Theologian David Bentley Hart reminds us that literal interpretations of Old Testament particularly are a recent pietist reaction. Traditionally the OT was read as an allegorical work and may have been written that way. That as certainly how it was taught to me as a kid in Christian school - as a non-fundamentalist Baptist.

t's interesting that I've linked to that article in Aeon magazine a number of times since it was published in 2019, yet it never attracts anything more than dismissal - actually, the first time I linked it, it drew down a fair number of insults - even though it's by three quite well-regarded contemporary — Wayfarer

I think it's a pretty good article and it summarizes the issues well. Pretty sure I said that last time. I have followed up by looking at some work by Evan Thompson. It's a very interesting issue to explore.

From the Blind Spot Aeon Magazine:

So the belief that scientific models correspond to how things truly are doesn’t follow from the scientific method. Instead, it comes from an ancient impulse – one often found in monotheistic religions – to know the world as it is in itself, as God does. The contention that science reveals a perfectly objective ‘reality’ is more theological than scientific.

The essay is interesting and certainly undermines scientism. But perhaps a straw man of science as it is increasingly understood these days (eg, Susan Haack). Scientists increasingly don't think of science as 'absolute truth' but tentative models based on the best available information. And yes, it is humans doing the naming and having the phenomenal experience that constitutes what we ambitiously call realty. I think the thesis is that this is the best we can do for now rather than this is truth.

Way things are going, that fiasco could easily happen. — ssu

Almost anything is possible in that space, I agree.

This is not a surprise - the speed might be, but not the result.

:up: That's the one. Vested interests trumps (no pun intended) ideology every time. In the meantime SA funds Wahhabi radicalism worldwide.

Afghanistan and Iraq became the surrogates of that desire. — Wayfarer

Interesting they didn't bomb Saudi Arabia, given that's where the hijackers were predominantly from.

I'm pointing toward an option that is repugnant to humanists: namely, the possibility that God is pretty much like major monotheistic religions describe him, and that the state of the world (with all its strife and suffering) is an argument precisely in favor of God's existence. — baker

So the suffering and cruelty of 'creation' is reflective of a cruel God who behaves like a Mafia boss in scripture? I think a lot of humanists have identified this scenario. It certainly makes sense that if there is a god he is either non-interventionist or 'evil' as far as human morality is concerned.

Nevertheless, the intrinsic goodness of God is central to most traditions I am aware of and human beings are supposed to please god by being good also. I guess, at a pinch, good could be interpreted as obedient and long suffering.

IOW, atheists and other critics of God operate with their own idiosyncratic definitions of God, thus making their criticism of God a strawman. — baker

If that's the case (and I am not sure what version of God you are applying this too and how you know this, but you could be correct) - we can't make any comment about God at all (good or bad) since it transcends human experience and understanding. We can't know anything about it and it would be better to remain silent about the subject.

Yes, and in the case of Chopin especially, anything written and now known is a codified version of something he generally performed with extravagant curlicues of innovation.

Hegel was the first and founding existentialist. — Gary M Washburn

Not the first existentialist exactly, but a theorist whom proto-existentialists like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche reacted to.

Sartre of course rejected the term... do we allow him this luxury?

Was around long, long before the 20th century, so not paradigmatic movement of the 20th C. Jazz maybe. — Janus

I suspect that the first music made by early humans was improv.

Few of you have actually bothered to read any existentialist texts, have you. — Banno

What would you say people get most frequently get wrong in their understanding of existentialism? I 'read' a few existentialist texts and was never much the wiser.

Even 'metaphysical idealists' are only speaking in analogies when they speak of "ultimate reality". — 180 Proof

And when they aren't gifted thinkers, they talk a lot about the ineffable. :gasp: Seems like a good way to hide woolly thinking.

I think that's a fair assessment.

Personal growth is akin to technological advances in cultural history. They evince an overall accelerative character. — Joshs

What do you say to people who argue that the notion of personal growth is often an archaic and romantic one and problematic in its measuring?

. I have different goals in life than a house family and sports car in my garage, along with a life in some corporate culture. Those things just don't interest me, or I might be saying "sour grapes", who knows?

