Or here is another way to look at it. You have been raised in the narrative matrix that UFO's are not real and never will be. So you comfortably place them in the category of the impossible, and no matter how many Pentagon flight videos, UAP reports, pilot testimonials, or insider whistleblowers come forward to tell you otherwise, you dismiss them out of hand because to do otherwise would destroy the narrative matrix you have been raised to believe is true.
And as we all learned from Plato's Allegory of the Cave, when humans are confronted with information that reality is different than the version they were taught, they instinctively run back to the narrative matrix/cave that they are more comfortable with. The key to being a wise human being is to learn to fight this instinct, and follow the evidence, wherever it may lead.
You're presuming that epic heroic drama is desirable, not pathological. All heroic societies are built on enforced lies and mysticism, and they are full of trite, petty personal intrigues and other self-glorifying emotional violence. It would be far better to grow out of heroic bullshit and start cherishing our lived experiences, and start dickpunching people and systems of emotional manipulation.
The tastes for such things are cultivated by a society that celebrates lying, drama, and conflict instead of dismembering the perpetrators and erasing their names and deeds. We can start doing those other things in our daily lives, right now, however figuratively for the moment.
Hahahahaha. Dickpunching! 😁😆😂. My arm would be so tired! And I’d have to start with Hillary, aka Jobba the Hut. Sometimes just pointing and laughing works.
The problem with pointing and laughing is that it affords them the impression that it's a messaging problem, already a deep tendency on the left side of capitalism. If they are receiving anything from the public at all — more likely, it will be displaced onto the staffers seen to allow the performance to "be failed" — it is that elites' adverse actions are a mere misdemeanor that can be repaired by abstaining from that behavior. That is akin to shutting the barn door after the horse has already impregnated two mares in the next county. But to hold them to reverse their actions is tyranny, because the hero's actions are sacred or some such aristocratic shit. The net effect is to envelop state actions in a sacrificial narrative envelope so that they can reach their destination without undue wear or tear. Whichever lucky priest drew the short straw steps forward and performs the kabuki, then takes their grief out on dead girls or live boys provided by the ruling class, and complains "Eh, it's a living" over brunch the next day.
Booing actually rejects *them* without recognizing their speech or actions, in fact, by interfering with their performance of those speech or actions and with those who would care to "bear witness" to them. Also it's easier on the arms.
Stinky: You remind me of the stupid American brother (played by Kevin Kline) in the movie "A Fish Called Wanda". You read the books and essays and quote them, but you haven't a clue as to what they are really about.
"Dreams, omens, coincidences, luck, sortilege, magic and other experience which shun rather than court inquiry and deserve notice chiefly, because every man has usually in a lifetime two or three hints in this kind which are specially impressive to him. They also shed light on our structure." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson #CW #WiseCo #p947
No one is ever going to experience a Ponderosa pine by watching a Twitter-posted video of a group of hikers dancing around it --- your perception will generally focus on those hand-holding humans, instinctively. Hug it; palpate the the sinuous recesses of its bark, draw your nose close and imbibe the vanilla/butterscotch terpenes while forgetting the terminology "terpene"; most of all, quiet your mind and relate to its essence as a magnificent complex system buzzing with messages to and from the soil fungi, probably for many more years than your brain has been processing pre-/ mis-conceptions about its true essence. Most of all, feel the love it—all of it— encompasses.
Is it logical to conclude that Bigfoot does not exist because so few people are capturing images of Bigfoot with their smartphones? If that is true, it is also true that, based on this theory “things don’t exist unless some large number of people have photographed it with their smartphone”, such constellations as the Big Dipper and Southern Cross do not exist either, because unless you really know how to tweak the settings in your iPhone, or unless you are willing to buy an app that can modify the iPhone photography algorithms, most stars cannot be photographed by the iPhone. So does that mean the Big Dipper doesn’t exist? Obviously not, because I can verify its existence with my naked eye. The Big Dipper exists, even though the iPhone photography algorithms cannot prove it. Obviously, we must distrust all digital photography.
