of religious thought.
One might be a student of comparative religion, not be religious or spiritual at all, and study the "geometry of arguments" so to speak

I have spent much of my life studying just that
but, the rules of this channel against religion make it dangerous to mention the word at all...

although, ironically, quite ironically, someone might be here hour after hour, day after day, saying essentially that "religion is nonsense" and they would not be reprimanded or in violation of the rule against religious talk
I mean, if you spend a lot of time saying "religion is nonsense", you are in effect discussing religion

regarding that "geometry of comparative religion" I can point out the most intriguing thing I have discovered as a difference between the god of the old testament and the god of the Koran

the Koran asserts that God is not bound even by his own pronouncements, but can revoke and repudiate anything, whereas the essence of the old testament is that god cannot lie, and is bound by his own decisions
this logical difference seems to me quite rich in philosophical possibilities
aha, ABROGATE, that is the word I was seeking

the Koran claims that God is so powerful that he can abrogate or nullify and command or statement
precisely, not omnipotent, if self limiting

but, the alternative is total capriciousness

exactly, set in stone
like those stone tablets

in effect, each religion is like a geometry,... with certain assumed principles, definitions, which reasons from those assumptions to arrive at certain conclusions

its a long story, not every question has a one sentence answer

at least, a one sentence answer that is adequate and does justice to the question

I want to tell you a true story from my life that is very amusing, and has a philosophical lesson in it I think.
I would like to hear it. My wife is from the Philippines, and I am non-Asian. She took me once to a Catholic pentecostal-style revival, where the lay preacher and everyone except me, is Filipino
Now, I am old, and walk with a cane, ... so the speaker asks me to stand up and asks me if I would like to be healed, and free of my cane
I said "No" and everyone was thunderstruck and asked me "Why not"
I explained that I see some purpose to old age, sickness, and death, and have no wish to escape the natural process

which is truly how i have felt most of my life

I once discovered a glaring oversight in one papal encyclical which advocated the elimination of world poverty...
namely, one verse where Jesus says "... for the poor shall always be with you"

and, that phrase, interestingly is echoed by Moses, when he forbids gleaning fields
he commands to leave tidbits for the animals and poor people "who shall always be around"
medical science dreams of eliminating disease, yet viruses and parasites evolve resistance to drugs (consider the malarial mosquito).

and communist marxist ideologies dream of eliminating poverty and class distinctions
but, we have seen the economic failure of such societies
i know one Russian American who would fly in Russia in the 1960s, and mock them for having "first class" when they boast a classless society

at the end of Goethe's Faust (part II), Faust undertakes a project to "reclaim land from the sea" and build some perfect society...

but, his whole bet with the devil is this, if EVER there comes to Faust a moment, where he says "thou art so fair, linger", then Faust loses and the devil wins

is this "the best of all possible worlds"? Can we improve it? Or will we destroy it in our attempts to improve it?

someone once said to Helen Keller "The world is filled with suffering" and she answered "But the world is also filled with the overcoming of suffering"

if wishes were horses then beggars would ride

engineers have devised a plan to preserve Venice from the oceans destruction,... but it would take 30 years to build
no regime/party in Italy stays in power for more than 2 years, so none would support a 30 year project...

because it would not benefit them in the short term

this aspect of human nature is precisely why there will be no improvement, even when it is technologically possible
if you concentrate on the sea level, you miss the whole point of the example
there was a one hour documentary about Venice, and the engineering proposal

there was another hour pbs doc on the tower of Pisa, apparently, yes, they made progress

different example of the problem of human nature.... American business was criticized in the 1980s for only looking down the road one year, at the bottom line of the financial statements, and the stock market, while japan was positioning itself for 30 or 60 years down the road

if we were to clearly see the destruction of mankind, 1000 years in the future, and clearly see a plan to avert it which would take 100 years of hard work and sacrifice, many would say "why bother, since I shall not be around to suffer the calamity"

there would be a minority of idealist activists who would champion the project.... and a majority of people apathetic

there is an ancient story about an old man in his 90s who is out planting a bread-fruit tree which will take 100 years to mature and yield fruit
a passerby sees the old man and tells him he is such a fool to plant the tree, since he can never live to taste its fruits
the old man explains that he does it for future generations, as his forefathers planted such trees for his enjoyment in his lifetime

basically most people are selfish sh!ts, but they prefer to use rhetoric to justify why their position is perfectly reasonable

it is such a relief to pronounce oneself utterly blameless

that movie "paying it forward" is so clever. the teacher asks each student to come up with some idea that will change the world.

so, the one kid comes up with the idea to benefit one person, but require them to "pay it forward" by benefiting THREE others, and placing them under the same obligation.
of course the story must end with the martyric death of the young hero-protagonist

if it is true that we owe a debt to our ancestors, then who can we possibly repay, other than future posterity

My books are BETTER than I am!

2008-10-02T18:03:00.000-07:00

Here is my side of a chat in IRC Undernet #philosophy:

I have absolutely no desire for some eternal life or existence... I am perfectly content with the notion that I shall simply cease to be

I feel that in a sense, Shakespeare and Plato and Homer, and all the great minds, still live on in the sense that their words and ideas are alive through us
like memes, the ideas have a life of their own, and each individuals mind is a cell in that meta-mind of culture in which such memes dwell

They last as long as our planet and sun, which has about another 5 billion years, until it becomes a white dwarf

Ideas stop when thoughtful creatures become extinct

When there is no longer a human-like creature with language to say those words
If the human race becomes extinct, then who will think those thoughts?
I know I can never be a Shakespeare or a Plato,... and I hardly think I could be a Hemingway or Vonnegut,... but I would be pleased if a few of the paragraphs I have written are plagiarized and continue to be read somewhere on the internet after my death

People cut and paste, and even steal ideas...

Once I am dead, I will not know what happens to what I have written,.. but I would like to think, hope, that a few ideas of mine life on

The only reason I continue to think, read, write, is the notion that I might hit upon something unique, and change one or more readers in some way

I enjoy the things I do, and the way I use my time... I just hope that some other will enjoy it also

It seems to me like hoping is better than crabbing

I do have a choice... I might choose to have no hope, and to crab to everyone that might have a glimmer of hope, and tell them they are wasting their time...

If I see someone with a glimmer of hope, I would like to encourage it, with the thought that the person will gain some comfort from that hope
for me, the best thing is to escape being a crab

If, as you say, nothing matters, there is no difference, then there is no reason in the world for me to be any different than I am

If everyone is doomed to be foolish, then I chose to be an optimistic fool, a cheerful fool

and I am optimistic and cheerful in the sense that I think it is worthwhile to study, write, and hold discourse with serious people, and hope to one day add a sentence or two to human culture

In all seriousness, I will explain to you my belief, that the only real "proof of the pudding" for thinkers, is their body of writing. If someone asks me, I can show them what I have written over the past 10 years. It may be rubbish, or it may have some value...

But, it is proof positive that I did something for 10 years

BUT. if someone comes to me and tells me how clever they are, and how they know better than many others, I will simply say... Show me your body of writing...

Now, it seems to me that a very clever and creative person would most certainly write down their findings, so that others might benefit

In the 1960s, there was a famous man whom many admired. One day someone traveled a great distance hoping to see this famous man. They entered his office, and saw him reading one of his own books. They were startled and asked him why he would study his own book, since having written it, he must know what it says.

The famous man explained that "my books are BETTER than me, in the simple sense that what I have written is a great effort of distillation and arrangement, that has taken months or even years. And what I have produced is something BEYOND, what I am capable of at any given hour of the day. So, if you study my book, you will gain far more, than if you simply visit with me for an hour."

What he said applies to many authors and books worse even than Timothy Leary (I could not say in IRC that the author was Prabhupad, because they detest anything that hints of religion).

But, it is not important who he was... what he said applies for example to Plato, or James Joyce, or any author If you could have lunch with James Joyce, it would be a great honor, but would it be the same as studying all his books or if you could have lunch with Plato,... would it be the same as studying all the dialogues carefully
Yes, precisely,... an author sometimes studies what he is written because it grows into something BIGGER than his own individuality
think of the tiny termites, who build towering structures that grow to 10 or 20 feet in height

Now, it is true that the termites constructed the termite hill over a long period of time...but,... each termite is dwarfed by the entirety of the termite hill...

Well, think of someone like Gibbon writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" over a 20 year period he is like one little termite, gradually building up something much larger than himself

Although he is the author, the creator, he cannot in a single meeting convey to you the essence of that writing and, perhaps he even forgets some things himself, and must therefore read and reread and study his own writings

I really like that explanation, "my books are BETTER than I am", which the author gave to the admiring fan, anxious for a brief audience

One modern author in India made a parable of all the cells in the body, personified, having a meeting, a discussion, and each of them thought of themselves as autonomous individuals; none of them realized that they were an integral part of a much larger organism

I saw a nice example once, which pointed out that, in a container of gas, if you examine and individual molecule, it seems totally random and erratic in its behavior, but if you look at the container as a whole, then all those seemingly random molecules obey very precise and predictable laws of temperature/pressure

As individuals, it seems to us that we are totally free, that we can be random in our actions, if we choose,... but, people in large bodies, such as a city or nation, seem to exhibit certain predictable patterns of behavior

What Is Happiness and Who Is Happiest?

2008-10-02T16:56:00.000-07:00

SøREN KIERKEGAARD wrote:

"The unhappy person is one who has his life's ideal, the content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness, the essence of his being, in some manner outside himself. The unhappy is always absent from himself, never present for himself."

Can one be deemed happy, who is not conscious of him/her-self as happy? I am thinking of the opening pages of Herodotus history, where the king asks the philosopher who is the happiest human thinking that surely, the philosopher will name the king himself. Instead, the philosopher cites three different instances of happy (or is it fortunate), people who are already dead
the king begins to get a little frustrated, and finally asks, "well what about ME (the king)"

The philosopher explains that one may not be deemed happy/fortunate/blessed, until the manner of their death is known...

Does being happy involve REALIZING that you are happy,... or is it some judgment that others make of you (perhaps posthumously)
I have been meaning for some time to re-read that Herodotus passage
well, suppose there was one person, that the entire world considered happy,... but secretly that person felt miserable and unhappy...

Now, imagine a different person, whom all the world considers to be wretched, but, secretly, they are happy...

Lincoln supposedly once said "most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" suggesting that happiness is a conscious decision on our part, which requires constant effort... rather than the popular image of "that elusive butterfly of happiness" that flees when we pursue, but alights when we are least expecting it

Is it conceivable that someone might have every conceivable benefit and blessing of wealth, health, intelligence, sexual satisfaction, career, success, and still be wretched, dissatisfied, perhaps even suicidal?

Is it conceivable that someone with many afflictions, perhaps a Helen Keller, might feel inner happiness?

Someone once commented to Helen Keller "the world is filled with suffering." but she replied "the world is also filled with the OVERCOMING of suffering" and of course, Helen Keller was born blind and deaf

I once saw a poor, unfortunate man, who suffered from some form of dementia or mental deficiency. He was always smiling and cheerful, but it was sort of a dumb looking expression of happiness. When I saw him, he was in a hospital, with bleeding feet, walking on a dirty floor

Now, my point is,.... he seemed happy. he had no worries because he was too simple to worry. he did not realize that his feet were bleeding, and he might get an infection from the dirty floor so... my question is.... what is the relationship between happiness and intelligence or education.

I could easily imagine someone of the stature of, say, Goethe, with a wealth of knowledge, who always felt some kind of apprehension, and gloom or doom, based upon that knowledge

Cardiologists are notorious for being the worst sort of heart attack patient.... because of all that they know about their affliction
You cant worry yourself to death, if you are too simple to worry
which is like saying "ignorance is bliss"

I suppose one may consider the analogy of a device with "few moving parts", which has less to break or go wrong,... compared to a device which is SO complex that it borders on the unstable. One may certainly think of geniuses who seemed unstable because of "too many moving parts", and yet it was their complexity that made genius possible

I wonder how happy someone like Einstein, Bertrand Russell, or Sartre was

Einstein said "because I have always rebelled against authority, my punishment is now that I have become an authority to the world"

I could easily imagine some little old woman, who raised 10 children, and had a loving husband, and had 20 grandchildren, and good health, but little education, to be extremely happy

Remember that story about a prince who has 100 pairs of shoes, and is depressed because the pair he purchased yesterday has a defect,... but he hears someone whistling happily, and looks out the window to see that it is a barefoot beggar

Perhaps it might be fruitful to compare "happiness" with something like fear...

Someone in the jungle sees an approaching tiger, and feels fear...
but now, compare that with someone who spends several years in a concentration camp, being tortured...

They feel fear initially, when they are first seized,... but as months and years pass, they become accustomed to the horrors,...

My point is that, meeting a tiger in the forest, and perhaps escaping with your life, by some means, is not a fearful as the thought of years of imprisonment and torture

And yet, the nature of time and habit is such, that the daily fear of the prisoner is only a fraction of the person confronting the tiger

So, happiness may be said to be subject the these same vicissitudes as fear a long period of deprivation, and then, a sudden windfall of food, or money, or water,... may bring intense happiness/pleasure/gratitude whereas, years of bountiful blessings and good fortune, may result in indifference, ingratitude,..

Perhaps, we make the error of thinking about "happiness", as we might think of a persons height, or weight.
A child keeps measuring him/her-self against the wall, hoping to one day be quite tall. We look in the Guinness book of records, to see how tall the tallest person who ever was..
We ask who was the happiest, or most fortunate ever

But, happiness, fear, and the like, have vicissitudes,... and depend much upon immediate circumstances, in contrast to what happens most of the time

Is there any human life which has never known a day or hour of happiness, joy, bliss... I think not (or very few and unusual circumstances)

Camus says of Sisyphus, that he has moments of happiness, as he walks down the hill, to fetch the stone

That one ancient philosopher, Epictetus, who was teacher to Marcus Aurelius said "When your child sets out on a journey, you pray to Jupiter for a safe return, but why not pray for the equanimity of spirit to accept any outcome, even tragedy"

Simpson’s Side Show Bob and Futile Disputation

2008-10-02T16:17:00.000-07:00

These are excerpts from my long dialogue yesterday in IRC Undernet #philosophy

Towards the end, I narrate one episode from the Simpsons and make a certain point, hence the title.

