I agree with your analysis in general, but I don't think that analysis applies to Weinstein. He isn't someone in academia who's been unwittingly dragged into the public eye, and so unfairly dunked-on. Rather he's someone who quite intentionally courts public attention, in the mode of provocateur, and tends to do so rather than engage in academia - for instance, his infamous dismissal of peer-review and so forth.

At the same time, (also @Razorback kitten) I think I was wrong to use the term 'charlatan.' That suggests someone who palms off goods, knowing they're bad. I think Weinstein sincerely believes he has something of great value. But I think there's something off about his relationship to his physics.

My suspicions of him aren't based on politics; they're based on observing how he talks and interacts in videos. I also have a friend who's into him, who tells me his theory of US decline is based on the lack of a new, robust theory of physics. If that's true (and it seems to be) he not only thinks he has a new theory of physics, he thinks it will save the country. He also thinks, if my friend is accurately describing him, that this lack of new physics was a big part of a economic/political dynamic, beginning in the early 70s, where institutions that need to meet 'embedded growth obligations', can't, and so become pathological fakes. His acronym for these embedded growth obligations is EGO. He uses this acronym a lot

To lay it all out: He thinks there was a period where it would have been be useful to have a new physics, but there wasn't one. EGOs then led institutions to act as though they were growing, when they were in fact acting pathologically. (this is almost verbatim from Weinstein himself)

Again, I don't know the math or science, so I can't appraise him on anything but the indirect - but this feels an awful lot to me like symptoms of something like a personality disorder - intense grandiosity + a kind of disavowed shadow self that almost perversely projects stuff onto the outside (fitting the grandiosity, he doesn't project onto others, but onto the world.) Again: He has the key to restoring phsyics and America; without the key, we have EGOS that made people fake growth and become pathological. It's so on the nose, that it's surreal. It's like he's got some kind of perverse subconscious imp.

Feels really really off, very weird, to me.

What do you make of all of that?

cryptoburfest

I read Ayn Rand, Hayek, Milton Friedman, von Mises, Murray Rothbard when I was 20 to around 24 when they enjoyed a resurgence of interest shortly after Obama was elected. I read Locke and Burke not long after that...some Buckley too. Mostly centered on far right-wing economics.

Culturally, Trump's election in 2016, Bannon's brief role, and some additional individuals and events, changed the trajectory of conservative intellectual interest away from the more economic-focused thinkers and towards more unsavory socio-political ones, such as Evola, Schmitt, etc. whom I don't have much interest engaging with, at least at book-level, at this point. Otherwise, I've read some First Things and Claremont Institute articles, some Yoram Hazony, National Review, Douthat op-eds from time-to-time, but I don't find any of them intellectually serious. — Maw

:up: Challenge presented, and handily taken down, respect. My personal go-tos have been 'rationalist community' adjacent-thinkers. I don't tend to agree with their economic views, but they present their ideas much better than most culture-war people, like the national review or douthat etc. Ideally, to me, the end goal of learning history and economic thought should be (1) fully understanding the present and then (2) something like the serenity prayer - "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference." The danger - and something you often see - is trying to leverage the historical/theoretical stuff in service of sustained, fact-checked, condemnation as endpoint. Not that one shouldn't condemn what is condemnable, of course, just avoid ending there. If we agree there, then we're on the same page.

Now that's a populist criticism I can get behind. On the plus side, maybe by the time you can get a new rig, cyperpunk will be all patched-up and you'll get the pristine experience promised.

Agreeing with @maw, I think Eric Weinstein is a figure deeply wrapped up in an 'not-appreciated-by-the-mainstream' self-narrative (and that that leads him, occasionally, into harsh disanalogies, as in the above tweet.)

I also think he knows a lot more about physics and math than me. But also: most, all, physicisists and mathematicians do. A broader question, then, about how to approach esoteric topics as a layman: If I were to try to invest in the stock market, there are a lot of people who know more about the stock market than me. How to pick? My best bet is to choose an index fund (which just mirrors the market, status quo) until I know more. Before I know the basics, when confronted with someone with a 'new scheme', all I can do is gauge the vibe of that person, someone claiming to outcompete the market; and I can only do that based on what I know of people, that is, what I've learned as a person who's observed people. In that lens: People who claim to outcompete the market, but get squirelly on how they do it, and who seem to have a psychological stake in being someone who out-performs the market - I'll be suspicious of them. The concatenation of those qualities suggest a known type - a charlatan. Maybe Weinstein isn't that, but he certainly acts like one. To be fair, some people who are legit come across, at first, as illegit. But, then, they'll really need to prove themselves.

That doesn't mean they're wrong. But it puts the cart before the horse to try to understand their unique take before understanding market dynamics in general. I.e. - better to learn mainstream physics before appraising outsiders. Einstein was revolutionary and upended things. He thought profoundly differently. But the people who 'got him' understood the current state of the art, and then readjusted, after reading him.

At the end of the day, do you really want to understand physics, is that the primary goal? If you do, you probably have to sink many years into the nuts and bolts of the math. Or do you want to feel allied to a man who got it right when others didn't? Well, if it's physics, you'll still have to do the groundwork. There's no shortcuts, unless you want to simply be a cheerleader on the sidelines. So the question is: do you trust eric weinstein enough that you're willing to dig down and fullly learn physics to learn his alternative physics? If so, god bless you, but I think most Weinsteinians want a quick 'in' to a outsider-intellectual status. And that usually comes from being an outsider and wanting something to show for it. Relatable, I get it. But you're better off learning: coding, farming, anything concrete. It will take less work, and you'll have something to show for it at the end. But if you actually want to learn physics, learn physics. Physics, in general, is just a bad choice if you're an outsider wanting an in. It's an inherently arcane field - it takes years of study.

The Orchard Keeper - Cormac Mccarthy
There There- Tommy Orange
Collected Stories - Chekov
Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman
Palm at the End of the Mind - Wallace Stevens (collection of poems edited by his daughter)


I tend to avoid confrontation and lie, but one vibe you get in Chekhov, is that a bunch of currents, very current then, petered out. Negri & Hardt, for example, analogy. But marx doesnt. something burst forth from him. Synoptic, and omni-literary-voracious. I worry our generations leftists too easily... I mean a marx of our time wouldnt have only read marx and left-sympathetic texts, you know? What you reading from the right?

Quoting the same part @Tom Storm did, because I think it's the crux:

It seems to me that life is much more enjoyable and less burdensome when one is not afraid of when it may end. — darthbarracuda

I agree, but what's weird about this quote is either side - pro-pill, anti-pill - might say the same thing in support of their position. The quote's mercenary - it can be enlisted in service of either cause.

Pro-PIll: If life is more enjoyable when you're not afraid of when it might end - then take the pill, and rid yourself of that fear. Once you've taken the pill, you are in full control of the moment of your death. You're free of the fear of grim reaper death birds suddenly swooping. Now you can enjoy life in peace.

