I mention "Cure" but I don't even accept that there's a disease. — hanaH
Imagine a group of people who are all blind, deaf and slightly demented and suddenly someone in the crowd asks, "What are we to do?"... The only possible answer is "Look for a cure". Until you are cured, there is nothing you can do. And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.” — Vladimir Solovyov
It's more that middle-class, technocratic culture has certain norms, what it thinks is acceptable, mediated by science, but devoid of the sense of over-arching purpose that animates traditional cultures. — Wayfarer
My general view is that modern liberal culture normalises a kind of aberrant state. — Wayfarer
Whereas traditional cultures make moral demands on the individual, that has been reversed in the ascent of liberalism, whereby the individual, buttressed by science and economics, is the sole arbiter of value, and individual desire is placed above everything else. Nihil ultra ego, nothing beyond self. — Wayfarer
From one of the theosophical philosophers I've encountered on this forums: — Wayfarer
And since you don't believe you are sick, there can be no cure.” — Vladimir Solovyov
I think you are right, and that that aberrant state is (relative) wealth, health, and freedom. — hanaH
Philosophers and humanists are interested in what has been called, in 20th-century continental philosophy, the human condition, that is, a sense of uneasiness that human beings may feel about their own existence and the reality that confronts them (as in the case of modernity with all its changes in the proximate environment of humans and corresponding changes in their modes of existence). Scientists are more interested in human nature. If they discover that human nature doesn’t exist and human beings are, like cells, merely parts of a bigger aggregate, to whose survival they contribute, and all they feel and think is just a matter of illusion (a sort of Matrix scenario), then, as far as science is concerned, that’s it, and science should go on investigating humans by considering this new fact about their nature. I think that Pinker makes a “slip of the tongue” in his article when he writes: “This is an extraordinary time for the understanding of the human condition”. He clearly means human nature and he moves back and forth between these two expressions in his article when they should be kept distinct.
Read this in another way and it's just madness. — hanaH
Do you recognise that sense of 'existential unease'? That, no matter our material circumstances, there can be a sense of un-ease, which can't be eradicated by simply adjusting to it. — Wayfarer
Gnostics believe that the world that the ordinary person inhabits is illusory - that provides illusory comforts, one that ultimately will bring no real happiness. — Wayfarer
If some man in Bedlam should entertaine you with sober discourse; and you desire in taking leave, to know what he were, that you might another time requite his civility; and he should tell you, he were God the Father; I think you need expect no extravagant action for argument of his Madnesse.
This opinion of Inspiration, called commonly, Private Spirit, begins very often, from some lucky finding of an Errour generally held by others; and not knowing, or not remembring, by what conduct of reason, they came to so singular a truth, (as they think it, though it be many times an untruth they light on,) they presently admire themselves; as being in the speciall grace of God Almighty, who hath revealed the same to them supernaturally, by his Spirit.
Again, that Madnesse is nothing else, but too much appearing Passion, may be gathered out of the effects of Wine, which are the same with those of the evill disposition of the organs. For the variety of behaviour in men that have drunk too much, is the same with that of Mad-men: some of them Raging, others Loving, others laughing, all extravagantly, but according to their severall domineering Passions: For the effect of the wine, does but remove Dissimulation; and take from them the sight of the deformity of their Passions. For, (I believe) the most sober men, when they walk alone without care and employment of the mind, would be unwilling the vanity and Extravagance of their thoughts at that time should be publiquely seen: which is a confession, that Passions unguided, are for the most part meere Madnesse.
Continual Successe in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call FELICITY; I mean the Felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual Tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because Life itself is but Motion, and can never be without Desire, nor without Feare, no more than without Sense. What kind of Felicity God hath ordained to them that devoutly honour him, a man shall no sooner know, than enjoy; being joys, that now are as incomprehensible, as the word of School-men, Beatifical Vision, is unintelligible.
Personally I don't evangelize, nor do I expect religion or conspiracy theory to go away — hanaH
Never been a Hobbes fan. From that period, I'm more with the Cambridge Platonists, not that I'm overly familiar with them. — Wayfarer
But I live in this world. And have to make the best of it. I think it's a pity though that so much culture and nature is gone. Though material culture has never been richer. — GraveItty
I was merely noting that TPF is usually not very "accepting of personal confidence as evidence of truth".
— Gnomon
Why not? Distrust?
— GraveItty
Nah, assumption of equality of people. — baker
What evidence for what truth are you talking about? — GraveItty
Imagine a person who tried various spiritual fads and classics in their 20s and found them all wanting.