The issue is the earliest occurrence of the phrase "human rights" in English (or any other language I suppose).

well, they also used to speak of the divine right of kings....

oh, I know what I read once, in an introductory book on law. it said that for thousands of years, rights were considered in terms of your class, or family lineage... but only gradually did the concept of an individuals rights evolve
our educational systems are always stressing grade point averages, and chosing valedictorians and salutatorians and magna cum laudes.... which does not sound very "equal" or egalitarian or democratic to me

I mean, if all are equal, then why such a lust for one-upsmanship
here it is in google, the first link that pops up when you google on Thoreau "human rights" http://www.hrweb.org/history.html
yes, those were called "miscegenation" laws

I met a fellow in south Africa,... who contacted my in myspace .... and when I mentioned interracial marriages (I am in one for 16 years).... he said he disapproves...

he was white south African

he was just a very prejudiced person in south Africa... I never bothered to inquire his reasons...

and THEN I discovered that he wants to preach his brand of Christianity... and when he was I was not interested, he did not want to talk with me...

I am white, and I married an Asian from the Philippines.... so
those experiences really transformed me with regard to other races...
each and every person is an individual

(someone asks if Asian women are 'hot' or better)

you cant say all Canadians are this way, and all Russians are that way, and the French and Germans are some other way

each and every man an woman is a totally unique individual, no two are the same

I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, in a New England environment of racial prejudice,... not like Alabama... but still, an atmosphere of prejudice.... so... I feel healed now, though my experience with other races and cultures
it was like having a horrible cancer in your mind...

in my mind, anyway, that is how it seems to me, as I look back on it
I think it is progress that there can be a woman candidate for high office, or a woman of color in a position of power and authority
that is a big change over the 19th century, certainly

I had to google to "remember" this, but it was geneticist Spencer Wells who did that "Journey of Man" documentary, proving through genetic markers, that racial difference is a fiction

putting it in my own words from memory... sorry if it is inaccurate
but I mean, prehistoric ancestor was a bushman in Africa, who speaks that strange clicking language, unlike any other

that really convinces me... Spencer wells documentary

but, the point of Spencer Wells' work is that, it isn't just a politically correct attitude of "color does not matter", but rather , we are all genetically related

I mean, that was the big thing for me about Spencer Wells' work
do you know that archeologists found, in Greenland, a small jade Buddha figure, that dated from like 100 b.c.e. that was so awesome

I mean, that things traveled around like that, in very ancient times
kingdom phylum class order family genus species (sub species) - Linnaeus Binomial Nomenclature
or something like that
we learned that in 8th grade, and that was like 50 years ago for me...

I like to talk about the concept of liberal and conservative... but then it comes close to breaking channel rules about politics... so, I steer clear
the term classical sometimes connote things that are from ancient rome and Greece,... perhaps classic is a more accurate term... which I guess means "typical" "standard" traditional...
now, you have me curious enough to google
ok, I surrender, the term "classical liberalism" is in wikipedia... and wikipedia has my great respect
though, an alternate term is "traditional liberalism" or "laisse-fair liberalism"
I was wrong about the term "classical"
gosh, wikipedia associates it with Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mills
interesting read for me, I am rather ignorant in these matters
not a beginning, not an end, but a good start... good enough for the likes of me, most days
and it mentions "the invisible hand"
so, are you saying I should not use wikipedia, because you find it lacking?
funny, I was thinking the phrase "grain of salt" before you posted it
I can tell you in all honesty, that in the past year or so, I have found so many answers to things I wanted to know, using google, in wikipedia, and I always google, I never start with wikipedia

I will give you an excellent example from last week...

I always admired the singing of Johnny Mathis, since my teenage years... but in the back of my mind I was curious about his "orientation"... as well as former mayor koch...
two years ago, I googled but found nothing specific
but last week, I found my answer in a wikipedia biography of Mathis....
so, I have often been impressed by how google has led me to wikipedia so many times
I am simply pointing out that I never ever start at wiki, I start at google, and scan the brief link synopses... before I click a link
and, so often, I get what I want at wiki...
oh... in fact,... I could not remember that actress in the 1920s, who was strangled because she always wore long scarfs, and one got caught in a car wheel
so, I had to google, of course

well, it was Isadora Duncan.... but I found something amazing, that I was not looking for
but I am not sure if it was wiki

yup sure enough... I added WIKI to my search just now, and it was wiki, that had a love letter from Isadora Duncan to another woman,... which was very poetic, but also, mindboggling
what I personally want from my internet experience,... here in irc, and google, and blogs... is to learn something new each day...
and... some kind of companionship
and... a vehicle to express myself... and also, just exercise my mind
this channel is head and shoulders above any chat in yahoo and Myspace...
this channel was quality 5 years ago, when I spent a year here.... and it is still high quality

for me anyway
that thing about being "thrilled every day" is an excellent point
I mean, somehow , our human nature seeks that.... our blessing and curse is that we can imagine a perfection which is far beyond anything that is possible
I can tell you one thing that thrilled me, in here a few years ago... people were discussing Camus....

and someone asked, "but where is the compassion in Camus"...
so, I said, "here is an even better question, where is the compassion in all the history of philosophy"...
and then, bingo, it hit me... Plato's cave analogy

that one bloke frees himself from illusion, and leaves the cave into the pure sunlight...

but... what does he do then?

he turns around just like some Boddhisattva of compassion, and goes back in the shadows, to liberate the others

and, part of the thrill, is the illusion of personal discovery....

I mean, my 4 years in St. Johns Annapolis, you wanted to come up with something utterly profound and devastation.... every seminar, every essay
in a way, it becomes an affliction
I mean, just like a habit you can never feed
oh sure.... all that stuff

and, I rented all 28 episodes of Ramanad Sagar's tv Ramayan production, in Hindi, with English subtitles
you know, that long movie version of Ghandi's life...
at the very end, as the credits roll by, there is this haunting melody played, but no words...
no american realizes that the melody was Gandhi's favorite HindI hymn (bhajan)

I shouldn't say no American... but the vast majority do not realize it
do you understand Hindi at all... you will know the moment I say one verse
but, to keep this philosophical.... people can savor things only to the extend that they are immersed in a certain culture and tradition...

I mean, most people in America who read Rusdie's "satanic verses" probably missed a lot, since one needs to understand several different cultures and traditions

I used to volunteer a lot of my time on line to help literature students... on the internet...

and the ones in the U.A.E. had the hardest time with things like Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist"...

because, they were not grounded in the same culture
here is a simple minded example.... but very obvious...
there is this one Bergman film, about a doctor, who has a son and a daughter, and the daughter is afflicted with mental illness

well, there is one scene, where the doctor runs away from a picnic table, runs to his study, stands in silhouette at a window.... and spreads his arms wide in an a gesture of crucifixion... but... only obvious to someone who grew up ...
in a culture which looks for those sorts of symbols
so, for viewers in Kuwait. that moment might pass unobserved
here is a different example... the shorts stories of j.d. Salinger...

the Nine Short Stories, collection.. there is one entitled "Teddy"
Salinger loved to utilize things unknown to American culture of his time... like eastern orthodox concepts from the Philokalia
and this has to do with our constant desire "to be thrilled"
so, Teddy was a prodigy child who claims to have been reborn, but a former holy man in India,...

yes, Ingmar Bergman died a few weeks ago
anyway... this news reporter is on board the ship, with the boy and his parents, and the boys little sister...
so, the little boy is explaining to the news reporter about his former life, and how he was guilty of an indiscretion with a woman, and his punishment was his current rebirth
well, here is the point which Salinger throws in, that no one will get unless they know the Gita
the little boy, teddy, says that one day, he is watching his younger sister pour and drink a glass of milk
well, the little boy describes it as a vision (realization) of "god pouring god into god"...
well, that is right out of Gita an Upanisads... but few Americans had seen anything like that in the 1950s
so, it was a novelty...
now, it is old hat, perhaps, hackneyed, passé
so Agathon, like you said, you saw the Gandhi movie, but remember no melody at the end (it was as the credits rolled)...
but I used to sing that song all the time, so, I was conditioned to have it hit me like a ton of bricks...
but, consider all the times we might read and re-read something like Plato's republic, and then, one day, when we are open to it... we see something
we notice something in a totally new and different way... and we are thrilled and thunderstruck well the Gita thing is about pouring ghee (rendered butter) into the fire...
and it says of that "I am the sacrificer, and the sacrificed, and the fire which consumes
so, there is JD Salinger, plagiarizing it, in a sense
the drinking of a glass of milk becomes, "god pouring god into god"
some people claim that "a perfect day for banana fish" by Salinger is one of the greatest short stories every written
I mean, as a different example...
it is about a man, on his honeymoon, who has packed a gun in his suitcase, and ends his life...
but, Salinger has this weird dialog, on the beach , between the suicidal man, and this 8 year old girl
they wade out in the oceans water, and he tells her to look for "banana fish"...
so.. she asks him what a banana fish is....
now here comes my point about a reader being conditioned by his culture, language, heritage, to 1 look for symbols, and 2 recognize symbols from a certain tradition
Vedas started first, as oral tradition, circa 3000 bce, by a nomadic tribe who migrated from the plains west of the volga river, down into India...
and the Vedas were redacted like 1000 bce. I am guessing
next come the Upanisads I think as commentary...
after that comes Mahabharat... and Gita is one chapter in Mahabharat
so all that is redacted around 400 B.C.E. I think
well, as a kind of commentary
now it is interesting that the tribe from the north, were basically bhaktic in their culture... and pale in complexion, while the south Indians (Tamil) were dark complexioned, and meditative
so, there was a synthesis.... between the traditions
one of the most interesting observations that I read recently is that, in human prehistory, religion develops BEFORE written language,.... evolves in an oral tradition, and then, is redacted to some text.... but... it is all pre-literate pre-literature in its origins
just like the australian aboriginie "dream time"
which dates back to 50,000 bce based on cave drawings
one can sort of see the period of 600-500 bce as this very fertile period...
Siddhartha Gautama begins to preach around that time, and his contemporary Mahavaira (of the Jains), while in China, the Tao is developing, and within an century, the pre-Socratics in Greece,... and also, Zarathustra and the Avesta texts, which are closely related to the Vedas
I may be mixed up on some dates, but, that is what I can remember
American thinkers such as Thoreau, and Emerson, and people like that, from that period, the Transcendentalists, were quite taken with things like the Upanishads...
and I suppose, in some way, they sought freedom from Europe and its traditions
it seemed to them a breath of fresh air (although it was quite ancient),... and offered some hope or alternative, to individual freedom of thought...
that is just my guess
there is one upanisad in particular, which is a dialogue, and almost like stand up comedy...
one interlocutor asks "well, just how many gods are there anyway.."
so, the first answer is "330,333" (or something like that)
then, as the dialogue progresses, the number keeps dropping
until finally, it says "one and A HALF"
WHAT a riot
and finally it say, one
those Indians invented zero I am told
I mean, for someone in 5th century bce to say "1 and one half"
that blows me away... and... to have such a sense of humor
one might well compare that anecdote to Abraham, bargaining down to 10 righteous men in Sodom, from 50
and Mohammad bargaining down from 50 prayers per day, to 5
I mean, there is an obvious similarity
there are numbers, and the numbers go down, and not up
and do not forget, his name was initially Abram... and then, it got changed to Abraham
according to the account in genesis
and Sarai became Sarah
but, the word Sarah had something to do with "laughing"
because, she was a very old woman, and she was told she would have a child
perhaps I am confused
I get these things mixed up sometimes
nope, I googled on Sarah laugh... and there are lots of links
hmmm... let me see
right you are... I was confused
you see how wonderful irc and google can be,... I reinforce what I learned, and remember what I forgot (or am reminded)
well, I almost passed out when I learned that there is a Babylonian account that almost exactly matches noah and the ark, and the raven and the dove
I think from Gilgamesh
I mean, that is staggering when you first learn of it
I mean, if you grew up in my era and culture
I looked a Gilgamesh, a little,... I should have read it closely
I so love ancient texts from bce, because it preserves for us human thought undefiled by the events of later history
undefiled is unkind.... I should simple say,... unconnected
simply
oh... I have the book. and watched all 10 hours of that interview on tv with campbell
which was complete a year before Campbells death
Bill Moyers, that was who interviewed him
simply breath-taking

