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shawn
Most everyone else seems to read my stuff and see what I am trying to say. Somehow you do not. I sitll say this is due to a blindness in your nature that comes from your beleifs. If I saw other having as hard a time as you do, I might think differently. No one else read that I believed in God or demons by what I had said, only you. I must therefore figure that our communications problem comes from your side. Either you just can not understand what I am saying for some reason, or you just do not not want to.
posted by
kooka_lives
on May 23, 2004 at 7:41 AM
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Kooka
I can tell from reading this comment of yours that even though we are both exerting a great deal of effort in trying to communicate, we are somehow doing a very poor job of it. That saddens me. It also saddens me that your perception of me is so incorrect. I do not think that I am better than you. I am certain that you are correct when you say that I have some flaws. There must be some way that we could do better than 10% of successful communication.
posted by
telemachus
on May 22, 2004 at 11:55 PM
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shawn
I find it very interesting that just about everything you just said about me I can say about you. Just the fact that you do have the high and mighty idea that you are better than me (And yes, that is what you are saying be making such comments as this last one.) when in truth all flaws you seem to point out in me are obviously there in you.
You n ever get my points and most likely never will. I would say that about 90% of what I say you take 100% wrong and somehow read it all to say whatever t is you seem to want it to say. You will never admit this because you are too high and mighty for a mere mortal such as myself to be able to point this out to.
Trust me here, I am not the one who has the 'perception that (my) intellect exceeds the realm of (other's) understanding'. For one thing at no point am I saying you are stupid to not understand what I am trying to say. You just are blind and have some serious problems with perception. You do not wish to see fact and logic, but would rather see the world the way you wish to see it. It more of a self inflicted ignorance rather than anything to do with how intelligent you are.
posted by
kooka_lives
on May 22, 2004 at 3:38 PM
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Kooka
I do not miss the point of everything you say. Your perception that your intellect exceeds the realm of our understanding is incorrect. I do comment on the portions of your post that I want to, but that is my prerogative. I can also choose to respond to your insults positively, as I have in the past without falling prey to your desire to garner clicks by insulting bloggers. I still think that you do not fully understand my position on the “gray” area and so I have entered another post to "Spiritual Medicine" concerning this subject matter. I hope that you will read it and let me have your constructive comments.
posted by
telemachus
on May 22, 2004 at 9:00 AM
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shawn
It has nothing to do with 'Spiritual immaturity'. You just miss the point of everything I say. You hear exactly what you wish to hear when I write a post. One time I had actually insulted you at one level and you read the comment way wrong and figured I was commenting you. You wish to say that all stealing is bad, all killing is bad, all sex outside a marriage is bad and so on. You can not see that these acts can all have a good side to them. All actions are gray. It is the MOTIVATION and RESULTS which make them good or bad.
Often it is by using the ideas such as you seem to have that those who really want power and control gain it. They do what seems like good actions for the wrong reason and in turn those actions lead to bad things. So in the end the first action, which looked to be good at the time, was really bad.
I would think true 'spiritual maturity' would come from seeing the world as gray and seeing the need for balance. It would come from understanding it is not the actions that matter in the end, but the heart behind them. This form of seeing what is right and wrong can only come from starting at the point where you can see that all is gray and therefore each and every action has its own history, without presumptions that will mislead and cause hurt in the end.
posted by
kooka_lives
on May 21, 2004 at 8:17 PM
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Kooka
With spiritual maturity the gray area tends to diminish. Spiritual immaturity can be the only reason for one to always say others have completely missed the point when they are confronted with a complete answer to an erroneous position or post. No one is right all the time and we can stunt our spiritual growth by failing to understand that sometimes we are incorrect. We are all here to explore the spiritual realm and stimulate one another intellectually. In so doing, we can properly categorize much “gray” area ourselves. I will prepare a post to my blog, “Spiritual Medicine”, to deal further with this enticing subject.
posted by
telemachus
on May 21, 2004 at 6:29 PM
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we are gray every day
marbled
shades of gray
one moment almost white
another nearly black
but gray anyway
celebrate our gray
no VO 5
or just for men
let the gray stay
posted by
Xeno-x
on May 21, 2004 at 6:22 AM
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bad link
Sorry...forgot that I was already in HTML mode:
You're an animal
posted by
BrWiSk
on May 20, 2004 at 5:10 PM
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Wow
Kooka...your last comment plays right into a blog entry I wrote a little while ago. Check it out:
<a href="http://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/brent_polemic/111971">You'e an animal</a>
We are extremely intelligent animals. So intelligent, that we wish to categorize ourselves as something other than the animals we incontrovertibly are.
This is a mistake. The real bravery emerges when we acknowledge, <em>sans</em> fear, our biology. Then we realize how special we <em>really are</em>. In recognizing that we are animals, we learn that we must exercise a <em>profound level</em> of personal responsibility to regulate the propensities we have, as animals.
How ironic. The church, which continually implores us to be more responsible for our own actions, rejects the very thing that would advance their cause the most.
posted by
BrWiSk
on May 20, 2004 at 5:09 PM
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shawn
As always you completely missed the point of what I was saying.
Time and time again you are a great example of what I keep saying.
You personally want it all to be black and white and will not accept the idea that things can be gray. You want to be able to label everything as good and evil.
I am saying you can't do that because most things really are not one or the other.
