Longest Thread Ever

[Red]

Neither proof nor disproof, just an aside for @babe....

@babe, I loved studying the early centuries of the Christian faith. I was particularly interested in the Gnostic Christian sects, in part because I had been attracted to the mystery cults of the classical world, I just resonated with mystical traditions, the notion of being an initiate in the perennial wisdom, the wisdom tradition at the heart of mankind's major religions. Of the gospels, that of John is closest in spirit to the Gnostic sects stamped out by the Church of Rome. John resonated the most with me, and, in truth, I felt I had to have been an initiate in some earlier existence. And any of the writings that failed to make it into the canon fascinated me. I knew the central myths of the Christian faith could be seen clearly echoed in Mithras, and Osiris, and in some respects it shook the faith I had been raised in, as most any venture into the early history of the faith, and the currents of the ancient world that fed into it, is almost certain to do.

But, enough preface. I could go on all day and night. I want instead to introduce you, though you are likely familiar, with the notion that there was an earlier so-called "sayings gospel" before there were any gospels written down. In other words, far more likely that the teachings of Jesus would have been passed down as a collection of sayings prior to codification as a narrative gospel. One heretical text that may reflect this earlier tradition was discovered at Nag Hammadi, and we know it as the Gospel of Thomas. It is familiar in part, unfamiliar in other parts, and fascinating to read if one is willing to entertain the possibility it contains sayings of Jesus not contained in the cannon.

One I always liked:

77. Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me all came forth, and to me all attained.

Split a piece of wood; I am there.

Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

The Gospel of Thomas. Several translations available. Easy enough to read; understanding is another thing altogether. P.S. I also highly recommend The Hymn of the Pearl, also found in this Thomas Tradition collection:

http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_thomas.htm

And then there is the so-called Lost Gospel of Q, a scholarly reconstruction proposed as the original written sayings of Jesus circulated before the earliest narrative style gospel:

https://wmthost.com/ndeinfo/ndeinfo/The Lost Gospel of Q.pdf

 

[One Brow]

Surely, if there is no God, there is still a need for God. That need resides in our innate drive for positive assertions to base action on....

I don't need God/gods/a god to find positive assertions on which to base my actions.

I assert that our government should not be in the business of enforcing human belief.....

Well, except for those you agree with, like not murdering other humans.

 

[ONE LOVE]

Surely, if there is no God, there is still a need for God. That need resides in our innate drive for positive assertions to base action on....

Hmm.. I'm not sure that's true. Buddhism doesn't have a 'God' per se and there are millions who are Buddhists and are doing positive things based off of the teachings.

To take it a step further, I'm sure there are plenty of atheists who are doing positive things based on what they believe in their heart is 'the right thing' to do.

In NZ for example I think only something like less than 20% goes to church, but we seem to be doing alright as a country. It's pretty much one of the most peaceful and least corrupted country on earth.

 

[One Brow]

I concede the exceptions that prove the rule. Not many OBs generally operating on logic.

Logic is a tool for taking basic principles and extrapolating from them, but it can't be used to choose basic principles (outside of trying to reduce contradictions from the choices). Logic does not have values.

A note of caution, however..... you may not realize just how powerful that need is in you, or the myriad of ways it may be operating on you.

Humans have an immense capacity for self-deception, and for seeing things in other people that are not there.

Far more alarming to me are those excitable enthusiasts for progressivism who can gun down congressmen playing baseball or senators cleaning their yards.

You don't get alarmed by the excitable conservatives that gun down children in schools? I find both groups worthy of fear.

 

[One Brow]

I have never heard of a single case of a political conservative ... ever going into a school to gun down the kids.

Nicholas Cruz sprang to mind immediately. There's the pizza-gate shooter (though technically not a school).

Almost every case I've heard of, for what little information I have, does have psychotropic drugs, psychiatrist pre-scribed for existing issues.

It's true that mentally healthy people, regardless of political affiliation, seldom feel the need to shoot up schools/senators/abortion providers/people at home/people who make pizza.

Shooters come from all over the political spectrum, and I would not wager on left or right being more dominant. That's why I said you shouldn't worry only about progressives.

 

[One Brow]

OB, I'm not convinced Cruz could rightly be classed anything politically.

The MAGA hat and associations to white supremecists don't mean anything, but you believe in the supreme poser of British bankers?