Campbell and Carl Jung where such giants and really changed things...
Jung was the greater giant,... but the were both giants
a graduate student at New School (I think)did her dissertation on Freud and Jung, and it became a book "Years of Friendship, Years of Regret"
and that biography clearly shows how and why Jung was the greater of the two men, and overshadowed Freud
and you know, Freud initially chose Jung to be his successor, to preserve Freuds "theory"... and
Freud realized that, because of antisemitism, it was important to choose a successor like Jung (who was not Jewish)

well, you have to understand something (and it helps to look at the Vichy govt in France, under the Nazis)...
when you are living under the thumb of such a tyranny... you cannot protest too loudly
you know, after WWII, the french wanted to have this great Vichy purge, and the executed several people...
then, their great WWI icon, Petain, who was then age 80, was about to be executed, and De Gaul pardoned him, and put a stop to is
put a stop to it
and, in the 70s I knew a Russian scholar, who had been on a newspaper in a Nazi dominated area...
my point is, it is easy to look at people in certain circumstances, and accuse them of certain things... which were really just their way perhaps of surviving
all I can say is I read Jung's "Memory Dreams Reflections", and a number of other things.... and I received no impression of Nazi sympathy
and, if he was antisemitic, he was sure chummy with Jewish Freud for a long time
hey, each of us sets what we feel are the limits...
I personally knew two scholars who lived under the Nazi regime, and were forced to write certain things...
and they were persecuted the rest of their lives for what I feel was something under duress
but, that is my subjective opinion...
you know, I was so shocked when the news came out that billy graham was on the Nixon tapes, making antisemitic remarks
antisemitic
but... I saw a documentary last night about grahams relation to all the presidents, from Eisenhower to Bush ...
well,... suddenly, I came to realize something....
namely, that someone can possibly be heavily influenced, seduced, by power, authority, and the moment...
and perhaps say or write something that they do not truly believe
I have seen people go on and on about some imagined flaw of Lincoln, and I have seen people go on and on about some alleged flaw of Gandhi...
I for one admire Lincoln and Gandhi and Jung... among others
I never met them, but I read a lot of their words...
if they had one or more flaws, or shortcomings, then I guess they are no better than I am...
but I admire what they wrote and thought...
each of us must make their own decisions about what and who they admire...
I will not try to force my opinion upon you or anyone else, you are free to come to your own conclusions
Dante, in his inferno, chose to place 3 people in the three headed jaws of Satan, in the center of hell... one was Brutus, who betrayed Caesar, another was Judas, the betraying disciple, and I forget the third
so, each of us is free to write our own inferno, and portray Satan with as many heads as we please, and place our favorite villains in each jaw
Agathon,... sleep well...
and I will tell you one little secret
I seek many things, but among them is not agreement...
you must come to your own decisions
but what you choose to think is your private matter...
I do not ask you to agree or disagree with me...
I simply see no value in that
the point is, it was Dante's take, Dante's "poetic license"
if you want to be Dante, you can place Lincoln, Jung and Gandhi in Satan's mouths.... its up to you
or Stalin... (how did he get in the mix, I don't know)
do I personally admire Stalin, Hitler, Mao, or Pol Pot... no, I do not...
do I care to argue about them with anyone, no I do not. what is the point
I will mention something that does interest me very much... a statement by Tolstoy
Tolstoy pointed out that "when we enslave a people, we become dependent upon them, in a curious fashion"
so, we defeat them, we control them, but we are weakened by our victory
and it is kind of like Socrates' argument that the powerful wealthy tyrant is the most wretched of people
but, just like pharaoh becomes dependent upon his slaves... I suppose that is the classic metaphor in western culture
perhaps it is all myth, but it is a myth which portrays a tyrant defeated by his own victory
so, true or false, lie or propaganda, a myth, a legend, whether Christ or Buddha or Krishna, or Mohammad, becomes a metaphor for certain things, and shapes the course of a cultures ideology
did you know that Gandhi and Tolstoy actually corresponded, and visited one another
Tolstoy
and, the mentor of Martin Luther King, who was Howard Thurmond, went with his wife to India and stayed with Gandhi for several weeks...
Gandhi instructed Thurman on the concept of passive resistance... and inquired of Thurmon how life in the Americas is for people of color
Thurmon in turn taught the notion of passive resistance to Martin Luther King, and it became a part of the civil rights movement
and Einstein corresponded with Gandhi, and , on Gandhi's birthday, Einstein wrote that "Future generations will read of this man Gandhi, and will scarcely believe that such a person actually walked the earth in the flesh"...
well, broader question, why isn't everyone any one thing in particular...
that is...
why after 5000 years of written history, is their so little conformity, or unanimous agreement on major issues of govt. religion, economy, education, jurisprudence
does that ever strike any of you as odd...
and.. by the way, one general said in recent years "we are technological giants, but ethical infants"
well, yes... with internet especially
I mean, I have talked regularly for years now, with young people in Pakistan, Tehran, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore
so, think of how freely ideas can flow now...
oh, I spent a lot of time on internet with graduate students in mainland china
so... this kind of contact cannot fail to have a transforming influence
well, of course, they are not as smart as you are... but... they are pretty smart.. I would say, yes, they understand the difference
there is this one woman, age 28, in med school, in Tehran, who never ceases to amaze me
she devours things like Plato, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky...
I am old enough to be her father, and she thinks of me a such
actually I am old enough to be her grandfather
anyway, I mentioned something very obscure to her in Brothers Karamazov...
and she finished my sentence for me... knew all about it
but, poor thing, she is trapped in a society which is not very free, or very pro feminine rights
she speaks English, French, Farsi... she is amazing...
I keep urging her to get out of Iran
but.... it is so much "in her blood"
Michael, you make one interesting point... namely, that.... we only have access to those thinkers who chose to write...
if there were some great thinker who disapproved of the written word, then , we would never know
now, here is another curious fact to realize, namely, that any ideology that was against proselytizing, converting, and against written word... encouraging individual thought,... well, it would never achieve hegemony and dominance
which mean, in a nutshell, that anything that survived and spread, was , in some sense, aggressive, rather than passive....
or should I say, less peaceful, rather than more peaceful
precisely
what can I say, the unexamined life is not worth living, said Aristotle (and David Viscott said 'the unlived life is not worth examining')

I love david viscott's works...
He wrote his autobiographical "The making of a psychiatrist" in which he said that...
"Psychiatric residency is so cut throat, that, anyone who survives is about as compassionate as a hard boiled owl"
which is a great irony, because psychiatry requires compassion and empathy
I think carl rogers is one example of a very compassionate empathetic analyst,.... as was also Alfred Adler
well, as I often say, a little education goes a long long way
most likely, yes, and it will be each other
Einstein supposedly said "I do not know about World War III, but I know that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones"
perhaps they will genetically engineer a breed of paraplegic gazelle, and then hunt them with fly swatters.... I don't know

consider the thousands of years that the native American Indian life in North America
sorry, I come and go from the keyboard
the native American was so hardy, through natural selection... that he lived with no medicines or surgery
now, we live perhaps to 100, but we are very weakened by our own technology
but.... is it better to have a vigorous life to 40... or live to 100 and be a weenie
I mean, we are so dependent on antibiotics... just as one example
a centenarian weenie is a happy weenie indeed, I know
with their pace maker, and hearing aid...
gulping down dozens of pills a day, to keep everything going...
I am a 60 yr old weenie... but I am working on it
actually, I will be grateful if I can die naturally in the next 5 years or less
I don't enjoy life much any more... and suicide is so embarrassing....
so, if I could just go naturally... with a stroke or heart attack,... that would be a blessing
well, everyone says,... "oh my, he killed himself"
but if you just die naturally.. then, it is ok
my failing health, and money problems... and many other reasons... the feeling of no future, no hope... I mean, I would not bother to say this, but you are asking me
I am disappointed by my own failures in life... and I am disappointed by the world and humanity
do you know, I have a young friend in England, who became a heroin addict, and told me about it...
and then, he stopped
but, one day, I asked him the details of a lethal overdose... because,... it seemed like something accessible,... feasible.. and he got angry
he told me he would not give me such information
you know, this is actually a philosophic issue... raised by Camus
in Myth of Sisyphus.... the opening paragraph
where is says the most fundamental question is whether to commit suicide
Camus was so brilliant
Camus was the better writer... at times approaching Kafka
miklas, I admire thomas mann, and I have thought of that at various times
I mean, the obligation to stick it out
like a duty
sorry for being so boring

well, you are a shining example of that, I must confess... you have a point.. yes, think for yourself,... don't be quoting all these dead fuddies
but, I know you will all cheer me up
my favorite sentence from Camus... "Perhaps the greatest sin, the only sin, is to hanker after some imagined future life, and ignore the implacable grandeur of this life we already have"
but, Camus suggests that even Sisyphus finds some happiness, in the moments when he walks back down the mountain
Eastman, the founder of Eastman Kodak, was informed that he had an incurable disease, that would result in an agonizing slow death... so, he wrote a note saying "my work is done" and shot himself in the head
in his case, I do not thing he was depressed, I think he was making a practical choice
yes, I watched that documentary
one old fellow from Germany,... was interviewed
he had a degenerative neurological condition
he was traveling there before he became totally incapacitated
he chose that physician assisted end rather than a slow agonizing end
the Hippocratic oath, in its original form, also begins with a prayer to 3 pagan gods.... which the Jews objected to, so Maimonides wrote a Jewish oath, which is used today...
I mean, for people who don't want to swear to Apollo and Aesculapius
I went through St. Sohns Annapolis with this fellow who became a medical doctor... and several year ago, we discussed physician death
he is a devout christian, so he told me his objections... but I discovered a very curious flaw in his reasoning...
well, I hesitate to explain the flaw, because, it had to do with his own christian belief, and I might be perceived as violating channel rules
well, when and if an op gives me the nod... I will explain
exactly
I am not going to play 20 questions about it... plus, you could never guess it
ok... who wants me to tell them in PM
you mean, I have Skept's permission to explain the flaw in the christian doctors reasoning...
ok... here it is... we discussed the scenario of someone on life support, and the doctors choice is to either overdose with barbiturates, morphine, which means quick merciful death
OR. to unplug the tubes which means a long slow death by dehydration, very degrading
well.. my christian doctor fellow alumnus explained his reason why he would never choose the barbiturate/morphine...
but would be forced to choose unplugging the tubes
his reason, in an nutshell (in my own words/terms), is that he would be tainted with the "karmic consequence" of his deed...
hence, he would rather let the patient suffer, and keep himself pure, rather than take sin upon himself, and spare the patient suffering
SO, here is what I pointed out to him, how in a sense, his reasoning is in direct conflict with what Jesus would have done...
in the sense that, christian doctrine describes the crucifixion as willingly assuming the sins of all humans past present and future
so as to spare others suffering
well, he really got angry, and said my thinking is so twisted
but... listed to what a leading nephrologist who is agnostic humanist, at a leading hospital, replied to this scenario
he chuckled and said, "the overdose of barbiturates/morphine has the exact same effect as unplugging the tubes... except quicker, so.. what is the difference
to that nephrologist, ... it was just ludicrous for someone to morally struggle over such an issue
so, thanks skept, for the nod

and... if I may point out an interesting analogy between this point... and the recent documentary of Billy Graham entitled "Pastor to Power" (graham and all the presidents)
graham stuck by the ClintonS in their scandal, and spoke of forgiveness... and many conservative religious righters distanced from graham...
I mean, they despise someone who lives out in actions what they pay lip service to
Lincoln once said "If I make my enemy my friend, have I not destroyed my enemy"
Lincoln was cool
I wrote a living will by hand,... stating that I wish to refuse any extreme measures to sustain life
you know it is interesting that King Saul commits suicide, I think, by falling on his sword... but no comment is made about the moral implications
there is all kinds of links in google about Saul's suicide
I don't know, let me google
well, given that I just said I would consider suicide... I think that is rather obvious
oh... wow.. you bring up an interesting point, flaw, in Charles Stanley's theory of "eternal security"...
a young man, depressed, asked a pastor if he could go to heaven as a suicide, and the pastor said "yes of course, based upon eternal security"
so, the young man committed suicide
google on "Charles Stanley" "eternal security" suicide and you will probably read all about it
oh... wrong... the unforgivable sin against "the spirit" is something altogether different... the early Greek theologians had an explanation for that
I just did that google search and, bingo, 1500 links
yes, but, the channel rules forbid discussing religion, and I cant keep pestering mods for permission
I am sort of walking on eggshells as it is
ok... here is the clever Greek explanation about the unforgivable sin against the holy spirit, which probably dates as early as 4th century C.E. or perhaps no later than 7th century
the Greek theologians want to argue that all sins are repentable
BUT, here is this one statement about the mysterious "sin against the holy spirit" which is unforgivable...
so, here is their clever solution...
they argue that there is no sin which cannot be repented and forgiven
BUT... they point to pharaoh in Egypt...
and explain that "IF you perceive the power of Satan as god, and the power of god as satan"....
then... it is not that you could not repent and be forgiven...
but you would never approach the genuine source of forgiveness
I thought that was most clever of them

