Ok then, let´s call my first definition exegesis. I use exegesis as synonym for hermeneutics, because I consider that the rational interpretation of texts is different to what I call oracular or divinatory. I´m aware of the fact that "hermeneutics" is usually applied to the theological interpretation of religious books and particularly the Bible; we must be grateful for hermeneutics, because it helped to preserve invaluable documents from the past and develop the art of translating texts. However, these translators have been historically committed religiously to the task of interpretation, without separating the three different approaches to the Bible I wanted to describe.

It is important to mark this distinction, because the corresponding interpretations are different and even opposed; and also that the religious, divinatory (from Latin divinare, to consult the gods) or oracular interpretation is only valid in the sense that interpretations of what tarot cards mean is valid. They mean what you want them to signify.

I also think that Protestant sects or churches, are not Christian, precisely because they rely on book idolatry even more strongly than Catholics or Anglicans. Consider this: If I download the Vedas with a good translation, or say I learn Sanskrit to read them proper: and I derive articles of faith and commandments from my own reading, am I a Hinduist? Or am I creating an entirely new religion using the text as a personal or communal oracle?

Okay, let´s say then that there three interpretations: one seeking to aproximate what the authors of the book, the actual people who grabbed a stylus or a feather and wrote the stories, wanted the text to mean, what they wanted to transmit to readers. This is complicated enough, because we are dealing, in the Bible, with texts that were added, edited, censored, copied and miscopied for a span of no less than seven centuries by people who literally had different religions and beliefs. And they were people we know nothing about personally, only Ezra has left some personal traces for the record. This is a hermeneutical approach.

The second one is the historic and literary approach, in which we want to compare the valuable texts in the Bible with other ancient texts and the archeological record, to understand the evolution of ideas, symbols and customs. This is my favourite!

The third is the oracular interpretation. An oracle is a communication from the Divine to mortals, via diviners who act as mediums, or different natural signs such as the aspect of a goat´s liver. It comes from orare, to speak, so it is when you ask God for answers and he gives you a reply. When we seek answers to our personal problems, spiritual doubts, or hints about God´s will, we are doing the oracular interpretation, similar to use the tarot. I´d rather use the tarot to the Bible for this purpose, because it´s more fun and there are no so many goats everywhere; however a Christian will prefer to use the Bible because in a book cult the selected book is considered a divine manifestation.

El Quijote works just as well; some people in Spain have El Quijote by their bed, and you can open the book randomly to read a passage. They are always meaningful and seem to be speaking to you and what is going on in your life. That´s partly why El Quijote is the most read novel ever: it is so attuned with human nature. Cervantes and Shakespeare died the same day, 23rd of April: World Book Day.

"the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" is correct if we understand "the tree of knowledge", without references to good and evil deeds. I´m telling you this is the most likely translation, the one that makes more sense if we follow Tomseltje´s method.
I must also point out that your interpretation of the passage is personal and not justified hermeneutically. I think you just want the passage to mean that, or you read what another person would like it to mean. For example, the nakedness more easily means change of status when they get dressed; when we invest somebody with a role or position, we dress him or her, for that is what the verb investire means literally in Latin. Adam and Eve, when are dressed in animal skins, become separated from the rest of the animals; the sacrifice of the totem animals and the act of wearing the skin is the ritual of passage. So you can read that God recognizes this change of status, derived from culture (knowledge) that expels us from Paradise, that is union with Nature. Animals don´t know death, or labour, because their consciousness is not split in their mind from the here and now. This interpretation is more reasonable, because we know from Persian myth and Gilgamesh Epic that people in the Fertile Crescent believed that the transition from animal to human was due to the new consciousness that is provoked by self-domestication induced by socialization; and was culminated by the construction of cities as separated spaces from Nature (Cain was the founder of the first city).

Even though it is not definitive, it is comprehensive and there is also some consistency, in principle, about it. Perhaps, it's that we cannot escape the influence of our collective associations, therefore, everything about us has a connection which is also a reference point to others." But of course, I have admitted myself twice in the thread that this method is correct, and it is the way to go with social sciences in general, feminist and anti-colonialist approaches aside as they do not use the scientific method.