Anti-Pill: In taking the pill, you're availing yourself of a sort of miraculous intercession : An angel in pill form has freed you from the Worst Eventuality. But, if the pill's effects were somehow reversed, you'd be thrown back upon your old fear. You haven't gotten rid of your fear exactly, you've just been granted a special dispensation.


I'm in the non-pill camp, for what it's worth. I think both sides have good arguments. I think what the pro-pill argument misses is that, by excising any ultimate stake, life loses all its emotional shading and heft and becomes flat and sterile - but I think what the anti-pill argument potentially (but not always, actually) misses is that awareness-of-death doesn't automatically give meaning to life.


Not being afraid of when it when may end, even knowing it could end at anytime - that isn't something that is easily reached, right? We might agree that that's a good eudaimonic state to be in, but the getting-there is the hard part. There's a confrontation with fear, a full confrontation with fear, that is the entry-price of that state. And a full confrontation with fear (in all in its aspects: fear of pain, fear of the insufferability of injustice, fear of personal impotence, so forth) is probably a long, multi-stage process. I think something about voluntarily undergoing that process - freely accepting necessity, etc - is important.

It's free. — James Riley

I don't have much of an excuse then. Probably should have learned that already, but learned now, I'll most probably get it. I think I broadly feel the same way as @180 Proof I'm in a hibernation period and at very little risk for infecting others (I'm not too worried about being infected myself.) I wear a mask when I get groceries, and put one on when I pass people walking. But, I mean, I got that wedding coming up. I guess it's inevitable I'll get vaccinated.

I don't know, I think it's good? Not an anti-vaxxer, but just not sure if I want to.

I think I had Covid in November of last year. I was with a friend who did test positive.We spent a raucous, drink-sharing, bowl-passing weekend and at the end, while we were lazily recovering, he got a call from a friend who'd tested positive. He (my friend) then went to get a test, and tested positive himself. Figuring the mutual damage was done, we decided he'd quarantine at my apartment instead of going back to his place and putting at risk his roommates He stayed for two weeks, we both got sore and fatigued and coughy, it slowly faded, and at the end everything was normal.

Part of me feels like I don't want to go through the rigamarole (and without insurance too) of getting a vaccine, but I also am synced up with enough people who would probably want me to before hanging out, and I have a wedding coming up in June. Long story short, I just don't know. I'm a strange, marginal person; If i was more in the thick of things, it'd be a no-brainer. Everything is happening so fast, though - I do have a rock-in-my-shoe suspicion of any expedited science. Nothing deeply principled, just a constant discomfort and unease.

I'll probably get it.

But I did well on a standardized test and was put in a smart kid's class, so I went from priding myself on the badass jets I could draw to being a strong reader — norm

Oh man I love this - it's so easy to laugh at drawing badass jets, and to forget that a lot of - this - is also drawing badass jets. I was a shit drawer - still am - but there was a kid in my class who drew these wild mazes, you had to navigate. You go here to get this thing, and once you have that power up, it lets you go tho this place etc. - he was like a rockstar for those mazes, at the time. It was like he was this strange shaman. It's funny to think of how these same impulses work themselves out as you grow older.

I haven't read Ham or Rye (I've read some Bukowski, but just the poems) or Fante, but I think I'm picking up on the vibe you're describing., & I think we dovetail at the pretension in high school and beyond.

I've always had a kind of split thing with internet forums. I started posting on the imdb forums in middle school, or early high school, while my irl approach drifted into a kind of volatile mitch hedberg-y comedian vibe . Basically my whole thing on here - which is me, but not me - is an extension of the imdb thing i was trying to do, writing about 2001: A Space Odyssey at 14. Somewhere around senior year, I tried to draw the two things together, which worked for a while, but became unworkable (good enough when you're young & teenage/early 20 handsome, grating as you get older).

The forums are weird. I don't think I'll ever be able to break the foundation, when posting online, of being a socially marginal middle schooler arguing movies for self-imagined prestige. I can sort of get around it, but its basically that (now with fancy philosophers and literature!.) I've been meaning to wind down recently, actually, because I've been going through some positive changes in my life, and this forum-persona is feeling like something I need to let go for now. But I wanted to sort of bring our conversation to a good spot, because I enjoy our talks, I think it lets something beyond that forum-persona shine through. Before tonight it kind of felt like there was just something left more to say in our recent convo, and it felt weird to cut out before saying it. This feels like a good spot to me. As always, good talking, and catch you on the next orbit.

I feel bad about the mask metaphor. I guess I just mean that I don't remember any jokes in Whitman. It's more like he shows a part of his high self. He was probably hilarious too, but left that out. — norm

Nah you're good. It goes back to what we were talking about pieces introduced. I've been reading a lot about masks discussed in a certain way that was different that what I wanted to get at with Whitman, and that's where that came from. At the same time, you raise a good point about his lack of humor - I really like Whitman but my all time favorite is John Ashbery, and I think it comes down exactly to that. He can bring you to these whirling places, and then just insert this perfect low-key line that is hilarious in context.

I agree. Or more specifically: what world is that kid being trained for? If he's stuck in the underclass or in some war-torn place, perhaps harshness is actually best But to rise in peacetime capitalism is very much about soft skills. Violence is done to and by poor people (though often directed by the rich.) — norm

Yeah, good point. I've knocked on about my past a lot on here, so quickly: mom was poor, dad was waspy. This was my paternal grandfather, so waspy. Middle class childhood ('good kid') -divorce - dad's gone - community does a volte-face ('bad kid") and I think I've been on both sides (no idea where I am now.)

But I still think the general approach is true. I did better with even the 'rough' kids through soft skills. And I should clarify 'soft skills.' It means one thing when you're talking about knowing what beats to hit to signal class-membership in an interview - that's soft indeed. But it can also be just understanding someone from a few angles, and talking to them in a way that isn't claws first (though maybe with the implicit threat of claws)- that seems to hold across class lines in my experience. I don't mean soft like 'kid-gloves' but again in that sense that dicey real world interactions often require you to be patient, perceptive, and still (think of boxers - its less about brute force, than being able to still fear, and see the enemy) I usually wasn't good at this, I don't want to talk myself up, but when I was it worked.

Perhaps you've also noted how easy and natural this is with people who don't think of themselves as intellectuals. I have great conversations with true friends that haven't read any of my favorite books. The whole I'm-smart compulsion can be such an enemy. There's a peer-to-peer attitude that people have antenna for. They can sense when the conversation is condescending or aggresive. — norm

In spades, yeah. Most of my friends aren't 'intellectuals' (i put the scare quotes because they're more interesting than most intellectuals I talk to, just haven't read the books) I guess aggression is ok, if its respectful (that classic thing of men bonding most after getting in a tussle - real, i think!) but condescension is an absolute killer. I think the whole goal is to bring yourself as well you can to a creative space where transformation can happen - there's something about a certain kind of a correction that is kind of like calling the teacher in when things get too real. That's it's core, anyway, but it gets clothed in faux-authority (i'm the teacher now!). You can feel it happen - people around a campfire, building - someone comes in 'well, but ...' and then a sort of silence that lingers until someone finds a way to start back up, slowly.