nooooo.... listen... the pharaoh of Egypt, had his magicians...
and they tried to imitate each wonder of Moses...
but the early theologians take that as an example.... along with the pharisees argument that Jesus power comes from Satan...
so... they argue that no sin is unpardonable... BUT the sin against the spirit is to see Satan as god and god as Satan
so, they argue that under such circumstances, you would never approach god, because you
ma zeh
mana
whatshamacallit
manna was whatshamacallit
in modern hebrew Ma-zeh
one verse said it was like coriander seed
and they would grind it I guess into flour
I just realized something amazing... if it is true that they had to grind the mana
well,... when they were thrown out of paradise, they were told that henceforth, they would have to live, "by the sweat of their brow"
so... I the manna were fast food... that would contradict the curse
if he had a hammer, hAd hammer in the mornin, he'd hammer in the evenin, all over the land
curiously, Buddhist scriptures speak of a "smallest unit of time" , like an atom,... and 150 of them is the time for one thought to occur
The Buddhist doctrine of momentariness (ksa-na) is pivotal to a number of key ... concretized and established as the smallest unit of time (0.013 seconds),
googling on buddhism smallest "unit of time" yields 4400 links
I mean, it is amazing that in 300 bce, people are thinking about such things
I have often wondered, is reality digital or analog
I mean, would a digital representation entail some incommensurability
I suppose it could not possibly be digitally represented precisely
I had an amazing thought the other day, to support the holism notion, that reality is greater than the sum of its parts (in contrast to a reductionist notion that it can be reduced exactly to parts)
in a nutshell... here is my idea
jung in his monograph "On the Nature of the Psyche", states that matter has "a psychoid" aspect which strives towards consciousness
so... let us say that matter evolves consciousness which has the power of imagination...
and... furthermore, let us say that thoughts and ideas also possess being and existence....
now.... if we posit that the imagination is capable of conjuring an infinity of realities, unicorns, horned rabbits... yada yada
then, that would suggest that reductionism is wrong
since, the one property of consciousness, imagination, produces an endless infinite number of things
well, consider people like Dedekind.... and all that transfinite number stuff
why.... if ideas have being... then mathematics alone proves the point I should thing
I should think
well, just think about it
I am an old man, I cant indian wrestle over it... but I thought it was an interesting idea
like arm-wrestling... google on it... I will
A form of wrestling in which two opponents, lying supine in reversed position, lock their near arms, raise and.... yada yada... google knows all, tells all
aha... but, dont you see... it does not matter at all what I personally think... or whether we agree or disagree.... all that matters is your subjective choice, what to read, and what you think of it
to me, that is one of the most important realizations, that few realize...
I loved Leibniz
how strange, I have been thinking about monads this week
we had an old tutor at st johns in the 60s, Winfree Smith, who would sing a little song whenever we read Leibniz
Im a little monad short and stout, got no handle got not spout , nothing coming in and nothing going out
lots of little monads all about
I was a sort of non practicing ordained reverend, who drank a WHOLE LOT
and he grew mint each spring...
and threw a mint julep party for the seniors
and, a house is not a home
and, a house divided cannot stand
and, a house built upon the sand, is uninsurable
and, whoever is elected, there will always be a bush in the whitehouse
bush in the sense of hair
if you get my drift... that was a joke on the Tonight show 15 years ago I think
well, look at Godel's META mathematical statements (calculus)
and Hegel's "flower of philosophies"
a kind of meta stance, standing back,
certainly meta theology is something that Huston Smith and Ninian Smart, and many others do
I have been doing it as a hobby for 20 years
sure, I have been posting on the internet for 10 years... I drew all sorts of conclusions... this one college student 6 years ago, told me he was reading my stuff for weeks, and was failing his courses..
but, he seemed a little imbalanced
in fact.. of the few people that took some interest in what I wrote,.... a disturbing number seemed imbalanced in one way or another
I would say that all the ideas which came about prior to the existence of humans are far more natural than anything which arose thereafter
ok... I posted something here several hours ago that is an example of meta theology
I did the thing about the upanisads... the countdown from 330,333 gods, to 1.5 gods to 1
then I pointed to a similarity with Abraham, bargaining down to 10 righteous men in Sodom
that is part of the amazing humor of the upanisads
then, I pointed to Mohammad bargaining down from 50 prayers to 5 prayers a day
I mean... whether it is goofy or not.. that is a form of meta-theology
just like Godel stands back from every axiomatic system, and contrives a calculus of meta-mathematical statements
and just like Hegel stands back from individual philosophies, and generalizes a pattern of thesis, antithesis, synthesis
sort of like the argument between Hilbert and Godel at the convention in 1905 (or thereabouts)
on Hilbert's tombstone, it says something in German like "we will succeed, we must succeed"
but Hilbert asserted that any mathematical truth must be provable
and godel proved him wrong with that indefiniteness proof
read up on Hegel... the phenomenology, the lesser logic
hey, dont ask me, what do I know, I am a stupid useless old man... I am probably full of baloney...
ok... let me explain it to you this way...
lets pretend that you are out digging in your back yard...
and you find this box....
and it has all these printouts,.... which is everything I ever posted on the internet...
except I have been dead for ten years...
so... you start reading... and you come across these things that I say...
welll... some of it seems ok... and some of it seems like crap
so.... what do you do???
do you argue with me about it....
no.... why///..>>>/??
because I am DEAD for ten years...
so... you do the same thing as when you read shakespear, or plato,... or some looney alchemist.... or anything else in print
right?
now, why is that significant

which is... you write your own essay or book.... or you right "in praise of Sitaram" or you write "refutation of Sitaram the idiot and heretic"
but, the point is... that... argument is pointless
now... consider the episode in the simpsons, where Krusty's side kick seizes control of all the television stations
now... Sideshow Bob, detests television...
so... he gets on the television stations, which he as seized, to denounce television...
and at the end... he says "and if you try to point out to me the irony of using the medium of television to denounce television... I have already thought of that
so... if I argue with you the point, that argument is basically futile.. then... I will become a bigger fool than I already am

but, I am too smart for that, because, I studied Sideshow Bob
ok... think about this... if I argue with this channel for the next 5 hours.. and finally, through the brilliance of my rhetoric , the scores of people here all unanimously agree with everything I say...will that make me right?
well, how could I be certain that if all of you agree with me, that I am right...
for all I know... people are foolish... and I have convinced foolish people to agree with me...

I come to these conclusions based upon my 10 years of being in chats and channels and message boards of this nature
but... I have no goal or desire to be agreed with
or disagreed with...

I have said some things... and some will find it interesting, and perhaps go and read or write something
and others will find it nonsesne and ignore it..

My goal is to get a few new ideas for myself each day...
and distract myself slightly from the misery of daily existence

it isnt about me so much as about the futility of equating argument with discourse, and consensus with facticity

hey, I just made that up

Do you know what the greatest secret of martial arts is?

The secret is: Steping aside

think about what I have done tonight
I have simply steped aside
but, you feel frustrated

Gandhi once approaced a large crowd of Sikhs, carrying rifles
Gandhi said to them, "you must be very frightened. you have rifles. see, I have no weapon. I am not frightened"
well.. the Sikhs were all embarrassed, and laid down their weapons
Gandhi simply "stepped aside"
here is an interesting thought, "for all any of us know... there is an infinity of time prior to our birth when we did not exist. this thought never troubles anyone."
"but... the thought that we must die, and there shall be an infinity of time when we no longer exists.... that concerns and frightens many"
but... for all we know, we have already survived an infinity of non existence

it is almost 4 am for me
I just took a sleeping pill...

(someoe askes "is it wrong to assassinate someone")

I am reminded of that lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who attempted to assassinate Hitler
and wrote that essay called "Cheap Grace"

I thank you all for your hospitality.... you are kind to tolerate me here
thanks....

I never though I would receive a word from skept.... this is auspicious
and some weeks ago, the requested to place one sentence from me in "The Wheel"
I am grateful for these small honors

I bet they can measure the metabolism of the brain,... and see increases
or image thermal changes, during thought

someone once told me that life feeds on negative entropy
entropy is a measure of disorder

so... negative entropy is highly ordered, with potential energy, to be metabolized

Schiller Seminar: On Aesthetic Education

2008-10-02T16:01:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to try and discuss the three hour seminar I participated in with 16 fellow St. John's "Great Book Program" alumni.

Here is a link to the readings:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/schiller-education.html

This is going to be more of a quick and dirty post, than something of crafted eloquence.

And I plan to try and come back to this during today and tomorrow, to edit but mostly to add.

Schiller was friends with Hegel, Goethe, and I suppose other great thinkers among his contemporaries.

He starts off this collection of letters by saying that he will attempt to follow Kant's principles.

In truth, I will not keep back from you that the assertions which follow rest chiefly upon Kantian principles; but if in the course of these researches you should be reminded of any special school of philosophy, ascribe it to my incapacity, not to those principles. No; your liberty of mind shall be sacred to me; and the facts upon which I build will be furnished by your own sentiments; your own unfettered thought will dictate the laws according to which we have to proceed.

With regard to the ideas which predominate in the practical part of Kant's system, philosophers only disagree, whilst mankind, I am confident of proving, have never done so. If stripped of their technical shape, they will appear as the verdict of reason pronounced from time immemorial by common consent, and as facts of the moral instinct which nature, in her wisdom, has given to man in order to serve as guide and teacher until his enlightened intelligence gives him maturity. But this very technical shape which renders truth visible to the understanding conceals it from the feelings; for, unhappily, understanding begins by destroying the object of the inner sense before it can appropriate the object. Like the chemist, the philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the spontaneous work of nature only through the torture of art. Thus, in order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions, and preserve its living spirit in a fleshless skeleton of words. Is it surprising that natural feeling should not recognize itself in such a copy, and if in the report of the analyst the truth appears as paradox?

The above is an excerpt from the beginning of the first letter, where he mentions Kant.

I am going to try and describe briefly what I see as problems in what Schiller wrote.

1.) He stereotypes the "primitive rough barbarian" in manner that in no way matches my impression of people like the Piranha in the Brazilian rain forests, or the Australian Aborigine, or the Chukshi reindeer herders above the arctic circle.

2.) Schiller seems to expect some kind of law or principle, like Descarte's method, that will enable everyone to enjoy aesthetics in the proper fashion.
I see the nature of art, whether painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, drama, music or cinema, as constantly changing in a manner which defies some kind of heuristic formulaic method or definition.

...
One person in the seminar mentioned mysticism and the mystical, so, someone else objected "I don't understand what you mean by 'mystical'".

I felt like saying to him that I can easily cite any number of things that we would all recognize as mystical, e.g., that passage in the Gita, 'I am the sacrifice the ghee (clarified butter), the offering, and I am the priest who offers, and I am the fire who consumes." Certainly, we see this as mysticism, and we recognize it as very similar to Christ's Eucharistic "mystical supper", "Eat of this all of you, this is my body... drink of this all of you, this is my blood." And I am reminded of J.D. Salinger's "Teddy" (in Nine Short Stories), where the prodigy child, guru in a previous birth, says, "I watched my little sister drinking milk, and suddenly I saw God pouring God into God." We may not be able to define mysticism or the mystical, but we certainly know it when we see or hear it.

There was one particularly brilliant man in the seminar, from class of the late 1940s, Van Doren, who truly amazes me. But I tried to make one point, and I feel he really did my point an injustice.

I tried to argue that, in every age, there is some reclusive person, such as an Emily Dickenson, or some rebellious iconoclastic person, such as James Joyce, or Picasso, or just some self-taught unknown, like Walt Whitman, who does something in poetry or music or painting or literature, which has never been done before. And, future generations come to admire what has been done, and consider it a form of ground-breaking art, which REDEFINES previous notions of poetry or literature or painting.

I pointed out that James Joyce simply wanted to do Finnegans Wake, and didn't give a hoot whether anyone approved of it. He just wanted to do it.

Van Doren remarked that no one should WANT to do such a thing, since it is just a vast collection of anagrams and puzzles in every sentence. Well, I feel that he is missing the point. James Joyce wanted to do it, and exercised his artistic freedom to do it, and didn't really care what posterity thought (although I am sure he felt that it was something with merit.) Suppose I objected to Picasso and said, "Well, who wants a woman with three breasts. I like my women with two breasts." Well, Picasso did what he wanted to do, and now it is part of art history, and furthermore, if anyone ELSE tried to do it, they would simple be labeled as a Picasso imitator. Same thing with James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. No one else can ever attempt what Joyce did without being seen as an imitator of Joyce. Now I am told that Joyce is first to employ a stream of concsiousness in fiction. Well, that can conceivable be employed by future writers, without smacking of Joyce.

...
Here is another person who annoyed me in seminar, by missing the point.

I brought up Amy Chua who wrote 'World on Fire'. Chua observes that America had several hundred years to evolve through conditions and experiences that gradually made America capable of constitutional democracy. One cannot simply march into some alien culture, which has not had some centuries of heritage and conditioning, plop down a constitution, candidates, and voting booths, and say "today you will have free elections and hence forward be a democracy."

My point is that, as with forms of government, so with forms of art and literature, one cant simply plop down a poem or painting or symphony or piano concerto, and say, "this is good art. this is beautiful." There must be a history and tradition of conditioning.

Well, this fellow sitting next to me pipes up and says
"Well, I don't think democracy has been successful."
DAMMIT, that is not the point. The point is not whether
democracy, or Finnegans Wake, or three-breasted two faced
women, or Mahler symphonies have BEEN SUCCESSES
or FAILURES. The point is that a people becomes
prepared and conditioned for certain cultural events
through centuries or millennia of tradition and
conditioning. You cannot just dream up some quadratic
formula for art of beauty, and plop it in the midst of education, and expect that it will work for all aesthetic situations for all times to some, in all places.

Here is another thing that irritated me:

Towards the end, I pointed out that, if you offer the world something like PBS educational television, with Nova, Masterpiece Theater, Bill Moyers, etc., it will be watched by only a small minority, while the vast majority will spend endless hours watching Judge Judy type shows and Jerry Springer type shows, which are not only petty and crude, but endlessly repeat the same sordid topics over and over. So one fellow pipes up and says , "Oh, you see PBS as 'The Beautiful':" Well, no that has nothing to do with my point. My point is simply that even if Schiller or Kant or anyone else could come up with the perfect aesthetic education, and formula for truth and beauty, the majority of mankind and future generations would care less. They would choose to wallow in what is commonplace, and they would read the "New York Post", with all its corny punny headlines. They would not read The New York Times, or The Atlantic Monthly.

Here is another quote from the beginning of Shiller's first letter:

Like the chemist, the philosopher finds synthesis only by analysis, or the spontaneous work of nature only through the torture of art. Thus, in order to detain the fleeting apparition, he must enchain it in the fetters of rule, dissect its fair proportions into abstract notions, and preserve its living spirit in a fleshless skeleton of words. Is it surprising that natural feeling should not recognize itself in such a copy, and if in the report of the analyst the truth appears as paradox?

...
Now, regarding that phrase "the torture of art", I brought up in seminar the point that Kierkegaard makes, about how the artist is like that bronze bull of Phaleros, which was a furnace inside, to torture prisoners, but had all sorts of intricate convoluted pipes, so that the screams of the victims were transmuted into an eerie kind of music. Kierkegaard says that the artist transforms inner sufferings and torment into beauty.

I think Kierkegaard's image or metaphor is very pertinent to the modern artist/writer, but is not emphasized by Schiller.

What Is Love?

2008-10-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

Several years ago, a dear friend wrote me and asked me to speak on love.

Here is my reply:

We do not have to worry about how to tell when it is love, for Love tells us.

The touchstone of true love is a lifetime of shared commitment. Failure of this test does not mean that we have not loved or cannot love, but passage of this test is proof positive of love indeed.

Years after we had parted and gone our separate ways, I told my beloved from my college years, "as Robert Frost once said, home is where, when you go there, they have to let you in, and I know your heart is home for me, for whenever I come to you, I know that you must let me into your heart."