But I´m telling you it is not enough at all. For example, when we read in Genesis that there was a Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the scholarly likely conclusion is that the translation was wrong, and it is better to translate "The tree of all knowledge". Because we do not have a pre-biblical tradition of trees of good and evil, but we do have a tradition of trees of knowledge: Hom tree, Soma tree, and there are also Egyptian examples. So a biblical translator can suppose that "good and evil" is used as a merism, as in "I traveled far and wide", or "I shivered from top to toe", to signify "to the entire extent". However, we also know that biblical authors, like most scribes in Ancient times when paper and ink were very expensive, liked to give double and triple meaning to words and sentences. So the possibility that the actual translation was a moral one can not be discarded for sure. In fact, Genesis was the last book to be introduced in the Jewish canon, when the Persian religion with its manichean and escathological themes was influencing strongly the Levant.

If the interpretation has only a scholarly or literary value a footnote would be more than enough; however, it so happens that from the translation of the name of this tree theological teachings are derived. It´s not the same at all to say that God wanted to prevent humans from developing ethics, than to say that God did not wanted us to develop science. Consider how today we debate if technology and scientific knowledge is neutral or must be examined ethically; or if ethics should be subordinated to science, etc.

The point is, that the level of certainty in the interpretation that a religious, or oracular reading of the Bible requires to avoid making the Bible say what we want to say is excessive, even impossible for us.
Of course, a religious person will contend that you can count on the Holy Ghost´s influence upon your mind to interpret it right; but if the Holy Ghost can inspire you in such a direct and particular way, why the need for a book?

We don´t know what is inside a black hole; much less what it feels like to be in a black hole. However, we infere things about black holes (that ultimately might be wrong) by the way they communicate with us.I understand your point, I think you are right. It might be useful then to make a distinction between communicating and knowing/experiencing. Communicate is to put a little of you in others; you don´t broadcast a message, you broadcast yourself, like the Sun irradiates waves that are part of his substance. Thus, reality does reach us, because we get its signal, in fact we are the signal. However, knowing is a different matter; to know is to organize information received through our senses (also inner senses like body temperature). When we place ourselves under a showerhead and turn the tap, is not water we feel, but the sensation constructed by our mind to label this update on environmental interaction of our skin. We can not feel the actual element.

Because knowing is representing, and objective knowledge is shared representations, the thing in itself is beyond knowledge entirely. It´s like being born blind, and know for certain that, if aliens ever land a spacecraft in your roof, they will be invisible. It´s not something you say about the aliens, it´s about your own capacities.

I beg your pardon, I thought the line commented was an actual quotation from a scholar I don´t know. That is why I wrote "this Tomseltje", not in a pejorative fashion, but recognizing my ignorance of this supposed author. Unless you have actually published essays, then it would all fall into place!
I said that it falls short (after writing that your guidelines was the correct scientific approach) because when you think that a text contains the real literal words and deeds of human beings and God, any approach is insufficient. There is just no way that a text, no matter how well written, could convey the minds of people or supernatural entities that lived thousands of years ago. Or in the XXI century.

But if there is nothing, then Kant's premise is false. There is no world as representation. Instead it is the world as it is in itself that we are experiencing. I kant understand what you mean by this. Perhaps you want to state that the phenomenal world is also real? I agree with you; but then what noumenos means for Kant is what we now call "fundamental" or primary.

It´s a known unknown, like girls for unmarried Kant.

It seems to me that Kant presupposes that there exists a world which, by virtue of its being independent of our experience, is unknowable, yet nevertheless is the cause of our experience. This presupposition seems to me unjustified. How does Kant know that such a world exists? I think it is justified, and what the German philosopher tried to explain is that reality is known to us mediated by our ideas, images and logic, and not directly. We don´t see, touch, or hear the world; the reality we can feel is the one we create virtually in our minds. This is totally factual and in harmony with what a psychologist or neuroscientist can tell you. To know is to represent in our mind, and a drawing of a horse is never a horse.
Kant admits this, and also that reality exists. Therefore, reality proper is beyond our experience, all of it, and that´s noumenos.