*Side-issue, but I can imagine someone saying 'well, that's not Zen.' OK, Cool, I reply. But what matters to me is an attitude/realization that exists now for me, which is maybe (doesn't really matter) what someone else somewhere else called something else. Even a shared American misreading of Zen can be a bridge, or just sharing in the cloud of the concept. Koans and shit! Waking people up to something behind language. Some kind of mutated OLP boredom with mind-matter-blah-blah. Also knowing that what keeps me going might not work at all for someone else and will only work temporarily for me. — norm

Ah! somehow I missed this the first time. I really like this approach, and agree. I find myself using cultural touchstones as shorthand all the time in just this way. I like clarifying it in the way you're describing, like - 'I'm going to introduce this piece to the board, so to speak, as a temporary placeholder for this aspect' Introduced in that way, you can continue the conversation, without having to worry about the conversation degrading into others offering counterexamples for the mere sake of proving you factually wrong. If they do offer valid counterexamples, you can say: fair point, I'll give a new name for this thing I'm talking about. And if the counterexamples enrich the thing you're talking about, modify it, make you realize it was off etc all the better.

And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death."
— Gospel of Thomas

That sounds kind of crazy until you compare it to:

Blessed are the meek
For they shall inherit the earth.

How do you inherit the earth? What do you do with it once you've got it? — frank

Possibly, you have your sister & your sister's kid over, you cook a meal, you put on some music. You play some games with the kid, you talk to your sister about what's going on in her life. Everyone feels relaxed and safe, and free to talk. I feel like these moments - experienced in this way - are surprisingly rare for most people, but when they happen, and really happen, tap back into old memories of stuff as a kid, and establishes this continuity that you can feel is outside death. You inherit the capacity to reach that zone, and then you continue to reach that zone, if you can. But the simplicity of saying it is misleading - its another palette or tone, that feels meaningful and simple when you're in it. As always, it bottoms out in the mystic idea of love as fundamental. What do you do with love?

Nice passage - there's something about Whitman's poetry that does seem to tap into something vital in a way you see rarely even in most poetry. He out Wordsworths-Wordsworth, for my money. & It does have that mystical feeling (Blake, in its intensity, but without the brimstone.) The experience the author describes reminds me a lot of some of the accounts you hear regarding experiences with gurus - of course it's impossible to disentangle what was flowing from Whitman, and what the author was tuned to receive, having read him - just as a westerner travelling to India might be primed to read into the guru this or that. but at the same time, it might not matter either way.

As I was saying to norm, I had a pretty profound mystic-like experience when I was about 20 - it does kind of fill you with this desire to talk about, and to explain it to people. At the same time - that's kind of a weird thing because it sort of puts the source 'out there', it was this thing that happened to you, and now you're trying to establish its reality - which is why it's cool that that dude slowly felt it become a part of himself.

The end of that passage feels like it could either be happy or sad, depending on how he felt about it. There is something to be said for not trying to spread the good news. I read the New Testament a couple years ago for the first time (besides scattered readings at mass and sunday school as a kid) and St. Paul is intense - vain, insecure, bombastic, flattering, pressuring, grandiloquent, self-deprecating, inciting rivalry - on and on and on. I empathize, because I have been all these things, often continue to be, and never more so than when I was trying to live my life in witnessing relation to the strange experience I'd had, and convince others of it. But I found it hard to like the guy on like an object-level wavelength.

At a certain point, it feels best to stop persuading others of it, and live its ramifications. What's hard, I think, is that its ramifications are much harder to suss out than the fact of its happening. But there's something maybe compulsive in establishing it, after a while. But that's where faith comes in! You don't have to say that it is, once you can find a way to hold that it is. I think some of the tussles we've had in the past revolve around the spiritual-defining-itself-against-the non-spiritual using the trappings of scientific legitimacy. I still feel that way, I'll admit, but I think the exit from that is just ----release. Imagine Whitman citing books, establishing their pedigree etc, before feeling allowed to then write ecstatic poems. At a point, you just have to jump.

Excellent description. I think that this can morph into a strange brew of confession-and-accusation. I am this, but I am also not this. — norm

Definitely. Time-traveling a second, I posted the one you're responding to after nibbling on some chocolate edibles, and I guess I nibbled more than I'd meant - I was very much surfing some inner waves - the, uh, phenomenology of it was these vivid 'pictures' (mix of images, memories, thoughts) coming to mind that were sort of being draped onto the structure of what we were talking about. I think it was something like I have been this and often still am, but somehow it came out a weird mix of pseudo-psychiatric ('the individual who undergoes this, will often go on to do this') and sort of vibe-sketching. Long story short - I do often tend to the confessional and accusational, but in this particular case was actually coming from a different primary space, one I don't usually post on here while I'm in it. Though now thisresponse is tending confessional.

You're right though, this conversation does have that same boundary-drawing buzz, in some spots, as the one I was describing. It's weird online, there's something a little different, something shifts, but I wouldn't know how to pinpoint that, at least just now.

I read Whitman (narrator of Leaves) as a heroic creation of Whitman, a beautiful mask, a fresh image of the noble man.) I mean that he grabbed his strongest self and got it on the page. He's a great example of a poet who's as important as a philosopher. (Really the distinction is a joke for spiritual purposes. ) — norm

There is definitely a lot of heroism in Whitman, but I have to say I get from him a sort of rolling movement that goes well beyond him - he's just one part of it. I'd go so far as to say I don't think it's a mask at all (though of course it isn't the whole man.) Edit: But I would like to add that we may be describing the same thing in different words, I'm not sure.

I find Cioran somewhere in the middle. 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' I recently learned that Cioran and Beckett were friends, that Beckett was a 1-on-1 guy, not a public wit. Cioran makes me believe that he's experienced the highs and lows that my vanity would claim for myself alone. He knows the great vanity of suffering, the enjoyment we can take in despair. Schopenhauer seems to lack this (without ceasing to squirt some accidentally hilarious gloom.) It's his dark cosmic vision of an irrational will at the heart of things, the world as an ultimately senseless machine for making half-sense.

Ah, yeah, you know. I believe that Beckett was great to fun to be around. Like, his stuff is funny. & Cioran too, at times, occasionally. I've found that the saddest people are the most fun to be around , at least when they aren't talking solemnly about the sad stuff.

