Awesome post. Thanks for joining to share this. I thought about that path once myself, decided to go for math, afraid that it would kill my joy in philosophy. Sounds like I made the right move...

I've been directly exposed to Catholicism and Pentacostal slain-in-the-spirit Christianity. I was told as child of a place of eternal torture created by loving God. I could read the good book myself and see that only a tiny minority would be spared the greatest sadistic fantasy thinkable. Adults are rarely monstrous. They are good at compartmentalizing and only half-believing these tales. God (as presented crudely) is like Santa Clause for grownups. He knows if you've been bad or good. Then there's the homophobia, the sexism, etc. It's very strange that ancient texts should be taken so literally by those who work in skyscrapers and heat their dinners in microwaves.

By "idolatry" I just mean a state of mind, a clinging to or identifying with some concept as sacred and universal. As I see it, earnestly accusing "idolatry" is to practice it.

Thank heavens for small mercies. X-) — Wayfarer

I'm having fun. It's the "seriousness of a child at play." I really don't mean to offend, but perhaps the imp of the perverse grabs the steering wheel now and then. I'm a smiley joker in person.

I am sure 'religion' recognizes that, in fact, is built around it. Certainly, that insight is often corrupted and distorted, but it's present in the texts. 'He who saves his own life will lose it...' — Wayfarer

Indeed, religion speaks of the sinful ego and then builds institutions and dogma with which folks passionately identify with. This itself can be framed as the "seeking to save one's life." There's also the humorous fact that the maxim itself is just advice on how to (paradoxically) save one's life.
To me it's just a disaster to condemn rather than sublimate egoism. In Christianity we supposedly have the "man-god" to imitate, who said that he was the way, the life, the truth, etc. If the incarnation isn't personal and grand, then what's it all about? Conservative politics? Kneeling to an idea? (But like I said, I'm having fun. This is the place to let it all hang out..)

Always, in the sense that anyone arguing a postion as wisdom or ethics is concerned with politics. They want to make the world into something, even if they are only concerned with speaking their own voice — TheWillowOfDarkness

As we enter the game of discourse, yes, we are impinging on the world. In a minimal sense, you can call this politics. But in that sense Keats was a politician. Even Lewis Carroll was therefore a politician --in that minimal sense. But this isn't about "politics is bad" or "politics is good" but a pointing toward that which transcends political assertions or political focus. It's about being able to laugh from one perspective at our earnest investment from another perspective. Are we good people? Good liberals? Good conservatives? Good whatever? Is that the whole story? Or is that a crust on the top of our consciousness? A construction of "oughts" and "truths"?

You view the "transcendent" as our meaningful escape from the squabbling politics of the world. Whether the transcendent Christian, mystical, atheistic or someonewith else, you view them all equal which saves from the ignomy of conflict, duty and demands of others. Everyone is saved by their ability to the meaning of the world and any conflict it might contain. — TheWillowOfDarkness

This is partially true, except that I still think you are understanding in political terms, as if I am "politically" asserting an anti-politics. Thou shalt not take politics seriously! But that is just more (generalized) politics and law bringing. I'm not trying to say that X is bad. Nor do I assert that my ideas are even compatible with just anyone's personality. We can use the "escape" metaphor, but it's misleading, for it already frames such an "escape" in terms of some violated duty. Thou shalt advance the cause of humanism/progressivism! You're right that the attitude I'm hinting at reframes all of this duty and perceives the narcissism/escapism within this "duty." It's hard to meet someone who doesn't think that his duty is also your duty. His abstract "gods" or causes are also yours, if you ask him. But look around: there is no consensus. There are positions that depend on thier anti-positions for an inferior or "fallen" out-group. Be it condescending pity or outright hatred, the group identification is something to melt in to.

