Hello everyone On Sun, Apr 3, 2011 at 5:02 PM, John Carl <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Dan, > > >> Dan: >> I am in no hurry; no worry. >> > > Good. > > >> Dan: >> As the Copleston book shows, the Victorians were staunchly religious. >> They really believed in God and spirit and soul. Make no mistake. It >> was demanded of them. > >John: > Yes.. and no. They believed in reason and rationality, these were the gods > by which the Victorians oriented their lives. There was a lot of religious > questioning at the time and a great deal of freedom to be atheistic or > anti-theistic even.
Dan: Do you have any evidence for this? There may indeed have been some atheistic thinking going on but I seriously doubt the Victorians accorded anyone a great deal of freedom to do so. John: It was a time of explosive intellectual questioning and > everything came under that keen analytical gaze, especially religious > superstition. So I'm unsure what you mean by "was demanded of them". Dan: The social patterns of the time demanded that a gentleman believed in God. Otherwise, a person was considered a heathen. John: > There were also those thinkers, poets and philosophers who foresaw the > dangers of over-intellectualism. Who in their own way, warned against the > same spiritual vacuum that ZAMM pointed out - what was down the road for > technocratic man. So it was a fascinating period, and full of some of the > finest thinking and innovation that the human race has produced. Your glib > encapsulation "staunchly religious" conveys an idea of modern fundamentalist > fanatics, who think that the solution to our values-vacuum is to return to > those people and do things their way. This is very wrong and such people > are kind of stupid, and these I think of as "staunchly religious" so your > epithet applied to the Victorians doesn't ring very true to me. It sounds > like a sorta unthought out cliche. Have you read much of the Victorians? > Fascinating people, really. Dan: Well, I do like historical fiction, but to be honest, the Victorian era doesn't appeal to me all that much. What books would you suggest? > > Dan: > > >> Starting from that point of view precludes any >> possibility of viewing reality outside of religious notions. In my >> opinion, they were spouting nonsense, pure and simple. Unless of >> course someone believes in that nonsense. >> > > John: The quintessential Victorian monument is the Titanic - the queen of > her age. "God himself couldn't sink this ship" as the essential Victorian > sentiment of the time. "God" was for old ladies and superstitious > simpletons. Man's power - intellectual understanding of the world - is the > true Victorian "God". > > And lots of people believe that nonsense, even today. Dan: Yes but by making such a statement the Victorian men were comparing themselves to God, in a sense, which I think (from my admittedly limited reading) was their ultimate downfall. > > > Dan: >> Yes but to compare Native American culture with the Victorians is a >> stretch. Not even in the same ballpark, I'd say. >> > > John: > Again, a vehemently disagree. The American character is largely a synthesis > of those two influences, and you don't have synthesis where there is no > affinity. Dan: Just because there is a synthesis doesn't lead to the conclusion there is an affinity. That is a mistake, in my opinion. John: One thing they both shared, was an idea of a supreme being and > spiritual reality. As did the Greeks and just about every culture you can > name. Dan: But the idea of a supreme being was much different to the Native Americans than what it was to the Europeans. Culturally, neither could understand the other without some sort of indoctrination. John: The Victorians were the first society I can think of, to actually > work at killing off the idea of deity. And today people think of them as > "staunchly religious" is kinda ironic. Dan: There may have been a few writers who proclaimed God is dead but culturally that was far from the truth. Even today, God is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Just walk down the street and count the churches, then tell me God is dead. > > > Dan: >> Well, ruach is a Hebrew word that literally means both wind and god. >> It has to do with a kind of vitalizing force... the wind of god >> brooded over chaos in the creation story to bring forth life. > > > John: > > Ok, now yer talkin'. > > > Dan: > > >> It is a >> what, not a who, however. >> >> > John: > > Now see, that's a choice too. Like I choose to treat my dog more as a who > than a what, but to ask what he ultimately is, beyond my conception of him > sorta makes the whole exercise ridiculous. We choose to view a who, because > we need a who. We choose to view a what, because it suits us to. I get > that. A lot. Dan: My point was that ruach wasn't anthropocentric (a who, a God) so much as it was considered a natural "force," some "thing" undefined yet capable of bringing order to disorder. > > Dan: > > >> Now, they may have been talking Dynamic Quality! But not the >> Victorians with their spirit and soul. Sorry. >> >> > John: > > See, "Victorians" is too broad a brush to wipe out a whole generation. Some > were, some weren't. You have to dig down a bit to find out which is which. > Like everything. Dan: That may be true. I assumed we were speaking of generalities rather than specifics. > > Dan: > > I don't think it is a good thing to conflate god and Dynamic Quality, >> which you seem to be doing here, hence my discomfort with spirit and >> soul as used in Copleston. It is nonsense. >> >> > John: > > Well that's a tricky one, Dan, to answer. Because there is a sort of > three-fold aspect of what I think when you say "God". I'm conditioned along > certain symbolic representative lines, and it's not really God the Father > that I conflate with DQ, it's the Holy Spirit, and see, that's a whole > 'nother problem because what THAT is, is a complete mystery even to people > who say they believe in the Bible, so just simply conflating God and DQ, no, > I don't do that. Dan: Good. >John: > One man's nonsense, another man's treasure. Hey, you gotta have some kind > of mythic conceptualization of it all in order to think about the whole > enchilada. Dan: Granted. > > > Dan: >> I am not indoctrinated, sorry. Never been a church-goer. Never studied >> religion, christian or otherwise. I did read the bible as a teenager >> and actually memorized a good deal of it but that was on account of >> reading somewhere that Hemingway did the same to better his writing. >> I've also read the Gita and the Koran and checked out the Book of >> Morman (God, what a load). >> >> > John: Well, I'd put a broader understanding of what I mean by > indoctrinated. We're all indoctrinated to an extent, and ideas about > religion are just as much a result of our indoctrination as absorbing those > ideas from the womb as truth. I've never been much of a church goer either, > but I've gone enough to understand how it drives people. But like you, it's > mostly just driven me away. It really wasn't till Deep Ecology Philosophy > that I started having more sympathy for religious conceptualizations. Dan: I would say we are all ensnared in the culture we inhabit. I think the MOQ agrees. > > > Dan: > > >> For the record, the ghosts that RMP speaks of in ZMM have to do with >> social and intellectual patterns of value, not spirits or the soul. In >> fact, he equates the theory(s) of gravity with those ghosts. >> >> > John: > > Exactly! And the way I understand spirit, is that equate it with those > things also - intellectual patterns such as the theory of gravity. > Software. Programmatic information, rather than some substance. Spiritual > reality includes all areas of knowledge and wonder, ghosts. spirit. I > mean geez, can't the meaning of a word be shifted from the exact spelling of > your expectation? If Spirit as they were talking about, is the same as DQ > as he's talking about. Spirit, apart from the dogmatic theories of any > particular sect - that which drives the creation of ideas about gods and > angels and sprites - THAT spirit IS DQ - the generator of the mythos. Two > terms which end up meaning the same thing in essence. Dan: I still don't think that is the spirit the Victorians were talking about. Not at all. Spirit to them was a manifestation of God, the Divine driving the mundane world. That is not what RMP means by Dynamic Quality. > > > Dan: > >> As I've told you before, I am not a philosopher and have done no >> formal studies. I would be interested in going over the Copleston >> annotations to further the MOQ, however. >> >> > John: It's a very enjoyable process. Analytic philosophy isn't really > necessary, its written as a commentary upon the ideas of a philosophologist > - Copleston, in his reading and analysis of British Idealism of the > Victorian period. There's a lot that RMP finds agreeable and good, and like > you, he's put off by the religious construction of the thought, but if > nothing else I think the whole passage is valuable as an illustration of > other great thinkers who overcame the S/O paradigm in their thought. Dan: I've been over the Copleston annotations many times, yes. There is much good stuff there to further illustrate the MOQ. Clearly though, RMP disagrees with any notion of spirit or soul as understood by the Victorians. > > >>> Dan: >> >> We both have a choice and have no choice, at the same time. That is >> >> what the MOQ is telling us. >> > >> > >> > >> > John: >> > >> > That doesn't satisfy me at all. Logical contradictions are not very >> > useful. Philosophically -wise. >> >> Dan: >> It is not a logical contradiction. To the extent we follow static >> quality, we have no choice. To the extent we follow Dynamic Quality, >> we are free. Where is the contradiction? >> >> > > John: > The contradiction is at "at the same time". We can only do one at a time. > We can either follow DQ, or sq. Thus we are either free or trapped, by our > choice. Choice is fundamental. Dan: No, Dynamic Quality and static quality are not mutually exclusive. As experience unfolds, they are both working all the time. Choice only happens after we've intellectualized the world, however. > > > Dan: > >> Yes, co-fundamental works. We need both Dynamic Quality and static >> quality. Quality (if we're talking Dynamic Quality/static quality as I >> assume we are) is both free and determined. It is not synonymous with >> free will however. >> >> > John: > > I don't see how you can separate it and still remain logical. By free will, > I simply mean the ability to choose. I don't see how you can separate > Quality from the ability to choose. When there is no choice, there is no > betterness. If you want to avoid the synonymous labeling, then you'll have > to come up with a functional difference or way to divide them. Dan: That's what the MOQ is all about. That is the fundamental split. > > > > > Dan: >> As I told Ham, you are missing the point of the hot stove experiment. >> Moving off the hot stove isn't an intellectual decision. That comes >> later. Your 3-stove analogy completely missed that point and I cannot >> see that you've grasped it yet. >> >> > John: > > Well, that's because you persistently refuse to get MY point. There's no > such thing as a "hot stove experiment". There is actual people involved > with actual stoves and their reactions are all over the map, as varied as > the people themselves. Some even intellectualize. Heck, some people > intellectualize EVERYTHING dan, I should know, I'm one of 'em. I'd > intellectualize myself off a hot stove, probably. So it's no conclusive > proof of anything, especially not of anything as important as the > fundamentalness of intellect. > > I thought I really explained this, but I can see that you haven't grasped it > yet. Dan: That may well be. But you're explanation isn't in congruence with the MOQ, so far as I can see. It is rooted in intellectualism. To you, we make a choice to get off the stove. I am saying there is no choice involved. That comes later. Thank you, Dan Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