OTH, extension of our senses by technology can be a good thing. The invention of the microscope allowed us to see what could not otherwise be known to exist. I wonder if we are just waiting for a technology to be invented that will properly extend our senses so we can see Bigfoot and other creatures of that magical or interdimensional realm that is almost always just slightly beyond our field of vision.
And finding Bigfoot is merely finding a species of primate, not like ET. Why do we lump all “mysteries” together? Truth is NOT equal to the status quo or commonly shared perceptions. So of course, I’ve seen enough scientific evidence from simply plaster casts of footprints showing viable populations of such creatures as measured by specialists using bell curves etc. And sounds that are not similar to any other animals. Of course some are misidentifications. Same is true for insects. But because these are large and bipedal they suggest we may not be the only such primate on the planet. Wasn’t enough debunking to discover the octopus as a creature who is essentially “all brain”?
I suspect we haven't figured everything out yet. And that some things many insist cannot be true (such as precognitive dreams) are actually true. And some things many insist are true (locality, non-contextuality) are not actually true.
See also the liar paradox: "This sentence is false." If that sentence is false, then it is true. If it is true, then it is false. So could the nihilists be onto something?
Jack Sirius: Nihilists could be onto something but we can't function if nothing is "true" or "good" or "evil". We have to have something we call reality or society would fall apart. It would be Bizarro World.
Though I'd love to see a Nihilist judge, lawyers, and courtroom. That would be a funny skit.
And yet every official scientific article ever published about Covid-19 contains an “image” of the virus. So, because a picture is worth a thousand words, the average person thinks/believes/assumes the “image” is a photograph, thus verifying to them the existence of the Covid-19. In fact, that “image” is always, always almost entirely an artist’s rendition, but it is also the essential “proof” that makes such propaganda work.
Of course, viruses—whatever they are, probably nothing more than molecular artifacts of cell metabolism, perhaps the cellular/molecular equivalent of shed skin cells—are smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so optical microscopes simply cannot “image” them. Instead they use electron microscopes, which manipulates data from a stream of electrons beamed into dead, highly processed organic material which, we are told, contains the virus. The imaging “magic” (or deception) happens when the computer algorithm assembles the collected data into something that vaguely looks, to a human, like a black-and-white photo of a spectral blob. Of course, a computer and the right software can take any string of data whatsoever and manipulate it into an image. (This is done all the time with sound wave data, for example.)
Then the artist gets involved, adding all the colors and even adding structures that don’t appear in the “image”. In fact, even the CDC and NIH refer to the resultant artwork as a “representative image” or a “representation”, not a photograph. But for most people, the propaganda damage has already been done, and the existence of the “virus” is proven.
JackSirius: Fun Fact: The stars in the Big Dipper are actually getting closer to Earth every day. In some millions of years they will impact our solar system.
The magic in the world is in ourselves, for generations the soothsayers and snake oil salesman, money changers in the temple if you like have sold us fantastic stories to fill that longing but the truth of the matter is that the best and only magic is what is inside each person.
A great deal of spirituality *is* based on the magic inside each person - which Atheist/Skeptics routinely insist on telling us these days is simply wishful thinking. One clear example is the last 30+ years of NDE (Near-Death) research. There have been over 65+, retrospective and prospective - peer reviewed scientific studies (some multiple years long) of what turns out to be, a not too uncommon experience many people will have when they are considered clinically dead: of which the Atheist/Skeptics will inform us are simply "fantastic stories" - "wishful thinking" and they ignore or deny the large amount of scientific research that has now been conducted in the last number of decades regarding NDEs. Making many of them, in my view, scientific hypocrites.