The pragmatisist is found to be ignoring the world in favour of the fiction which produces a lesser degree of conflict or hides its presence. You often see pragmatism expressed as the phrase "we only need what works." How exactly is anything going to work though? For that to function, the world must have significance in-itself, else there would be no measure of what was working. Conflict and significance must be expressed by the world. It cannot be just a question of politics. — TheWillowOfDarkness

That's an odd perspective on pragmatism, of all movements, which is just sophisticated anti-intellectualism with a dash of anarchy. This talk of "fiction" is pre-pragmatic. Inquiry is driven by doubt, malfunction, pain when not by curiosity. A "hidden" conflict is the absence of a conflict. Conflict is disclosed by pain. It is pain. Indeed, we do only need what works. That what "works" means. And of course the world has significance "in itself." We are embodied, fragile, social. We are always already invested, threatened, promised. The question is adaptation, adjustment --largely by means of strings of marks and noises. Much of our life is work, politics. There's no escape from that on the practical level. It's about (in my view) learning to love this practical level. The "mystic" hints or post-law iconoclasm I've been singing is not by any means some replacement for work or politics. That's the point. It doesn't deny or replace them. It enlarges the space around them. Call it a string of marks and noises that polishes or lubricates the machine of everyday life. It's far more poetic than that, but there's no piety involved. But neither is there guilt or duty at the (possible) "apex" of a personality.

But I was "wired" this way. I've always loved fire.

Wild and beautiful thoughts. Yes, life is dreamlike or dreams or lifelike. It's possible (I guess) that we could wake and find ourselves in yet another life --that we dreamed a long, long dream in which we dreamed yet again (Inception stuff). I can't really say I expect that, but I think there's a case to be made for all sorts of wild possibilities --if only for the eeriness and wonder.

Sin can never annihilate worth altogether, but it can certainly diminish it. — John

Indeed, it's really the only kind of "sin" I can make sense of. My Jesus strides on an ocean of blood. Empathy and generosity are beautiful, but altruism as a duty is (to me) more or less an abomination, a weapon in the hands of those who think they are pacifists.

Very nice!

A sinner has just as much of a right to exist and be loved as the perfectly virtuous. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not that this is directed at me, but I think "right" is functioning here in the realm of politics or the Law. We are all endlessly guilty before the infinite law. "Finite" personality is just endless accusation and guilt. To accuse finite personality for this is just--- more finite personality, more word grinding. That too. That especially. By "infinite" personality, I just mean the negation of this game as the ideal mode. We "fall" into liberalism or conservatism or some other righteous role. Even here, I clash with you, enter the game of essences in order to point at it. Life is funny.

For me, the problem is that the New Testament is a massively mixed message. The book itself contains both genius and madness. I keep reworking my own "synthesis" of this book with all of the many other great books out there.

I go back to it with these other "scriptures" in my hand. None of these scriptures are sacred or authoritative. That, to me, is the highest "thing" that any of them point at. But until that vision of nothing-is-sacred lights up in one's heart and mind, there is (as I see it) always the tendency of the self to glue itself to something outside, beyond, and above itself. But our "self" wants recognition, so what it glues itself to is above others too, whether they like it or not. This is bigger than religion proper. It's also everywhere in politics and philosophy. Personality itself is a violence. But accusing it for being that way is to indulge in the same sort of righteous violence. Instead one just has a vision of the game and can occasionally have a cup of lemonade far above the battlefield. That's the general structure that my personal reading of the N.T. recognizes: "Christ is the end of the law," where the "law" is also Stirner-the-ghostbuster's "sacred." Christ is (an envisioner and vision of) the end of that which is sacred and therefore alien to the living-dying self. The magic/hidden word is now incarnate, which is to say mortal flesh that participates in a universal re-framed as primordial (as deep as the genitals) rather than in the realm of embattled personality ("idolatry"). Theidea of the "primordial" can clearly function as an idol, but I have to splash around in the realm of symbols if I want to say anything at all.

I have a sense of humor about this. I have yet to meet anyone who sees it all that much along these lines --although I genuinely believe that I could have one hell of a cup of coffee and a walk by the river with Caspar (Stirner) in particular. Infinite jest.