I would like to ask some readers about their ideas about self-cultivation. — Shawn

Chasing careers and vulgar status symbols is no shortcut to happiness as most people with a mansion and sportscar soon discover. I think you are right to eschew these things. Not sour grapes at all. They just don't matter.

Even for the philosophically inclined, I suspect most people are into self-curation rather than self-cultivation. They build and curate a version of who they think they should appear to be. Not sure this demonstrates any self-reflection or authenticity which should probably at the heart of self-cultivation. I actually think it is hard to determine whether we are on a path to self improvement or just constructing an image of who we think we should be. How do we know the difference or can they be connected?

:up:

Tony Judt's "Ill Fares The Land" takes up and develops some of these themes rather well.

Nietzsche turned this thinking on it’s head. He argues that pessimists were still mourning the loss of the grand old metaphysical absolutes (God,Truth, Goodness) and hadn't figured out a way to replace them with existential values of change and becoming. — Joshs

That rings true. Must be wrong. :joke:

I am a part time nihilist myself. — Corvus

That's the way. I recommend life affirming Zoroastrianism on weekends.

Many are actually quite content and happy being nihilist. — Corvus

I know I was nihilist for many years and I always found it absurdly life affirming.

Unless if you're lucky or fortunate, a lot of people or even most of us here usually won't live a so-called perfect life (eg: successful, rich, wealthy, famous, popular, living the dreams, have lots of friends, healthy, or even just to be completely happy). A lot of people still have to toil away just to survive everyday. — niki wonoto

I don't know why anyone would think wealth and fame make us happy, given the history of fame in the 20th and 21st century. That's a very teenage, mainstream media view of success. I think a simple life with a little toil and suffering is a better path to comparative happiness.

I think (I don't care what the bloody Wiki says), nihilism is about the death and post death, which is eternal nothingness therefore it even affects life at present into something meaningless. — Corvus

I can't see how 'eternal nothingness' (such a deliberately dramatic term) matters two fucks. We are all familiar with nothingness - it is quite beautiful in its way. Just think back across the billions of years before you were born. Death's just like that.

So, there is no meaning in trying to achieve anything. No meaning to worry or feel pain. They are all meaningless. — Corvus

That's an amusing outlook and seems such a cultivated position. The opposite also holds. Life is long and full of adventure and what matters is the moment and the sparks of light and adventure along the way. A party doesn't have to last for eternity to be a good party. God forbid. If a person truly can't find joy then perhaps they are clinically depressed; or maybe are that very common phenomenon, a morose teenager.

Personally, I feel like you haven't appreciated well enough the nuances to my political theories. — thewonder

That may well be the case. Politics is not the point of my involvement here. I was simply making some related observations, which I've made. You're drilling down into detail way past my level of interest or ability to engage with. As I already wrote above I am not that interested in politics.

The quote, I think, is a clear dig at the Soviet Union, which was probably informed by Kundera's experience in Communist Czechoslovakia. It's very poignant, but, I think, unfair when applied to my reasonable and practical interpretation of Anarchism. — thewonder

The point of a good quote is it transcends any specificity. K clearly thought utopias were fraught. That's the point of my using it. And the beauty of the quote is it applies to organizations and businesses as much as it does to governments. I am not thinking of anarchism - but any pollical path people think will usher in a better world.

So the question becomes, what is the cornerstone of religion? — praxis

I would have though the cornerstones of religion are hypocrisy and materialism. I agree with @Pantagruel that if you wish to understand human behavior in all its maddening ambiguity and contradiction, religion is a good place to start.

"Though all religions assert that they worship God and say that we must love one another, they instill fear through their doctrines of reward and punishment, and through their competitive dogmas they perpetuate suspicion and antagonism.”

Krishnamurti

Watching an adroit logician play with this stuff is like watching an talented musician; they know the rules, but break them intentionally in order to keep it interesting. — Banno

Not unlike jazz improv.