We need to be needed and we need to need.

We may look to many songs and poems to learn different aspects of love.

One old song says "Love is a many-splendored thing" while another says "falling in love with love is falling for make-believe".

There is even a song which says, "when I'm not near the one I love, I love the one I'm near."

"Better to have known love and lost, than to never have known love at all".

There is love of neighbor, love of country and love of God.

There are selfish and selfless forms of love. There are selfish loves which smother and destroy and there are loves which give life and meaning both for the giver and the recipient.

We see love as instinctive in infants. There is no child which does not love its caregiver, no matter how flawed or abusive they might be.

We love because we seek love in return. The love we seek is a validation of our own self-worth, that someone would care if we were not here. The essential message of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life," with Jimmy Stuart, is that the world would not be the same place had we not passed through it.

In the movie version of Brideshead Revisited (from the novel by Evelyn Waugh), Sebastian, a tragic alcoholic, has found and taken in someone even more tragic and helpless than himself. Sebastian explicitly says that anyone must be in quite a sorry state to need the likes of a Sebastian to look after them. Yet, Sebastian finds meaning and self-worth and validation in this relationship where he feels needed.

To love is to find value, worth. To be loved is to have value and worth.

Aristotle said: A friend is another 'I'.

There is a love which strikes us unexpectedly, like lightening on a stormy night, like the song "some enchanted evening, you will see a stranger, across a crowded room" or the song "strangers in the night, exchanging glances, lovers at first sight".

There is a different sort of love which grows through years of shared experiences, which is the love that is possible in arranged marriages. Mohandas Gandhi and Kasturbai were married at the age of 6 and spent a lifetime together. Gandhi, in old age, wept inconsolably when his lifetime companion, Kasturbai, passed away.

We see such a love expressed in the song from "Fiddler on the Roof," "Do you love me?"

We do not choose our parents, and yet we love them. Sometimes we do not choose our life companion, and yet we grow to love them through shared experiences.

We may even learn of bizarre loves as in the movie "Kiss of the Spider Woman": A complex and universal story of friendship and love, "Kiss of the Spider Woman" explores the enforced relationship -- through imprisonment -- of two men with radically different perspectives on life. Molina is a flagrant homosexual window trimmer convicted on a morals charge and Valentin is a clandestinely-held revolutionary who has been endlessly tortured by prison authorities in a non-specific Latin American metropolis.

Definitely, love is quite necessary and required for life. An infant will die without some form of love, even if only a feigned love by some nurse caretaker. Experiments in nurseries indicate that if an infant is fed and cleaned, but never given affection, that it grows sickly and dies. I know this only from reading, and cannot personally vouch for the scientific accuracy of this observation.

Various religions speak of love. The Bible says somewhere that God is love.

The Psalms say "how blessed is it for brethern to dwell together in unity / it is like the oil running down the beard of Aaron". This passage from the Psalms speaks of the sort of love found in monasteries, which is not a sexual love. One sees an analogous love in the military between comrades-in-arms who have seen many battles together.

That love which the world spends most of its time discussing is the love which draws two people to share a life together. For the vast majority of us, that love is heterosexual love, which draws us to someone of the opposite gender, yet for a sizable minority in the world such love is for someone of the same gender.

Most of us know what it means to live with another person in one fashion or another. Most of us have lived with parents, siblings, relatives. We share the daily tasks of eating, sleeping, cleaning, working and recreation.

It is possible to live with someone without loving them and it is possible to love someone without living with them, but the highest expression and test and proof of love is your love for someone you live with daily.

In the delightful play "Our Town" by Thornton Wilder, a young man, about to marry, expresses great anxiety about what they will find to discuss each day, for the thousands of days that constitute a lifetime of marriage. Years later, that same character laughs, because what seemed a problem was never really a problem at all. There were always plenty of things to talk about.

Thornton Wilder won a Pulitzer price for the play "Our Town". It is quite possible that Thornton Wilder was gay. I have read that, after his death, it was revealed that Wilder was a homosexual, a fact he kept hidden during his life.

Karl Maria Kertbeny (or Benkert) [Hungarian] Coined the word "homosexual" in 1869.

Karl Maria Kertbeny (1824-1882)

Karl Maria Kertbeny was a Hungarian writer who is remembered today mostly for coining the term "homosexual" as a replacement for the pejorative term "pederast" that was used in the German and French speaking world of his time. Though he claimed not to be homosexual himself, Kertbeny said that his sense of justice made him cry out against sodomy prosecutions. Kertbeny argued that homosexuality is an inborn disposition, so laws like Paragraph 175 that punish it are unjust.

Kertbeny's writing career produced many books, but almost nothing of literary merit.

I mention Thornton Wilder's sexual orientation simply because so many writers, artists and philosophers have been gay and yet have written works which influence our understanding of what love is.

While we are on the subject of Thornton Wilder and his play, "Our Town," take a look at this excerpt from an article on AIDS and the terminally ill:

Originally Posted by regarding Our Town
...anybody who's living with a terminal or a chronic condition is forced to look at their own mortality. For a lot of people who successfully go through the adjustment process and aren't stuck in it, it's real freeing to begin to savor each moment of life, to see fully all the colors that are there, smell fully all the smells, taste all the tastes, hear all the sounds, feel all the feelings you can. It gets back to Thornton Wilder's play 'Our Town' about this girl who was part of a community but who then dies. She comes back as an invisible spirit and watches the townsfolk, her former neighbors. And she see how very little actual living the people do when they're caught up in the middle of it, how they all just kind of sleepwalk through life.

I don't think that sexual orientation makes a big difference in one's capacity to love another during a lifetime of cohabitation. There are both straight and gay couples who are successful in committed love relationships, and there are many of both orientations who are failures (and some who are chronic failures).

It is difficult to speak about love without speaking about sex. It is perhaps easier to speak about sex without love than to speak of love without sex.

It is easier to make a lover out of a friend than it is to make a friend out of a lover.

It is rare in any relationship for two people to love each other equally. There is usually one person who loves more and another who loves less. Sometimes, in life, you must make a conscious decision and commitment as to which role you wish to play.

Compare a line from e.e. cummings poem :

your sex squeaked like a billiard-cue
chalking itself, as not to make an error,
with twist spontaneously methodical.

..... with this line from Wallace Steven's poem "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle":

If sex were all, then every trembling hand
Could make us squeak, like dolls, the wished-for words.

In the 1980s I lived and worked in New Haven, Connecticut (near Yale University)....

Japanese Sushi restaurants were beginning to gain popularity in the USA, but there was only one such restaurant in New Haven at that time.

The two restaurant owners were a somewhat portly middle-aged man of Irish ancestry (who was gay), and the chef, who was a much shorter, slender Japanese man (also middle aged). They were lovers who had lived together for many years.

I went to the restaurant often, and got to know many people well there (customers), and also the Irish owner....

I'm sure that most people perceived them as quite an unlikely couple to share life together.

One day, the Japanese chef returned to Japan for a visit. After several weeks returned to his life (and companion) in New Haven...

I had some talks with the owner (the Irishman).... about various personal things...

He told me that one day he asked his companion "Do you love me?", and the chef answered... "Love? ... Love!... What is this talk about love?.... We are CONNECTED!"...

On Friendship, Time and Inequality

2008-10-02T15:38:00.000-07:00

Me: I have one friend (casual Internet acquaintance), at Oxford right now, in bio physics doctorate

TehranMD: I should be satisfied with medical abstracts it seems, for my thesis paper

Me: I was thinking (a long shot), to write him regarding finding an article or two

TehranMD: oh no! He is already busy

Me: like I said, it would be long shot

TehranMD: don't worry I shall find articles etc. But how come you have many friends in high places!

Me: noooo... I have only a few, by chance, in Yahoo, like you
He was in Yahoo books and literature chat room one day, while a senior at Yale, 2 yrs ago, at Yale, but now, finished Yale, and doctorate at Oxford

TehranMD: great! lucky guy

Me: his mind is amazing. I mean, a giant next to me

TehranMD: I bet

TehranMD: you could have introduced him to me!

Me: much depends upon genetic, neurological makeup

TehranMD: am really interested in genetics

Me: well, he possibly sees me as a potential pest

Me: no, not genetics, biophysics
well, perhaps that is genetics
perhaps that involves genetics

TehranMD: no its different a bit

Me: someone like him, I don't want to pester him too often, since, his time must be valuable

TehranMD: Interesting you are

Me: well, it is only common sense, to perceive the boundaries of any relationship. I mean, if he blocks me, then, that is the end of everything, as far as contact with him...

TehranMD: haha, why should he?

Me: well, if I pester his ass, and say, Oh, here is my friend in Tehran, etc

TehranMD: haha, interesting
he would be delighted to know a lovely woman like me! but if not......well his loss!

Me: well, I am sure he would, if he took the time. But, he would be suspicious... thinking "why is this fellow setting me up? What is the angle?

TehranMD: haha. I see ok

Me: well, it is true

TehranMD: I am not curious at all. forget it

Me: besides I hardly think he thirsts and yearns for intellectual companionship. I mean, he is adrift in an educational sea an ocean. So, he needs you and me like a hole in the head

TehranMD: eh and am not an intellectual companion?

Me: (an old American saying)
"oh, I need that like I need a HOLE in the head" I suspect it may have Yiddish origins

TehranMD: he must be one or those arrogant creatures then

Me: NOOOOO. Not arrogant at all. He is very sensitive. But, from my perspective, I must need him more than he needs me, since he is at Yale and Oxford, gifted, etc

TehranMD: haha. you have strange outlook toward education. Come on! those schools are nothing. you could be there and see those people are just like you and me etc. not more gifted even

Me: well, if Salman Rushdie, or Lionel Trilling, or Stephen Hawking were my buddy. I mean, I would need them more than they need me

TehranMD: you idolize people. I don't like that

Me: Well, come on! In reality, I have written to scholars on television, who were must less caliber... and they never even answered I wrote several times to one Yale theologian and I wrote to Annie Proulx, and only got to talk to her son at her website.... and all he did was scold me

TehranMD: wow. haha

Me: I mean, in real life, our idols are not there for us in person.... only in print and media

TehranMD: Annie Proulx is a human like you and me etc

Me: it is the shear mathematics of time

TehranMD: I have no idol I respect their ideas . but don't look at them like my gods prophets etc

Me: there is only so much time and energy and, each relationship requires investment of time and energy

TehranMD: true

Me: stop and think, Allah was there for Mohammed, in an in your face personal sort of way, through Angel Gabreel..... and Jehovah was there for Moses, in an in your face way,... but, for the common blokes in the street, like you and me, Allah has no time, Salman Rushdie has no time, George Bush has no time

TehranMD: haha

Me: lets face it, we are screwed! ha ha

TehranMD: I dont agree

Me: that is why we must befriend each other

TehranMD: I mean my time is as precious as theirs

Me: you an I need each other, because, we cant get Stephen Hawking, and Annie Proulx

Me: I know, but it is the shear mathematics of time and energy
Wallace Stevens pal-ed around with Robert Frost and Carl Sandberg. I mean, they were poets for gosh sakes, in the same century But, they never came to visit me
In fact, stop and think of this interesting study..... a study of famous friendships
measure how many close friends each writer had, and see who had the most pen pals, for example

TehranMD: haha. I don't care about famous friendships

Me: but, it is something which is accessible to study because of archives, correspondence every biography is filled with such stats
I was just reading D.H. Lawrence... and his bio tells of his buddies correspondence
I mean, Tolstoy and Gandhi exchanged letters

TehranMD: so what?

Me: well, science involves measure so, relationships can be measured
in a sense... we might see some threshold, seriously

TehranMD: what you mean?

Me: Well, is there some median number of pen pals for the famous
Do literary people maintain more, on average, than mathematicians, or historians
Who has the Guinness Book of Records for number of intimate intellectual friends

TehranMD: oh I prefer literary people

Me: I learned one valuable lesson in my own life, but I learned it only late in life

TehranMD: what was it?

Me: When I was in 6th grade, there was this tall, awkward girl named Gale Howard I did not realize she had a crush on me One day, some other girl called my home, anonymously..... and said gale would like it if I called Gale up I reacted with moral outrage,.... that such a call was inappropriate. That was my gut response, at that time, at that age of 11 But, as years went by, I began to realize that, I passed up an opportunity to make someone happy I realized that, in my own life, I am mostly, lonely and rejected and THEREFORE when someone approaches me with need and longing, for help, companionship, whatever then, I should grant them their wish because, you see, in any sort of relationship, of any nature whatever, between any two people, there shall always be some sort of imbalance one will like the other more than the other likes the one

TehranMD: not necessarily

Me: one will be more powerful, one will be more clever, one will be more gifted in something oh, on the contrary, TOTALLY necessary in fact, the inequality is unavoidable no two snow flakes are identical yet, they are all snow, and indistinguishable to the naked eye

TehranMD: of course not identical

Me: but, therein lies the heart of the matter

TehranMD: but they could be equally valuable and beautiful

Me: our error in judgment lies in our mistaken notion of qualia
it is ok to speak of red fruit, red flower, red wagon... but, when we speak of redness, in a Platonic, eidetic sense then, we make errors in judgment. We see justice and equality where there cannot possibly be justice and equality

TehranMD: sure

Me: and we develop notions about freedom, and justice, and egalitarianism, which look fine on paper, in constitutions but, in practice, do not quite work out

Me: I was amazed when I read that Chairman Mao said, "the results of the French revolution have yet to be seen" I thought "how can this be???"
BUT, I asked a young woman, French accountant, from Paris and she said "oh, but of course, he is right and she explained from her perspective that, the revolution set out for a form of liberty equality fraternity by abolishing the nobility BUT, the inequality merely shifted from nobility, to a different kind of class distinction
The very notion of inequality offends our sense of self yet, inequality is in the very nature of all organisms, and is the driving force in survival, ecology
as George Orwell said in animal farm "all animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others

TehranMD: but you know........you think the time of that guy in Yale is more precious that Jakarta girl in a sense it is ..since he is using his time more properly

Me: but, I just told you my lesson with Gale Howard
the Jakarta woman, who is trying to get off heroin, NEEDS me
the Oxford fellow does not

Me: I never called Gale Howard
I missed that opportunity to give happiness
to give of myself

TehranMD: I think that anonymous girl was gale

Me: no, the voice was different
it was really some friend of Gale's
I dont think Gale knew of the call

TehranMD: am not sure though

Me: anyway, in high school, across the street from me...
was a foster girl.... who was sweet, but, plain,.... and had suffered in life, being foster child
my mother told me shat she spoke to the girl once, and the girl said "oh, he does not even notice me

TehranMD: wow. and was it true?