But, talking in philosophical terms, the point is that the Christian belief in the resurrection obviously implies acceptance of a reality beyond the physical. This challenges our accepted understanding of the way things are on a lot of levels. — Wayfarer

True.

(Hence what I call 'handrail materialism' - the adoption of materialism as an attitude because it gives you something to hang onto in the face of uncertainty.) — Wayfarer

Here is where I think you conflate "commonsense" and materialism. Most of us humans don't traffic much with the "isms" of the intellectuals. You and I do, but we're strange like that. We want to give an account, possess and project knowledge. But most just live in the world and see their loved ones die and not come back. Call this induction or whatever, but we form that idea that death is final, provided with so very few counterexamples. Ask yourself whether you expect any of those you know to have died to knock on your door tonight? Does that make you a materialist? Would you believe a stranger who said he could fly, but only when no one was looking? I think it's just a psychological fact that we expect "more of the same." This is mostly in the "manifest image" and not in the ghostly realm of bloodless isms.

I think a part of spirituality is the ability to live with the unknown - to accept the idea that nobody really knows about these matters, rather than accepting the implied authority of science (or scientism) in respect of something it really has no idea of. — Wayfarer

I agree. Live with the unknown. Don't make it about knowledge. That's just the same, sad metaphysical quest for the magic word. And yet there are words that liberate us from magic words...ladders to be thrown away... Or that's how I see it..

That's the genius of the Incarnation, it seems. That great, distant authority (whom it was death to look upon) became a living, particular man in time. Incidentally, I picked up The Concept of Time (Heidegger). Apparently it was written a little before B&T (sort of a sketch of it), but it's significantly more readable and condensed. Also did research on Kojeve. Well, it's clear that "man is time" is mostly from Heidegger, and that was one of the most profound things in Kojeve. (Geist ist Zeit).
Then we can throw in Sartre and describe idolatry as that futile passion that man is to become "spatial" or "present."

For me it's a collision of the infinite and the radically finite. There's an intuition of something "deathless" , "eternal","primordial", radically at home (a son of "God"=reality), at the center of us which allows the "surface" to be radically finite. "The fire and the rose are one." (T S Eliot).

Iconoclasm clears away our idolatry and our insistence that religion be more than subjectivity. We crave to crystallize our mortal selves as imperishable authority or knowledge, hiding from the fire and the rose at the same time. Yet we only "fall" into this self-conscious alienation now and then. Quite often we are living in creative play and open-hearted-ness without giving it much thought. We aren't mortal when we love and play. Not for ourselves. That loveis the "eternity." I think this includes a healthy self-love, which is often (counter-productively) demonized by sacred or self-conscious altruism, a narcissism that doesn't recognize itself as such.

Just my 2 cents, of course. I just don't know if these marks and noises will "click" for others. Is there a universal human nature? Or does it just feel that way sometimes?

But traditions are there to be creatively used by individuals for self-education, development and inspiration; individuals are not there for traditions to use or dictate to, in the name, and for the interests, of authorities or powers, or to repress and subjugate under the aegis of orthodox totalitarian ideologies. — John

Yes, indeed. This is almost everything, really. The past exists for us, not us for the past. The desire to freeze time is the desire for "undeath" or "unlife."

That's true. I don't want to insult believers. I do think it's acceptable to profess one's lack of belief though, and to reason from that -- at least in this context.

Yes. It's already just scientism and politics once we leave the guts and the heart. Religion is all too often (in my view) bad metaphysics, clumsy politics. We give a damn about it in the first place for "irrational" reasons. But then we obsess over possessing knowledge or science of something objective. All the same, we flee into the assertion that it's somehow non-empirical objective truth if challenged by the scientist or skeptic. But whence this objectivity? Belief and intuition, yes. We certainly believe things that others refuse to. But a science of such intuitions? propositions that cannot be falsified? It would maybe be better to hear some confessions of faith. "I can't prove X to you, but I believe X. And I can understand why maybe you don't." It's odd how religion tends to mimic the structure of its "destroyer" science. It confesses thereby its submission to the rational and the respectable. (I personally find an intersection of the religious and the rational/respectable that works for me. Others won't do this, in my view, because they want too much from religion. They don't want any freedom left over to be responsible for. Jesus must be science and philosophy and politics all at the same time, rather than that center of us that transcends them all.)