OK.

 

[One Brow]

What possible reason could any authority or law enforcement person have for not taking action in the Cruz case, on any of the information we know they received.

Because they get information on kids like Cruz dozens of times a year, and most of the time nothing happens.

Clearly, we know enough to realize he was not a credible believer in anything, just an irrational and deranged person.

You decide to portray shooters with leftist beliefs as true leftists, while those with rightist beliefs as not credible believers, just irrational and deranged. Good for you, but it's not a serious response to the issue of violence.

Thus, the effort to link mentally impaired persons to the credibility of any political agenda is pretty much just a smear attempt. You should be ashamed of doing that.

"Far more alarming to me are those excitable enthusiasts for progressivism who can gun down congressmen playing baseball or senators cleaning their yards."

Sound familiar? My response:

"I find both groups worthy of fear."

So, to be clear, *you* linked the mental impairment to the credibility of "progressivism", I pointed out that it affects both sides of the aisle. I would ask if you feel ashamed for the conduct you declare is shameful, but I already know you don't.

You and others discredit yourselves by not distancing yourselves and your values/causes, and positively rejecting people like Bill Ayers.

You and others discredit yourselves by not distancing yourselves and your values/causes, and positively rejecting people like Nathan Bedford Forrest.

Sounds pretty stupid, doesn't it?

And, OB, nobody on this planet with any sense could possibly believe Britain does not have people of influence with interests in what we do. Any commercial interest, not just "bankers". All kinds of political interests as well.

That's true for pretty much every country in the world, regarding every other country in the world.

 

[One Brow]

..., as well as some extremists or revolutionaries of any political strip.

Agreed, any political variation.

We do have some "political" violence that appears to be rational in the professed cause....terrorism.

Not to mention anti-terrorism efforts, as well, although both are more cases of rationalizing violence than rational violence. If anything, anti-terrorism violence is more rational than terrorism violence, but that's like saying hail is drier than rain.

 

[Siro]

@Siro re Nietzsche.....

The theme I was attempting to attribute to Nietzsche as "Might makes Right" would be the "Will to Power". Looking up a few quotes...…

Anything which] is a living and not a dying body... will have to be an incarnate will to power, it will strive to grow, spread, seize, become predominant - not from any morality or immorality but because it is living and because life simply is will to power... 'Exploitation'... belongs to the essence of what lives, as a basic organic function; it is a consequence of the will to power, which is after all the will to life.


from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, s.259, Walter Kaufmann transl.

A lot of Nietzche's philosophy came as response to German pessimist philosopher Schopenhauer and his idea of "will to live". To Schopenhauer, the will to live is the driving force of all human behavior, and all human hopes and desires are irrelevant and futile in this Darwinian world of survival. Nietzche counters that human hopes and desires are all that matters, and that the driving force behind human existence is their will to power. He believed that all humans have the urge to excel over others and be more powerful. The best of men, the ubermensch, are those who embrace this most innate desire and forge a path to greatness for themselves. It is important to note that Nietzche was a great admirer of the pre-Socratic Greeks and the Romans, for their aesthetics and view on life. He was consequently hostile to Christian egalitarianism as counter-productive peasant mentality that keeps everyone down.

I'm late to a hair cut appointment, but this is a fun discussion to have.

 

[Siro]

Nietzsche is probably the most well known and most quoted modern philosopher. And yet, very few actually understand what he's about. I want to discuss a couple of common misconcenptions.

1. Nietzsche was a racist who provided the philosophical framework for the Third Reich.

********. There's nothing in Nietzsche's writing to support that. He even openly attacked anti-Semites on a couple of occasions. His sister and brother in law, however, were part of the budding white nationalist movement in Germany in the late 19th. She published some annotated and edited books by her brother posthumously (like The Will to Power), which are best ignored. During Nietzsche's life time, he had a restraining order against the couple. That said, the Nazis were obviously influenced by Nietzche's ideas about reaching for greatness. That's why they took on Roman iconography and styling. **** the dumbass Nazis tho. Nietzsche's work is top notch. p.s. There's a nice alternate history novel called Fatherland that focuses on the Nazis' obsession with grandeur. Really fun book.