That's the second time you've said that quote to me, and, though, the first time that I agreed with you doing so, but, this time I'm not quite so sure. — thewonder

I don't think the quote is true. It's a provocation - shall we call it 'truthy'? I think it just underscores that fact that one man's utopian leader is another's doctrinaire fanatic who brooks no dissent. I've certainly known many a wannabe utopian political revolutionary who would cheerfully mass murder families if it established their system.

he Nordic Model, has been tried and, I would argue, has proven to be somewhat successful. It'd seem to me to make sense to then put the Nordic Model to greater use. That, I think, is what we can hope for from Liberalism. — thewonder

Agree. Often where models do not work it is likely to be where cooperate interest intervenes and corrupts the process.

This, I think, doesn't quite hazard the same dangers as something like Communism in Czechoslovakia. — thewonder

I think K was contemplating the nature of revolutions rather than Czechoslovakia specifically.

I think that Anarchist society could be established through a kind of gradual process. Some communities and initiatives will fail, but some will be successful. — thewonder

My gut feeling - and I am not a political theorist or all that interested in politics - is that human nature will turn anything we attempt into a powerplay with internecine squabbling, inevitable conflict and consolidations of power. I am probably a pessimist and a Hobbesian. Is that a tautology?

I'm content enough, personally, with Liberalism not to harbor too many utopian delusions of grandeur, but do ultimately asses it as being insufficient. — thewonder

Milan Kundera put it best - You create a utopia and pretty soon there's a need to build a small concentration camp.

Thanks. Nice summary of the issues.

As to how pluralistic participatory democracy can be immediately effectuated and functional, I don't think that it can, which does, in a way, make me not an Anarchist, at least as Anarchism has proceeded from Bakunin, which would be a fine enough charge were it not to be a façade for the issue that some people take with that I am a Pacifist. — thewonder

I tend to think that most alternative political views held by people can't be implemented and are unlikely to work in practice. Anything can work our heads, but humans don't agree and the desire for power and control is awfully strong. I'm also cynical about any political ideology that relies upon abstruse theoretical foundations and justifications. Chomsky makes anarchism sound like a friendly old uncle.

Thanks for this. What makes people think that anarchism (I take the problem of definitions and categories) would work in practice?

Chomsky:
"Primarily, [anarchism] is a tendency that is suspicious and skeptical of domination, authority, and hierarchy. It seeks structures of hierarchy and domination in human life over the whole range, extending from, say, patriarchal families to, say, imperial systems, and it asks whether those systems are justified. Their authority is not self-justifying. They have to give a reason for it, a justification. And if they can't justify that authority and power and control, which is the usual case, then the authority ought to be dismantled and replaced by something more free and just. And, as I understand it, anarchy is just that tendency. It takes different forms at different times."

This is very interesting even to a non-philosopher - if I get time I will check out the video after work. I've been a logical monist but to be honest I have not interrogated these axioms as much as I could have. The notion of choosing logical pluralism over logical monism is enticing. Thanks.

I'm assuming the idea is that identity, non-contradiction and excluded middle remain tautologies but are less certain even if it is generally held that these are the preconditions for sensible communication.

however, I honestly feel like I've gained more from J.D. Salinger than anyone else, including some of the actual religious texts that I've read. — thewonder

Yes. Me too except it was George Elliot.

I'd found I didn't get anywhere, or progress in my understandings, until I gave up seeking "clear answers" (mythos) and switched to reasoning toward better, more probitive, questions (logos vs mythos (i.e. meta-mythos)). — 180 Proof

That sounds like breakthrough moment. I think the questions people find interesting are very revealing about them and often they seem to be the wrong questions. With an inadequate set of questions, the answers can be like premature ejaculation. :gasp:

Cool. I've enjoyed talking to you.

Hmm - not what I am talking about. And maybe we need to move on from this. Last comment: suicide may be a useful and liberating tool if you have a terminal and debilitating condition. Fuck any doctors or psychologists. I'm talking DIY - not state sanctioned.

I agree with you. I wasn't talking about psychologists making recommendations (that would likely be unethical) - I was talking about personal choice - being in the driver's seat (so to speak).

I didn't mean all at once. :wink: I just meant knowing there's hours of the stuff ahead.

