So yes, there is a scale of understanding and that has to do with the "extent" to which it is understood, but there is no such thing as judging something that is understood to zero extent. — Leontiskos

I agree. If I say “I know nothing about brain surgery” I am exaggerating the fact that I know very little. If I knew absolutely nothing about it, I couldn’t even call it “brain surgery.” And I would argue that I used judgment to admit I know very little about brain surgery - judgment of what I do know, and judgment of what brain surgery is.

So part of our initial criteria can’t be not to judge at all. We need some judgment to progress through a discussion, to define, to identify, to finish with a thought and judge its safe to move on to the next.

That sort of thing is precisely what is needed in order to go beyond a mere assertion of an insufficient understanding. — Leontiskos

It is time for some meat on the bone, right? I asked @praxis before and now @Antony Nickles, what don’t I understand about wokeism, or a key woke position - be it a whole position of just a key underlying interest, criteria, etc.?

I think in the end you will find that we have different interests, that maybe we can agree on criteria, and that we won’t get to the substance of an actual issue. To each of us it will look like bad-faith in the other. I hope not, but that has been my experience. If we are too careful we get frustrated before getting anywhere, and if we are not careful enough, we yell at each other instead of conversing.

So to start over:

Over-arching rule of engagement: goodwill towards the others in the discussion, and good-faith in all things proffered in the discussion. I will assume you what you say and you can assume I do as well.

Interest 1: the well-being of strangers
Criteria 1: we all know something of what it means to care for the well-being of strangers.

Interest 2: rule of law
Criteria 2: law/policy as an end in itself, and a means to effectively enforce the interests protected in individual laws.

Interest 3: reason
Criteria: use argumentation that allows for verification in fact and in validity of logic

What needs revision above and what else do we need to set the stage for a reassessment of wokeness?

I would argue that our goal is not “judgment”. In a moral situation like this, it comes down to whether we see that our (once drawn out) interests are more alike than apart, that we are able to move forward together, extend or adapt our criteria, reconsider our codified judgments, — Antony Nickles

Who wants to go first? Dig up an interest or set a criteria.

let Bud Light drinking be taken over? — praxis

I meant trans promotion had taken over bud light promotion. It wasn’t clearly stated. But not too important. @praxis is kind of running with it.

that they do not mind causing easily predictable social dis-ease. — AmadeusD

It was a predictably stupid business decision.

it wont work. It'll either tank the company, or make people vastly more abrasive to the "trans agenda" such as it exists — AmadeusD

If we make drinking alcohol legal and socially acceptable, do we have to push alcohol to all people of all ages in all settings, or is there any value to arranging a decorum and propriety surrounding alcohol consumption? Same thing with transgender. Time and a place, and read the audience. If bud light started marketing to kids and heavy machinery operators you might see kid rock shooting up cases of beer too.

we can probably both drop this example - it was cynical regardless — AmadeusD

At least we (me and praxis included) should be more clear about what we are trying to use it for.

You asked me if resistance is essential and I said that I wasn’t sure how to answer. I think it’s a good question, if extremely broad in scope. I tried to narrow the focus to the Bud Light fiasco and asked, if you regard it as a form of resistance, whether or not pushing back on that was essential. I didn’t think that I needed to say that the gesture was inessential.

Do you think the pushback was essential? — praxis

I’m not exactly sure if you are asking this of the woke or anti-woke ideologue.

One could say that Bud Light using a trans spokesperson was an act of pushback against a cisgender status quo, but I don’t think you are talking about that.

I think you mean whether the pushback from Kid Rock and all he represented was essential. So now I have to ask essential to what - is pushback essential to a traditionalist, anti-woke position? I’d say no. Traditionalists are the ones who don’t move and so they are the one’s progressive movement pushes up against.

Kid Rock was pushing back, but I think that was a sign of frustration that nothing else was working - no laws, no politicians, no arguments or discussions - just frustrated people showing off in their own bubble. I’m not sure it was activism or true policy making push back.

But you could also see it (and I think you did) as a reaction to seeing wokism as the institution and the entrenched position, so entrenched it took over Bud Light drinking - on that case, it was activism and pushback.

Last though, if you just look at what is at the essence of woke, I think activism and pushback are essential to it. Woke is more of a negative deconstruction, than it is a positive construction. We don’t need to know what gender means or is or can be, just that 3000 years of male-female binary dominance is over. We don’t need to know if African or Asian or Middle Eastern cultures belong on a hierarchy, just that White European culture should be on the bottom. Pushback is essential to how wokeism seems to express itself. It needs the big bad wolf first, to then mount its attack.

Maybe?

:up:

There are right-wing descendants of Nietzsche who also draw from Derrida, Deleuze, etc. as well as critical theory, although they tend to also mix in influences no one else pays attention to…
they have been influential through other avenues, particularly in the right wing media space and through their evangelism of Big Tech leaders. Here, the groundlessness of hierarchy and values are precisely why they need to be forcefully asserted (not made known, but constructed and endorced).

There are also some eliminitive materialists (analytics) who pick up on post-modern theory. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That makes sense it has to be the case.

I still think it is worth considering why such pluralist sources such as CT and post-modernism, vastly lead to the same progressive conclusions. If it was even 59% it wouldn’t be a good question, but it has to be more like 90% or more. Something is off about the PM and CT methodologies, where all of these more relativist/ pluralist thinking structures, like a funnel, yield the same societal conclusions.

(The pluralist/relativist baseline is why they avoid any sense of self-awareness of their own brand of facism and absolutism that can result when they have power and seek to impose these vastly uniform progressive conclusions.)

what I am addressing is the judgment I’ve seen that these moral claims are irrational, emotional, personal, etc. to point out that it is possible to get at the so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it. — Antony Nickles

Sounds like you are saying fruitful discussion needs to first level set the playing field. Bring all the assumptions to the surface. Or that there is a pre-discussion about “unknown interests and different criteria” and “the terms on which to take it.”

That sounds right, but would also require good-faith.

