Taoism was developed as a conversation with Confucius who put the 'human' experience at the center of what could be known. That conversation involved epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. The inner chapters of Zhuangzi are focused upon the limits of language and opinion to deliver what they seem to promise. The paradox of using language to point beyond it was often discussed.

In some ways, Zhuangzi's approach is similar to Kant's table of antimonies, where the different possible theses are ranged against each other because of the rules of our thinking rather than a result of something beyond it.

So, does Russon mean to say that recognizing perspective as a necessary element is not a rejection of a shared reality?

Which writing did the quote come from?

The fact is Putin actually says it, even if we can debate how much he really believes it. — apokrisis

And he says it while doing fist bumps with the head of the Russian Orthodox church. If the intention was substantially different from what was stated, the erasure of Ukrainian identity is a lot of collateral damage.

I figure Occam can keep his switch blade in the pocket on this one.

I wasn't thinking of it as either us or the monolith as originators. 180 Proof made a distinction between ways of seeing it as an agent. It is different to see it as an instrument working toward an end from its appearance pointing to a condition that precedes us and the monolith. The monolith's quality of seeming completely formed not telling the whole story.

Very interesting take. It makes me realize I have been looking at it through a Hegel/teleological lens.

If the disturbing factor is the same throughout, the monolith is like the attempts to measure time against place as with Stonehenge or the orientation of Egyptian monuments. The question of simulation becomes one of who is making up who.

Important in the context of the story because it is what gives the impetus to having an Odyssey.

You did not include the moon stuff in your description.

Interesting. Clarke's expectation.

The idea is undercut because it uses the means of verification that are being denied in order to promote the proposition.

Regarding violence, it is present in the prehistory, moon discovery, and the space voyage scenes. There was much establishment of a tense cold war problem in the moon scenes. HAL kills the whole crew except for one. Kubrick seems to be linking an element to each progression rather than transcending it.

I think the way the monolith is so clearly an artifact where there should not be one is part of the relationship it has in each encounter.

It is a communication device in both the scene with the hominids and the uncovering it of it on the moon. It is not clear what was imparted to the hominids, but it sends a traceable signal to the outer solar system after the moon discovery. Whatever its purpose, it is acting as a lure some kind to both groups.

In case of the moon discovery, it is also a 'motion sensing' device. Informing its maker that the project was showing results.

To the extent that encounters with the monolith has 'made' us into something, the crisis with the AI named HAL show us another collision of the natural with the artificial.

I'd also have preferred the OP would have referenced the Amish as an example of the intentional ludite as opposed to Ted Kaczynski. It's not necessary that every radical be malevolent. — Hanover

That is why I brought up communitarians as wanting to preserve something they already had rather than making it all about breaking the system.

I have not been following all the interchanges here, but I am curious where the taking of Kiev 'free of cost' idea refers to. Who spoke the quote marks, "for free."?

The experience of our system is not only a theoretical construct but a result of actual events. And with that resul in view, I read your statement:

It seems to me that various anti-modern, anti-tech movements such as Greens & Neo-Luddites for at least the last half-century or so have mostly ignored the other driver of (mass) alienation which is overpopulation. — 180 Proof

Rather than argue that such a problem is strictly about investment in a particular theory, I think that the 'technological' is not something that happens by itself.

The various models of capitalism involve ever expanding markets for the process to establish an expectation of future returns. That limit provides no model for the problem of Malthusian limits to what can support a population. That problem persists regardless of how resources are directed toward sustainability if those models do not include population growth itself.

I am sorry, I don't understand that emoticon as an expression of thought.

Always the bald-headed stepchild of eternally expanding systems.

I agree with T Clark on the importance of recognizing the danger of the new means of production. I also stand with those who point to the dynamics of exploitation which is readily evident to any that care to look. With that confluence of concerns, the arguments between communitarians and global unity should be seen as necessarily linked to your question.

Ivan Illich spoke of how technology can disempower individuals, not only as a participant in a system of exchange but as a shrinking scope of freedom for the homo faber. Perhaps he was naive in how society could be different, but it is interesting how he thought Marx was naive.

One factor pointing toward the status of taking Kyiv being a central goal at the beginning of the invasion is how the failure to do so has greatly diminished the utility of Belarus in the conflict.

One imagines that the situation in that country would be very different if it was now the favored access path to a Kiev ruled by a puppet government.

Much of your description of a 'continual process of change' reminds me of Gene W Marshall's Primer on Radical Christianity. One can safely say it is a very different response than the Evangelical churches of today but probably is an example of the 'modern' that Dermot Griffin objects to.

This is what is truly remarkable; St. Stephen asks God to forgive his persecutors in the Book of Acts. This brings me to the sobering fact that New Testament Christianity is dead and needs a revival. Kierkegaard, for example, wrote to an entire country that he felt had never been authentically Christian. — Dermot Griffin

It is true that Kierkegaard greatly annoyed his fellow Christians by saying that their satisfaction with holding good opinions is not the same as doing the works of love as commanded by Jesus. He did not, on that basis, declare a separate congregation as others have. He was a voice, like Luther and Pascal, trying to separate a vision of authentic life from one made false through corruption and illusion.

What you don't like about modern evangelists sounds a lot like the complacency others have objected to in the past.