This issue does seem central, the 'man' and the 'woman.' There's a idea attributed to Freud rightly or wrong that all jokes are about women. 'Only the exaggerations are true.' In another thread about 'rational suicide' I talk about my fantasy of walking into death, alone, fully aware. Why does that seem heroic to me? Why do we like it in Socrates and Christ? Even Joanna Newsom must be a product of violence, at least of some kind of severity of high standards. I also think of Nick in Freaks & Geeks. He's the pot-head narcissist shitty poet who hasn't been shaped by the mocking father. I guess I'm saying that some violence and humiliation is necessary and justified in order to train us into civilized animals (not defending old-fashioned belt whippings, just talking about hurting a kid's feelings sometimes, if they steal, etc.) Interiority depends on repression, of uncouth (often ultimately-selfish 'love' (lust, obsession)) and of course petty aggression. There's something undeciable for me here, though certain extremes I'd obviously reject. If the world is nasty (and my small town was tough for a misfit), then maybe 'dad' should represent the reality principle within limits. — norm

Yeah, in terms of parenting - like in terms of how one ought to parent - It's undecidable for me too. Ideally, a dad would do his best to clock what emotional space the kid was, enter that space, and talk to him directly from within it. A tall order, and obviously impossibly to do consistently - I'm not a parent, & understand that it must be very hard- but if you grant this ideal as a hypothetical, at least, then, at it's best, it has he potential to not only avoid the extremes, but kind of dissolve the framework. Realistically, even as an ideal, it could only be a kind of guiding star.

I think of my grandfather here. We'd do jigsaw puzzles - quiet and low-key, little verbal communication, he'd point out pieces, we'd organize them etc. But he would also, occasionally, ask me very direct questions or make very direct statements about this or that thing I did. They were value-judgments but they were neither mean or coddling. They were matter-of-fact. It allowed me to reflect on things, without feeling at risk. I think something about the shared project, the stillness, and the directness allowed him to get to my conscience much more effectively, than drilling his way in.

I don't think this is a wishy-washy absence of severity - I think it was quite severe in its own way. If the Reality Principle is a lion your kid's going to have to face down one day, then what he'll need to learn most of all is perception patience, timing, stillness - what you learn on the hunt. If you 'eat' your kids, the way the lion could (if you only focus on the eating)- well, they might have a leg-up on this or that coddled schoolmate, having at least some familiarity with force and violence - but they still haven't learned any of the softer, quieter, skills that are necessary face to face with the Lion. What they've really learned is a traumatic [NOT THAT] that shocks and shakes them, and only slowly, as it subsides, leaves them feeling they have to construct a defense against. Not having guidance, they assume stances & attitudes and then compulsively play them out (again, they have a leg up on the coddled kids, who have no defense against any familiarity with violence, and will experience the stances and attitudes to be sources of - rather than weak reactions against - true force. As the anthropology books all seem to say, in communities of hunter, there is a great respect for the lion, and the hunt is very intimate, and measured.)

As an adult, since I had so few of those experiences with my grandfather, and many rougher experiences with my father, I feel like I have to sort of reparent myself out of it. The dostoevskian mold (my father's, for sure) has a hold on part of me, but it seems like something worth slowly, delicately, wriggling out of, like an old skin. (& don't get me wrong, I think Dostoevsky is an incredible writer, but I mean that his morality is always at fever-dream extremes with holy men and monsters, saints and whores, resentment and absolution (or it goes 2nd order and its about regular people driven by internalized models of holy men and monsters, saints and whores) - & I guess I could plausibly be accused of going 3rd order here - but I think maybe I'm saying that as the dostoesvkian orbit oscillates from this to that extreme, its possible - if you plan right, wait patiently - to find the alignment that makes it possible to pounce on, say, Chekhov, let him pounce back, and carry on into that orbit.

OK, response part 2, the softer round:

Yes, we are on the same page, very much. And I like Taoism. If you want to be whole, let yourself be torn. I think you are nailing the tone, which is difficult. It's hard to talk about wisdom and spirituality without lapsing into a certain unpleasant role. It's what Zizek means when he calls wisdom obscene. I totally get that and yet it's obvious that humans want wisdom, which is something like the skill of living well where words are perhaps a secondary part of the skill. IMO, there's a playful attitude that's primary. When disaster is forcing us to be serious indeed, there's a creative ground state that could only play at launching manifestos. I like some of Tristan Tzara's stuff quite a bit, self-eating manifestos that (importantly!) register as joyful and not bitter. There's no definite conceptual content to be communicated. It's the attitude that matters. I project this on Zen, which I don't know well. — norm

Yes, that's it. The 'everything is one' message can take radically different tones. I find Schopenhauer to be heavy and sodden, while Whitman is envigorating -and it seems to circle around what they make of the central paradox. Schop sees beasts eating beasts - suffocating immanance - a claustrophobic room that everyone is locked in. Whitman sees this profusion of joy that wends upward, like a river of incense incorporating all these tributaries, each flows finally into the same joyous yelp.

And at the same time, I see Whitman's 'yelp' as a joyous exultation that builds on a simple foundation. Everything lived is part of it, and at a certain time it can explode gently and expand upward.If it was always and forever that exultant yelp, it wouldn't have all the brilliant firewood he brings in to sustain the flame. I think a lot of american literature wants the yelp to be the ultimate release and flame, self-fueled ( metaphysically, miraculously, non-dependent on firewood) ----raft down the Mississippi, endlessly flowing, with no anchor or destination. A good mystic state - or even period of your life - but it can only be a part among parts (Kerouac comes to mind)

Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you.

This reminds me of Witt/Heid but maybe it's more like Jung's whatever is unconscious is projected. If Jung is right, then 'unconscious' is misleading. There's what we identity with and as and there's all the repressed/projected stuff that's in front of our face. Othering is self-division. — norm

Yeah, very much

Coming at this by way of two synchronicities

Warhol did some book that was just 24 hours of his friends and him talking bullshit, uncensored and raw. Maybe they performed a little for the tape-recorder, but I like the aim of sanctifying ordinary life, or making peace with the banal, the lazy, the imperfect. (I wish Byron's journal hadn't been burned. It would have been nasty, sure, but illuminating even in its nastiness.) — norm

There's a small market in the town I live in that has this free bookshelf. It's fun to browse because it's relatively small, and the selection is totally random. I sometimes get overwhelmed in book stores because there's so much that seems interesting that you have to instinctively narrow down what you're looking for, in order to carve some sort of signal from the noise. That's still the case with this free book thing, but somehow the filter loosens a bit. In any case one of the books I found there recently is an anthology of diary entries, arranged by day of the year. So part of my morning routine is reading the day's entries. And one of the diarists who pops up is Byron

On January 5th, 1821, he wrote:

"Clock strikes - going out to make love, Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. Memorandum - a new screen put up to-day. It is rather antique, but will do with a little repair."