Because it also sounds like a search for dog-whistles and unconscious shortcomings and ill-motives. We have to assume good-will in a person even like Trump (because he’s president, probably should be especially like Trump), when seeking to uncover the “so far unknown interests and different criteria, apart from judging the means or even judging what we are told, as we do not yet understand the terms on which to take it.”

Is that something like what you mean?

among Critical theorists, why does Habermas reject Adorno’s negative dialectical realism in favor of a positive hermeneutic model of communicative action? Why does Rorty believe that Habermas’s reliance on Kantian categorical norms of rationality is to metaphysical? Why does Deleuze attack Rorty’s pragmatism as plaronist dogmatism? — Joshs

Do you think there is something internal to Critical Theory that would adjudicate between these many divergent views? Can CT tell us whether Rorty or Adorno or Habermas is the better way? Or is indeterminacy inherent to CT, and we will always need to wait for something even better, and/or always return to something left unfinished?

even resistance (wokeness) can be turned into a commodity — praxis

I wouldn’t say “even wokeness” - I would say clearly wokeness is a money maker. It is highly funded, lobbied, commercialized, packaged, tee-shirted, gas-masked, etc etc….

Is that a CT insight? Or just an insight? Or even just a disinterested observation?

Interesting you said wokeness is resistance. Can you elaborate - is resistance essential, like awareness is?

But this is different in that we have a known issue, a clear view of the interests, and are just debating competing criteria for a decision about what to do. And yes, we do need to also conduct such a discussion ethically as I have suggested, but I don’t take the description to be about your reasoning, as if you are unaware as in uninformed — Antony Nickles

I offered it as an example of how I reason. Maybe you personally don’t take it as a sign of me being asleep and unaware, but generally, people who talk like me are seen to be driven by unconscious fears. We are unaware of the real and whole persons affected by my policies. I dehumanize humans, by default. I am therefore a sub-human class of sorts - just deplorable. This is all packed into someone who reasons “we need stronger borders and to deport illegal immigrants.” This is packed into statements like “DEI doesn’t work.”

What I am saying is, part of the woke methodology of reasoning seems to be avoiding anything on its face that appears anti-woke, and instead analyzing for sub-text, the dog-whistle, looking for virtue signaling or lack thereof. Maga types and conservatives and tradition-lovers, are objects of incredulity, whose behavior and speech can only be examined from the outside, not engaged with directly, (as we are engaged here so you are the exception).

See my conversation with Praxis - that is how it typically goes.

Woke doesn’t clarify what their virtues are. Not to anyone perceived as anti-woke.
Woke doesn’t address what a border is and why it exists.
It doesn’t believe that the race and nationality of an illegal immigrant has zero to do with the issue. Such notions are lies and cover.

The woke person knows immigration policy is about white nationalism, racism and oppression - it’s about winning political campaigns. No need to say “border” at all.

This is one example to demonstrate what I (and others here) see as a pattern, a way of woke argumentation and thinking.

Maybe, over time, and with much more discussion, it will help Mexico and Mexican people if we secure the border. That is an insane and insensitive statement to a woke person, a lie to hide hatred and fear, a careless indifference to the suffering of human beings. End of discussion. Before any discussion starts.

I am willing to debate and be educated, but such debate almost never, in good faith, happens. My opinion is discounted by the woke from the start. That has been the case all of my adult life (since the 80s). Trump and Trumpism hasn’t fixed any of this - he’s just shown the world how there has been no conversation at all before so many changes, wanted by a few, have been forced upon everyone. And to show that, he’s forced changes on everyone - using a bludgeon, like Kid rock used gun, to restart the conversations.

Let’s pretend we are all reasonable human beings who want what is good for all human beings. Even Trump. Even Maga. (Imagine that!!). Wokism, generally, wouldn’t allow any discussion on such grounds. By definition, if I don’t already agree with what is woke, I am asleep and unable to have a reasonable conversation.

That is the problem with wokeism to me - its inability and unwillingness to debate and address reasonable challenge. (That’s what praxis said about me, as he shut down the discussion.)

And I mean no disrespect by not engaging more. — praxis

I appreciate the recognition that I could feel disrespected. A gesture of respect would have worked too, but telling me what you don’t mean by your disrespectful posts says maybe there is hope in the future for an actual conversation.

I don’t want to trash the topic further with useless bickering. — praxis

But you just did.

You could have cleaned it up by offering something of substance.

Enjoy yourself and your woke jokes!

It takes an effort to see someone as a person, as someone different than me, perhaps with competing interests, different measures of importance. In being asleep, perhaps we are not making that effort, perhaps in only looking for, or considering as valid criteria, hats and coats. — Antony Nickles

I agree with you fully about persons. Each of us are worth the effort to be seen and taken as unique and individual persons. Period.

I also think we don’t have a country without a border and we don’t have a border without telling the world to honor our rules at the border, and we are not honorable if we don’t seek to lawfully enforce those rules fairly, with no regard to race or religion or gender.

How is all of that unaware and asleep, at least how is that any more unaware than thewoke” person who thinks America will always be here for the immigrants of the world seeking to better their lives.

That is just one issue to put some minimal flesh on a bigger complex conversation. But one step at a time.

Am I deplorable and not even worth talking to? That has been the first question for the past 15 years or so before engaging any anti-woke argument. Did Trump make it all worse for those who never wanted to argue anyway, or is there anything the woke need to learn that they do not seem to be aware of?

You can’t reject what you don’t know exists — praxis

Is that a way of saying you can be woke, but I wouldn’t know it?

Just like I can be anti-woke and not even know what that means?

You could just talk to me like I’m talking to you, saying what you think yourself about the value of wokism and the situation with bud light.

Another non-conversation underway.

You have no idea if maybe “wokeness” is a type of sleep. Do you? I mean, how could you, right?

I am unaware to the extent you haven’t said what you think. That’s for sure.

Here, I’ll give you one more opportunity to tell me what you think - I’ll show you how speaking your own mind is done. I hear Cisgender versus transgender bud light drinkers? And I think that is not as meaningful as what Kid Rock said with a gun and a case of beer - which had more to do with people not wanting to make every single thing a political statement. Maybe CRT is misguided, fetishizing the political too much.