Well that's what I've read, but it really doesn't matter to me. I understand the Gospels symbolically. I'd guess that people who believe in it literally are still getting the "symbolic" potency (which helps fasten the belief against "common sense.")

It's not my call nor my responsibility to enact this, but nevertheless I think that if people were able to objectively and honestly evaluate their condition, a very large amount of people wouldn't see the use in continuing - they would realize that reality has little to offer them. — darthbarracuda

Respectfully, there's an immense arrogance in this. It implies that you know the "real truth" about the lives that indeed are not yours. Your worldview is something that makes you question whether you should be alive, and yet you project this as a true or objective worldview. Strange gods, this worse-than-useless "truth" and this "objectivity" that is miles away from consensus or falsifiability. I quote Nietzsche below not as an authority but as worth contemplating.

About life, the wisest men of all ages have come to the same conclusion: it is no good. Always and everywhere one has heard the same sound from their mouths — a sound full of doubt, full of melancholy, full of weariness of life, full of resistance to life. Even Socrates said, as he died: "To live — that means to be sick a long time: I owe Asclepius the Savior a rooster." Even Socrates was tired of life. What does that prove? What does it demonstrate? At one time, one would have said (and it has been said loud enough by our pessimists): "At least something must be true here! The consensus of the sages must show us the truth." Shall we still talk like that today? May we? "At least something must be sick here," we retort. These wisest men of all ages — they should first be scrutinized closely. Were they all perhaps shaky on their legs? tottery? decadent? late? Could it be that wisdom appears on earth as a raven, attracted by a little whiff of carrion?
...
Judgments, judgments of value about life, for it or against it, can in the end never be true: they have value only as symptoms, they are worthy of consideration only as symptoms; in themselves such judgments are meaningless. One must stretch out one's hands and attempt to grasp this amazing subtlety, that the value of life cannot be estimated. Not by the living, for they are an interested party, even a bone of contention, and not impartial judges; not by the dead, for a different reason. For a philosopher to object to putting a value on life is an objection others make against him, a question mark concerning his wisdom, an un-wisdom. Indeed? All these great wise men — they were not only decadents but not wise at all. — Nietzsche

Indeed, I sort of remember something like that. Then I believe he made some bold hypotheses about archetypes being physically manifested, which Pauli I think found fascinating. For me, though, the primordial images are just there if one is pointed in the direction. Jung pointed me in that direction, so I can see things in those terms. But Jung is no authority for me, just another human being with insight, neither perfect nor sacred.

You're quite welcome. These are fascinating issues even if one is happy. For me the "dark" thoughts have become (more or less) toys for the intellect.

For me, anyway, there's a huge difference between Jesus as symbol and Jesus as the sort of being that can wash away "sin" and provide an afterlife. I believe in crime, a legal term, but not in sin, which is sometimes understood as a "magical" something that gets one tortured in the afterlife. I completely reject the "magic" and the "torture" and the "afterlife." Now if there really was a Jesus like there was a Socrates, I think the story of his teaching has been enriched by symbolism that is often taken literally. The death and resurrection were imported from older "mystery cults." Well, he could have been executed, but this would fit so conveniently into Mithra's story. As old as Christianity is, there are far older religions that it is largely a blend of. Anyway, (to me) this historical Jesus doesn't matter much, if he existed, but that's because I have a "heretical" understanding that views it as continuing into some of the great atheistic philosophers.

Those who believe in miracles thousands of years ago are probably going to want to "freeze" Christianity at the Gospels, which in the less symbolic realm of philosophy would be like having stopped with Plato.