Thank you for the careful response. I will ponder upon it in coming days.

I remember the discussion well. What part of that history suggests to you that Christianity was a solution to an 'objective' problem? Or is that how you meant to put the matter?

Job does not claim to be blameless but doesn't accept that he must be wrong by default either.

Your question about what I mean by distinguishing faith and understanding is a good one and I admit that I need to think about it more.

In the context of the OP, I am wondering how the reception of matters 'Christian' relate to a choice between a vision of revolutionary change versus something more 'normative' as suggested by Dermot Griffin. And by bringing up Job, I was thinking that expecting good results from living a good life is sort of an argument for the normative.

I won't argue those bullet points as theses, but several observations occur to me.

In 2014, Russia succeeded in getting a large number of the 'the self-identified Russian' population to support the changes. There are no similar groups in play during this Special Operation. The attempts to set up a similar scheme in Kherson has collapsed. The conscription methods in Donetsk and Luhansk have the population hiding their males to protect them from the war. So whatever strategic/tactical similarities may exist between the present operation and the first invasion, the previous element of local support is not there in newly attacked territories.

The WW2 comparison most apt for the present situation in the Kherson oblast is the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans were kicking butt until their supply lines were cut and they could not retreat across a big river.

Some of the fear of death may be connected to a fear of an after-life.

There is the prospect of torments as spelled out in The Inferno. The scariest part of that to me is a living person getting to have a tour. So it is the imagination itself that causes despair.

Like those nightmares where each strategy to escape a scene leads to another scene. One comes to wonder: is this a tourist visit or am I dead?

The people who participate in those threads are interested in them to whatever degree they make efforts to present their point of view. Are you asking for those people to go away?

That would remove what you find objectionable.

We know, however, that he is blameless. — Fooloso4

We are told that is the case. His 'friends' doubt it. How does Job know they are wrong? Is that a keeping of faith or a better understanding of what righteousness is like?

I understand your view. My comments are a challenge to it. Perhaps a topic for a separate conversation.

I agree that there is a lot of emphasis on the righteous getting help when needed. The greater part of the book of Job is devoted to whether Job can know his status in that regard by himself. His 'friends' keep telling him he must have sinned. The wager is on whether that kind of self-knowledge is alive or only an illusion of good fortune.

How does the struggle of Job fit in with this objective?

I am curious what you see as more 'objective' in the Gospel texts that countervails against the excessive 'subjectivity' you see expressed by Paul.

Kierkegaard, after all, emphasized that the experience of the Single Individual was where the struggle for one kind of life against another was happening.

Yes, your effort in these matters is evident.

The recognition of the reference connecting modern theories of influence to ancient texts is illuminating.

Jews have always had an idea that fixed societies are inherently evil, as if you're closer to God if you're detached from cities and able to dwell in the desert, free from the corruption that inevitably creeps 8nto city life. — Tate

This idea was put forward in The Protocols of Zion.

It is a society of righteous people where outside behavior is apparently pretty rigidly constrained. It's kind of strange vision. — Moses

I hear that. When I read the Sermon on the Mount, the call for not reacting to violence with violence strikes me as particular answer to a specific situation, not an adequate response to all situations. In many articulations of Christian belief, this issue keeps coming up with the whole range of being comfortable with being a soldier of God or renouncing War as such.

It was part of the humanist focus, with or without religion, but as the emphasis on social existence is the key domain, as opposed to in relationship with God, awareness of effects of action has become more important as a form of social ethics. — Jack Cummins

If it is true that the two domains are not given to us before thinking about them, all theological expression is also a 'social' ethics, a 'conjunction' with particular consequences. Maybe it would be good to decouple the tendency to see the creator as like us or vice versa from the agency of a god as a source. The Timaeus told a story of the creator as a sort of Cabinet Maker with a well-equipped shop. Aristotle presented us with the idea of an Unmoved Mover who we must reflect in our nature by definition but is not like us in most respects.

Regarding Kant, perhaps all 'histories of philosophy' approaches are their own 'conjunction.' But I don't want to argue for that as a necessary conclusion. That would presume an understanding that I do not have.

Yes, that level of interconnection can be heard in both Spinoza's and Nietzsche's versions of 'determinism' and their rejection of an anthropomorphic creator.

Wanting to know how to live makes wanting to know more than curiosity. I agree with I like sushi saying:

‘Ethical aspects of philosophy’ IS ethics. — I like sushi

Consider how the first part of Spinoza's Ethics is a cosmological explanation of our conditions.

There is a distinction between what is pursued as a description of life and the meaning and values we find there, but their "conjunction" is not that of two self-sufficient domains. How those domains are distinguished is one of the primary features of a 'philosophy.'

In Nietzsche, for example, the will-to-power is seen as a fundamental property of organic beings that informs us of a source for 'moral' behavior. The idea of that source is not a collapse of all distinctions between the two domains. They do become necessarily linked to each other through the description.

I read Nietzsche as more of a Monist in that regard. We are stuck with our world and that attempts to make it otherwise kick the ball down the road.

What I meant to say in my comment was to push back on the idea of philosophies being discrete points of view when there are many substantial disagreements about what is being said through their exposition. Different 'philosophies' do not pose problems worthy of solving to the same degree. To the degree they can be encapsulated into a simple thesis, they do not ask anything of us.