Me: yes, I could have taken her to prom dance
I missed opportunity to give happiness selflessly
I chose a girl who did not need me, but whom I needed

TehranMD: now you think you better put your time for those who need you?

Me: exactly

TehranMD: what about your needs and desires?

Me: I need my wife more that she needs me, because, she handled all the money, and at times, I was a burden to her
my first wife needed me, more than I needed her, because, I was her total support, and she had serious psychiatric issues, which prevented her from ever trying to be independent
but, sometimes, we can fulfill our needs by fulfilling others

TehranMD: that's why you got divorced?

Me: Noooo, it is very long story
it is something that evolved,.... no one planned anything
but, she and I once planned a joint suicide
because, I could no longer support the two of us.....
the times of prosperity came and went
jobs were no longer easy, rents were no longer low
We planned a death by freezing, because, it is totally painless, numbing, one simply goes to sleep
Once she almost died of freezing in a blizzard
that is how she knew that death by freezing would be painless
But, you see, over years, I was an enabler to her, and she slowly drained me, used me....
I would stll be in that marriage today, if prosperity had been different

TehranMD: but what you think about you and your current wife? you don't your current wife to do to you what you did to your first wife?
I dont mean to insult etc
I just want to know ...........why should the relationship be based on financial needs ..or even needs

Me: well, how free are any of us, at any given moment?
My first wife was not free to do for herself until AFTER we separated
I have no way now to support myself
My current wife has no one to help her when she is in wheel chairs, except me
perhaps first wife is BETTER off, because, she had to change things

I know that my ex-wife remarried
because, she called my father several years ago, to inquire if I had a legal divorce
which would mean she is free to marry

TehranMD: you had?

Me: yes, I got a legal divorce; it took several years, because first wife disappeared

TehranMD: wow

Me: she would not contact her brother sister, friends , or anyone
so, you go to judge, and judge says "publish notice in a newspaper"

TehranMD: you got upset?

Me: well, I had my life with second wife by then
I called places every six months, but no one knew her location
She often spoke of her desire to be homeless person
even when she was with me. and she did become homeless for a long while

TehranMD: wow
like that I like to become a world wanderer
haha
but not with such homeless status

Me: sometimes, life makes our decisions for us
in last years of my marriage to first wife
I went to psychiatrist medical doctor for one year
he told me "get divorce, leave family business, get computer job as network administrator, remarry"
I said "oh no, I can never divorce, never leave family business..."
but, 5 years later, without my planning it... all those things came to pass
so I found email of that doctor and wrote him to say, that everything had happened as he suggested

TehranMD: interesting no?

Me: I think the Sufi teaching stories of Nasrudin, are helpful
one man says "I believe in causality"
So, Nasrudin points to criminal being led to execution
and asks, "what is the cause of that.... the man who sold him the knife murder weapon,.... the people who did not STOP him, the witnesses, the jury and judge
so, it is like Buddhist notion of dependent co-arising
and not Aristotelian linear causality

Me: the truth lies more on the side of the holistic concept...
and not its opposite (which term escapes my mind, and I must google)
reductionism
reductionism and holism are opposites
holism = the idea that all the properties of a given system (biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by the sum of its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave.

TehranMD: reductionism means to see one tiny aspect of action

Me: no, to the mind of the holist, reductionism is one tiny aspect
to the reductionist, that one tiny aspect IS the whole

TehranMD: I know I got it

Me: for reductionist: chemistry is reducible to physics, biology is reducible to chemistry and physics, psychology and sociology are reducible to biology, etc.
so reductionist tells me that my cat does not love me, but only wants food
and desire for food appears as the illusion of love

Me: well, a reductionist looks at my first marriage, and divorce and says "oh, A implies B, B implies C...
cut and dry
religious moralism tends to be reductionist
e.g. love of money is the root of all evil, and that sort of thing
and communism is an example of reductionism, I feel

TehranMD: you feel?

Me: Feel is idiomatic for believe. I mean, the notion that interest is bad, is usury, ipso fact,.... that private ownership is bad, that entrepreneurship is always synonymous with enslavement
I am holist
I mean, for me, Calvin and Luther (Protestant Reformation), and Mohammed and Qur'an.... and many examples, are reductionism at its worst
while, for me, Camus, Sartre, Russell, Humanism, are holistic
I see Hobbes Leviathan as more reductionist, but Locke is more holistic
Sufis are holistic

TehranMD: but Sufis also see one aspect of life

Me: Reductionist fundamentalism can give birth to Sufi and (oh what is that Persian of th century, bab)
well, it is one step towards holism
much more holistic than Wahabi for example
Bahai! I remembered the term.
Bahai and Sufi are more holistic, along with Thoreau and the Unitarians
in other words, no Hitler, no Nazis, means, no Shindler's List, and perhaps, no independent state of Israel...
not that such are goods in themselves... but that they are interconnected
there is an interconnectedness

TehranMD: Bahai we had one girl who talked to me a bit about their religion it was silly

Me: well, you can find a fool in any denomination, creed, discipline
but, the more something gravitates towards ecumenism, eclectic, syncretism, less dogmatic
the closer it comes to holism
and the further it retreats from reductionism

TehranMD: sure. one can see the whole image ..then understands better

Me: if Gödel had not proved mathematical indefiniteness for all axiomatic systems
then math would be more reductionist than holistic
if physicists in their cyclotrons, came to the fundamental particles, then, physics would be more reductionist than holistic
BUT, there seems no end to sub particles
and no end to mathematical endeavors in axiomatic systems
Hilbert the mathematician was reductionist
while Godel was holistic
The United States of America, in a reductionist spirit, seeks a world which is all democracies
just as Islam, as reductionists, seeks a world umma under sharia
both sides are doomed to failure
reductionists are doomed to failure precisely because reality is analog, rather than digital

TehranMD: haha yes phasic logic

Me: let us say that I am the product of my culture, language, epoch, and experiences (readings)
and let us say I arrive at some understanding of the truth
For someone else to see that same truth, they must become me...
they must originate in my culture, speak my language, live my experiences

TehranMD: not necessarily

Me: but this is what st Sufi martyr Hallaj said, as he was led to execution
"if I had had YOUR experiences, I could do no other than execute me"

TehranMD: I am god?

Me: and "if you had had MY experiences you could do no other than exclaim I am one with Allah"

Me: but, that is more holistic than the orthodox Sunnis who executed Hallaj

TehranMD: well but as you see,,,you and me perhaps don't not see the same truth but will not execute him etc

Me: the Qur'an is at one extreme, stating in one verse that "Allah is unlike anything else"

And yet, in same breath, makes the error to say "Allah is GREAT"

ANY comparison, or the 100 divine names, such as merciful , assumes some analogy, resemblance, likeness
but, the notion is that God would be somehow soiled, if there were any embodiment or resemblance
now this goes hand in hand with notion that no one person, such as Hallaj, or the Baha Ulla, could have personal experience of infinite

Me: that only one chosen messenger, has message from angel, not from God, that only one chosen individual, Abraham or Moses, has personal experience on mountain
but all others must read a book

TehranMD: but we understand diversity etc
perhaps anything else is not great haha
I dont like such discriminations!
Imagine a simple peasant was telling God ..I will polish your shoes give you food etc take care of you ..and Moses said oh you are saying nonsense..but got angry with Moses

Me: but, dont you see, Hindus are exactly such children

TehranMD: haha

Me: in one sect, of Vallabh, their entire religious activity is to play house with god as baby, They awaken god, feed, bathe, dress god, sing god to sleep

TehranMD: how cute

Me: much as those Muslim 7 yr olds in Karthoum, Sudan, named a teddy bear Mohammed
Children by nature think in terms of dolls, of idols
The spectrum of extremes is so obvious, when one stands back
figuratively speaking, reductionists always seek to proclaim "the seal of the prophets"
and holists always seek to become god themselves

TehranMD: sorry to inrrupt you but I must lie down a bit I feel so tired

Me: ok.... yes, go rest

TehranMD: wow

Me: dream of polishing God's shoes

TehranMD: ok you try to be God and I will be myself !

Me: they are so dirty from walking about in reality

TehranMD: haha

Me: but, you must worship me
and clean my shoes

TehranMD: nope

TehranMD: you will secure me

Me: secure?

TehranMD: take care of me
thanks for sharing time!

Me: sure well, only with words. Words are all I have

TehranMD: words are precious gifts

Necklace of Youths

2008-09-30T17:03:00.001-07:00

The sky above the island is a palimpsest for centuries of celestial motions,
as is the sand for prints of youth gone generations; at least, that is the
impression on an open mind whose viewpoint is the pre-eternal.

The tiny island had posed for time-exposures of a heavenly paparazzi
since long before the scandal sheets of legend went to galley stage.

The island and adolescence have disappeared now. All that remains are
some footnotes in history books, this vagrant idler’s prose and, oh yes,
the necklace of youths in its museum case.

Museums and briefer genres are a sanctuary for would-be artists with
open minds and shutters.

I have been pressed close to the glass staring unblinking for hours,
rousing an old guard’s curiosity.

“What is there to see?” he asks me.

“Just visiting with the prisoners, sir. I see canoes setting out at sunrise.”

My press card as eccentric buys much freedom of speech.

“And there is Gauguin by the tree, a child’s unread letter lines his paint
box.”

Gauguin had his problem, and I have mine. His problem was art. My
problem is hidden pearls.

How difficult it must be to prepare the pearls for threading, and so easy to
break the string and see the work undone. There are works which can
never be undone but only fictionalized. Authors do not work as hard as
jewelers. A bunny hides the pearls for all the youths to find on Easter
morning. The reader must only have faith not to be strung along.

The island had its good and bad months. The divers had their ups and
downs. Sometimes a shark would have his way. The youths grew up
quickly in their hardship. Some grew up not at all.

Some things are rare and we reckon that rarity as priceless. How often
does a month see two full moons? But it does happen. And once in a
blue moon a young diver would surface triumphant with a perfect pearl.
Such a treasure was not his. He would give it to the entire village and
there would be a feast. Some became brides during such festivities and
the fuel of the village fire was stoked deep into the night.

Twice a year, a ship would come with merchants who purchased all the
pearls. The perfect ones were for the Imperial jeweler.

Before the empire collapsed, the Queen would wear this necklace of forty
such perfect pearls.

King David, of olden times, grew thirsty from battle; a thirst which nothing
satisfied. He thirsted for water from the enemy’s well. Guards were
sent by night at great peril to their lives to fetch a pitcher back. As the
King filled his cup, he saw, not water, but blood to the brim. He poured it
out as a libation and never took a sip.

The Queen loved her necklace. When the assassins slew her, the thread
broke and the pearls scattered. There is always someone to mend what
is broken when the price is right.

But I see you heading for the exit. I must tell you the joke before you go.
The Queen never learned how to swim!

How many pearls are in the sea? How many stories are in me? How many
worlds are in the metaverse?

I sought a pearl of great price but found only the paste of Maupassant.

Winthrop Sargeant translates it this way: “On Me all this universe is strung like pearls on a thread.”

Erotic Images

2008-09-30T16:55:00.001-07:00

An erotic image is simply an illusion, a gestalt, of countless
colored pixels upon our senses. The individual pixels have reality
and existence. The woman in the image has no real existence. And yet
we are aroused by the woman and are not conscious of the individual
pixels. We can respond to this non-existent image because it
is an outer reflection of something which is actually within us and
which resonates with that inner woman just as the two arms of a
tuning fork resonate and produce tone.

Should some, but not all of the pixels fade, yet the image of the
woman persists. Cells in our body, and possibly even our brain, are
dying, and yet our individuality and continuity of memory persist.
Lockes and Jeffersons and Lincolns die, yet constitutional democracy
persists. Democracy, a gestalt and illusion of countless pixels of
generations of anonymous humanity which arouses in us noble feelings
of justice and inalienable human rights, persists. Stars explode in
supernova, yet the starry night sky which fills Kant with wonder and
fills Van Gogh's canvas with intoxicating imagery, persists. And
should this very planet of ours die and grow cold, extinct, is there
not something which yet persists, somewhere, elsewhere in the ever-
collapsing kaleidoscopic telescope of being and reality?

Democracy is our erotic woman, our Statue of Liberty in provocative
pose, a gestalt formed by the myriad pixels of suffering throngs of
humanity which come and go like mist and spray as waves crash upon
the rocky coast. And our libertine lady, provocatively posed, this
non-existent idea of Justice and Truth, is like Dante's Beatrice,
enticing us up a ladder of Divine Ascent, like Socrates' school
mistress Diotema and her teaching on the ladder of love in
Plato's "Symposium".

Discussing Plato's Dialogue "Gorgias"

2008-09-30T16:46:00.000-07:00

To read a Platonic dialogue is to watch ideas in motion, not just any motion, but the special motion which takes place when giving birth. Socrates at times describes himself as a mid-wife, helping minds to give birth. There is a wonderful adjective for this role which Socrates plays; maiutic.

Socrates has two different nick-names in the dialogues; sting-ray and gadfly. In ancient Greek, the word for sting-ray is Nar-kay, or Narke, which is the root word for narcotic.