A little more, since, well, it's Whitman, America's new and improved Blake.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
...


These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next
to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.
...


My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really
am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
...


You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you. — Whitman

Here's some great 'mystic' poetry, though perhaps too carnal for some tastes:

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from
them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the cur-
rent and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their coun-
terpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of
the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or
am touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of
my own body, or any part of it,
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded
duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!
Sun so generous it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my
winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever
touch'd, it shall be you. — Whitman

I think that's what W was saying, though I'm thinking he sees it as more of a bad thing. We've been having quite the discussion in the "Mysticism" thread. I like to take Jesus as a literary character and a symbol that is lit by the kind of "primordial image" that Jung writes about. Nietzsche and Stirner are famous atheists, yet their conceptions of Christ as a kind of personality are profound. It's clear that their own "atheistic" work (on the notions of radical freedom and joy in this world) is an evolution of the concept of Christ.

It's a fair and profound question. But let me stress this: youth doesn't know. If an old man is dying of brain cancer and wants to go out on his own terms, before his personality crumbles, I think that's f*cking beautiful. I would do that myself, though my wife doesn't like it when I talk that way. Death has its beauty. But youth is a series of stubborn "illusions." I don't know if you ask about this for personal reasons, but you have a sincerity and openness about you that makes me think you will be happy if you aren't there yet. Novels, poems, and philosophy really turned around my attitude. I can't be grateful enough for the liberating ideas in those books. But it took time for me to wrestle through not only the intellectual complexities of existence but also to train my heart. It's not just having the right thoughts that matters. It takes time for those thoughts to reveal themselves in your guts in all of their fullness and power.

Perhaps the most fruitful route was to look at the art itself, ignore the critics and see it's meaning, quite a pilgrimage. — Punshhh

It's a beautiful thing to just dare to see with one's own eyes. Lots of folks may nod at that concept in the abstract, but a little later they will appeal some grand authority. This art conversation really is related to the rest of the thread. The imagination I was trying to share is all about the liberation of one's genuine feeling and perception and even about one's own voice as a writer. I know people who write well when it's nothing they want to publish. But they switch into solemn mode and lose their unique voices. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons I embrace this medium. No, it's not like they did it in the old days. The internet has opened up something new. (I also love good TV and rap, but I can imagine a resistance to these forms because they aren't yesterday's Shakespeare but today's.)

"Unscrew the doors from their jambs." (I'll have to put some Whitman on this thread. He's a 'mystic' of the flesh that I tend to have in mind.)

Let's reframe this. There's a beautiful girl (or boy or whatever) who likes you and you like her. Unfortunately, she has to move to the other side of the world in 24 hours. But she wants to spend all the time she can with you before she gets on that plane. Do you say "what's the end goal here?"

Some people may think they "need" to live (suicide is a sin or something), but most people want to live. And I'm not sure that very many people believe in the afterlife in their guts. So every once in a while they face their mortality and then get re-absorbed in some form of work or play. This play is what it's all about. All this angst and second-guessing is obliterated along with the "neurotic" self in the authentic, flowing, more or less creative play. Maybe it's the writing of a novel. Maybe it's flirting with your lover. Maybe it's a video game. All of these "little" things are what life is about, as I see it. The "big" things are usually employed in self-conscious power games. "X is the truth or the god or the real." "No, Y is the truth or the god or the real." So Mr. X and Mr.Y slap each other with words that are supposed to point beyond this "play" that we can all have sometimes, and yet this too is a form of play if it's not too serious or hateful.

I would live the life I actually have for thousands of years if only "the gods" would let me. (Just turn off the aging process for me, if you don't mind, dear lords.) But then I got better at living life (after some serious angst in my teens and 20s) by accepting the world as it is, evil and senseless as well as beautiful and rational.--and finally getting around to earning the type of job I love. I'm not above or beyond the world except in this refusal to be above and beyond (which is to say that I don't get assimilated by some infinite duty in the mouth of Mr. Z that condemns play).