Everything does not have to be that deep - have a few beers once in a while and you might wake up to what Kid Rock was saying to all you serious politicians who know what is best to to be aware of.

If you know better, I want to wake up.

You can still be the bigger man here. I’m not that hard to talk to. All you need to do is extend half amount of thought on the issue than I’ve shared. You said the response to a transgender bud representative was unconscious reaction to a power challenge. You said a few other things. Is that it?

Is there anything at all that if made into a political issue would annoy you? Is there anything positive at all one such as yourself might draw from opposition to Bud’s ad campaign? Maybe this opposition might have less to do with cisgender normativity, and more to do with being forced to learn the meaning of “cisgender normativity” from a beer ad? Are you getting the other side at all, or must we talk about what you want to talk about only, after the beer ad plays.

You are making @AmadeusD point about how hard it is to talk to proponents of wokism (which Instill have to assume you are one, because you won’t just talk to me and tell me what I asked.)

The water is physical, and the cold temperature is physical, and the ice is physical, but is the relation that describes and accounts for the transformation itself physical? — Leontiskos

That seems straight out of Hume to me. And I see his point.

And consider the world in which water never freezes. Surely that world has one less physical thing than our world, given that it lacks ice. But does it lack a second physical thing, namely the causal relation described by the consequence? — Leontiskos

But water mixed with cooling temperature followed by its becoming frozen water or ice…

Maybe we can say that like we sense water and then sense ice, causality is something we sense over time, it’s a name for the “and then” when we mix water with cold air over time. So like the other physical things causality isn’t just a mental relationship, but the motion of objects. Causality is a type of motion like icey or liquid are types of water depending on the temperature.

Rather, you unwillingness to to employ CT expresses your anti-wokeness. — praxis

You got me.

You said anti-woke means asleep and unaware.

I guess as analogously (because I mange to wake up, and navigate the city streets). Or what exactly do you know I am unaware of? Should we both just assume the rest about me? Do you have all you need to know already now that I failed a CRT test?

I am not unwilling.

I may be unable. But I willingly tried. I wrongly, according to you, brought in ‘homophobia’ much like self-described formerly woke @AmadeusD did, after my post. So you accused Kid Rock of bad faith - are you hinting at some sort of bad-faith on my part because of my “unwillingness”?

Could there be anything you are unwilling to do or say towards me, the now anti-wokist?

I willed an attempt in good faith.

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear. — praxis

Now it’s not clear to me. Are you “pro-wokeness”? Or are you something else, and just “attempting to adopt” for sake of argument, someone else’s speak? I am not accusing you of bad faith, I am just saying I am not sure about you being woke-leaning or not anymore.

And if you are woke, what do you think, personally. In any speak. Since you raised Bud Light, who were the good guys and bad guys, if any - what’s a better CRT answer if that is what you think?

But I have since then, approached the 'woke' with extreme sympathy because of my journey, as it were. I have never been met with reasonable discourse or sympathetic interlocutors. They notice I am not the same as them, and its over, in terms of respect. Its higihly ironic, hypocritical and gives the distinct impression the "underlying urges" are as irrational as the manifestations (wholly reasonable and expectable that they would be). — AmadeusD

That is my experience too. Anti-woke people who want to discuss these issues with the other side have to be practiced in tolerance and always looking for the best light possible just to have conversations that last longer than 4 minutes. Otherwise, there is no actual conversation that ever happens. I have close friends and family that are fully woke and liberal, whereas I am more libertarian/independent but leaning conservative. They think because I want to enforce immigration law I must simply be a racist. They are basically waiting for my true racist colors to show and don’t really understand how I might not actually give a crap what race people might be. We love and respect each other (on other grounds and because I don’t mind people who are ironically intolerant and uncritically prejudiced), but mostly steer clear anymore of real conversations. I’ve spent hours in conversations about politics and we maybe come together on one small point about the media, or about Chinese freedom of speech - like the lowest hanging fruit. That’s as far as it ever got.

critical theory moves away from Cartesianism by showing the subject to be formed through structures of bodily, material and social interactions. Postmodernists like Derrida and Foucault go much further, making the subject nothing but an effect of these worldly interactions. — Joshs

I just wonder why this process which sounds like it should be neutral as to outcome always yields the same political conclusions. Liberal wokism is the only result of postmodernism - how is such uniformity of outcome possible given such undefined unformed clay as “bodily, material and social interactions.” Why is there no legitimate facist dictator, but there can be a legitimate woke pontificator?

Thought experiment - if all maga, all racist, all conservative, all anti-woke people just left the planet, and all rich people (top 5%) all gave away all of their money and property to the poor and left the plant too - how long before the remaining population became divided along the same lines as it is today? How long before the upperclass formed and oppressed the rest? How long before inequality and injustice weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now? A month? 5 years? How long before there was a war?

How many thousands of years will the self-reflective creature that we are ever really admit that it is mercy and forgiveness, not justice and equality, that are our only hope of progress? How many times will we hear the word “fight” from every single political leader before we realize we have no idea what peace would look like anyway? Trump gets shot and stands up and says “fight” (maybe give him a pass because he just got shot); Harris just gave a speech to youth this week and in her concession speech after the election, she said “fight” - everyone always says it. Like jihad - that’s our basic modus operandi - jousting with words.

You’re adopting culture war rhetoric, not CT. — praxis

I went to college too long ago I guess.

There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions.
— Fire Ologist

The issue is that plenty of points on the 'woke' side are clearly illegitimate and I think that's what's being discussed. — AmadeusD

I guess part of my point is that neither side will hear the other, certainly not hear arguments against their own position coming from the other, unless and until they perceive a good-faith willingness of the other side to accept points in favor of their own side.

But it’s a small point I guess, and is not really any different about any discussion between entrenched sides on any issue, so maybe not needed.

I was attempting to adopt woke-speak or what the anti-woke decidedly don't speak. I thought that was clear. — praxis

I missed it.