"This makes our values just as fluid as our nature, and why should it be any different?" Values are fluid like water: water moves and changes states and occupy different spaces, but it is always water. It has two atoms of Hydrogen and one Oxygen atom. It retains many properties that have no changed in billions of years. Is it possible that human values are constant, and what changes is their adjustment to particular situations to preserve their essence?

This Tomseltje was right, if he or she was talking about how Hermeneutics and scientific History have to proceed. S/he probably made great contributions to Science.

However, as far as interpreting religious books, even that approach might fall short. I think it´s better to not consider any book sacred and divine. Before writing people were very superstitious; but they also were less prone to take simple words for granted. Even Egyptian scribes, who thought that they were the literal vessels of Djehuti more or less like the Sacred Form is supposed to be the vessel of Christ and considered written texts magical, still wrote that true wisdom is not to be found in books, but in the observation of Nature. The hieroglyph for "to be high, to exalt", for example (a28), is derived from the gestures than babuins do at daybreak. These animals were considered special and their warm-up routine perfectly symbolized visually the glorification of Ra in its rising sun manifestation. Nature informed literature, and not the other way round. With literary cults such as the Torah or Mani´s Living Gospels, the hierarchy is inversed, and from then on we learnt that if Nature is at odd with the Written text, is Nature that is wrong. This is not exactly superstitious, is idolatrous: because the text becomes more than a text, it becomes a divine manifestation and the writers and characters in the stories become divine.

This strange idea is so ingrained in our Piscis era psyche, that even atheistic people think like this. For example, a feminist reads de Beavoir or Judith Butler and says to herself: "something is wrong with Nature!" (Physical reality). Ancient peoples were incredibly superstitious, however they did not worshipped books. Very ironically, Christian, Jewish and Muslim people call people who don´t worship books and images (characters in texts) "idolatrous".

This book was written by people who thought that their wisdom, that was not so dissimilar to some of the ideas held in the western end of Civilization in the same period, could not be transmitted through a book. It´s more a poetic exercise, that explores different examples of a literary figure called paradox. It´s not meant to be read like Christians read their Bible or Feminists read Simone de Beauvoir; it´s not an epiphany or an oracle from a higher power. I isn´t a manual or beginner´s guide to become a taoist either. It´s poetry, it´s an artistic object to be used for meditation. So to discuss what a particular fragment of the book means is misguided.

Passiveness in Taoism does not mean to be at rest, or quiet. It´s a different meaning.

Non-action action in real example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jXXWBt5URw

In The Police´s Message in bottle, I hear "Messi chino pato" Messi ordered Cantonese duck? Messi chino pato...Messi chino pato... In Sade´s "Smooth operator" a Spaniard distinctly hears: "ella es una porrera...es una porrera!" (she´s a pot smoker), and later in the song: "costo, costo, into Chicago..." (hash in Chicago)

When you bring together the need to move fast to stay alive with the mechanics of fluids, a form called vesica piscis tends to arise. Vesica Piscis is a sacred shape, it´s the conjunction of the one and its twin reflection. And it is really a number, but a number in the Pythagoric sense: a rhythm or invisible vibration. The visual experience of these animals is just a sensorial manifestation of what is happening on a deeper level, which is the conjunctio or gradual harmonization between the specific rhythm we call animal life with the specific rhythm of fluid matter, either in form, cycles, movement... Fish, birds, flying fish and swimming birds, dolphins and bats.


So what a Master who knows wu wei can do, is realizing that he too is a Pythagoric rhythm that is being mixed with other rhythms; when he focuses in allowing his body and mind align with the natural underlying "mathematical operation" in course, he can manifest the easiest action, the one that takes less effort, like driving without leaving the smooth, straight road and invading the stony field. He´s not moving; is the whole universe that is moving, and he with it.

I like the last analogy with the celestial bodies, is very useful

x

It only depends on if the central impact of the moral system is fundamentally neutral, negative or positive. I'd say the mere act of eating animal products is neutral, while being a child rapist is actively negative. I think All acts are morally neutral, and they can be attributed an moral positive or negative charge when they actually happen, in a context.
Notice how your examples (eating animal products and child rape) differ in that the second is given a context. Because the general, context-free action is not to rape a child, but to have sex with a child. I think second generation anthropologists like Malinowsky wrote about cultures where adults were supposed to initiate the children sexually and the ritual practice was functional within their society and apparently not harmful at all for the kids and their self-esteem. The very same practices could be traumatic in our society for children in the same age.

