I don't want to imply anything unusual about Prof Tim. In fact, the idea
that I was putting forward is that he is *very* normal. AND, when I use
words like pagan...I am opening myself up for criticism from people who
honor that word as it applies to their own spirituality. Sorry.
About The Bible's stories. I like to make comparisons between the works of
ancient prophets and modern-day teachings. I have noticed that many
so-called "sins" have modern psychological names. "Idolatry" as it was used
in the story of Moses and the 10 commandments (where the *individual* was
chosen to understand things--is more enlightened--while the group remained
in the average passing around those things which they revered and humbling
themself before their more average neighbors for promise of reward) reminds
me of the borderline personality where something is idolized and then
destroyed...they both create a lack of individual accountability (in the
biblical account this leads to the need for someone else to think for them,
to give them rules).
I have made a life out of not allowing anything the group looks up to to
influence my decisions (with varying degrees of success). By comparison,
even the most righteous social citizen (concerned about looks, or prestige,
or money, or responsibility, or family, or friends...) seems to me to be a
sell-out (idolater, borderline): They make compromises with their intellect
very subtly changing thoughts which might cause them to loose those things
which they look-up to. Only in the most abstract philosophical discussions
do these compromises appear to be so blatant (to an individualist)...simple
statements like "there are two ways of looking at something (mine and my
bosses's...mine and my significant other's)" tell my trained eye that there
is some fine-tuning that could be done (in my field of expertise...not
withstanding whatever social fine-tuning I need or other areas that I don't
see).
Anyway, I wanted to say that Idolatry looks like borderline, I think I'm
Moses, and...I said this view was "objective", I mean it is "pragmatic".
Any comments on idolatry, individuality, pragmatism?
Brett
At 05:46 PM 9/21/97 -0700, you wrote:
>On Sun, 21 Sep 1997, Brett Lane Robertson wrote:
>> Prof. Tim,
>> I didn't mean this post (below) as a flame. I really do mean the words that
>> I have written in an objective sense. There is a social phenomenon whereby
>> a person denies themself, projects themself onto someone else, destroys the
>> other, internalizes the results and ends up being without self. After this
>> phenomenon, there is no internal basis for "truth" (which assumes that a
>> child born into a world of truth is an example of that truth--knows THE
>> truth--until, or unless, that child denies himself in order to worship the
>> external appearance of truth). The Bible talks about this phenomenon as
>> being without a soul (having the form of goodness [truth] but denying the
>> goodness thereof...[what good is it] if you gain the world and lose your
>> soul...the mark of Cain, the many-headed beast, etc.). I am not trying to
>> say that because the Bible says it it must be true (and I seldom quote
>> someone else and/or appeal to authority). I am saying that there seems to
>> be a pagan (peasant--democratic) class who thinks that they can vote on
>> truth and that I did not invent the idea.
>> These "pagan", "soulless" people are "dead" in the sense that they no longer
>> have a self which has maintained enough consistency from birth to continue
>> to formulate understandings and modify themself accordingly until they are a
>> living example of truth and can discern it from an internal (ontological)
>> perspective. They have "sold out" to a "social illusion" in that the
>> external resemblance of truth (without a unified perspective to discern it)
>> is all they have to form ties to their "first love" (another Biblical
>> reference, I am sorry, as in "this I have against you...that you have
>> forgotten your first love"--self?).
>> I am not completely of the opinion that this position is hopeless...only
>> that it denies essence, being, existence, truth, meaning, purpose, reason,
>> cause, and effect. To then find these things based on a social metaphysic
>> of "it's true if two out of three doctors recommend it" seems a shame ("more
>> than I can bear...am I my brother's keeper"). After buying into whatever
>> someone else is selling and selling out to whatever anyone else is
>> buying...it does not surprise me to hear people say that "there is more than
>> one way to look at something" and/or "everything is a dependent
>> arising"...but the underlying disorder is a "borderline" lack of consistent
>> "self".
>> Brett
>[Point One skipped upon thinking better of it]
>Point Two: When you're faced only with arguments on a screen, you're on
>better grounds characterizing the arguments than the person behind them,
>about whom you know little.
>Point Three: Our Professor seems to me to be fairly well established as
>a coherent self (in my judgement as a fellow human being who's spent many
>hours with him in person by now), and not to have any particular
>difficulty telling reality from fantasy or groupthink as necessary for
>daily life. Of course, since I agree with him that there are multiple
>useful views of the same situation possible, I am probably just as deluded
>and my perceptions don't count for much.
>Point Three: Looks like it's high time for my precis of _The Mind of the
>Bible-Believer_, with descriptions of the Biblical Mind Control Devices.
>I'm still a hundred or so dense pages from the end, but I'll give it a go
>as soon as I can.
>Eva,
>soulful pagan,
>going back to reading the book, which is what she was doing before she
>logged on.
Returning,
rBERTS%n
Rabble Sonnet Retort
"The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated
ambiguity that would be clearly understood."
Alexander Haig