What does the little boy learn? A contempt for vulnerability. My dad used the belt, and at some point I could take the whipping without tears and that's about when they stopped. A boy who cries over a little pain deserves the belt in the first place, right? So the sissy soul of the boy goes into hiding or rather projection....and the castrated girls (actually uncastrated one might say) are more fascinating than ever. We end up with a classic system (possibly crumbling) of men insisting on 'sublimated' relationships with one another and saving some secret tender private side for women. (I know this is cis-het biased, and I just can't speak for other situations.)

Returning the The Possessed and Stavrogin's confession: why does he hate the little girl after seducing her? After her confused initial resistance, she is shockingly enthusiastic. I think he is appalled not because of her physical youth but because of her trust, because of how easy it was to deceive her and instill faith in her. He suddenly hates her, because she suddenly loves him, because he was inspired by an imp of perversity or demon of irony in the first place, and certainly not by love. — norm

I haven't read The Possessed (would like to) but I am currently reading The Dispossessed which has this passage:

"Shevek saw that he had touched in these men an impersonal animosity that went very deep. Apparently they contained a woman, a suppressed, silenced, bestialized woman, a fury in a cage. He had no right to tease them. They knew no relation but possession. They were possessed."


To my mind, both of these quotes (the possessed & the dispossessed) are at the heart of the heart of the darkness (or at least the antechamber to the heart of the heart) - I want to take a look at it, but we'll see what I can muster on a Sunday afternoon. I'm gonna try to stay afloat in it, but might prematurely post depending where I can get to.

To dovetail with what you said above, It makes sense to me that the hatred that the victimizer feels toward the victim is, first, a self-hatred for having themselves been victimized before. Certain abuses are almost like a virus - a transmission - a passing on of possession. There's a cold mechanics at the heart of the community of wounded souls - it's like a series of wires running silently and invisibly through the body of a river.

There are some permutations

(1)
The person abused learns to identify with a part of themselves that will not be abused anymore. Usually: cynical, detached, ironic. The way you talk with friends has a certain tenor - detached, archly amused, separate, mocking. I think the unconscious intent is to put up a sort of buzzy/electric vibe, to secure a psychically protected zone within the broader sea of human awareness. Maybe groups of people wounded in this way, when brought together, amplify the whole thing - if someone slips up, somebody else 'jokingly' jabs at them; in this way a weak spot in the group 'buzz' is identified and conditioned not to arise again. (Have you ever been to an open mic night at a small comedy club? It's really wild - you can see in real time how people are conditioning one another to live in this sort of environment. It's got this roiling, anxious, tense atmosphere) (another thought: one type of joy can still survive here: but an isolate joy - it has to be an irradiating ecstasy with a still humming edge of darkeness. It is joy in an exploding way that maintains a kind of barrier. Maybe The Doors vs The Grateful Dead. Maybe related: Dostoevsky's ecstasy-inducing seizures. It's all Dostoevsky territory, so to speak.)

In any case, you learn to only respect yourself insofar as you can hold to this tone, and to instinctively disrespect the parts of you can't. And part of the jokey routine of the cynic and ironist is to talk to their friends as though they were someone naive or open enough to believe this or that - it's just part of the psychic equilibrium, a staged 'pretending to be' naive and then a cold laugh - But when you find yourself in this automated habit of thought and speech, talking to an outsider who unexpectedly does buy into it, it cuts through the buzz and opens, at some level, that unprotected field - there's a breach! - and the reflex kicks in : anger and desire to punish. As in The Dispossessed quote - Men's own suppressed, silenced, bestialized inner woman is at the heart of misogyny. The misogynistic act, or jab, has long been-prepared in a self-lacerating space.

(2)
There's another form of misogyny aimed at the Joanna Newsom figure. This isn't someone who unknowingly breaches, as in (1) but who is well aware what the breach is all about and feels a tenderness.

(I never had the belt, but I was held up against a wall, shouted at with deeply cutting words face-to-face and the rest. (I can almost feel the effort at holding my face fixed against this deluge...which now that I think about is cynicism or irony in essence) It's funny, I've minimized it before, and haven't thought of it in forever, basically forgot it, but- it was really scary. I would break down, tears, and mom would come to console me - read books in bed, that kind of thing. )

So part of it is: In offering tenderness, she's dissolving the rigidity you had to assume to withstand the onslaught. Some ambivalence: She's both salving your wounds and rendering you more vulnerable to future ones, which will possibly be deeper.

And another part is: Well why is she with this monster in the first place? Because she is (or at least was) drawn, too, to his 'crying.' Which is to say, in blame-logic: It's because people like her exist (that make monsters feel better) that they can continue to hurt others. And that feels like another of those cold, wires of abuse: the tending to the wound somehow wants the wound, and allows it to perpetuate itself.

So the third, and main, part: She's quick to console you now, but will nonetheless allow the abuse to continue.

So another blame-logic: As an adult, you're drawn to 'consolers', but the person willing to console you as an adult is taking the role to you, that your mother took to your father, the very person who left you in need of consolation.

(To collapse all the nesting dolls, quickly: When I think of Cioran, I am reminded of my own calling out, my own highlighting of a wound. But at the same time, I am very skeptical of what my cry is all about. I suspect that Cioran would not lose his wound; I would. Or at least I would lose my fixation on the wound. And I think there is a way to do it. But that comes from letting down the protective 'buzz' - and that's slow, painstaking - it's a slow-flowing feeling of joy. This space is where Taoism is brilliant, but that's another post)


Ok, I had a few more to go (all my above examples involved someone encountering, rather than pursuing, so much is left out), but that stuff is hard to stay afloat in. "Somewhat perilous, but not disagreeable. " I'll take a break, and then try to pivot to some of the lighter parts.

On that note, just had the thought and impulse to repaste the last section I posted from the Gospel of Thomas:


(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

It almost seems too clunky to explicitly break down the consonances, but I think it wonderfully fits with all of this!

On the picking a fight issue, yes indeed that's stuff we humans do. And I wrestle with shame sometimes too, because there's the temptation to mock, challenge, subvert. Then there's perhaps the worse temptation to be above all this, to scorn all this in an even less forgiving pride (silent contempt.) If one knows this evil or aggression in one's self, it's hard to be earnest, because one expects it in others, especially in those who matter, because our pretty intellectual flowers grow in the soil of cruelty (something like that.) Messages are contorted as they are squeezed through defense mechanisms (like dream work of some kind.) — norm

Beautifully put. It is like dreams. The phenomenology of posting: You're not consciously choosing to elide this, or add that, but it sort of feels right. You have an inner sense of how things will 'land' and adjust accordingly. There's the impulse - the thing you want to say - and then in posting it, the editing, the awareness of the audience, happens sort of through you - only you experience it, a little self-misleadingly, as what you meant to say the whole time. (Alcohol facilitates that, I think, but that's its own topic.)