My point is not to discuss the topic of sex with minors, but that you always need a precise context to assign moral qualities to an action. Eating animals is neutral; but if you give it a context it becomes good or bad. Eating endangered animals as they do in China today is bad, because they drive many species to extinction. Eating paella de conejo with your grandparents is morally good, because you are fulfilling your duties with your family.

this mindset is called Luciferian, and it´s important for masons and other secret societies. They don´t believe in a physical Devil but they know they can get what he promises through "natural magic". Natural Magic is what Italian philosophers in the early Modern Age called what we know refer as Science; but their understanding was better because it doesn´t hide the Faustean side of technology and research, that we are all talked thousands of times, is "neutral" and "good". Magic is good or bad, white or black, but never neutral because the essence of Magic is manifesting projects through the power of concentration of an ego.

Luciferians want to turn their egos into godlike entities: inmortal, and with inimaginable power. They want to transcend matter, that is, to go digital. It has took them more than two millennia to get there, but are very close and a global extinction is not something against their plan but a tabula rasa they expect to use to reshape the planet from scratch to their interests. They have always seem Morality and Nature as divine, that is: opposed to their luciferian goals. Because freemasons and other societies have contributed enormously to shape our civilization, our society is led by values that serve their purposes.

the I.C.T.s of the first centuries of our era, Piscis, were the alphabet, the papyrus and durable ink. This new technologies were propagated throughout the Ancient World, creating a brave new world. It was very easy for people back then to think that written texts were magic, because they could communicate your thoughts and those thoughts remained even after you died, or traveled thousands of miles. Amulets and hexes used alphabetic writing to charge their incantations, and anybody could do it.

This explains the rise of literary cults. Cults where books are considered divine, or epyphanies of the Divinity. Since then, we have characters in written stories are our gods, and the voice of Heaven is no longer in the signs Nature as Celts, Egyptians or Iberians or Mesopotamians believed, but in published books.

Thus, we learnt to see time not as a circle or spiral (Time has fractal qualities, which manifest in patterns that repeat and that is how calendars are made and how all pre-alphabetic societies viewed time), but as a literary story: with a Beginning, a Development that builds up a climax, and an End of the World. The end of the World is not a new beginning, is the real end of the world: the literary deities promise that. That is why Christianity and post-Christianity (socialism, capitalism), Luciferian logias, Islamism and Judaism all work for a much awaited and desired Doomsday or end of History; and not for the preservation of Nature and the Human race, which is the purpose of religion and History in circular or spiral (scientific) conceptions of Time.

Part of Literary idolatry, is the idea that written pages can convey the thoughts of God: so "Scripture" is used as an oracular object, seeking information about when the end of the world will come and what can we personally do to bring it closer; also what we can we do personally to be in good terms with the deity when the (probably nuclear) Final Chapter comes.

I think I stick to the Gregorian calendar, because it recognizes periods of the year that are very meaningful to me and which are lost in the alternatives. Also because the Roman-Gregorian calendar was calculated by Spanish scientists (from Universidad de Salamanca, which is the oldest European university). What I do favour, is changing the decimal system for the duodecimal system. It is very practical and more in tune with nature and with ancient traditions of many cultures of the world. It would also make maths easier to learn for children.

It is the pits when can no longer be the person we valued because of a life-changing event out of our control. — Athena

The intrinsic and personal value of a human being like you or anybody else, in my current understanding, is not dependant on our contribution to society. If that were the case, a large portion of humanity would be valueless, as many people have a negative contribution to the material functioning of social networks, being more a burden than an asset.
On the contrary, I think that citizens must consider their capacity to experience and imagine the world subjectively paramount for their self-value. In this sense, we can all contribute positively to the soul of our community and the Earth. Also animals make this contribution; but we humans were specialized in just that, like eagles specialized in being awesome.
Without us as meaning-makers and subjective experiencers, society is just a machine, and not one that will work for long.

