roseweird posted:where do you recommend beginning
the epistle to the romans is good
deadken posted:roseweird posted:deadken posted:islam i think runs into the opposite problem through the doctrine of tawhid, declaring the plane of immanence to be pervasive and thus negating it as a plane that intersects an object although i suppose there is dialectical potential in these contradictions
how high on stimulants do you have to be to believe that "the pervasiveness of the plane of immanence negates it as a plane intersecting an object" is a "problem"
how dulled on marihuana do you have to be to NOT see the urgency of this situation
it's really cute that you two know each other's preferred drugs. friendship blossoms on the internet
also, mindmaster, by "pagan" did you mean basically "natural order" style traditions or is that not quite it?
c_man posted:a cool thing i heard about pre-mosaic "judaism" (idk what people call that tradition, calling it judaism doesnt make a lot of sense to me?) is that there were separate terms for the divine "inspiration" or whatever for david, isaac, abraham etc like "the shield of david" or "the fear of isaac". does anyone know more about how that is thought to have functioned in that time period, or about how it is view today/was integrated into what i imagine must have been a much more strongly monotheistic cultural background later on?
also, mindmaster, by "pagan" did you mean basically "natural order" style traditions or is that not quite it?
something like that, i was thinking of religions which limit the concept of the divine in some way to definite worldly things, in which everything is cyclical and transient (except, of course, the social hierarchy) and the role of the subject is to acquire virtue by taking up a role which is "harmonious", or to retreat inwardly, to "inner peace" or something. again i have to add that i hardly know what im talking about beyond what i saw in japan supplemented by zizek on st. paul and badiou and the usual suspects
c_man posted:does anyone know anything/have opinions about gnosticism? most of what i know about it comes from reading foucault's pendulum when i was 17 and reading the wiki page for the gnostic gospels but it seems interesting
Once on a time, Zarathustra also cast his fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen. The work of a suffering and tortured God, did the world
then seem to me.
The dream--and diction--of a God, did the world then seem to me;
coloured vapours before the eyes of a divinely dissatisfied one.
Good and evil, and joy and woe, and I and thou--coloured vapours did
they seem to me before creative eyes. The creator wished to look away
from himself,--thereupon he created the world.
Intoxicating joy is it for the sufferer to look away from his suffering
and forget himself. Intoxicating joy and self-forgetting, did the world
once seem to me.
This world, the eternally imperfect, an eternal contradiction's image
and imperfect image--an intoxicating joy to its imperfect creator:--thus
did the world once seem to me.
Thus, once on a time, did I also cast my fancy beyond man, like all
backworldsmen. Beyond man, forsooth?
Ah, ye brethren, that God whom I created was human work and human
madness, like all the Gods!
A man was he, and only a poor fragment of a man and ego. Out of mine own
ashes and glow it came unto me, that phantom. And verily, it came not
unto me from the beyond!
What happened, my brethren? I surpassed myself, the suffering one; I
carried mine own ashes to the mountain; a brighter flame I contrived for
myself. And lo! Thereupon the phantom WITHDREW from me!
To me the convalescent would it now be suffering and torment to believe
in such phantoms: suffering would it now be to me, and humiliation. Thus
speak I to backworldsmen.
Suffering was it, and impotence--that created all backworlds; and
the short madness of happiness, which only the greatest sufferer
experienceth.
Weariness, which seeketh to get to the ultimate with one leap, with
a death-leap; a poor ignorant weariness, unwilling even to will any
longer: that created all Gods and backworlds.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the body--it
groped with the fingers of the infatuated spirit at the ultimate walls.
Believe me, my brethren! It was the body which despaired of the
earth--it heard the bowels of existence speaking unto it.
And then it sought to get through the ultimate walls with its head--and
not with its head only--into "the other world."
But that "other world" is well concealed from man, that dehumanised,
inhuman world, which is a celestial naught; and the bowels of existence
do not speak unto man, except as man.
Verily, it is difficult to prove all being, and hard to make it speak.
Tell me, ye brethren, is not the strangest of all things best proved?
Yea, this ego, with its contradiction and perplexity, speaketh most
uprightly of its being--this creating, willing, evaluing ego, which is
the measure and value of things.
And this most upright existence, the ego--it speaketh of the body, and
still implieth the body, even when it museth and raveth and fluttereth
with broken wings.
Always more uprightly learneth it to speak, the ego; and the more it
learneth, the more doth it find titles and honours for the body and the
earth.
A new pride taught me mine ego, and that teach I unto men: no longer
to thrust one's head into the sand of celestial things, but to carry it
freely, a terrestrial head, which giveth meaning to the earth!
A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed
blindly, and to approve of it--and no longer to slink aside from it,
like the sick and perishing!
The sick and perishing--it was they who despised the body and the earth,
and invented the heavenly world, and the redeeming blood-drops; but even
those sweet and sad poisons they borrowed from the body and the earth!
From their misery they sought escape, and the stars were too remote for
them. Then they sighed: "O that there were heavenly paths by which to
steal into another existence and into happiness!" Then they contrived
for themselves their by-paths and bloody draughts!
Beyond the sphere of their body and this earth they now fancied
themselves transported, these ungrateful ones. But to what did they owe
the convulsion and rapture of their transport? To their body and this
earth.
Gentle is Zarathustra to the sickly. Verily, he is not indignant
at their modes of consolation and ingratitude. May they become
convalescents and overcomers, and create higher bodies for themselves!