A sting from the tail of the sting-ray causes the body to become numb. Socrates was called narke because of his ability through a series of questions and answers, to numb his opponent into a motionless cul-de-sac, called in Greek "a-poria" which means "no way out."

Now, the gadfly nick-name denoted the very opposite of numbing. The gadfly, through its bites, could sting the lethargic horse of the state into motion. Socrates also stings up those who feel hopeless by "mytho-poiesis" or making a story or parable to give them a feeling of what it shall be like when they finally come to understand.

Someone who presumes to know is smug and complacent and does not seek or inquire. But also, those who have lost hope and given up do not seek or inquire.

Notice how these two opposite qualities of motion and rest are united in the one person of Socrates. We may better appreciate the conflict between motion and rest if we consider that Aristotle speaks of an "unmoved mover" as that one principle which somehow must exist as a source for everything else.

To understand Socrates' narcotic strategy, we must understand his theory of knowledge.

Socrates had a woman named Diotema as a mentor who instructed him in a theory of knowledge which is likened to a ladder of divine ascent, which describes an inductive ascent from love of objects, to sexual love, to love of mathematics, and finally to the love of the EIDOS of justice or beauty.

Socrates states that "God does not love wisdom, because he possesses it." Remember that the word "philo-sophia" means "love of wisdom." If we have something or believe that we possess it, then we do not go in search for it. We are smug and confident that the wisdom is ours. This smugness can be a form of illness, and the medicine to restore us to a state which is suitable for inquiry is refutation through a syllogistic chain of questions and answers which ultimately forces us to admit that we do not really possess true knowledge about a particular matter like justice or happiness.

We may see this theory of knowledge or dialectic illustrated in a well-known Sufi teaching story, made popularized in the many books of Idres Shah.

Nasrudin is a comical, sophomoric (or wise-fool) character. One day, someone sees Nasrudin frantically searching the street outside his house. When asked what has been lost, Nasrudin explains that he has lost his keys. When asked where he lost them, he explains that he lost them in the house. When asked why he is searching in the street for something lost in the house, Nasrudin explains that it is dark inside the house, and there is more light outside in the street.

Abraham Heschel illustrates something of this problem, in volume one of "The Prophets" when he writes (paraphrased) "We must learn to understand what it is that we see, and not merely see only that which we understand." Our compulsion is to search where the light is better, even if that means looking in the wrong place. Abraham Maslow put it differently: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem tends to become a nail."

Most of what I explain here will be things that I learned at St. John's College in Annapolis in the 1960s. It is worth mentioning that the teachers there prefer to call themselves "tutors" rather than "professors", in honor of this Socratic method, since a "professor" professes to already know the truth, and will convey it to students in a lecture and for a price, much like the rhetorician Gorgias in this dialogue. The term "tutor" better reflects the role of a mid-wife who aids the student during this maiutic process of giving birth.

I would like to focus in quite a bit on this notion of uniting opposites, such as motion and rest.

Socrates and Odysseus share something interesting in common. Homer describes Odysseus bodily build as a paradigm of this uniting of opposites. Odysseus had very short legs, so that when he stood amongst the other Achaians, he was the shortest. But Odysseus had an unusually long trunk such that, when he sat in council, his head was above all the rest, and his words poured forth like a flurry of snow.

Socrates unites outer homeliness with inner beauty.

Rabelais made reference to this quality of Socrates in his Prologue.

Regarding Socrates' homeliness, I am reminded of that verse from Isaiah Ch. 53,2 "He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, [there is] no beauty that we should desire him."

This harmonizing or balancing of opposites is a very ancient notion. The Greeks called it the golden mean. The Buddha called it the middle way. According to legend, Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha (a term meaning "Awakened One"), had tried every form of philosophy and religion, and was meditating near a river's bank, close to death from fasting. A boat passed by on the river, and Siddhartha could hear the voice of a master musician instructing his disciple as the young student strung an instrument: "Do not leave it loose, or it shall not sound, nor tighten it overmuch lest the string break." Suddenly, Siddhartha realized the wisdom of "the middle way", the mean between extremes.

I realize that I might appear to you to be jumping about a bit with all these topics, but you must remember that when I read the Gorgias, all of these notions are within me at once, as a gestalt, and I perceive the dialogue through this lens of experience.

With regard to the similarity between Socrates and Odysseus, I want to make a certain point about the position of Odysseus' ship in Homer's "Catalog of Ships" in Book II of the Iliad. I am going to use the figures at this URL to assist me:

Notice how the 12 ships of Odysseus are in the exact middle of this line-up of ships, as a mean or balance between extremes.

At one extreme of the line-up of ships along the shore is Ajax, who is so massive, that his epithet is bulwark or "wall".

Achilles epithet is "swift-footed".

Achilles and Ajax possess opposite virtues which are difficult to unite or harmonize; Ajax' size, and Achilles' speed.

We see Odysseus as a mean between these two extremes of opposite but necessary virtues.

Once, in Book Eight of the Iliad, we find one verse which clarifies the logic of positioning in the catalog of ships:

Again, in Book 11, we are reminded of this same geometry:

Ajax, who is massive but slower, is placed closest to Troy so that, during an attack, the approaching enemy will first encounter Ajax' massive strength.

Achilles is positioned furthest from Troy, since his virtue of speed allows him to meet the approaching enemy before anyone else.

Plato stresses this role of Odysseus as a harmonious balance in The Republic

I suppose one might say that the assortment of possible lives for rebirth, spread out before the souls which have drawn lots, resembles the assortment of facts and phenomena in reality, spread out for the mind to choose, or the assortment of careers spread out before students.

But it is not the phenomenon or fact which casts the mind into a certain state, or the career which shapes the student, but rather it is the harmony of the mind, the balance of the student, which conditions the choice of attention and specialization. Hence the task of the Socratic method is not to offer facts upon a platter, or sheet music, but rather to fine tune and harmonize the mind of the student as a process rather than a destination.

It is not the scenery which colors the vision, but rather the harmony or focus of vision which determines the scenery.

What follows may seem a non sequitur, but it is good for the reader to have some insight into the educational philosophy of the college which influenced me; a college which attempts to put into practice the maiutic process harmonization which I describe.

The Motto of St. John's College:

Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque ( I make free men from children by means of books and a balance)

This metaphor of our education as a lens which shapes our vision reminds me of a true story which I entitled "Eighth Grade Existentialism"

When studying Plato, it may be helpful to realize that, in the 20th century, Kurt Godel the mathematician was essentially a Platonist and viewed number as having some independent and mystical existence, along with Einstein, who was a personal friend of Godel. Opposite to the Platonist is the empiricist and positivist, who see number as a human instrument or construction, and a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. Remember that over the entrance to Plato's Lyceum was written "Let no one enter here who has not mastered Euclid's Elements of Geometry".

After this long prelude or prologue, we may begin to look at the Gorgias itself.

Gorgias is an orator and rhetorician. Socrates and his companion arrive late upon the scene, just missing Gorgias' demonstration of expository speaking.

We should keep in mind that one of the charges against Socrates at his trial, in addition to corrupting the youth of Athens, was that he taught people the art of "making the weaker argument defeat the stronger."

I sometimes wonder if our contemporary educational system isn't corrupting the youth by heaping scores of sheet music before the symphony and never attempting to tune the instruments in the orchestra. Society shall prepare and drink its own cup of hemlock for that crime.

An offer is made to have Gorgias repeat his performance for Socrates' benefit, but Socrates convinces Gorgias to enter into a simpler dialogue of brief questions and answers. Socrates gleefully compliments Gorgias on how well he complies with the rules of this simple form of dialogue.

Socrates is leading Gorgias into his dialectic trap. I once saw a cartoon in a magazine depicting a dog, who has laid down a trail of cat food, leading to an open dryer, hiding and gleefully waiting for the cat to step inside the dryer. Once the cat is in, the dog will slam the door shut and rejoice as the cat spins round and round. Once Gorgias agrees to enter Socrates' "laundromat" of syllogisms, then poor Gorgias will find his head spinning like that cat.

For me, the age old struggle between Platonists and empiricists arrives at a dizzying plateau once the question is finally asked "is reality digital or analog?" which is related to issues of holism versus reductionism. It will be helpful to read this link as a refresher on holism and reductionism:

Perhaps by now some readers are ready to throw up their hands and shout:

"Whatever does this enormous mountain of baloney that you have amassed have to do with Plato's dialogue with Gorgias?"

I am only beginning to realize one excellent answer to that question just now, after hours of reading and writing. The rhetoricians and sophists, such as Gorgias, quite possibly represent the empiricism and reductionism inchoate, while the Socratic method of dialect inquiry represents the holists with their model theory.

I may be quite mistaken in my notion, but it is exciting to thing of the possibilities should such a notion be plausible.

With todays science and technology, we can take images, sound, and even the human genome, and digitize it to a sequence of numbers. If we should find one day that a digitized representation of reality can exactly match reality and be indistinguishable from it, then we may conclude that reality is digital. If, on the other hand, all attempts at digitization are doomed to be mere approximations to the original, or counterfeits, in the sense that the number pi is irrational, then we may conclude that reality and being are analog.

I was struck by all of this when I stumbled one day across a casual remark by Einstein to the effect (paraphrasing) that "no one could ever have arrived inductively at a notion of relativity simply from empirical observations." What Einstein is pointing to involves a branch of mathematics called "model theory". There are numerous axiomatic systems of mathematics (e.g. euclidean, hyperbolic, ellipical and Riemmanian geometries) mutually exclusive to one another in how they describe space, and all dwelling in the human imagination much like Plato's "eidei" or ideal forms. One day, someone notices that one of these axiomatic systems resembles observable phenomena. Ptolemy could account for the observed motion of the planets with epicycles, with an accuracy equal to Kepler's system of ellipses. Model theory has to do with the initial phase of stumbling upon a system which seems to match observations, as well as the later phase of asking "is this system actually the way things are (i.e. the noumena)? or is the system only an ad hoc contrivance for measurement?"

The laws of relativity and quantum and thermodynamics in no way lead inductively to the existence and nature of bunny rabbits, and yet the existence of rabbits in no way violates those laws. The laws of statistics do not inductively lead to the rules of poker or blackjack. Such games of chance obey the laws of statistics and probability, yet we would not study statistics in order to learn how to play the games themselves.

The Socratic line of questions and answers, a series of syllogisms and predications, is the tail of the sting-ray. At the end of the tail is a stinger, the numbing and silencing narcotic of "aporia" and refutation.

Authorship and Social Responsibility

2008-09-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine, from the United States, once told me an interesting account of his time spent in a monastery. There he came to know an old Russian professor, retired, a layperson, who lived at the seminary school which trained future priests. The professor was a worldly man and an intellectual, but very devout and pious, his thinking very much influenced by Russian Orthodox beliefs. One day, during Lent, the period before Easter, he was looking at an iconographic painting of the final Day of Judgment, depicting the wicked souls being cast into the torment of hell and the righteous souls being admitted to a heavenly paradise. He remarked that the day of
Judgment must certainly be most severe for authors, because although the ordinary person must answer only for personal actions and sins and transgressions, an author must take responsibility for the conduct of thousands or millions of people who are influenced by the authors writings, either for good or for evil.

Each of us is author of our own actions (or inaction) and our lives and careers are our books, whether famous, or infamous for the very few, or simply anonymous for the vast majority. Each of us must answer for our actions in some fashion or other. We pay a price for foolishness or sloth, and we are rewarded and compensated for wisdom and industry. But an author or artist is a different sort of beast from the ordinary
individual or average citizen.

We must ask ourselves two questions. First, what do we mean by social responsibility? Secondly, what is the nature and motivation of an author or artist?

In every society, government, culture, and ideology, there is a stress and emphasis upon the responsibilities of an individual to society as a whole. From the time we are small children, we are painfully aware that certain things, in fact, many things are expected of us, and that there are consequences and a price to be paid should we fall short of those expectations. The notion of an individuals social responsibility has existed in one form or another since very ancient times, in the earliest of governments and polities, and even in the small tribes of hunters and food gatherers at the dawn of history. It is only in the past several centuries that there has arisen a notion that societies have responsibilities to individual members. We call this new found notion of society's responsibility Human Rights or Civil Rights.

Every school child in America is required to read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, (a.k.a. Samuel Clemens). Twain's novel is required reading because it is a brilliant and entertaining and, now, historic portrayal of a time of slavery and oppression in America. We now know that smoking and the use of tobacco is very damaging to the health. In Samuel Clemens day there was no notion that tobacco might be harmful. Yet, every other page of Huckleberry Finn is praising the virtues and pleasures of smoking tobacco. Many young people have been tempted to experiment with tobacco simply because it was so romanticized by Mark Twain's novels. We may see this negative influence of Huckleberry Finn as an example of social irresponsibility, of
corrupting the youth. We certainly cannot lay the blame for this corrupting influence at the feet of Mark Twain. We must, if anything, blame generations of educators who have chosen to place the book among the required readings of the curriculum of very young and impressionable students without giving thought to the damaging social consequences.

If we extend our notion of authorship and social responsibility to artists, then possibly, we may see the painting Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, as a positive exercise of social responsibility, dramatizing for society the evils of violence and war. Yet, if we study the life and works of Pablo Picasso, it becomes quite obvious that concern for social responsibility was not in the forefront of Picassos mind as a goal or concern or inspiration.

In the 1960s, Francoise Gilot, one of Picasso's several ex-wives wrote Life with Picasso, and painted a picture of a very selfish, egocentric and unpredictable personality. That woman divorced Picasso and married the famous humanitarian Jonas Salk, who pioneered the development of the first polio vaccine. We may certainly see someone like Jonas Salk as a scientist committed to social responsibility in his attempt to alleviate the suffering of many. Though, perhaps it is far more accurate to observe that each author, whether of books or paintings or theories in physics and math, is driven more by a quest for the power of recognition than by some altruistic notion of social responsibility. Authors and creators are most driven by a eudaimonic inspiration or compulsion which drives them mercilessly and relentlessly towards the act of creation, and often, in that process, alienates the author from society as an eccentric rebel outcast.