It has nothing to do with the need to consider ourselves that much better than animals (Which we really are not, but that is a topic for another post). What separates us is that we have this need to label things in such a way. When we can grow beyond this childish need and see things as they are, then it will be so much easier for us all to get along.
posted by
kooka_lives
on May 20, 2004 at 3:35 PM
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shawn
not much dispute there.
the idea is we learn to live better as we learn as we live longer.
it's a tough row to hoe.
posted by
Xeno-x
on May 20, 2004 at 2:55 PM
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Westwend
The gray area diminishes with spiritual maturity.
posted by
telemachus
on May 20, 2004 at 2:48 PM
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WHAT I WAS ACTUALLY THINKING
PROBABLY WASN'T Rousseau
I remember the tale that was told in response to someone saying that "this was the best of all possible worlds" or something like that.
The tale itself was a comedy - the guy was whisked from one disaster to another -- comedy? --
any Rousseau -- the quote there -- we have to remember Mr. R. lived in the 18th Century -- right?
The statement below -- I'm pretty sure it came to some conclusions that have since been shown not to be absolutely true.
Rousseau worked from what he could perceive at the time. Much has been discovered since then.
I thought pigeons ate more than just grain -- like grubs and worms and such -- I don't study pigeons, but I see robins all the time pulling worms out of the ground and other birds catching moths in the air.
An ornithologist knows.
Specialists in other biological fields can probably elucidate on the eating habits of carnivores.
I guess the point I'm making is that Rousseau worked from a limited point of view -- he could have been better served by specialists who could have informed him as to the eating habits of animals.
Besides, much that is now known of human behavior has been learned since Rousseau's time, so almost any conclusions reached at that time are obsolete.
Actually I'm just being contrary so we can continue our discussion.
posted by
Xeno-x
on May 20, 2004 at 2:00 PM
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ABOUT THE BEAST
We operate more on bestial instinct than we want to admit. We do not soley choose morally, operate out of free will.
We are evolved from beasts -- our sociological structure and a lot of our own instinctual reactions reflect that.
So free - will ?????
Every day we operate on an instinctual level.. Many of our actions.
IN order to test that -- make a diary of you day -- what you did what others did your actions and reactions and interactions.
See how similar this all is to other primates.
other primates make war, lie, steal, cheat, attempt to take other males' females, etc.
check out a good book on anthropology to see how close we are to them --tribal behavior, elevation of the dominant male, etc.
The New Testament deals a lot with the "Christ" vs. the "Beast".
posted by
Xeno-x
on May 20, 2004 at 11:56 AM
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RELIGIONISTS WANT A DEFININTE, ORDERED, UNIVERSE THAT THEY CAN HANDLE
They can't handle the REAL Universe, which is a helluva lot more chaotic than they want it to be.
They want structure.
The Episcopal Priest at our church, the late "Bud" Ball, likened this to a "rose and a trellis".
Religious strictures are the trellis -- holding the rose where the grower (religious hierarchy)wants it to be.
Yet a free standing rose is a thing of beauty.
Naturally, wild roses, small-flowered as they are, tend to have that "wild" type of beauty that surpasses the "cultivated" rose.
But structure and stricture are comfortable. They abrogate responsibility from the individual to a "higher power".
The New Testament is a "testament" to departing from these religious strictures. Freedom from the Law is the theme.
The Law of Love is the new law, and if you read such New Testament passages as Matthew 5 - 7 and Matthew 26 and First Coprinthians 13, then you will see that black and white, sin and righteousness as usually defined cannot fit into this new paradigm where it takes a lifetime to learn to even begin to approach the ideal (sin, by the way, here, is "missing the mark", like missing a target. We learn not to sin by learning to love -- by going back and getting better at "hitting the mark".
Children need structure. They haven't developed their minds and personalities to an adult scale. Problem is, the overwhelming majority of adults (there might not be any exceptions, myself included) are still their "child-self" -- large bodies, but childlike thoughts and actions.
People, generally, don't have enough confidence in themselves or the "christ in them" to be able to make their own decisions. They need a "Christ" outside of themselves -- another to lean on -- person, place, thing -- something defined, physical, definite (?).
For their own feeling of security, they need to know that everything around them works "like clockwork" -- that "God's in HIs Heaven and all is right with the world."
A little Rousseau might help them.
Without all this security, they would fall apart. Their world would end.
Some need this security. Some don't.
They need to remember that the Law was a "governess" type of a thing that was meant to guide them until they are mature adults.
posted by
Xeno-x
on May 20, 2004 at 6:26 AM
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We must see through the gray area and discern what is right.
Man is distinguished from animal species in that he has an ability to make good or bad choices. He is not driven solely by instinct. He has been created with the ability to discern. I think Rousseau distinguishes this concept well in the following quote:
…While nature alone activates everything in the operations of a beast, man participates in his own actions in his capacity as a free agent. The beast chooses or rejects by instinct, man by an act of freewill, which means that the beast cannot deviate from the laws, which are prescribed to it, even when it might be advantageous for it to do so, whereas a man often deviates from such rules to his own prejudice. That is why a pigeon would die of hunger beside a dish filled with choice meats and a cat beside a pile of fruits or grain, even though either could very well nourish itself with the foods it disdains… -Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Because we can discern, we do not have the option to simply back away from the stage and declare that the choices are too hard. We cannot declare that too much gray area exists between right and wrong and so we are not going to distinguish between good and bad. Even no decision can be the wrong or right one. We must use our faculties to study our choices and constantly embrace “right action”.
posted by
telemachus
on May 20, 2004 at 6:16 AM
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