Who goes there? hankering, gross, mystical, nude;
How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

All I mark as my own you shall offset it with your own,
Else it were time lost listening to me.

I do not snivel that snivel the world over,
That months are vacuums and the ground but wallow and filth.

Whimpering and truckling fold with powders for invalids, con-
formity goes to the fourth-remov'd,
I wear my hat as I please indoors or out.

Why should I pray? why should I venerate and be ceremonious?

Having pried through the strata, analyzed to a hair, counsel'd with
doctors and calculated close,
I find no sweeter fat than sticks to my own bones.

In all people I see myself, none more and not one a barley-corn
less,
And the good or bad I say of myself I say of them.

I know I am solid and sound,
To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.

I know I am deathless,
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept by a carpenter's
compass,

I know I shall not pass like a child's carlacue cut with a burnt
stick at night.

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize,
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by,
after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

***********************************************
These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next
to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.
— whitman

You know the laughing thing, well it's the same with art, suddenly everything is art and you have to restructure what art means from a position of knowledge, aware of the futile struggling you were doing before the revelation, veiled in ignorance. — Punshhh

I sort of neglected this before, but I've had a vision along the lines of everything being art. I used to want to write a book, etc., and crystallize something, but now I think of the living, flowing unstable persona as a sort of dynamic sculpture. Water on fire, looking for fuel.

In the U.S. there's not as much pure atheism/scientism to be had. I know people with degrees who will talk of ghosts. How do ghosts fit in with atoms? Also, "global warming is a hoax" and then there's just lots of traditional religion available, too, though the millennials seem to be avoiding the churches.

I agree, however, that, if you frame the question a certain way, they will repeat the expert knowledge as it was told them. Later they may say that aliens built the pyramids, though, or fire up the Tarot app on their smartphone. My old man had a strange, personalized reincarnation belief, but he mixed it with science-fiction notions of the creation of humanity. He got something from it, but he only talked about such things a few times, mostly absorbed in projects for the back yard. My point is that most people don't care enough to synthesize something cohesive, as long as they feel good. Passionate, closed-minded materialism and atheism are rare in my experience. As you know, it's a new pop-atheist twist on humanism--another "religion." Just like scientism.

Prominent progressives do lean toward science (and altruism) as the grand authority. Traditional religion is lumped in with sexism, homophobia, and even (post Trump) racism. I've noticed little rainbow stickers on churches that feel the need to distance themselves.

Now obviously the material states are all completely different - but the meaning is the same! Hence, meaning can't be reduced to material states. — Wayfarer

I agree. There's something "holy" or "eerie" about concepts. There's something at the heart of math, too. We have to recognize a symbol as the same symbol even though it's always written differently, even by the same hand. We have a inborn ability to recognize intelligible unity. Any attempt to reduce mind to matter (if that even makes sense) is going to have to use this ability, concepts. It's going to exist as a "truth" within the realm of concepts. The sign is that ill-named thing...that escapes the instituting question of philosophy: what the hell is it? Is it a thing or the condition of possibility for a thing to be a thing or...etc. etc. " [It] is."

I was looking into Rescher lately and it opened my eyes a little bit to just how much of experience is mediated by the rational. Look around the room you are in. You know what those objects "are." You have names for them. You can put them to use. You know where they came from. Crucially, you can include them in your plans for the future. "Bare" experience is an unthinkable limit, perhaps. I find this in Kojeve, too. History haunts our objects. To fully understand the presence of a table is to got back to the factory and then to the creation of factories as well as the evolution of the trees or metallurgy involved. All of this is present for us as we follow the train of our thought, sitting in our chair. And yet none of this thought would have evolved (as we know thinking) if not for embodiment, hunger, ambition, lust, etc. We had to tear into the environment, our own minds, and the bodies of others to build this kingdom of thought.