Men and women have different views of life sometimes, but they are not opposed, and I also totally challenge the idea that we live in "men-dominated" societies". There are no men-only or women-only societies (The Amazons is a legend, not history); this gives us the clue that men and women are a single system. People with more caring and affectionate attitudes in our society are a by-product of people who are particularly tough, and sometimes cruel. Very nice people can afford all that niceness because someone else, actual people or procedures in the system such as law enforcement, are assuming all the hard ways that very friendly and compassionate people do without. In social environments where this specialization is reduced, say the army or a prison or people trying to escape a fire, everybody is tough and not so nice because they can not delegate in social structures, or cops, or those people who kill rats and other pests.
And viceversa: people working in very stressful, competitive and even dangerous jobs can survive and raise healthy children because other people, say a wife (sometimes a husband) or a teacher, are doing the caring tasks that demand sensibility and tenderness.

If a society rejects toughness and its male side, becomes a failed state, like Sweden, unable to control who enters the country, or accept people with different political views, or preserve social order and protect women from being raped on the streets. If a society rejects tenderness and its female side, it becomes like Nazi Germany or modern-day China or Iran, an iron cage for its own people and a threat to the world.

Very good answer Inis

The passive frame theory, a metastudy that was published in 2015, was very interesting because it took into consideration many recent studies. Personally, I do not think that Daniel Dennet´s interpretation of the theory and other studies is correct; he seems a good person but I think he probably has a too reductionist idea of reality.

My own interpretation is that mind exists and consciousness exists as the theatre where mind performs its reality movies. Mind for me is the capacity of the universe to produce symbolic representations through the use of animal bodies. I think it´s an emergent property of physical reality. I also suspect that our conscious mind is only the animal form of a much wider phenomenon that we do not understand yet. Who knows.

I can not find "The soul machine". The search engine gives me a rap singer who must be all the rage now. Who wrote it?

you need to read all the most relevant scientific papers on this matter. They provide very good clues to help you find your answers. Last twenty years have been quite ground-breaking in this field, and there is no reason you should spare yourself all that information if you are really interested. It´s what philosophers of the mind in past centuries would have done, but they could not.

If you understand Spanish, this is a course to introduction to Philosophy from the Argentinian public tv which is quite good. Even if you already know a lot about Philosophy, it is still good, as the guy has ways to put philosophers in the History of ideas that are insightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMPwE6Uv5Tw&list=PLgRR0bx2IcuwW-NgmPalawIM7CxXQ3RdJ

I wish that were true...In practice, I think most philosophers are very much in tune with the zeitgeist of their time and the ideas prevalent in their social circle. Which is not what would happen if philosophy had such a shaking effect. We could not have philosophical periods and schools, as each philosopher would put into question the ideas in his or her environment and would build a unique path. That is not what happens.
This said, the XXI century is unique in the sense that we are exposed to so many influences (if we want to) that very different philosophical personal paths are possible, at least in the privacy of our minds.

yes, I totally agree. What´s the point of being conscious if we don´t protect our life and those of our dear ones? We have an eternity to enjoy being dead. In life we must serve Life. All religions worth of the name are about that, and all that our parents taught us as kids that for me has more weight than religion.

"I dont see any moral compunction against starting a nuclear war for trump. Pakistan does actually have more moral compunction not to start a nuclear war." Ernestm
Why Pakistan should refrain from starting a nuclear war? The state´s official religion is Islam, and the country has been purged from other beliefs that amount to only 4%. With this strong islamic milieu, I do not see why Pakistan is more likely to feel guilty about using nuclear bombs than the U.S. War and violence are a sacrament in islamism. A sacrament is a ritual that brings you closer to God and makes you more worthy. Killing people or dying trying to was considered sacramental (human sacrifices) among Vikings or Germanic tribes, and they fought among themselves when Romans were not attacking. Or they´d invade, simply because war was sacred to them, a favoured path to be in good terms with their daemons and to prove worth. Islam is based on that kind of "morality", because early Muslims mixed Judaism with their own tribal ideas of the world.