I agree suicide is usually desperate and tragic, but part of that I'd think is because it's something that's not allowed and shunned socially. — ChatteringMonkey

Depends who you know. I consider suicide to be a wonderful potential act of freedom and liberation. But the circumstances need to be right and the method benign. No doubt a source of debate and acrimony. I've known folk to jump off buildings or under trains or ram cars into walls at 120 miles an hour - but these approaches come with a degree of anger and theatricality. A quiet overdose of insulin, or an opiate at the right time is best. In facing a terminal disease or some other great suffering, it makes sense to me.

I don't know. I think that, even in my personal life, I still find something or another to gain from just about everyone. — thewonder

Admirable. I'm querulous and impatient.

I was kind of with him when he talked about nothingness and reflexive self-consciousness, but he lost me when he seemed to cast nothingness as consciousness itself. — thewonder

I hear you.

Heimat, in its entirety on /tv/ so as to put some other lonely soul through all fifty-nine and a half hours of that sad and strange West German melodrama. — thewonder

My parent's favorite TV show. I don't generally watch long-form TV - to me it's like sitting through a 7 hour speech by Castro. I can't take all that storytelling... But I hear it's great - like The Wire and Breaking Bad - neither of which I could endure.

Eh, the entire cultural climate is ruled by this logic and is fairly poor because of that. Not everyone can, perhaps, can relate to this, but take anime gatekeepers for example. — thewonder

Sure - I was talking about my personal life, not about public discourse, where I do value pluralism and the views of people I disagree with.

It becomes so much more perplexing when he makes statements like this with his particularly defined philosophical vocabulary. — thewonder

Agree with you on Sartre. I must confess it's been decades since I read him and the fact that I have not returned suggests he isn't significant to me (despite leafing through his work occasionally to see if it has traction). A lot of people I knew in the early 1980's called themselves existentialists - I suspect they just liked the sound of the word. There was a lot of talk about existence preceding essence in those days, but if you dug deeper they ran out of Sartre pretty quickly.

Granted, I just think that negation delimits Ontology, and, so, in the Sartrean sense, is important for reflexive self-consciousness, but would place less emphasis on nothingness were I to write a seminal philosophical tract. — thewonder

It's a reflection of my limitations but I have never fully understood what the significance of nothingness is for Sartre. Consciousness is 'no thing' - being is 'thingness' - from choices/action the fully human emerges? His version of phenomenology is described in a laborious way (translation problems?) and it probably requires an enthusiast of Sartre's to make it sing.

This is however a pure statement of that which is called the Way, for truly, 'Nothing is everything and everything is nothing.' Through the ages it has been easy to say, yet it has always been impossible to be fully explained. — athelstane

Yes, this kind of Eastern insight means little to me. Sounds more like a language game designed to be a kind of provocation These sorts of statements are of minimal use to the way I relate to the world.

I sometimes thought that Sartre hinted at Daoism in some of his more cryptic utterances - I prefer this one:

"We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

I also firmly believe that all of my fellow men (women) deserve to be heard and believed as what they see to be true — athelstane

I take the opposite view. There are some people who are actively not worth listening to and should be avoided at all costs; they have nothing to teach. Of course, you could get tricky and say that they can teach you tolerance or patience - perhaps, but I prefer banishment.

I have spoken to many close friends about death on numerous occasions over the years. I've only ever known one person who is afraid of dying, or who resents the fact that the show will come to an end. Most of the rest of us don't really care or dwell on it. But it does give me some satisfaction to think that in 3 or 4 decades, I'll be dead. Life is good but it's hard work and frankly there's only so much of it I want. I think it may be those people who fear judgement in the afterlife (or who were taught this as children) who are most anxious. I have no concerns about living an authentic life or letting philosophers form my response to death.

Thanks. I've generally enjoyed Camille Paglia - I don't always agree and she is often barking, but she is super entertaining. Her ongoing fight against the wreckage of 1960's radicalism and the Me Generation which followed (and only needed 30 years and social media to metastasize in the international psyche) is often highly amusing.