How would you view the incident through the lens of wokeness or critical theory? — praxis

Through the lens of wokeness - probably exactly like you did. Maybe add homophobia to the analysis. I don’t know if bud light is sold at Disneyworld, but if so, it was probably all part of a planned conspiratorial attack…

Most concisely would simply be what the term implies: asleep or unaware. — praxis

Hence “awoken”.

But your analysis of why you think the “anti-woke” didn’t like what Budweiser was doing is not precise.

The anti-woke reacted unconsciously to reassert cisnormativity and the status quo. — praxis

I don’t think it was unconscious what happened there, nor about any cultural/ideological status quo. That’s university-speak, or secular church speak. There are times and places for everything. Time for preaching and a time for… not-preaching. We all need to read our audience. Budweiser leadership was willing to overlook the average Bud consumer and his reasons for purchasing Bud, to basically ignore the obvious shock of their cultural/political/ideological lesson. Fine. If they think that is good business for Budweiser. Fine. Turns out it wasn’t. Was it unconscious disdain for their own consumer demographic by an enlightened and awoken upper leadership? Probably not that either - just a bad idea for an ad campaign. (Now a bad idea for a political campaign.).

I agree with this need to go deeper; I would only suggest that we have not drawn out and made explicit for consideration these “urges” (I would say taking them as “legitimate” would be to treat them as the concern of a serious, intelligible person; not just a feeling, or fleeting desire). The fact that they are “underlying” is because we have not yet made the effort to look past our own criteria and (perhaps also unexamined) interests to see theirs, treat them with the respect of being able to be different but equally able to be considered once understood. — Antony Nickles

I agree - racism, sexism, and many societal ills championed by the proponents of wokism are true ills. Those who want to utterly downplay and de-prioritize them (from the right) should not get away with it. But those who want to destroy perfectly good institutions because they aren’t improved enough for them (from the left) should not get away with it either.

Both sides of the issue are disrespectful and over-confident in their righteousness.

Take the heat and venom out, and look for the facts and the arguments - and most of all, show good-faith and assume good-faith in others first (until proven otherwise - sort of due process for a respectful disagreement).

I think most people fear giving the other side of the argument any points or even admitting their facts because in doing so, they will lose some perceived ground - so we all can’t simply be reasonable and go where the facts and arguments lead us. Instead we all have to frame and reframe the issues to keep control of the conversation and force our own conclusions. It’s all coercion first and we’ll sort out the facts later. (For many…not all.)

Like just above, @praxis had to make sure there was nothing productive and positive to learn about the Budweiser affair, because you can’t give deplorables like Kid Rock an inch or the slippery slope will take us all down. The reverse is true for me, I can’t assume there is nothing for me to reassess about Kid Rock and Bud drinkers whatsoever because they were unwilling to support a transgendered Bud representative.

There are legitimate points to be made from all different perspectives and directions. I risk sounding like a relativist saying this, but it’s true, and that is the point - we need to admit the truth both sides see between them. It’s not relativism to recognize diversity has value; but it is not equitable or inclusive to assume Kid Rock didn’t have a point about what Bud is supposed to be if you want the average Bud drinker to pay you for it.

The wishful thinking about wanting to remove disparities has been, and I think will continue to be, wholly destructive. People do different shit. Grow up. — AmadeusD

Yup.

Well, there was no "anti-woke crowd" before wokeness, and wokeness ironically created much of the sentiment that it claimed to oppose, such as racism. — Leontiskos

I agree with that. I don’t know how best to characterize the anti-woke. It’s like a tradition-first crowd. It’s not that they are pro-badness conducted in the past, but pro-the goodness that got us to the present.

Wokeness sees the dirty bath water and wants to throw out the dirty water while overlooking the baby.
Traditionalists want to preserve the baby, but overlook the dirty water and would rather keep it all.

Wokeness is worse, which is what I hope the current moment in history teaches us.

But the bath water is still dirty..

To be very concise, morality cannot be coerced, and this is what the woke movement seems to most misunderstand. — Leontiskos

These coercive and tyrannical tactics have largely backfired. The common people have rebuffed the woke attempt to forcibly shrink the Overton window and impose a highly idiosyncratic morality on the entire population. — Leontiskos

Yes. Although I think @AmadeusD was right to say we are somewhere in the middle of this struggle. Despite the current rebuke of wokeness, all kinds of tyranny still loom (either from the right, or from the boomerang when the right loses power again).

Meaning, the current rebuke against wokeness shows fairly well what NOT to do (I think), but the anti-woke crowds’ arguments in favor of what TO DO were the reason wokeness arose in the first place - so we are destined to continue further struggle.

If we are seeing the end of wokeness, without something truly new to replace it, we are likely (at least to many) simply back to a place that gave rise to wokeness. Where is the Hegelian synthesis?

We don’t know how to train ourselves to respect (and love) diversity while simultaneously building common ideals that call us all to change.

Wokeness told us that (except for white men) we are all good enough, and all should accept me and my truth. This led to a tyranny - a tyranny of the majority, a headless group-think bubble. But with this rebuked, the bubble burst, must we all think we are all the original sinners, almost hopeless without some leader to carry us to the promised land? Is a rebuke of the relativistic commune of DEI, an automatic promotion of the fascistic absolutism that begs for a king? Are those opposed to DEI really saying they need a Trump-type Hitler-type, Putin-type, Khomeni-type ideal maker, agenda setter, aspiration definer?

I think in a way, the right is more willing to follow a strong leader, but the more rational of these folks realize there is a smaller pool of such leaders to choose from. Nevertheless, wokeness will never cure anything.

Humility needs to be the overlap. That means white supremacists need to be taught to love black people, and lesbian Jews need to love white male patriarchs. Sorry folks. I must humbly accept and include and tolerate those who are just different than me, despite apparent failings and weaknesses, because ultimately, who am I with my own weaknesses to judge anyone else’s failures before my own?; and I must humbly accept that I can do better and must change myself first if I am to build and emulate a truly good ideal for me and for the community. I must seek help forming my ideal. So must we all.

And forgiveness before correction. Seeking mercy before justice.