Neither is Zarathustra indignant at a convalescent who looketh tenderly
on his delusions, and at midnight stealeth round the grave of his God;
but sickness and a sick frame remain even in his tears.
Many sickly ones have there always been among those who muse, and
languish for God; violently they hate the discerning ones, and the
latest of virtues, which is uprightness.
Backward they always gaze toward dark ages: then, indeed, were delusion
and faith something different. Raving of the reason was likeness to God,
and doubt was sin.
Too well do I know those godlike ones: they insist on being believed in,
and that doubt is sin. Too well, also, do I know what they themselves
most believe in.
Verily, not in backworlds and redeeming blood-drops: but in the body
do they also believe most; and their own body is for them the
thing-in-itself.
But it is a sickly thing to them, and gladly would they get out of their
skin. Therefore hearken they to the preachers of death, and themselves
preach backworlds.
Hearken rather, my brethren, to the voice of the healthy body; it is a
more upright and pure voice.
More uprightly and purely speaketh the healthy body, perfect and
square-built; and it speaketh of the meaning of the earth.--
Thus spake Zarathustra.
c_man posted:does anyone know anything/have opinions about gnosticism? most of what i know about it comes from reading foucault's pendulum when i was 17 and reading the wiki page for the gnostic gospels but it seems interesting
It's another edgy alternative religion to identify with. Its primary feature is that it considers the material world evil and that the God who created it (the Demiurge) was evil and separate from the true God of the spiritual realm. Gnostics were hardcore ascetics. Christianity on the other hand takes the nuanced/paradoxical view that the world is inherently good, because it is God's creation, and yet also evil because it is corrupted by sin. So "world" and "flesh" are used as negative terms within Christianity to refer to selfishness, but we do not literally promote asceticism or the hatred of the material, and Christ was not an ascetic.
roseweird posted:"elohim"
i barely knew 'im!
littlegreenpills posted:lemme see, this bit kind of raised my eyebrows
A patient says, for example, "I can't come to my Tuesday appointment because
I have to take my child to the doctor."...Perhaps she says that the child was very sick and she had to take the first opening. This could be true, but it could also be true that it was the first possible opening that was convenient for her....There are no inherently "reasonable" excuses
This is 100% Tru.
littlegreenpills posted:this bit was funny as hell but i know and care about more than a few people in therapy and can only hope to god noone does this to them
A friend of mine was in analysis with a Lacanian and, for more than a week
at one point in his analysis, his analyst sent him on his way after sessions
lasting no more than a few seconds. At the time, my friend and I were shocked,
and considered the treatment altogether unfair, inappropriate, and brutal. I
am not aware of the analyst's precise reasons for the harsh treatment, but it
seems quite likely to me in hindsight that this friend—an obsessive accustomed to overintellectualizing, with a somewhat grandiose sense of his own
self-worth—was no doubt proffering well-constructed discourses on highfalutin subjects during his analytic sessions, and the analyst had decided it was
high time he realized that there is no room for that in analysis and learned to
get to the point without beating around the academic bush.
In most schools of psychology and psychoanalysis, such behavior on the
analyst's part would be considered a serious breach of professional ethics—
abusive, unconscionable, and downright nasty. After all, people would argue,
the analysand did not seek out an analyst to be treated in that way! But
analysis is not a contract, and the analysand may well be hoping for something
that he or she nevertheless unconsciously strives to stave off. The eminent
writer I mentioned above was still hoping to achieve something in his analysis,
despite his unconscious and at times not so unconscious self-defeating strategy. The very fact that he continued to go to analysis every day for such a long
period of time meant that he was, at some level, looking for something else,
hoping against hope, perhaps, that the analyst would wean him from his
long-standing self-sabotaging tendencies.
This friend who received several extremely short sessions in a row was,
in a sense, asking for it. Not openly, necessarily; not even verbally, perhaps.
But he may very well have known, at some level, what he was doing; he
simply could not help it. He went to that particular analyst (one of the most
experienced Lacanians) asking to be trained as a psychoanalyst, and then
conducted himself as if he were in a classroom with a professor, discoursing
upon theoretical matters of the utmost interest to him. Since my friend was
by no means ignorant of Freud's work, he knew very well that that is not
the stuff of analysis; nevertheless, he could not break himself of his intellectualizing habits, and tried (somewhat successfully at first, it seems) to
engage the analyst at the level of psychoanalytic theory. His challenge to
the analyst was, in some sense: "Make me stop! Prove to me that you won't
get caught up in my game!" In this sense my friend was asking for it.
Perhaps you do want this to happen to You?
deadken posted:european paganism/polytheism is bullshit because it proposes a numerical finitude of the divine. any half-decent polytheism ('hinduism' for instance) will eventually recognise a single god of which the others are instantiations or aspects because a true infinite multiplicity (or a multiplicity of multiplicities) can only be expressed through the figure of the One and not through any succeeding numerical term. multiples are directly inimical to multiplicity. the invention of a singular nature-deity associated with modern european pagan belief systems is almost certainly a romantic back-formation influenced by christianity
roseweird posted:and what do YOU do nofreewill
i grew up in the church and now i'm atheist. i make games, toys, and play structures and spend all my time browsing internet forums. at least i'm not bahai.
roseweird posted:a lot of religious traditions end up seeming like they intend to enforce the natural order because religions need to spend a lot of time reassuring people that they can and should continue to live in a world that is genuinely horrible and , realistically speaking , seems unlikely to meaningfully improve.
why are you doing that comma thing
roseweird posted:i don't know i guess i just like it. does it bother you
i dont know , let me take it for a test drive for awhile