I think the shame might come out of a sort of cognitive dissonance - e.g. ' I know that I wanted to say - and really thought I was saying - this, but now (sober) I realize that what I subjectively experienced is different than what I was objectively doing, and I want to sweep the whole thing away. The gap between the fantasy and the reality is massive, and I'll maintain the fantasy by 'deleting' the reality. With the delusion that, itndoing so, the next time around the objective and subjective will be perfectly wed, and there won't be anyone around to remember the last time, and drag me down out of the fantasy.'

You wake up with a gasp and want to delete a post - I almost did with my last one ('ecumenical spiritualism', what are you talking about dude?)- but that impulse feels like not wanting to be the individual who made that mistake. And if you made it, that's part of how you're currently operating, and that's a good thing to know! Deleting it - as I've done in the past, and have been tempted to do - is like taking the stance of 'silent contempt' as you put it, toward yourself. The 'bad' part is pushed into the cellar again, to stew and resent, while you do stuff in a 'good' way, until the cycle repeats. Original SIn gets a bad rap, in may cases rightfully so, but one way at it is just: it's a worldview that allows you to fuck up, and makes sense of it after, without recoiling from and repressing it.


Regarding Cioran, Kafka, and Tim & Eric. I think you're right about the castration, the laugh at the void, and all of it. What I want to say is that I think it is, to echo an earlier post, sort of one genre among others. There's this Joanna Newsom song where she sings - plaintively, sweetly, patiently, understandingly - 'honey, where'd you come by that wound?' - and the plaintive, sweet, understanding vibe felt so nice that for a few months, I kept playing that song again and again - the feeling of loving attention gets tied to identifying with your wound. It's a powerful complex of things (in every 'cioran' theres an offstage 'joanna newsom' singing that song. For me it maybe echoes being sick as a kid, and mom taking especial care of me) It is a powerful aspect of life and should be given a spot - refusing loving care is its own temptation - but I also feel that it is not the sovereign genre (or emotion, or stance) I want to take - or I don't want to take any genre (aspect, region, vibe, atmosphere, emotion, frame) as sovereign at all.

One thing I've been drawn to, reading about Taoism, is the refusal of any one aspect (the mechanical ritual, the normal workings of life, the philosophical frame, the ecstatic experience, etc) to be the 'real' thing - it's all part of it. We're probably on the same page there - I just don't know if Cioran, say, is. I haven't read all of him, not even close, and there is a lot of subtle stuff - but sometimes it feels like it's all sort of subservient to a beautiful suffering to be experienced.

That at least is my working model of Cioran, which is rusty. If it isn't accurate, that's good too. I guess, regardless of whether Cioran exemplifies it, I'm interested in critically approaching the impulse of raising anything into an over-valorized thing, association with which lets you partake of it. And man, I guess even that is ok too, as long as you can navigate re-entry into the profane space where you're not part of the valorization, which is inevitable. In such a case, that valorization is an ecstatic, or ritualistic thing which has value, but oughtn't diminish the value of the stuff that isn't it.

Part of the reason I come back to this I had something that I guess would be considered a manic episode - though drug-induced -in my early 20s and it was really beautiful and after I was charged with this really great energy. As it faded, I couldn't admit it was fading and the world in the absence of that experience felt really drained and ugly. But what happened is the memory of those highs became a way I structured my life, and I wanted to attach myself to things I felt 'linked back to it' while dissociating myself from things that felt like they didn't. This was a recipe for disaster, and looking back is I think basically addiction in its purest form. All the other addictions are aspects of it, so to speak.Finding a better way of relating to these peak experiences has been a big part of how I've tried to think of stuff moving forward, so these themes crop up a lot. A sluggish, slow process filled with relapses, granted, but I think the guiding light is good.

I guess I've just always come to the usual conclusions - why should I care what is written in any holy book? — Tom Storm

I don't think you should care about any of it.

And I should check myself here. If you grew up in a problematic religious community, then I have no right to talk about these texts vis-a-vis your relationship to them. I can only talk about them from my perspective: slightly secular - raised half catholic, half protestant, (which one depended on which parent, in a messy marriage, had the upper hand in any given year) but, in any case, it was primarily a social thing. Believed in god, as a kid, but the rest was up in the air.

I'm very much on board with the self-knowledge approach, and I think these texts potentially offer some good insight. At the same time, it would be ridiculous to pretend that they haven't been used in truly noxious power-maintaining ways. (gospel of thomas, maybe not, at least not in the modern era, but it certainly hooks back up to the full christian complex)

I resist the existentialist approach, only because I think it puts too much emphasis on the individual will (another story, but I don't oppose it for any external reason - I think that approach immanently self-destructs, naturally, according to its own logic) but I think some stuff in these texts is just good, in the same way I think a Don Delillo or Marilynne Robinson novel is good, or a book on investment is good, or a friend's advice about cooking is good- it feels, to me, like the gospel of thomas is doing its genre very well. I don't think that genre is sovereign, but it's a good genre among others (& invites power-hungry assholes, like any genre: you got your Norman Mailers & Phillip Roths in literature, take your pick in finance, Gordon Ramsey in cooking etc.)

I don't generally focus on Christianity - I'm generally much more interested in Taoism, Buddhism, and Shamanism (of which there are christian, Buddhist and Taoist variants.) It would be a full thread to explain my journey from catholicism to atheism to existentialism to post-structural relativism to ecumenical spiritualism, but the end result is ecumenical spiritualism (yes, psychedelics are involved.) It is wishy-washy, in some ways - but only if it's not grounded in general practice. Life comes first, is a base, Maslow, and then you have to learn how to ritually, rhythmically structure the rest - there's no way around it. No one should care about any holy book, only tap in if its useful.

Dr Richard Carrier is an exponent of this. — Tom Storm

He is, that's the name I was grasping for - but at the end of the day, why's he doing it? I've watched many interviews with him, when I was reading the OT with a friend, who was a fan. He's cagy, and isolated. As are many people who are pushing heterodox ideas...but you just get a feeling that his impulse is based on religion, and he's trying to get a comeuppance. It's very tantaiizing if you grew up in a strong religious community; it's kind of weird otherwise. To put it into context: imagine Richard Carrier giving a lecture, with the same vibe, on the role of mana in polynesian tribes.

Old testament, & new! You know a shit ton about it, but what would be most interesting is how you organize that knowledge to put forth a novel approach.

What I'm wanting is what you make of all this and why it matters.

I am interested in the relationship between pessimism and religion. It doesn't surprise me that, as a pessimist, you're into the context of Christ - whereas it would surprise me if you were into, idk, coal markets in the balkans in the 50s. I am - truly - impressed to the extent to which you've gone into this. But at the same time it feels like .... not a foregone conclusion per se -can't place it. I respect your knowledge -its deep - but all I can see is anti-natalism HQ sending a good, shrewd, diligent, worker on a two-year mission. I dont' know how we can talk about any of this, because the horizon of your research is going to be the same fixed thing.