— hanaH
When I was young I spent 15 years respectfully trying to understand revealed wisdom and higher consciousness, spending my time in the company of theosophists, self-described Gnostics, Buddhists, devotees of Ouspensky/Gurdjieff, Steiner, etc. What I tended to find was insecure people obsessed with status and hierarchy who had simply channeled their materialism into spirituality. There were the same fractured inter-personal relationships, jealousies, substance abuse and chasing after real estate and status symbols that characterise any secular person. — Tom Storm
Peer-review and exposure to criticism lets inferior ideas die by exposure. — hanaH
What, by the way, do the self-anointed compete for? — hanaH
I think there's a kind of performative contradiction at the intersection of critical philosophy and elitist spirituality. The trans-rational elitists often can't help offering reasons that they deserve more recognition by plebeian rational humanists. "Can't you see that my spiritual genius is invisible?"
Look around and see the profusion of healers and gurus and visionaries now available without leaving your home. I doubt that the world has ever offered such a spiritual buffet to the average person, along with the lifespan and leisure to enjoy such things. — hanaH
The "tyranny" that troubles some may be the absence of tyranny, namely the freedom of others to be unimpressed by their claims of spiritual status or insight.
But that doesn't obviate the critique, although I don't know if I want to try and spell it out in detail right at the moment.
— Wayfarer
You and baker both seem to be echoing Nietzsche's disgust with the last man. — hanaH
The Last Man is the individual who specializes not in creation, but in consumption. In the midst of satiating base pleasures, he claims to have “discovered happiness” by virtue of the fact that he lives in the most technologically advanced and materially luxurious era in human history.
But this self-infatuation of the Last Man conceals an underlying resentment, and desire for revenge. On some level, the Last Man knows that despite his pleasures and comforts, he is empty and miserable. With no aspiration and no meaningful goals to pursue, he has nothing he can use to justify the pain and struggle needed to overcome himself and transform himself into something better. He is stagnant in his nest of comfort, and miserable because of it. This misery does not render him inactive, but on the contrary, it compels him to seek victims in the world. He cannot bear to see those who are flourishing and embodying higher values, and so he innocuously supports the complete de-individualization of every person in the name of equality.
Devoid of a share, single sense perhaps, but rife with many different senses of over-arching purposes. We have the leisure and freedom to explore and discuss such things. Frankly I don't trust what I see as a kind of nostalgia. Sure, we have hot water, air conditioning, Novocain and plenty of food, but we are "condemned to be free" when there "ought" to be a kindler, gentler theocratic hand at the helm. — hanaH
My general view is that modern liberal culture normalises a kind of aberrant state. Whereas traditional cultures make moral demands on the individual, that has been reversed in the ascent of liberalism, whereby the individual, buttressed by science and economics, is the sole arbiter of value, and individual desire is placed above everything else. Nihil ultra ego, nothing beyond self. — Wayfarer
No, those are just the torments of Tantalus. All those "goodies" might indeed seem like they are at your fingertips -- but when you reach for them, you can never reach them, or they disappear altogether. — baker
So, yes, by these criteria, Donald Trump is a deeply religious/spiritual person. Yes, I know this isn't going to earn me any brownie points. That's what they get for telling me that I don't have what it takes. — baker
Spiritual types tend to say that they have the real thing while others are fakes. To secular outsiders this is one of the turn-offs of the spiritual hustle. In the end many of us just don't think there's any secret worth bothering too much about. — hanaH
I used to be a "seeker" (god, I hate the word). I looked into several major and minor religions. I was always told, in more or less (usually less) polite ways that I "don't have what it takes". — baker
I'm suggesting that it is the assumption of equality of people that leads those who assume such equality to not accepting personal confidence as evidence of truth.
If we're all equal in some relevant way, then why should I accept your personal confidence as evidence of truth, notably when you differ from me? — baker
. But the issue is what kind of experience spirituality is understood to offer. I'm asking about intensity and duration. And I'm also interested in the intensity and duration of angst, ennui, the sense of meaningless. We are bags of water and fire on stilts. — hanaH
Religious freedom means we get to experiment and hopefully find something that works. — hanaH
So it goes — hanaH
If you want personally revealed wisdom, you might want to put some distance between yourself and other people. — James Riley
For me it wasn't metaphysics, but spiritual pursuits I also hoped for a great transformation of that kind. Now I just accept that I should settle for piecemeal improvement.I believed that through meditation, a state of insight would spontaneously arise which would melt away all my negative tendencies and weaknesses. — Wayfarer
Early on, I did have a real conversion experience, which I interpreted in a Buddhist framework (mainly through this book.) I formally took refuge in 2007. But in the long run I found are some hindrances that are very hard to overcome. This sense culminated in late 2017 when I gave some talks at a couple of Buddhist centres. I'm quite well-versed in the subject and can talk intelligibly about it. But I felt like a phony, speaking from the position of being dharma teacher. When I was describing the paramitas (Mahāyāna virtues) I realised how conspicuously lacking I was in them. And I went to a Buddhist youth organisation conference around that time, and sadly realised that I thought a lot of well-intentioned Buddhists were also phony. — Wayfarer
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