Consciousness itself remains an open scientific question of which the reductive materialists have yet to come up with a shred of evidence consciousness itself is simply a product of multiple random particles that managed to come together over aeons and become self-aware. Materialists have no idea how consciousness even experiences the color red, or how consciousness is self-aware. Their preconceived world-view falls short when it comes to attempting to understand or model the reality of consciousness - of which, much like Freud, they want to reduce it to a cause-and-effect existence, motivated only by some sexual aberration of the past as a "survival" trait, in a deterministic mechanistic reality that they insist you ought to find meaning in - while they fool themselves into believing their brand of nihilism (determinism, materialism) is superior to all other forms of metaphysical beliefs that they so hate.
I am one of those wretched Atheists but I don't deny what is obviously a phenomenon, rather I see it as an area where scientific understanding is incomplete and the rejection of research in those areas is akin to politics rather than science.
I am an AI developer and work extensively with a variety of different technologies, I strongly suspect that the human brain has some hidden structures that allow for non-linear processes. Essentially quantum computing with each neuron of the brain. If that is the case then multidimensional access from inside our own brains could be a game changer in regard to our perception of reality. Small minds exist in the scientific community like anywhere else and regardless of where you find a small minded person the one truth is that they reject what they dont understand.
I have literally died on the table and I didn't experience anything except a missing moment, I think it was because I was only officially gone for a few seconds. That doesn't mean I have not experienced spirituality. It may well be because I didn't believe I would experience anything, perhaps thats the message Christ tried to give, if you don't believe (have faith) then there is nothing for you after your gone. That would fit well with Schrodinger theory about sub-atomic particles only being defined in our reality when they are observed. If you don't believe can you still be spiritual ?
Reminds me that in the early Roman empire, Rome was tolerant of all religions. But you might guess what group was among the most disliked among the religious- yep Atheists.
So I feel your pain. But who knows, I think in many ways the verdict is still out regarding the ontological underpinnings of the reality you and I find ourselves in right now (and soon to perish - maybe forever). Science has not resolved many open philosophical questions, including the mind/body problem. But I feel that's no reason we should just stop asking important questions regarding the meaning of our lives, or pretend we've already got the big questions figured out. In the end, it may all just be some short meaningless jaunt into nothingness. An absurdity. Or ... maybe not.
I also worked in AI (chess learning) many moons ago and worked at NASA for about a year - on the space shuttle's launch control system.
I've had two good friends (not many) who did die briefly then came back, and did relate to me personally the typical experience scientifically reported for an NDE (i.e. tunnel, separation of body, emotional detachment from the body ...). I had no reason to disbelieve these two friends of mine, no reason to believe they made it all up.
There are a wide variety of concepts/beliefs one could call "spiritual". I think the key to it all, that still remains a scientific puzzle, is consciousness itself. What is consciousness? Is consciousness a product of the body, or does the body host consciousness like a radio hosts a mozart symphony broadcast?
I don’t belong to any atheist organization, so I don’t accept your characterizations regarding what I reject or believe. I don’t speak for any other atheists, and they don’t speak for me.
I simply reject the arguments that look at, for example, dolphins’ or octopuses’ intelligence as evidence of a deity. I do believe that, as Gore Vidal argued, Christians ought more accurately be called Paulists, because most of what they claim to believe about the Christ has been from St Paul’s mind and pen.
My position is believe what you want, but don’t infuse your politics with those truths. The human-centric, material world is the only appropriate realm of politics.
I reject the argument that phenomena currently unexplained falls in the same category as leprechauns and unicorns.
I believe in the separation of church and state.
But I also believe the persecution and intolerance (in whatever form it might take) of people's spiritual values is arrogant and smacks of moral superiority which Skeptic atheists do not have the right to claim.
Atheism is just another kind of metaphysical belief system - even though many will make the absurd argument Atheism is not a system of belief at all.
I don’t attack any believers, but I do react negatively to ideologues letting their ideology frame their arguments, and I’m curious who you are referencing when you declare your opposition to...spiritual persecution. Christianity is an ideology that is threaded through American politics, and its followers see themselves as persecuted. We don’t have separation of church and state!