Analogically: I know more about breaking boxes at the homestead restaurant than you could ever know. I know which boxes they get the most of, how certain boxes fit etc. I know it inside and out. I broke boxes there for years in high school. But what is the horizon of that? It's just a kid breaking boxes for money. I think you're breaking the OT for pessimism. I respect the craft, but I just - what am I supposed to learn from it?

You've done due diligence, don't get me wrong. I"m vaguely familiar with the pre-existing idea of a 'Christ' - and its relationship to NT scripture - and how Jesus potentially fulfilled that, was made to fulfill that. You certainly have a better handle on the details than me. But I don't think you really care about any of it. It seems palpable to me that you've stored up these facts for the purpose of downplaying christ's divinity. When you say all these things I can hear you learning it, for the sake of an eventual -nah, fake. And ok. You've done it perfectly, I can't say you haven't.

But, at the same time, I find myself thinking - everything you're saying is just geared to proving 'it isn't true.' That doesn't hit any chords with me. I don't care if jesus was god or not, at all. Analogically: I could talk napoleon with someone, but if that person was bent on proving one thing I wasn't super invested in, idk, that napoleon was gay, I'd be like 'damn, this guy knows a lot, but we're just not approaching this topic on the same wavelength.' I respect your research, but all I'm learning is that you know a lot of details that tend toward jesus not being the son of god. Ok, sure, but I don't feel like I'm learning anything more about the text.

I mean maybe you're just randomly interested in this, but why not be interested in turkish government from 200 ad to 700 ad, right?

Anyway, That's not what I'm interested in, though I truly think you have mastered what you've set out to master.

No you misinterpreted me completely. — schopenhauer1

Fair, correct me. Edited: retracted: you already made your point nicely

oh ok you're doing that dude's thing. Yeah maybe jesus wan't real. What's the guy's name? I read his book a while back. Finding the Idea of a christ and how it pre-existed the gospels etc etc. Bummer, I thought you were coming at this from a more interesting angle. But fair, maybe jesus wasn't real.

I am going to come out of left field here and come at this from an anthropological/historical perspective..
I think the more "Gnostic" movements that influenced Hellenistic Judaism made for some interesting synthesis.

I think Judaism is/was a very community-oriented religion. The basic core is that God created the lower world of physical realm in order for there to be free-willed humans who will communally acknowledge him by practicing various commandments. Some of these were meant for laypeople, some meant for Cohen-priests, and some of these over time shifted from priests to lay-Israelites to make a "guard" against violating the commandments. It was very much about communal practice. One anoints the mundane things by following a particular commandment that raises it a holier level by doing it in a prescribed god-ordained way. One can argue historically, that this kind of strict communitarian version of the religion was created by community-leaders (like Ezra the Scribe) that returned from the Babylonian Exile under the auspices of the Persian Empire, as governors, reforming the previous (probably more Henotheistic) religion into a strict monotheism with an orthodox version of how the history came to be.. This was around the Great Assembly with the last "prophets" of Israel (like Haggai and Malachi).

Hellenism after the time of Alexander and his spreading of Greek-thought brought ideas such as Platonism (and later Neoplatonism), Aristotelianism (and emphasis on "intellect" as mystical), Elysian mysteries, Mithra/Isis mysteries, and Pythagoreans, and many more mystery schools and variations thereof. There was also mystical ideas from Zoroastrians, Babylonian mysteries, and Egyptian mysteries prior to Alexander, so there were other strands as well. These traditions were more of a direct, personal, inner aspiration to commune with a mystical godhead. There were elements of this from the prophetic period of Judaism in the prior generation, but the nature of these schools is lost. Was it more esoteric inward looking meditation or still rather communal? Perhaps there was an inward meditative technique.. Either way, since this prophetic tradition was considered to be no longer legitimate, there was probably an allure of the more inward-looking traditions of the Greeks and Eastern mystery schools. That is where I think Gnosticism came in. It provided Jews living in Hellenistic communities to combine their own traditions with Greek mystery schools, allowing there to be a synthesis. Notice, the Gnostic sects and practices were not usually found in Israel proper, but in the cities around the main Hellenistic centers like Alexandria, Antioch, etc. I don't think historically, the Jesus Movement was associated with these Gnostic sects which rather used the character of Jesus as a vehicle to explore Gnostic thought in general. Rather, the historical Jesus, I would say was probably a sect of Essenic/Ebionite Judaism (much closer to Pharisaic Judaism but with different interpretations of the Mosaic Law, and ideas about the End Times that were more pronounced).

Anyways, there are four basic branches of Gnosticism.. I believe it is the Thomas Tradition (based on The Book of Thomas), Sethian, Hermetic, and Valentinian.. They all have similarities and a lot of variation too. — schopenhauer1

My 'scholarly' understanding of the Old testament largely comes from a single archaeology book, and traces it to Hezekiah, rather than Ezra and the expats. I don't know if it's right, could well not be. But I think we both agree that the OT is a a sort of library structured at some moment within the events being recalled. I'd be interested to hear more about the provenance of gnostic thought, and how it got tangled up with christ.

There's a Christian theme about loss and disaster being the path itself, the door. It's as if we have to be broken open, humiliated. Our pride in our knowledge of trivia and mastery of ritual blinds us and binds us. 'Astonishment' is a nice word here. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. There's a vague, dark reading of that that appeals to me.

I've been reading Cioran lately (The Trouble with Being Born), and the intersection of the dark and the light seems important here. If I live in some sense like I'm already dead, if I'm not so pathetically fucking thirsty for the recognition and ultimately envy of others, there's a new kind of life in that, while it lasts. Perhaps one does not taste death because the dying ego is no longer functioning as a center. It's the space between mortals that's interesting. I cough up my boring biographical trash only as a symbol, as a bridge, and not as of inherent interest. 'I' am nothing. 'I' am already dead. 'We' know this and are therefore more alive than ever, infinitely and bottomlessly alive. But we remain mortal and faulty, without a cure for the world beyond a little graffiti that may or may not signify for others and help them get over themselves now and then and feel less alone.



He said to them, "What you are looking forward to has come, but you don't know it." — norm

I relate a lot to this. Being broken open and humiliated sucks - and the natural move is to sweep the thing under the carpet and move on flashing the self you want people to see. I had something like that with this thread. I posted it inebriated, and got defensive talking to Tom, who was introducing valid skepticisms. I woke up feeling like shit. and, knowing I had a scheduled phone call with my sister that afternoon, I turned over, drank some gatorade, and texted her to postpone. i had planned on our conversation involving, in part, my demonstrating that I was on top of stuff. I pushed it back a day. But still, today, I brought it up, sheepishly and that went into a back-and-forth of our embarassing experiences. She said 'oh i get it, you're going for fights, want to puff up your feathers' - the shame of it dissipated when it was just like - yeah this is shit people do.