Christian and post-Christian (Progressive) U.S. do not have the concept of Holy War or Jihad. That is partly why Europeans had to wait more than a century and lose more than half of Christianity to Islam before they could organize defence. And still, Christian soldiers needed to expiate their sins in monasteries or donating to the Church if they wanted to go to Heaven. Does Pakistan have "anti-belicist" movies and songs, like the endless list of those produced by the U.S. culture?

In Quran however, Muslims read that the promised triumph of Allah over the whole of human kind and long-for Doomsday looks suspiciously similar to what would happen if Pakistan (or Iran) started a nuclear war:
We have made of what is on the earth ornaments for it in order to test them as to whose work is better, and We will surely turn what is on it into a barren wasteland!. 18:7-8

So when the horn is blown once, and the earth and the mountains are lifted and crushed with a single blow; on that day the inevitable event will occur. 69:13-15

Therefore, watch out for a day when the sky brings forth a distinctive smoke that covers the people; this is a painful punishment.. 44:10-11

For all this, and the demographic bomb that is also in total harmony with Islamic teachings, I find more likely that Pakistan begins the Doomsday War, and feels less guilty about it if at all, than the U.S.

It would be better for Pakistanis to return to their lost hindu religion; at least Hinduism has no need for a Doomsday as they think that history is meant to be endless.

Christopher Hitchens predicted that Pakistan would be the state starting a nuclear war. This seems very likely, since they have a huge population bomb the government can´t stop. This factor of instability, together with the pro-belicist (Muslim) identity of this new country makes "the nation of the pure" the most likely attacker with nuclear heads, much more than North Korea. Nuclear wars are a good deal for people who think the world should end soon (Islam, Christian fundamentalists, George Soros) but a terrible business for anybody else. You don´t need nukes to win global wars; only the economy, as China or Saudi Arabia are proving. North Korea is a mad mad regime but they fall on the side of the world that doesn´t want History to end. They just want a good deal I suspect, and Trump is trying to negotiate that deal with China and the mad regime, something that Obama did not even bother to attempt.

it depends on what you understand as morality. If you use moral as a synonym for ethical, then to be vegan doesn´t put you on a higher ground. This is so because Ethics is based on reason and empiricism; not on beliefs or cult books. You have values, and find out what behaviours promotes those values more than others in the real world and with real choices.

It so happens that veganism is not such rational framework, but a life-style that satisfies personal instincts and feelings, with religious taboos that promote community bonds and inner peace. What is lacking to call veganism an ethical behaviour, is the logical and scientific study of what is the best way to protect the values vegans have.

However, the taboo is supposed to make you feel superior morally; or purer. And part of a better group of people that recognize you as one of them. So it is natural if you feel superior, but it´s not real if morality has an ethical meaning. I´m not judging you or anything, only trying to answer your question as well as I can....

then I was wrong about the man and my personal explanations were unjustified.

However, it is still true that what he says seems to be more related to his time than to Classical zeitgeist, that is too far from us to really know. We can only come near to what particular authors whose works have survive thought; but to understand what was in the mind of the actual people who went to visited the Acropolis for religious reasons or the people who were buried by the Vesubius´ eruption involves a lot of guesswork.

Where is the evidence to substantiate this claim, you ask? There is no shortage of evidence, and I will again defer to Spengler in setting out some illustrations and explanations for you now below...
John Gould, is it not obvious to you that Spengler wrote his books from the standpoint of a Victorian man who is watching how the British Empire is declining? And who studied a curriculum that was strong on classical studies and the sculptural nudes? (pederasty was widespread in Victorian elite schools and it was justified on Classical authors and art). When we talk about the past we have to bear in mind that we always put in those centuries appreciations of our own times. And more critically: we were not there, we do not know what people two millennia ago really thought and felt about things. We can not know, because we mostly have written documents that are a tiny fraction of what existed, and in which certain authors like Plato or Herodotus might have more credit than they enjoyed in their own time, when the alternative thinkers and intellectuals also had their now lost books, in circulation. We have to be very cautious. We really don´t know. When we have so little information, is very easy and tempting to add from our own imagination to fill in the blanks.