If the subject is unconscious belief or the manipulated mind or conditioned attitudes, Marx and Engels wrote about alienation and ideology, which touch on all of those topics. Neither Emerson nor Jung are typically referenced in political discussions, but I can appreciate their contributions on perception and cognition.
I said I believe in separation of church and state. I didn't say whether I think we have completely achieved that in the US or elsewhere. Which also by the way, just because church & state are integrated doesn't mean a society cannot flourish - take the ancient Egyptians for example. But I am still of the opinion a culture is better off not having any kind of officially adopted "religion" and there needs to be a tolerance for all spiritual practices, including Atheism.
Emerson was a strong abolitionist, and Jung, contrary to the smears he has received over the years, was against Nazism and Hitler - he famously fled Germany when he realized the fanaticism that was about to overcome the entire country.
Interesting that Marx and Engels wrote about alienation and ideology .Carl Jung also spoke/wrote about it and you can read about his ideas in the book "The Undiscovered Self" - which was prompted by conversations between Jung and a Dr. Carleton Smith, director of the National Arts Foundation at the time.
An interesting quote from "The Undiscovered Self":
"Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find a real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors." #p24
Another quote from the book:
"You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return." #p65
I’m very fond of the last quote, and have used it to argue that all gods are creations of the mind. I also have no argument for the quote you cite from #p24. We are taught and browbeaten at times into believing we have intrinsic value, which I can only applaud. But then we are told to find meaning and justify our lives by that meaning, and that, IMO is insidious indoctrination.
The pagans are the unenlightened sods who haven’t been brainwashed and are not the least bit motivated to torchere themselves to answer the questions they exhibited no natural inclination to ask.
This is an interesting comment jamenta, I’ve always wondered about near death experiences and have searched specifically for what happens when atheists die and come back to life. Supposedly the longest someone’s ever flatlined and came back to life is around 4 minutes.
I’ll admit that I don’t believe in heaven or hell, I kind of think that when you’re gone it’s just over. But I’d also be curious to hear from people with no political, religious or anti-religious influences what actually happened to them
Thanks Han. You might check out Pim van Lommel, M.D.s excellent approachable book on the subject of NDEs "Consciousness Beyond Life, The Science of Near-Death Experience". Easy to look up on Amazon.
If anything, Lommel's book is a fascinating read. I've been following the subject i.e. the scientific investigations of NDEs now for the last few decades. There appears to be no bias regarding who may be the subject of an NDE, even young children have reported the phenomena. From the scientific studies conducted, it appears it does not matter what your religion or your belief system was before having an NDE. There are some cases of avowed Atheists also having an NDE experience.
I find the many studies well researched (all over the world, not just in the US) and the doctors and scientists conducting the research possessing solid scientific credentials. Of course, many Skeptics have tried do whatever they can to smear many of the scientists conducting the research, and/or claim the results are unscientific. Predictably so. Skeptics I find, are much like fundamentalists in the churches of old - but this time the religious belief is in the almighty particle of Materialism and a mechanistic universe where consciousness is a happenstance product of the brain, and nothing more.
I find the NDE scientific research hopeful and likely indicative that consciousness is more than just a product of the brain. I like to keep an open mind and not commit the fashionable stupidity that everything unexplained is in the same category as leprechauns and unicorns.
There is scientific criteria regarding NDE's: the Bruce Greyson NDE scale - that most scientific researchers studying the phenomena use for identification.
A good book on the subject (if you are curious) is Pim van Lommel, M.D.s "Consciousness Beyond Life, The Science of the Near-Death Experience".
And there’s something “collective” about what’s inside us, that can only be experienced by patient observation and an open (ie calm and aware, not busy) mind.