So in humility, we all respect the others despite their shortcomings while accepting we ourselves are not good enough either, so we can help each other reach some new ideal together. And in humility, we find there is much to love about the differences as well, which we are slowly coming to learn in America (despite what the politicians build power saying, and what the media makes money selling.)

DEI helped some avoid the reality, which is, we all need to promote respect, and humility, and all need to resist identity politics and ideology over actual humanity. And ultimately we need to learn how to love. Respect, humility and love. Imagine trying to have a Chief People Officer teach those. Need a RHL initiative, that has nothing to do with business or the work place, but has to do with opening our mouths to talk to anyone ever.

We need humble leadership.

the body, as part of God’s creation, is redeemed alongside the soul, and that salvation pertains to the entire person, not merely their spirit. He criticized Gnostics who despised matter and the body.

However, as previously noted, by the third century, Origen and others began incorporating Platonic dualism, — Astorre

Interesting theological/philosophical topic.

Mind/body distinction does seem a naively practical way of talking about what a human being is. We need this basic concept to do anything physical that is hard, or seemingly impossible. And it helps us deal with death of a loved one. And it helps explain permanence (idealistic spirit and mind located law) versus change (body), both of which we seem to experience S phenomena.

I’m a Catholic. So theologically, the distinction between mind and body highlights where the important aspect of the human being exists - the mind, the soul, the heart - these are where love exist. But the heart itself overlaps with the passions and emotions, and these are of the body and of “strength”. These passions and strengths are physical, and human, and good as well.

In the end, I would argue that, Christ, in the resurrection, was affirming the goodness of body and a role for the body in human eternity. God has prepared a place for all of us, but this need not merely be metaphor. It is not Christian to despise the body; it is Christian to seize control of it, to master it, to tell the mountain to be thrown into the sea by faith. Death and suffering show how impossible this is without grace, but heaven and grace are not merely for the soul - they are for the whole person which is always individuated in some bodily form.

So the mind/body distinction is a helpful one for the understanding and for discussion, but it does not mean there are human souls that exist without bodies, or that the distinction between mind and body is so distinct that one can rationally deduce that a soul can live without a body. (Eternal life will be a miracle, a gift, not a function.)

To the extent angels or God have no body whatsoever, I don’t think we can conceive of this, and I am not sure God who is Holy Spirit equates to God has no body (it may just be that God’s body is not like our bodies - God’s body may be a word, the Word with him and is him himself - whatever that philosophically means).

I think it has been error to shrug off the body as if it is not necessary. It may be subject to death, and it may be a hindrance to true freedom and knowledge, but that does not mean eternal life and knowledge of truth can only happen without a body. I think when Paul and other saints were so ready for death they embraced it and even seemed to long for it, they were not judging the body as bad, but merely expressing their own limitation in receiving the grace they needed to be even closer to God. If instead of dying, God came to them and perfected their form, they would t have been disappointed. Instead of asking for that, they humbly accepted what God seemed to have planned for all of us and that is an initiation into eternity through birth, life and death on this earth.

What if there is no separate, disembodied soul existing apart from the person? What if the human body is not a cage, not a mortal and base vessel, but a valuable creation destined for glorification? What if humanity is valuable as such, in its inseparable wholeness of spirit, soul, and body, and its resurrection after death is the sole truth about the afterlife, offering hope for a complete existence in a transformed state? — Astorre

I wonder the same things…

I also think no distinction between mind/body jibes better with eastern philosophies. Even reincarnation seems at first to draw a sharp distinction, but it could all be reduced to “carnation” as much as “transmigration of the soul”. There is no life before carnation that is reincarnated. And the end of this process is as much purely spiritual as it could be purely physical - one with the One.

the most intuitive problem is that, generally, the 'woke' claim that morality is rational, but relative. If so, they have absolutely no place to make moral commands of others, even in their own culture. That is to say: one ought not throw stones once one denounces stone-throwing. — AmadeusD

I agree. The relativity that would support valuing diversity, undermines the absolutivity necessary to support equity. To be diverse, inequality must be valued; to be equal, uniformity (not diversity) must be valued.

Wokeness and political correctness have always been full of contradiction.

There are nuances and perspectival particulars that allow one to value both diversity and equity, but to make those arguments you have to defeat relativity. And you can’t value diversity and equality equally. “All things being equal” is an ideal, and a political criteria, not a physical condition. We have to fight all physics to uphold “equal due process” for instance. Diversity is a physical condition, that requires much more humility and respect to value - we can’t force the opinion that all diverse cultures are good and equal.

At root, it is the misunderstanding and misapplication of “equity” that seems to be the problem to me.

It is easy to to understand we should value diversity and inclusion of the diverse. It is hard to do this while recognizing there is an essential human nature that all humans equally must have (essence/ideal), and that equity is only something that comes to bear in relation to the government. All get one vote; all are equally subject to the law and constitution; “all” is adult irrespective of race - these are where equality as an ideal is fought for. There is no equal opportunity or equal productivity or equal pay - these are specific particular, diverse conditions that will never be equalized, and it is to the detriment of all of us to pretend otherwise.

we're still in the middle of all this — AmadeusD

Started around the year 1776 in America.
“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Life - equity - most natural of natural rights, same thing for all living people, most ideal, most absolute;
Liberty - diversity - the particular individual is now the ideal;
Pursuit of happiness - inclusion - all free living people are playing the same game and must play together;

That is all a stretch but yes, we are in the middle of some swell and wave called “what is woke” on the larger ocean of history.

If we didn't live in a causal world, there'd be nothing to experience, sense, or even think. It's so fundamentally important and yet so difficult to even define.

Mind blowing. — flannel jesus

Mind itself is just as difficult to define. And here we wondering about mind to mind causation.

How can we not say more after 3,000 years of trying?

Everything blowing…

I am kinda of the mind that they both suffer with the same underlying problem of how causation is framed. — I like sushi

That’s what I was saying.

So your OP caused the same mental ambiguity in me and J. Or is “cause” the wrong word?

wokeness is not purely ideological-it is affective. It is about the desire to feel seen, safe, included, or conversely, excluded. — Number2018

The ideological / affective distinction is really good to note.