For example, I´m not so sure that Greeks had a problem with infinity or incorporeal stuff. Chaos is a Greek word, and it meant very much what we know understand as quantum vacuum; not exactly corporeal or limited. Greeks took chaos from Egyptian Nun, the emptiness with maximum potential that is nothing in particular but gave birth to the Universe. Well-off Greeks went to Egyptian temples like people now go to universities, to learn medicine, philosophy or maths. Temples in Egypt were not churches; they were in many senses more like colleges or professional schools and kept large libraries. In Egypt you had the Nile, a mighty river that allowed Egyptians to transport massive limestone pieces from quarries in the South all the way to the Delta, and through a channel to the Gizah plateau. In Greece, which is all mountains, hills, and small islands, massive constructions were not a good idea so instead they went for noble materials and fine artists, which they did have. Greeks were not so limited in their art. In fact, in comparison with other cultures they were quite creative and outrageous. You have to be an expert in Egyptian art to tell if a fresco belongs to the Ancient, Middle, New Empire, or Hellenistic Egypt. Greek art on the contrary (even the usually more conservative religious art) is very easy to assign to periods, precisely because it was not canonized and simple. It kept changing at a pace that is surprisingly fast given the communications back then.

I haven´t read Spengler, but his theory seems very odd. The Faustian spirit of Western culture is not attached to a particular ethnicity. It´s a way of thinking rooted in Judeochristian and Classical philosophy. It has to do with how ego and the human being are understood in the Mediterranean and European advanced societies, and it is the same notion that also gave us democracy and human rights. However, there is a dark side that also shaped how the world would develop and particularly economy, technology and science. I totally recommend the biography of John Dee and his adventures with Edward Kelly, as the two exemplify very strikingly how "natural magic" (Science was separated from Magic and Religion by Italian thinkers in Modern Age, and called it Magia Naturalis) was fated to follow to this Faustean path when it became emancipated from spiritual consciousness.

The West is civilization to the West of Islam, and The East is civilization to the East of Islam. Before Islam west and east were just the two ends of a single Old World Civilization. It was Mongolian empires first and Muslim later, that separated and made possible the great cultural divide that European colonization of the globe brought to an end. There is no West and East Civilizations, only Civilization and different cultural adaptations of the worldwide phenomenon derived from the development of cities connected through trade and communication technologies (especially writing). "Europe" did not exist prior to Muslim invasion of Spain and the North of Africa; it was this loss of the control of the Mediterranean and economic decline due to commercial isolation what made necessary to create a new political entity using De Civitate dei and Ancient Rome as models. Islamic expansion was counteracted with expansion to the North, to civilize (adapt to civilization) Germanic, Slavic and Norse tribes; this Christianization was a sort of Restoration of the Roman Empire, replacing the Mediterranean basin with the great rivers of Europe and the North seas. Remember that is not land, but water, what shaped and delimitated economic and cultural regions before trains and aircrafts.

The construction of a global empire by Spain and Portugal, replaced the traditional routes to China and India and America provided the resources Europe needed to survive economically. All the gold Spain took from America is equal to the gold extracted by Perú at present in two years; however it meant a lot to build European financial networks to fund new enterprises.

In return, America left the Stone Age, and new powers developed; in 1830, the U.S.A. was already strong and confident enough to help Europe re-conquer the "Mare Nostrum" and piracy and traffic of European slaves to the markets of Egypt and Arabia ended at last after twelve centuries. The West and East were joined again, and the sharing of ideas and customs brought about a cultural revolution in the world that characterized the XIX and XX century.
Even the Islamized world was affected by the new world order; however, the new dependance of civilization on oil and the divide of the planet between totalitarian and liberal nations trumped the social and cultural development of the Islamized regions when it was just started.

Therefore, the West no longer makes sense as a cultural category in a world in which people read Japanese manga in Wisconsin and Chinese businessmen sing Elvis Presley´s songs in karaokes. On the other hand, the division between totalitarianism and democratic liberalism makes more sense than ever, as societies in Europe and New-Europe (America) are trying to re-define themselves around liberal ideas, and that is why the literature and institutions of the English-speaking countries are still so relevant. Also, because people totally ignore that many of "Anglosaxon" liberal ideas are really derived from Spanish, Jewish and Italian authors in the Modern Age, that French an English authors co-opted (and that is great, but it would have been better to cite their sources). Christian faith is dying slowly, because it no longer serves its purpose of protecting nations from islamization and forward individual rights and social cohesion. So new religions and ideologies are being born to compete to be the new glue that protect civilization; the geographical frame for this new cosmovision can no longer be restricted to a continent or subcontinent. So again, the West is no longer a good category for analysis.