When electronic devices were simpler and less "obedient", one used to could turn off the input power to the receiver while tuned to an FM station, and hear the music's peaks become more clipped as the power supply's capacitors quickly but perceptibly were drained of charge through the speakers.
The need to emotionalize, celebrate, and believe systematic errors is sad but typical of heroic societies.
What we have yet to discover but will very soon is that our Perception "CREATES" our reality. That CONSCIOUSNESS creates matter, not the other way around? That we ARE the gods that we assign to the heavens? That the difference between horrifying despair and eternal satisfaction and contentment is just a stones throw away, and is completely within our power to imagine it?
What if the UFO's and Inter-dimensional beings are US? Other manifestations of our Consciousness on other planes of existence - or future focuses of ours disabling Nuclear Missiles before we blow ourselves to kingdom come?
What if we were to discover and embrace that we are all interconnected? Not only with each other, but with all of creation?
I wish I could get my people to read Caitlin's unique style and alternative view of, well everything, I encourage but some can't get off their phones long enough to experience life... simple, mundane life ...
There are not many extremely well-trained US aircraft carrier pilots, or veteran commercial airline pilots who report they have seen "Big foot". The fallacious "Categorization" argument, often used by Atheist/Skeptics of the Skeptic's society - who lump everything they deny into one big category without discrimination, is unfortunate and lacks objectivity.
Reminds me of a quote by Thomas Mann in 1929:
"I aver that there can be no true skepticism which is not skeptical of itself; and a skeptic, in my humble view, is not merely one who believes the prescribed things and averts his eyes from everything that might imperil his virtue."
Definitely. And Bigfoot is now the idea that maybe there’s a species of primate we haven’t yet discovered. Which is hardly in the category of magic, fantasy, or religion. Also I believe the knee-jerk debunking of all unusual ideas, observations, or phenomena to be the historical stance of those adhering to the status quo, which generally dislikes “the unknown.” Not the ideal mindset for people who want to actually “change the world.”
Personally, I haven't seen much that convinces me Bigfoot is a possibility. But that's not where my beef lies. Like you say, one often sees a knee-jerk debunking of everything that is unexplained, which I find intellectually distasteful. It's often the anomalous phenomena, the phenomena that lies on the fringes of scientific inquiry, usually disdainfully ignored by the 'status quo' that often ends up becoming the largest breakthru's in science and human understanding.
I am not at all ready to believe UAPs are actual off-world technology, but I have reached the point where I will state categorically that there is some UAP phenomena that remains "unexplained" and those who claim to be able to explain UAP phenomena I find unconvincing. But that's just me.
jamenta: I looked up Thomas Mann. He was an interesting man who led a very interesting life. Why does everyone seem to end up in California?
As for aircraft carrier pilots or commercial airline pilots seeing Bigfoot, that is of course impossible. Those planes fly way too fast to see an animal the size of Bigfoot. Bigfoot lives in the forest.
"He's credentialed, he's incapable of lying" More professional-managerial class self-worship, I see. You must have a whole backyard swimming pool full of it.
"Is it not possible that this, right here, is the miracle we are yearning for, and that it always has been? That we’re not really searching for Bigfoot, but for a different kind of relationship with the ordinary?"
Yes, it's possible, but not under the current circumstances of our reality which is pretty much controlled by the Evil Globalists who want us all dead to the truth and buried in lies and deception.
The see the mystical everywhere in nature and I strenuously object to anyone's attempt /claim to control it, or persuade others that they have control over it: the God on a leash idea. But I am absolutely positive something exists that we can never comprehend. Occasionally, it makes tangible contact, but I reiterate, it's a very bad idea to attempt or claim to own it, that is, count on it to do your bidding. No one can explain how life came to be, except for general environmental principles, and even they do not hold for all species.
I have no use therefore for religion, and I think it is an objective fact: most of the evil in the world has come about from some kind of religion, mainly the Christian, because it has been dominant, and dominant because ruthless, along with deliberate polices of procreation promotion, using the most absurd logic. Most wars are connected to the superior god idea and concomitant "values". Terrible crimes against women and homosexuals were rendered "acceptable" for "the cause".