2. Nietzsche was a nihilist/cultural relativist who believed morals are meaningless.

Nietzsche was a cultural relativist in the sense that he thought morals stem from the historical circumstances of a culture. Which is obviously true. He was not a cultural relativist in the sense that he thought morals were culture-specific and beyond external critique. Nietzsche did reject objective authority as a legitimate source of morality (God or Reason). He thought that we should experiment with different lifestyles and ideological paradigms to find out what works for us. He dismissed the idea that people would be any more cruel or malicious without a moral system imposed on them. By the way, Nietzsche was a very kind and gentle individual. He once thew himself at a horse that was being beaten in order to shield it.

3. Nietzsche believed that you're either a master or a slave.

Nietzsche described the origin of morality, at least in the West, as follows: back in the earlier days of civilization, a few people had all the power, and everyone else was a slave (technically or practically). Those few powerful then created a system of morality that elevated their characteristics. Wealth, possessions, comfort, pride, etc became good. That was the masters' morality. Then the Judaic offshoots took hold, and the slaves overthrew the masters. They took the master's morality and subverted it. What was once good now became bad. And the characteristics of the slaves were elevated. Sacrifice and sharing became good. Then civilization grew and developed, and the people's situation started getting better, but they never let go of their slave morality. He did not think we should go back to master morality. That's as antiquated as slave morality. We should find our own path, that fits our current circumstance.

 

[Gameface]

Nietzsche is probably the most well known and most quoted modern philosopher. And yet, very few actually understand what he's about. I want to discuss a couple of common misconcenptions.

1. Nietzsche was a racist who provided the philosophical framework for the Third Reich.

********. There's nothing in Nietzsche's writing to support that. He even openly attacked anti-Semites on a couple of occasions. His sister and brother in law, however, were part of the budding white nationalist movement in Germany in the late 19th. She published some annotated and edited books by her brother posthumously (like The Will to Power), which are best ignored. During Nietzsche's life time, he had a restraining order against the couple. That said, the Nazis were obviously influenced by Nietzche's ideas about reaching for greatness. That's why they took on Roman iconography and styling. **** the dumbass Nazis tho. Nietzsche's work is top notch. p.s. There's a nice alternate history novel called Fatherland that focuses on the Nazis' obsession with grandeur. Really fun book.

2. Nietzsche was a nihilist/cultural relativist who believed morals are meaningless.

Nietzsche was a cultural relativist in the sense that he thought morals stem from the historical circumstances of a culture. Which is obviously true. He was not a cultural relativist in the sense that he thought morals were culture-specific and beyond external critique. Nietzsche did reject objective authority as a legitimate source of morality (God or Reason). He thought that we should experiment with different lifestyles and ideological paradigms to find out what works for us. He dismissed the idea that people would be any more cruel or malicious without a moral system imposed on them. By the way, Nietzsche was a very kind and gentle individual. He once thew himself at a horse that was being beaten in order to shield it.

3. Nietzsche believed that you're either a master or a slave.

Nietzsche described the origin of morality, at least in the West, as follows: back in the earlier days of civilization, a few people had all the power, and everyone else was a slave (technically or practically). Those few powerful then created a system of morality that elevated their characteristics. Wealth, possessions, comfort, pride, etc became good. That was the masters' morality. Then the Judaic offshoots took hold, and the slaves overthrew the masters. They took the master's morality and subverted it. What was once good now became bad. And the characteristics of the slaves were elevated. Sacrifice and sharing became good. Then civilization grew and developed, and the people's situation started getting better, but they never let go of their slave morality. He did not think we should go back to master morality. That's as antiquated as slave morality. We should find our own path, that fits our current circumstance.

I don't follow this thread, but I am interested in this line of discussion.

Thanks, Siro!

 

[♪alt13]

A genealogy of morals is probably the greatest work I have ever read.

I would think that Orwell must have been very familiar with Nietzche in order to write 1984. The whole New Dictionary thing seems to me to take FN's insight about language/meaning and imagine it mechanized for the benefit of the state to the extreme.

 

[One Brow]

Nietzsche is probably the most well known and most quoted modern philosopher. And yet, very few actually understand what he's about. I want to discuss a couple of common misconcenptions.

Have you read the blog Camels with Hammers? Fincke is a big Nietzsche fan, and I think he has been trying to meld that with Aristotle's hylomorphism.

It's deeper than I usually wade.