But to answer your question: my "higher" or most fun self goes in for grand theories. I love math. I love philosophical visions. That's why I don't find pragmatism too dreary or unromantic. Pragmatism is the shoes on my feet. I still want diamonds in my eyes.

I enjoyed your post. I had a sense like that about Taoism, but I haven't heard much about the other antimonians of the East.
I don't know that atheism == materialism, but I see what you're getting at. On the other hand, there are atheists who lose interest in origins and even in science. For me these "accidents of biochemistry" are very abstract and distant from the world I live in of faces and voices. Only as technology does science interest me much these days. Math is another story! As Conway said, that's the stuff that we can understand. But we deeply live in language. I'd be there are lots of "literary" atheists out there, and maybe they aren't exactly atheists. I believe in deities in a roundabout way. I suppose it's about whether we expect the manifest image to change directly ( by divine intervention) or indirectly through world-shaping man's passionate imagination. (That I imply that deities [excepting Being itself?] are "just" imagination should be understood in the context of a great love for the "poetic genius" and "human form divine.")

But, Agustino, this debate about who is legitimate or not is hardly a footnote. It is exactly the sort of "Law bringing" narcissism (which I partake in like anyone) that some notions of the mystic attempt to transcend. You make mysticism sound like a gym membership. "God has to be earned!" "Look at all of these fakes!" " Real Christians/mystics/philosophers/men/whatever do it THIS way, MY way." As I see it, this game (my Law projected as the authentic, universal Law) is what "Christ" transcends.(We see that this game cuts both ways.) But of course my Christ is a symbolic Christ. Yours is a man of the Law. (I'd use some other name for mine if my childhood occurred in a different religious context. )

I quoted Stirner, not Sartre. As I see it, Sartre was still trapped, though right on the edge conceptually. He's a great writer on alienation, on contingency, on "being-for-others." But he took politics seriously, so he's really not my guy. Stirner, on the other hand, strikes me as truly liberated, on a level beyond Sartre. Marx hated Stirner. Sartre was deeply invested in Marxism. That gap between mere politics and "spirit" is crucial. Sartre was torn between two visions.

Maybe I'm a foolish optimist but I truly believe that if we broke down the man made divisions, we could see that we are one species and unite under that premise. — saw038

I hope to see this at some point. Maybe the internet will help.

It's OK if you disagree. This kind of disagreement is thousands of years old by now. Paul happened to be a Jew, but (as I understand it) he took mystery cults for the other half of his blended Christianity. The divine man who dies and is resurrected is ancient, as I understand it.

Just found this quote:
"Pre-messianically, our destinies are divided. Now to the Christian, the Jew is the incomprehensibly obdurate man who declines to see what has happened; and to the Jew, the Christian is the incomprehensibly daring man who affirms in an unredeemed world that its redemption has been accomplished. This is a gulf which no human power can bridge."
Buber

An unexpected juxtaposition:

A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one — E

Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a “true man” from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a “true man,” the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the “man.”

The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous or suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, “The spirit is man’s proper essence,” or, “man exists as man only spiritually.” Now, there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
...
It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your “destiny,” but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your “destiny,” because it is present time. — Stirner

What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. — John

Well said. Philosophy (if it's loyal to Socrates at all) is going to try to give a "reasonable" account, as reasonable as possible.

What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit. — John

This. Yes. Though I like Agustino, I think he's missing out on a notion of something that surpasses politics.

Some Meister Eckhardt quotes: 'He is your being, but you are not his'
'The eye with which I see God, is the same eye as with which God sees me'. — Wayfarer

Great lines. I was exposed to some Eckhardt in Caputo's book on Heidegger and mysticism.

Oh, I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic. But this perception of existence beneath essence is profound. There are books that link Heidegger to Daoism, etc., and of course Sartre took off to some degree from Heidegger. Anyone walking knee-deep into ontology or phenomenology is at least getting close to that zone. And godlessness as god isn't so strange, is it? Nothingness, transcendence, freedom, Being.