What of the authorship of someone such as Albert Einstein, the author of the theory of Relativity which made possible the terrible destructive force of the atomic bomb? The ancient Greeks spoke in their myths of Pandora's Box. The name Pandora means every gift or all gifts. When Pandora's Box was opened, many terrifying things escaped which could never be put back again. In the myth, the last thing to escape was Hope. Many physicists felt dread and guilt over the monster of destruction which they had created and unleashed.

Those who are religious and believe the Bible to be the divinely revealed word of God feel that each and every sentence is totally good and instructive. Yet, at the end of the New Testament, in the Second Epistle of Peter, Chapter 3, verse 16 we find this curious warning:

[In the Bible] are some things difficult to understand , which they that are unlearned and unstable twist and distort, unto their own destruction. So here, we see the Bible itself warning us that there are verses within it which are harmful to certain people. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Jeremiah, the prophet speaks scathingly of the lying pens of the scribes. And yet it is those very scribes who copy and perpetuate the religious scriptures. Indeed, Karl Marx saw religious scriptures as an opiate of the people and therefore as something negative from the point of view of social responsibility. Conversely, the religious communities of the world see communist regimes in a negative light, believing them to oppress and censor freedom of religious expression and worship.

If one looks at popular authors and artists like Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Proust, Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Thomas Dylan, and many others, one sees that they are rebels, renegades, misfits, alcoholics, recluses. We see that the worlds of imagination which they create in their writings and art are forms of escape from reality and everyday responsibilities of a good citizen.

Now, if we search for socially responsible authors, then one might choose Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin. When Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he exclaimed, And here is the little lady who started the Civil War.
Certainly, Lincoln was exaggerating to some extent in his good-natured humor, but it is certainly also true that the nation as a whole became more self-conscious about the evils of slavery after reading Uncle Toms Cabin with the cruelty of Simon LeGree, whose name became the byword of wickedness.

Another prime example of social responsibility in American literature is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which exposed the evils of company towns who exploited immigrant workers in the meat-packing industry. President Theodore Roosevelt was
sickened by the brutality and injustice which Sinclair's novel dramatized so vividly. Roosevelt immediately called upon Congress to pass a law establishing the Food and Drug Administration and, for the first time, setting up federal inspection standards for meat. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act, were both signed into law on June 30th, 1906, as a direct result of Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle. President Roosevelt commended Sinclair for exposing the corruption and injustice, but scolded him for being such a socialist. Certainly, Sinclair seems to be one author deeply motivated by notions of social responsibility.

We even see, in the 20th century, authors like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, examining the state and society as some abortion gone bad, creating a nightmare world for its inhabitants. The passion of the authors creative obsession is closely analogous to the reckless abandon of sexual passion. In Orwell's novel, 1984, it is a love scene of wild abandon in a secluded woods which symbolizes the rebelliousness and isolation of the individuals will to power. It is the State of Big Brother which crushes the sexual feelings of the protagonist during his imprisonment.

We easily come to see society and the state, not in their day to day reality, but in the fictional picture which is painted for us by novelists and philosophers and historians. We romanticize our notion of the state until we become like America, carrying its holy grail of democracy and freedom to the four corners of the globe through diplomacy or force, to the willing and unwilling alike. As social activists, driven by our ideologies we become Christs running about everywhere seeking out the
largest cross, and then gathering about us a reluctant crowd of Herods.

In Genesis it is said of Abraham that he believed the promise of the divine vision, and that his very belief was counted to him as a form of righteousness or correct action, which also goes by the name of social responsibility. But by the time we come to the end of the Book of Job, God is saying to Job, Tell your friends that I am angry with them because they BELIEVED about me incorrectly. We see how ideology and theory and belief gradually supplant the individual and his daily actions and conduct in life. Finally, by the time we arrive at Jesus and his Apostles and Paul, we are told that we are utterly worthless and hopeless no matter what we do, but that there is a way to be forgiven, if only we will embrace a certain belief. Communism and Capitalism are both jealous gods preaching their ideology to the world and offering forgiveness and shelter in return. A certain physicist once pointed out that, in a gaseous collection of molecules, each individual molecule enjoys the utmost random chaotic freedom of chance. No one may say what a given individual molecule will do at any given moment. And yet, the mass of molecules as a whole is under strict obedience to various laws of temperature and pressure and gravity. The fiery rebel freedom of any single renegade molecule represents the force of hundreds or thousands of molecules robbed of their vigor and spontaneity and exiled to an icy state of passivity and inaction.

Plato explored many notions of social responsibility his dialogues, most notably The Republic. Plato proposes to examine the State as a kind of microscope to view the soul written in large letters. Plato envisioned philosopher kings in a society which saw the noble character of its citizens as its product and enterprise. Remember that Socrates was put to death for allegedly corrupting the youth through his teachings,
whether oral or written we know not.

That great German philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, said that we must always act in such a way that we treat individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to some end.

Psychiatrist John Powell wrote: "To live fully, we must learn to use things and love people, not love things and use people."

http://www.meaningoflife.i12.com/psychology.htm

Gradually, over the millennia, our notion of social responsibility has evolved and shifted from the prehistoric hunters and warriors duty to his tribe, and has done a hundred and eighty degree about face. Now the great emphasis is upon society's
duty to the individual in the form of human rights or civil rights.

In light of the above considerations, I must personally conclude that the notion of social responsibility of the author is something alien and unknown to the author, imposed posthumously by a reading public. Responsibility, if it lies anywhere at all, lies in the appetites and demands of the consumer public, who clamor for an endless stream of murders, rapes, cataclysms, wars, monsters and even alien invasions from outer space. Our true responsibility is to our own inner space first. If we personally make that inner space of the heart in order, then the orderliness of society will perhaps follow more naturally. Perhaps the real truth is that both religion and politics are the opiates of the soul, lulling it into complacency, apathy and indifference.

Sentiments In and Regarding France

2008-09-30T08:17:00.000-07:00

http://archive.japantoday.com/jp/news/351463

French bashing alive and well in U.S.

"That's some denouement
whoa (Oct 9 2005 - 00:47)

Thanks, Quackshot, for proving my point. Americans do not know enough about France to do any serious bashing, and the French are winning this contest."

Everybody loses.

Some believe that opposites attract and likes repel: American exceptionalism and French l'exception culturelle.

But could it be that much of the anti-US sentiment in France actually starts with the elitists at the top only to have it returned to them by the ignorant in the US? My understanding is that, for the most part, French people, young and old alike, like or have no dislike for America and Americans. Ask French elitists how they feel about a Big Mac and the invasion of English into the French language.

The mainstream media in both countries are conspirators in this. Hysteria sells newspapers.

"All the american things are completely forbidden or boycotted"

BS. It is obvious that QUACKSHOT has never been in France, even for a few hours. Or maybe it was before WW One! American music, American movies, American novels, the American way of life, all the newest American trends are everywhere, at every corner of the French society.

True, there is some anti-americanism in France, usually politicians or journalists on both side of the political spectrum. They blame America for everything because they refuse to blame themselves for their mistakes. A bunch of arrogant morons but they represent only a few percent of France.

"Subway ran the ads in about 10 states for nearly a month and pulled them in September following an outcry by members of the French expatriate community and other customers offended by the racist undertone."

How in the world can this somewhat humorous advertisement be considered racist? There is no racial component to the ad. Are the French as separate race? They may feel that way but I don't beleive they are.

Also, do the French really have such thin skin? It's not as if we accused them of being Nazi's or imperialists or anything (as they refer to the US all the time). The elite's in France are constantly bashing the US and asserting the moral superiority of the French way. It's only natural that there will be a little of their arrogance and mean-spireted way of thinking thrown back at them.

American's understand that France care's only about France and it's own feeling of moral superiority. Any help that American's have gotten or are receiving from France is only for their own benefit. Conversely, America has spent a lot of money and lost many lives for France and did not expect anything in return (and you can bet your last euro that the US got nothing in return for their sacrifices either).

I think someone in an earlier post had it right - JT is just trying to instigate a self-rightgeous back and forth between people that support America and those that hate America. The stories that are put up on this site are carefully selected. Anything negative about the US is quickly put up here. Conversely, stories that are negative about the international community are soft pedaled or ignored. When the recent UN reform confab in New York failed miserably, I looked for an article about it on JT and one never appeared (at least that I could fine). This was a major news event and a major failure on the part of the UN to reform itself.

"Anything negative about the US is quickly put up here. Conversely, stories that are negative about the international community are soft pedaled or ignored. When the recent UN reform confab in New York failed miserably, I looked for an article about it on JT and one never appeared (at least that I could fine). This was a major news event and a major failure on the part of the UN to reform itself."

Amen!!

"America has spent a lot of money and lost many lives for France and did not expect anything in return"

Bwaaaaaahahahahahahaha. Yeah, right, America only does things by pure generosity. Try to take some info about how Roosevelt wanted to block De Gaulle and negotiate with the Vichy government to install a puppet regime who would have nothing to refuse to the US. It's not in your school history books but a bit extra search could enlighten you!

Keep living in your own world dude....

Wolfpack: "How in the world can this somewhat humorous advertisement be considered racist?"

Where in the world can this ad be considered "somewhat humorous"? Only in America.

The way I see it, the ad is actually a form of self-bashing, demonstrating the lack of American taste.

http://www.strangepolitics.com/content/item/100582.html

French bashing alive and well in U.S.

The way I see it, the ad is actually a form of self-bashing, demonstrating the lack of American taste."

(And being the most important person on the planet this probably means something to you.)

Believe it or not, capitalism has no politics. Corporations side with neither left nor right. They side with the almighty dollar -- YOUR dollar.

I'd like to know the response rate as well as ROI for this campaign.

Lunchmeat: "capitalism has no politics. Corporations side with neither left nor right. They side with the almighty dollar -- YOUR dollar."

Oh really? Economics is not entangled with politics?

Not to mention that has nothing to do with my comment, which was to say that American acceptance of that ad is a form of self-bashing.

"I'd like to know the response rate as well as ROI for this campaign."

So would I, so we agree on something!

Selling French-style chicken with an anti-French message. They ran that idiotic ad for 10 months?

Subway needs a new Ad Agency.

That's capitalism.

"Bwaaaaaahahahahahahaha. Yeah, right, America only does things by pure generosity. Try to take some info about how Roosevelt wanted to block De Gaulle and negotiate with the Vichy government to install a puppet regime who would have nothing to refuse to the US. It's not in your school history books but a bit extra search could enlighten you!"

So you are trying to convice me that FDR wanted to make a deal with the Nazi-backed French Vichey government during WWII? I guess the US was going to put an Iron Curtain around France - and only France - and not seek to make any of the other Western European countries into some 'puppet regime'. Your French nationalism is getting a bit nutty dude. Care to cite any respected source to back this claim up?

America has been generous and it's such ungratefulness as you are displaying that makes American's dislike France.

"Keep living in your own world dude...."

I am. It's called the real world.

"Where in the world can this ad be considered "somewhat humorous"? Only in America."

Heck yeah it is humurous! You - and apparently the French - have no sense of humour. I would guess that after having the French look down their noses at the British for so long that more than a few Brit's would consider it humurous as well.

Lighten up - you will live longer.

"http://www.strangepolitics.com/content/item/100582.html"

Pretty funny Pasquinade. I guess those thin skinned America-haters will not get many laughs from it. To each their own I guess.

Never saw ad, americans hate? WolfpackWhoa
yondervu Click here to see all messages by yondervu Click here to see member profile (Oct 11 2005 - 02:13) Rate | Report

Never saw the ad, but having seen other subway ads and reading the article, it was probably humorous in a small way.

By the way, Americans don't hate French. Just poking fun. Hate is a very strong word, besides it would take a lot more than the Iraq Liberation/War to make us forget about the Statue of Liberty. We just think they are on one of those strange steaks, like the time they went fascist, you konw. It won't last, we'll be on good terms eventually, I am sure.

Hey, when can I get this sandwich? I tried their Chicken Parm., man did it suck. Wheh !! No I mean really, I thought I might vomit. Needless to say I won't buy that again.

As for lack of American taste, I have to admit Subway does kinda suck, McDonalds sucks too. Pizza Hut is awful. Yeh, you are probably right.

Try this one: http://www.tedrall.com/longarticle_011.htm

Only for you, here is one part of a Roosevelt letter to Churchill:

"I am more and more of the opinion that we should consider France as a militarily-occupied nation and governed by British and American generals...We would keep 90% of the [Vichy] mayors and a large percentage of the lesser bureaucrats of the cities and departments. But the important posts would remain the responsibility of the military commander, American and British. This will last between six months and a year...Perhaps [General Charles] de Gaulle can become governor of Madagascar."

Enjoy the rest. Also, check out this biography of a Vichy offical: http://africanhistory.about.com/library/prm/bldoubledealer1.htm one more part for you:

"It is also probable that Roosevelt saw in Darlan the ideal pawn for his postwar plans for France--a country for which the president had low regard. He not only favored stripping the French of their sprawling overseas empire but intended to carve up the nation, significantly reducing its area, to deny France any part in the eventual peace settlement, membership in the United Nations, or role in the postwar occupation of Germany. Darlan evidently struck Roosevelt as a malleable puppet whom he could use to further his ideas for postwar France."

I didn't know teaching you a bit of history was "nationalism";-) your statement that your beloved US of A only provides unconditional help throughout the world is a day dream dude. As any good country, the US does things for self interest.

Corporations side with neither left nor right.

Lunchmeat: "capitalism has no politics. Corporations side with neither left nor right. They side with the almighty dollar -- YOUR dollar."

Oh really? Economics is not entangled with politics?
---

Not economics. Please see above: "Corporations side with neither left nor right."

And let's not talk about whether or not corporations pay taxes. We'll save that for another time.