Wokism turns legitimate individual rights concerns of safety, recognition and unjust exclusion, into transitory identity-based ideological fabrications less concerned with individuals than they are with groups and generalizations, and emotional effects.

wokeness is a transitory phenomenon? That given its affective character it will never be more than a bridge between more stable and rational cultural epochs? — Leontiskos

I agree with that. The legitimate concerns underlying the urges of woke political correctness will need to be addressed if any real cultural progress is to become of these urges, but the manner by which the proponents of wokeness have been trying to cause progress has allowed their passions and emotions to over-power rational assessments and discussions. Certain groups are not allowed to challenge other groups about anything, and certain other groups are not allowed to be challenged by anyone when it comes to their own group - this is rationally untenable and will not hold up in time (without a dictator and force, which never seem to hold up in time either).

The internet allows groups to build a solid bubble world that effectively shuns outsiders and creates a flourishing online community of like-minded people. But it’s more like-feeling people and less minded.

We all give group identity too much influence in our arguments and our thinking. Any one single individual has more reality and force to them than any notion of the group we might temporarily assign that individual too for sake of some argument. Individual people are always more than examples of some generalization. People who argue for and against rights for some newly defined group never seem to mind overlooking the particulars of individual human beings that would resist whatever identity political arguments so crassly limit people to.

There are no two conservatives or liberals or gay men or immigrants or Chinese people, alike. We all know this. We give up sound reasoning when we ignore this fact. We need to resist the urge to think individual people fit neatly into the boxes we create for them to make our arguments. Wokism seems to focus more on the boxes, the identities of groups, than it does the individual people in those boxes.

very detailed break down of the number of each gender (as chosen), race, ethnicity, sexual preference, and the percentage equity each had in the company. — Hanover

And it is self-defeating on at least two levels. First, it is incoherent to say that all people are equal (equity inclusion) and then say we need less of this race and more of that gender (diversity) - if all are equal, then it will not matter what race or gender or sexual preference sits and does not sit on the board and owns the company. Period. Second, the company that seeks DEI compliance will inevitably be faced with the decision - do I do what I see is best for the company and hire this particular best candidate, or do I do what is best for DEI goals and not hire the person I think is most competent? Ideal candidates can come from any DEI category, but on your particular list of candidates, the ideal may only be one of them and those DEI categories must be damned if thinking of what is best for the company. The appearance of diversity is shallow and will always be - and those people who look for the appearances first, having a shallow sense of what a good appearance looks like, will be led into bad business decisions over and over.

The anti-DEI pushback has been refreshing and feels like proper comeuppance honestly — Hanover

Prejudice and racism have always been wrong, wasteful of time, and bad for business. Political correction needed to happen to open markets up, but DEI, the new prejudice and racism, has always been doomed by its own incoherence and internal contradiction.

Through the medium of words (physical objects), is this post of yours “causally” linked to your mental state?

And for me, does my mental state cause me to frame my post with certain words, or cause certain words (physical characters) to be printed here?

So there is the question of whether the mental “causes” the physical at all.

But now your question would seem to be more specific: did you, through the physical medium of words, cause my mental state?

I think you can take my words as evidence of my mental state (I’m telling you what I am thinking). And then if you find that my words (evidence of my mental state) are rationally responsive to your post (my evidence of your mental state), then this rational relationship might be called causally related.

In other words (as more evidence of what I am thinking), from your mind, through your words, you communicated your mind to my mind, and now if you see a rational relationship to your mind in MY words, and you see my words as related to a mental state in me, you could see this rational relationship as causal.

You express your mind and I respond to your mind through my own expression and where we are connecting, we have mental to mental causality.

There is the whole “free speech” political debate. Can someone be held accountable for inciting others to riot? The law says yes, which seems to require that words can cause mental states in others (intentional rioting), so as long as the words were caused by the speaker’s mental state in the first place, we have mental to mental causality enforced by courts.

Perhaps causation should be more narrowly and technically construed to describe physical to physical contact. So is those post I Like Sushi’s words banging up against “Fire Ologists” words, or is it two minds banging up against each other through words? Words hitting words seems to have no meaning but metaphor - is mind hitting mind also metaphor? Maybe causation needs to be taken literally. I think if we did we would have to reeducate everyone because naively, people say other people make them think certain things.

How about lying. There is no physics to support me telling you about the spaceship that landed I my backyard yesterday, so if your mental state is believing a spaceship landed, your mental state could only be caused by my lie. Seems like mental to mental causation is a straightforward way to describe a lie.

I don’t have a unique opinion.

We need to be practical. Realistic.

There are guns.

Why would anyone want only one group to have them?

The only gun control that makes sense is to destroy every gun on the earth and never make them again.

I’d talk about that. I’d say that would be great. Also, that is impractical and will never happen.

So we’re back to, there are guns.

‘Cease from evil, learn to do good, and purify the mind.’ — Wayfarer

Cease from - means something was already going on that needs to cease.

Learn. To do. Good. - a life’s work.

Purify the mind.

Love it.

It does present Christians with an allusion to an inconsistent canon, but that inconsistency is not the thrust of the OP. — Leontiskos

So are you saying @Bob Ross basically has no skin in the OT/Biblical revelation game?

Bob has a conception of God.
This conception of God happens to be consistent with maybe the best parts of the NT. (Probably not all of the NT since the NT often upholds and seeks to support the OT.)

But separate and apart from that, in this OP, Bob is asking Christians and theologians, how they can reconcile a NT type conception of God with an OT type conception of God? How is a good God capable of doing what God is said to do in the OT?

The answer need make no reference to any actual scripture - it is a philosophical/theological question about goodness, Gods, and child killing.

(See, all along I thought Bob was a Christian - no wonder my posts meant so little and were off target.)

But @Bob Ross is that the gist?

The Catholic Church teaches that God Almighty came down from heaven to save us...
How does a person make sense of this? — frank

The Christian narrative is a response to a particular human narrative.

Christ is supposed to be God becoming a human being, and supposedly for the sake of human beings, who are all dying by our own hands.