I´ve never read any text by Karl Marx because he was so disappointing as a person; the way he did never get a bloody job, or look after his family, or even care for himself. He was the opposite of eudaimonia, and blamed it all on the owners of the factories where people did that mysterious thing called work. His self-hate and self-disgust was projected to upper classes. What can we learn from him? I guess there are bits that make sense, but you can not buy theories of the world from such a terrible father, spouse and citizen. What did he not end up in jail or hanged? Why did he not take his own life before any of his children died due to his lack of responsibility?

Or maybe I´m mistaken and he had a positive side for philosophy, like Freddie Mercury that was talented for music.

Do you imagine that person of similar conviction will be kept out by a wall? -Tim Wood. Okay, it does has a deterrent effect, proved by the fact that the wall built so far has provoked a reduction of traffic and the traffic that exists goes to dangerous areas without any wall. On the other hand, a wall it´s not just the physical construction, it is also all the defences implemented to protect it: police force, weaponized drones, surveillance etc. The illegals and drug dealers that come by commercial airliners can be dealt with very differently, because no humanitary catastrophes are associated with regular flights unless the aircraft crashes or is hijacked. The wall´s humanitary purpose is to end the "cross or die" lethal contest, and to end a very strategic source of income for the maras that control and terrorise Mexico; something that Mexicans should be very grateful for.

I can´t help thinking that what is wrong with the wall is that "evil" Trump wants to build it. If Obama wanted to build it, many protesters would at least stop and think if the wall is a good idea or not.

Please explain this: if the South wall has been being built since Bush senior´s years and most of if was erected with Obama why is such an issue that Trump wants to reinforce it and finish it? What´s the difference between the existing wall and the new plan? What do states that border Mexico (California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas) want?

I don´t understand what the problem is with the wall any ways; if it is conceived to protect better the southern border and prevent illegal traffic of goods and people in a very sensitive region of the world. Among the things that Trump promised, this one seems to belong with the small number of rational and wise ones. Do members of Congress who oppose the wall reform think that is not well designed or will not be enough to stop illegal immigration and smuggling at the border?

I wonder what you would do with the Spanish president... He has secret meetings with Soros in the presidential palace, was invested with the votes of all fascist separatist parties (including the ETA party, Bildu) and the Pro-Venezuela communist party that is financed by Iran, Podemos; the Gibraltar strait is totally controlled by narcos and the military is not permitted to go and reestablish order; the number of pateras (boats with illegal immigrants from not-at-war countries like Morocco or Senegal) this year is higher than the previous eight years combined; he supports the Coup d´etat in Barcelona to divide the country into several smaller new nations controlled by fascist (literally fascist as they were born from the fascist movements in Europe, not fascist as progressive millennials use the term) organizations. He promotes its consolidation nationwide.

He paid for his PhD with an ad-hoc tribunal of friends and the people who actually wrote the thesis; he later used the fraud title of doctor to work as one. Half of his cabinet is proved to be involved in fraud, blackmail and other crimes; his deputy Carmen Calvo says that he´s not obliged to what he said before he enter office, quote: "since he was not president yet, so the Sánchez who said those things was a different man." He uses the presidential aircraft to go to concerts with friends. He promised to call elections the day he was elected, and he says now that he´s not even thinking of it. Economy is declining after several years of growth.

"IMHO, their doing so is a perfect example of academic arrogance that shows contempt for the concerns of ordinary believers and no thought for the consequences of trying to forces their 'angels dancing on heads of pins' nonsense onto people to whom it is repellant. They miss the whole point of spirituality." I totally agree.

Scientists and intellectuals today, who were the bishops and priests of the Middle Ages, are also too arrogant and they take advantage of their position and knowledge to influence common people with their own ideas way more than it is fair and justified.