 

[Siro]

Have you read the blog Camels with Hammers? Fincke is a big Nietzsche fan, and I think he has been trying to meld that with Aristotle's hylomorphism.

It's deeper than I usually wade.

No, but it looks really interesting. Bookmarked, thanks.

 

[Siro]

There's something that bugs me about the way liberals approach social subjects. They often take on a tone of "these are facts and if you don't acquiesce then you're a bad person". I guess that's because these are issues that touch people's lives directly, and thus people are prone to get emotional about them. But that's not how science works. Specially not a soft science like sociology, where the data can be interpreted in a plethora of ways, within the vast context of human social existence. There are many theories about the history and nature of society's problems, and even more about possible solutions. Just because a set of ideas are en vogue in academia doesn't make them unquestionable, and it doesn't make those questioning them necessarily ignorant or stupid.

There will come a time when people will look at us and mockingly say "that's what they believed?!", while being totally sure of THEIR version of reality.

I think we should show some humility.

 

[One Brow]

"these are facts and if you don't acquiesce then you're a bad person"

For me, its "these are the experiences that people endure and if you don't stop participating then you're helping make the world a worse place for them".

 

[Siro]

For me, its "these are the experiences that people endure and if you don't stop participating then you're helping make the world a worse place for them".

People's experiences differ. You're referring to statistic on people's experiences. Additionally, people's perceptions are filtered through cultural norms and the ideological landscape.

 

[One Brow]

People's experiences differ. You're referring to statistic on people's experiences. Additionally, people's perceptions are filtered through cultural norms and the ideological landscape.

People's experiences differ, but there are commonalities to them as well. Ignoring the commonalities to emphasize the differences does not lead to truth.

 

[Getting Traded]

I hadn't thought about Crime and Punishment in a long time, but it made me reflect about the time I read it, and I also was reading Nietzsche then. I seem to recall that Dostoevsky was influenced by Nietzsche and that Raskolnikov sought redemption by confessing to the murder, elevating him to being like God. Nietzsche did say God is man; man is God, that we elevate ourselves by using our free will and taking responsibility for our actions. Yes, Nietzsche was an atheist, an existentialist but believed we create our own meaning and morality in our lives, and that's what led Raskolnikov to confess.

 

[Jazzta]

I really need to read some more, I have forgotten a lot..... but this is definitely an informed view by a person who has read Crime and Punishment and some Nietzche.

I remember debating this Man-God/God-Man topic in class. Probably only Mormons would really be able to put it in a scriptural perspective. Most Christians see God as an Absolute sovereign who can do magic. Mormons humanized God in saying God is of our species, having transcended a mortal world experience like our own..... while at the same time deifying Man in potential by saying we can become like God is..... by following true principles.

When anti-Mormons condemned Mormons saying they would all go to Hell, Brigham Young said so what.... "When we get there we'll run the Devil out and irrigate the place, and make it a garden.

I have theorized that early philosophers like Hegel must have listened to Mormon missionaries on some corner soap box talking about the United Order and Zion in the American wilderness. Well, the Puritans were Christian collectivists, as were the early persecuted Christians who had to take care of one another somehow, digging tunnels under Rome where they be safe and such....

I have theorized that the whole Progressive movement is a plan derived from Mormon society with emphasis on collective economics and ideological conformity in the community. A sort of political plan to turn the devil outta the earth and make it a pristine wilderness if not a garden...… unfortunately, in some people's heads, there is little room in utopia for the humans..... lol.

all in all, Mormons are probably of all religions the most inclined to central planning and authoritarian top-down community. There is some grist here for understanding a Mitt Romney.....

Nietzche could also be claimed by some self-reliant non-ideological off-the-grid Americans as well...… he clearly saw the primal instinct for self-preservation or right to life as a fundamental necessary value...…. yah.... the progressives with all their managers might not like everything he said.

Mormons might see those folks as antisocial or unrepentant selfish sinners for their refusal to be rounded up and branded by authorities, just as Hillary calls them "deplorables", but I think we will always need some kind of frontier where we can go to start life anew on our own terms.

Who want's to plan a moon colony? I'm working on extreme water conservation methods and efficient reduction of CO2 back to C and O2.

Not too sure whether we will have to drive the devil out, or just some space based operatives from the Pleiades.

Don’t you know that the Earth is flat and that the moon is an illusion because we live under a dome?