So if we are to interpret the reasonableness of Christ’s response to the human condition (crosses and sacrifices for redemption, and death for eternal life, etc), don’t we need to form some understanding on the narrative describing the human condition, and whether that narrative is reasonable first?

In plain language, do you assume people, much like other animals, are just making their way the best they can in the universe, naturally doing whatever people have evolved to do? Or do you assume people, unlike the other animals, have some ability to work against their own survival interests, capable of “sinning” against each other selfishly to the detriment of themselves individually and to the detriment of the species, doing what is unnatural?

What is your starting point as a person, assumed or at least hypothesized, before you ask what is the deal with Christ and the “bizarre” Christian narrative?

Seems to me Christ will never make sense if you think human beings already make evolutionary sense, on some gradient scale with the other animals, all of them also already making sense.

OR, if you think human beings do not make sense, that we do absurd things to ourselves and our brothers, you might say the Christian narrative, although nonsense metaphysically, serves as a sort of psychological distraction; so although it may be internally incoherent, it is just the opiate the doctor ordered for the absurd patient that is mankind. So this doesn’t answer your question about the absurdity of the narrative, but explains why it has worked for 2000 years - man is nuts and only a nutty God story will suffice to build room in his mind for “hope” we could be better.

But this avoids your central question - how does a rational Christian make sense of the Christian narrative? Some of us are no longer affected by opiates.

My response there is, the best way to start to do so, might be to first make sense of a human narrative - understand who God is dealing with - and only then can we reason our way through a narrative of how Christ is said to have engaged with such a being as a person.

So, in the words of Pete Townsend, who are you?

If you are another innocent creature, Christ will never make sense.

looking at an artwork "properly" means looking at an artwork as it was intended by the artist — RussellA

I think that is right in the sense that, in order to see what the artist is showing, it often helps to know what the artist intended to show.

But I would add that there are works of art that declare much in themselves, demanding the viewer react - music can do this. Dance can do this. A poem can do this. But any type of art can require more instruction to orient the viewer and deepen the experience with the artwork.

even setting aside "wrath," to say the primary goal is: "to save us from himself," makes it seem like the problem of sin is entirely extrinsic. That is, it suggests that the entire problem with sin is that it has made God mad, not that it is inherently bad and bad for man. This would imply that if God simply chose not to "have a cow" over sin, there would be no issue at all. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Agree. If someone understand sin only from the outside, as an infraction about which some external judge imposes a sentence, they will not understand our blameworthiness for the crucifixion, and they will not recognize God’s mercy despite this blameworthiness, nor forgiveness despite blameworthiness, and ultimately love, redemption and eternal life. Viewing the Bible’s God from the outside, they see wrath in the one who accuses and judges the sinful - sin only leads to hateful judgement, wrath, and punishment and death. They don’t see death as a natural consequence, self-inflicted though warned against, but at best they would see death as a punishment extrinsically imposed. Undeserved if not overly dramatic. And they cannot see the sacrifice of a truly innocent one as a triumph over all weakness and vanity. The crucifixion seems vain itself.

Because they instead see innocence as our true baseline condition and one that need never change or is in any need of redemption, (as if we are all just children - boys will be boys and if God created boys then what did he expect), then why would God blame us for anything we boys do? Now some sort of extrinsic theatre like the crucifixion has no impact on such a basically blameless creature, leaving only the impression of its absurdity and bizarreness without logic. They do not see that we are all the crucifiers, and responsible for sin and therefore all of its effects, and do not see that, without God’s help, the consequences are fixed and permanent. It simply cannot make sense to make sinners out of innocent children as if “sinners” is just a label and not a condition.

I don’t blame people for not getting it - but I do blame them for making fools of their brothers who try to answer their insulting “questions”.

True.

I was imagining being in the whole room with the blue wall. The blue wall is not just a blue wall (or maybe not even a wall) - it is in a corner, highlighted, because the other wall is not blue. It could have been displayed otherwise, but was not.

I am sure a case could be made that I am not looking at things properly. And a case could be made that there is no such thing as looking at these things properly. And a case could be made that I was looking at things properly, (no matter what I said I saw, or because of what I said I saw, namely, a sculpture with a blue wall).

Is that maybe a sculpture about a painting? Since it incorporates the room space to complete its portrayal?

I haven’t responded in a while because I’m trying to shorten this. It seems impossible to make this simple and make it satisfactory.

1. I think it is contradictory to think of God as all good, Jesus as God the Son, and that the God of the Israelites in the OT was not one and the same all good God whom Jesus loved as his Father, and taught us to love as our Father. Jesus spoke of his Father, and Jesus spoke of fulfilling the promises made to Abraham fortold by all of the prophets and worshiped by David and the judges.

God is certainly all good, so the task is to answer how are the things God told Saul to do something an all good God would tell us to do? The task is not to weed out all of the lies and misrepresentations in the Bible. That would contradict what Jesus did, what Jesus died for.

We can reject all of Bible, but we can’t logically accept only the NT and say we are literally doing what God, in the New or the Old testaments. tells us to do.

So I think your whole approach, thinking the depictions in the OT are not God, is doomed to fail and will blind you to any real answer.

You need to trust there is an answer.

2. Who is innocent, of what are they innocent? My interpretation of the law against killing is that it is a sin to commit unlawful, unjustified killing of another person. It is NOT that we can never kill innocent people, but we can kill evil people.

So you need to stop looking for innocent people and guilty people to find who it is justified to kill and who isn’t justifiable to kill.

The law against killing is a law I am to follow regardless of the guilt or innocence of the other person. The question when I am faced with the choice of whether to kill another person is not “do they deserve it?” The question is “am I justified before God in killing that person.” Am I justified before my fellow man and the dead person when I kill them?

So if a person just killed your son on your front lawn and was now breaking down your front door while screaming “I’m going to kill you all!” And you take your shotgun and kill them, can you justify the killing of this person? Sounds like self defense. But what if you and your son just murdered 20 people. Was it still unjust for someone to kill your son and break down your door to kill you? Or let’s say you and your son did nothing wrong, so you killed the maniac in self-defense. Should the maniac take any responsibility for his own death?