To cioran, I almost want to say: everyone you know is going through the same stuff. As a literary stylist, you're doing great work; but at the same time, if the content is that you're alone with suffering -- just reach out! In a way, he's doing that, just as you say - he's posting up landmarks for people who are in the same boat he's in. It's nice, when you're smart and alone, to feel that this guy gets it too.

But the idea of being broken up and humiliated in christianity is different in kind. Christ isn't prideful on the cross. It's a really beautiful thing, potentially, if you think of it - a community of sinners witnessing and supporting one another. We all fuck up, and feel bad, and we'll help each other. I worry sometimes, with Cioran, it's about being the exemplary sufferer (witnessed, not witnessing). He's a complicated guy so it's not always that, but there is a throughline that tends that way.

Anyway, no exact moral, but those are my thoughts at the moment.

(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

cheers

I have to watch how I come across. I certainly can be detached and analytical just as you say. The problem with forums is the conversation can feel impersonal and veiled and because philosophy and cultural studies can hit controversial subjects, it is often hard to know what tone to strike.

The interesting thing about the opening of Thomas is that it has the familiar tropes of mysticism that frankly seem designed to appeal to personal vanity. Secret knowledge/ key to personal transformation. This is right out of Hermetic wisdom or the Kabbalah. But frankly the same proposition is made in Scientology. Is it the case that secret or hidden teachings are the classic refuge of the dispossessed and marginalized? (think I first read that in Isadore Epstein's Judaism - his take on Kabbalah).

What is appealing about mainstream Christianity is the surface appeal of the myth. Jesus is the least mystical of religious teachers. A key teaching is about loving the poor, the weak, the scorned - so detested by Nietzsche and so many modern sensibilities - is actually a powerful idea with far reaching repercussions. There is no need for secret teaching or initiation. That's refreshing. This to me is where orthodoxy (for want of a better term) has the edge on the more secretive Gnosticism. Making something a secret doesn't mean it is more profound, but it sure seems that way.

Perhaps the Gnostic stuff appeals more to people with hierarchical machinations on their mind. "How can I access the real wisdom and the key to ever lasting life?" (or whatever the reward underpinning the doctrines might be) Is it not interesting that the Gnostic teachings also pivot on an idea that is so prevalent now. That the world is coming unstuck and the truth is hidden by design and that only some with the right mindfulness can access this truth. It makes you wonder if QAnon is today's apocalyptic nascent religious tradition with a baroque line in hidden internet based scripture - waiting to be rediscovered in 2000 years and reinterpreted for the times.

Oops, that was more of a flight of ideas than a coherent view. — Tom Storm

Yep, we both agree that the opening plays with common mystical tropes.

Ok, I think I get where you're coming from. The text itself is an annoying gnat - let's get to the brass tacks - desire for power.

The basic idea, if I understand you, is that the canonical gospels are democratic - Jesus is a radically non-hierarchical guy - and gnosticism wants to think it's tuned in to the real shit. It's more valuable because it's secret. That's how the gnostic thinks. The gnostic sees power in secrecy.

I appreciate your navigating niceties with me but you're still saying the same thing: 'why are you attracted to this? (with the obvious subtext : I know why! you want power (as I did/do) )

Listen, tom, I have all the insecurities you imagine and more. I have a great oodling tower of insecurities. I'm sure you're a much more decorated and successful man than me. I'm not trying to angle at scientology sceptres, faux-sanctity by proxy, or anything else. I like reading the gospel of thomas, along with a lot of other things. Much comes up talking about them, they're fun. It might be hard for such a patently secure person as yourself to understand. But it comes down to:

The text is rich. Talking about it, if you're in the right mindset, can bring you anywhere. Yes, people abuse mysticism for personal gain. It's a good thing to keep in mind. But I think you're - i mean, i don't know what you're doing, but you're not on board with what this is, while posting on it.

Brass tacks: if you're interested in the text, say something about what you think of it.

Otherwise, let's get on with it.

One of the windows is how sexuality is referred to as not being important in some passages while others call for everyone to be "male."
It sounds like a local difficulty being related to a universal one. — Valentinus

I'm going into pantomime mode - I only know the text presented so far, and can only work from that. Granted, it's my own idealized approach, and once a thread's out there, it's out there. But I like the fiction as a kind of interpretive heuristic.

Pagels (who doesn't sing) is a reference to one of the seminal writers on this subject - surely this name is copasetic. Her work on the Gospel of Judas was revelatory to me (no pun intended). The notion of Judas being the most loved and significant of all the disciples (because he had a key role in setting the divine plan in motion) is a compelling idea. A beatific betrayal, if you like. This was also echoed in the novel The Last Temptation of Christ, another extraordinary mystical interpretation of the story. — Tom Storm

I don't know her, or admittedly much about any scholarship around this area. This is a new subject for me. In my first incarnation on the forums, I was much more a German Idealism/Psychoanalysis guy.

I very much invite any insights from her works that bear upon the text. (I'll trade a name - Borges' Three Versions of Judas has been a touchstone for me for a long time, along the same lines you're discussing.)

I picked up a vibe early that you were coming in with a kind of detached psychological/analytic approach - kind of therapist-used-to-probing-others-while-their-own-views-remain-safely-unspoken - that just felt deeply counter to the kind of conversation I'm interested in. I pushed back accordingly. But, if you have real interest & some extratextual insight, I'm down for it. What do you make of the first couple sections?

Well, I welcome you aboard if you have interest. I can't tell if you do. I am sure you're soberer than some people on the forum, if that helps. You will be accorded proper respect (we won't tell Elaine Paige her name isn't proper)

Exactly ! But it's tricky- because your point is very good, & i think clarifies what comes before- but I think the one-part-at-a-time opens it up for a sort of slow-burn interpretation.

I don't have any views on it as I don't remember the documents well enough. I read some of them in the 1980's and I knew one of Carl Jung's offsiders when the Jung Codex was put together. We spent a good deal of time discussing their significance to early Christianity. Nothing you won't find in Elaine Pagle's famous book (The Gnositc Gospels). — Tom Storm

Interesting, why are you attracted to this approach to the gnostic gospels (perhaps, mysticism in general?) I notice you're using autobiographical detail, proper names, and indications of your inclusion in a kind of a sanctified, certified community. What does this approach do for you?

One of the interesting qualities of the Gospel of Thomas is how the language is very close to the received canon of the Church Fathers. So the "esoteric" messages are important but there is also a down to earth quality in the words to be observed. Consider the 6th verse: — Valentinus

Strongly agree. I think one of the things I like about this Gospel is how it fluidly skates across a lot of different domains. Now it might be foolhardy to try to bracket things in a fixed way, but I was thinking, going in, to present it as sort of a one thing at a time - advent calendar, sort of - and build from there. I think you're right to bring in the sixth verse here, but If possible I want to keep the one part at a time vibe.