And if you are a bomber during war and your bombs kill the enemy’s bomb factory, and bridges and military installations, and some families and children, and hospitals, and some gun factories and tank factories, and some elderly and sick people - will you be justified before God and the enemy?

The answer to your question is not about the innocence of the children - it is always and only about whether God will find your actions justifiable. Or is always about who looks to God to justify their actions and who does not.

According to you, Bob, you know the guilt or innocence of others without God, by your own reason. You know children are innocent, you know killing the innocent is always only wrong, and you know the OT story describes God as killing innocent souls. And from all of these you conclude that either God does evil, or the OT is lying when it talks about God, so therefore the NT is lying when it talks about the OT.

That makes a mess of logic and of faith.

But I would say we should never judge the guilt or innocence of other souls (just our own - we can judge other’s actions, make laws, put people in jail, etc, but not condemn them to hell for sin), killing other people can be justified regardless of innocence or guilt, God never once ordered the death of an innocent soul, God does not do evil and Jesus taught us to love the God of the OT.

Basically, killing kids is terrible nasty business, but not per se evil. If you know God’s will but do not follow it (by omission) or resist it (by commission), that is per se evil. I feel it is easier to find all people deserve to be slaughtered for their sins then it is to see some people are innocent. It’s not that babies are innocent, it’s that they are lovable and can be saved. But do you know what God did with the souls of the Amalekite children? If you believe Jesus was God, what do you think Jesus did for the Amalekite children?

One of the lessons of Saul story is that, if we would just listen to God, we can let God work out what is just and good and evil because by always listening to God, we are always good and justified. We have the ability to judge good and evil for sake of judging our selves and so that we can face God honestly and knowingly like men - not for the sake of judging others, and certainly not for judging God.

Maybe all the silent theists and believers, patiently being silent should now come forward and make their presence felt. Otherwise the casual observer might conclude that philosophy has won the debate that the issue of God and divinity in the world we find ourselves in has been put to bed. When in reality, they’ve just been told to be quiet. — Punshhh

It’s hard to have a discussion with a rock.

Especially when the rock carries a slogan on it like:
“Argument is irrelevant”
“Belief is irrational”

Further, the non-theists don’t mind being the ones to characterize what theism is, and then waiting for the theists to answer their questions about their characterization.

Frank and others already seem to understand all there is to understand about Catholicism, and therefore, their conclusion of bizarre absurdity is not really the issue. The issue is how could someone who claims to be rational actually follow such bizarre absurdity.

That is a recipe for a non-conversation. A sparring match here in the coliseum.

is my question: is it more that a bizarre narrative — frank

the lack of logic in the core Christian doctrine — frank

attempts to express that truth result in a convoluted story. — frank

How does a story that makes no sense survive that long? — frank

at best, the story is horrifying, at worst, it just makes zero sense.

What myth is even close to that bizarre? — frank

original sin (which was basically a matter of eating fruit — frank

the core message of Jesus, — frank

The message of Jesus.

Let’s say you don’t speak or write Chinese but you have a question about something written in Chinese. Do you think you will get anywhere stepping into room of non-Chinese speakers and asking them their opinions? Or then going into a room with some Chinese and English speakers and saying “having no alphabet makes no sense and using characters can’t be a precise way of communicating - the Chinese language is bizarre and can’t be logical - but tell me, how do you speak Chinese anyway?”

That’s what you are doing here. Are you looking for any actual information or just a sense of confirmation for your bias?

The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. — Thomas Nagel

how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all. — Thomas Nagel

since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood — Thomas Nagel

So there is something intangible, or non-physical, about the contents of conscious experience, and it is within this intangible something, that purpose exists. Does that jibe?

The exclusion of purpose was never, and in fact could never be, empirically demonstrated; it was simply excluded as a factor in the kind of explanations physics was intended to provide. Meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy and control in specific conditions. — Wayfarer

I don’t quite follow how meaning was left behind for the sake of predictive accuracy. Are you saying, scientists saw no need to wonder what the bat (for instance) is subjectively experiencing when they could make predictive models about bat behaviors that need not include any such considerations?

the assertion that because physics finds no purpose, the universe therefore has none. This is not science speaking, but metaphysics ventriloquizing through the authority of science. It is a philosophical sleight of hand that confuses methodological silence for ontological negation. — Wayfarer

Although I like the metaphor bolded above, to be sure I follow, could it be restated as: the finding of no purpose in the universe is not something a physical scientist can say, but only something a metaphysician can say, despite the fact that many physicists play metaphysician and say it as if it is physics. Is that the dryer meaning of the bolded?

The question of whether life, the universe, and everything is in any sense meaningful or purposeful is one that entertains many minds in our day. — Wayfarer

It will as long as there are new minds that come to be. Give a mind long enough time (in the modern academy) and maybe purpose can be weeded out of the conversation (straining incredulity). But there is no therapy for questions of meaning, for the mind’s ability to consider itself. There are only answers, or opiates/lies/distractions - like a ventriloquist distracts.

How does a person who hasn't had a lobotomy make sense of this? — frank

How does a person who expects a respectful exchange of information ask a question like this?

How does a person who has survived life beyond childhood think the explanation for all of human history would simply make sense?

We can’t agree if the cat is really on the mat or not. Do you think it will be easy to explain what God is on the cross or not?

Don’t you already know the answer? Lobotomies are fairly easy to obtain. Good explanation. Why are you checking your math?

No one brought themselves into existence. Our lives are a gift. We each take this gift and demand more than we even care to give back, and steal more, and murder and lie about it. Instead of crushing us out root and stem, God marked us down as incurring a debt. Then God paid the debt for us.

Make of this second chance what you will. That’s the story. All makes perfect sense to me.

allowing Himself to be tortured to death. And apparently this strategy worked in spite of the fact that he didn't actually die — frank

You could do the autopsy 20 feet away from the body. The cause of death had something to do with all the blood loss from the beating and whipping and spikes and spear in the gut. There was a burial. As far as walking around afterwards, that’s up to you to trust, but you would need a lobotomy to say he wasn’t dead.