Religion is the attempt to own or explain, categorize, regulate the unexplainable on the basis of alleged superior arcane knowledge, and rule over others on that basis. The result of this duplicitous arrogance has been socially, psychically, psychologically and environmentally catastrophic. Have we forgotten how GW Bush claimed God told him to attack Iraq? And then joked on video about the whereabouts of the infamous missing WMD: "They're not here" he quipped, checking lower kitchen cabinets: "They're not here" he smirked, extending the search to the upper cabinets.
Religion is a concept enforced by autocrats, and indeed even fascist governments have traditionally employed it. Plato said his Utopia - translate- soulless and sterile ideal society - could only work if enforced by religion. Religion involves faith in the ridiculous diktats of human beings, usually men: a higher faith is required to believe in the universe and the mystery of life itself. I am a socialist, and perceive no contradiction: socialism is about the best system to eliminate a number of basic human, practical, existential problems - in this world: it makes no vapid assertions or promises about any other.
"Whereas the man of today can easily think about and understand all the "truths" dished out to him by the State, his understanding of religion is made considerably more difficult owing to the lack of explanations. ("Do you understand what you are reading? And he said, "How can I, unless some one guides me?" Acts 8:30.) If, despite this, he has still not discarded all his religious convictions, this is because the religious impulse rests on an instinctive basis and is therefore a specifically human function. You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
The leaders of the mass State cannot avoid being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsessive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy - for instance, money, work, political influence, and so forth. When any natural human function gets lost, i.e. is denied conscious and intentional expression, a general disturbance results. Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the world today by the Iron Curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern man, no matter on which side he lives. And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his *shadow* *side*, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within."
I am not a fan of Carl Jung, but disagree on the equivalence of religious belief and political belief: they are both rife with superstition, obfuscation, error, lies , treachery - well, I could go on. But the Christian religion has hung on for 2000 years, and Neoliberalism only dates to about 40. So draw conclusions: religion is a lot more difficult to throw off, once established. It seems obvious: we can't get by without some form of government, for had we none, there would be no consensus as to infrastructure needs and who it serves, the food and supply chain would be much more precarious, and slavery would have no bounds.
The mystical is what is always with us and is actually negated by religion which purports to have the answers -when it has none. It was common among astrophysicists, mathematicians and others to believe the universe was just a machine, input in, input out. This on the intuitive basis that matter, therefore facts are limited, must be limited, what is, is, and there is nothing more: Big Bang and then Big Silence and Stasis: All bullshit from small arrogant minds. We cannot understand the universe, and it is the ultimate in arrogance to believe we can. We understand snippets, that's all. But we can devise a system of government that gives everybody a fair start: democratic socialism. That's a reasonable objective.
Christianity aka Greek religion could be seen as the continuation of Platonism and its totalitarian utopia of rules.
Unfortunately, democratic socialism is only a theory of Christian democratic capitalism, which preserves the problems as sacred under the pretext that they can be "reformed" by pleading with them. The absolute root problem is heroism and, frankly, the entirety of classical culture starting at Homer if not before is lousy with it. You'll have to erase competition and private property, along with every institution of social rivalry, to create a "system".
That's before we even get to the ridiculous Neoplatonic idea of the Great Chain of Being, that there is an "objective" total order of things, and that all humanity needs to submit to it in their due station. Greatness is a lie and so is Smallness. And so we must also erase the prizes for stupid games and stop rewarding heroic exhibitionism and arrogance.
It's far better that peoples decide for themselves how they wish one another to behave, assort themselves accordingly, and shut down (and to encourage them to shut down) heroic drama wherever it appears.
Everything can be seen as the continuation of something else: that is a mere truism: what is significant and informative is - in what respects? I see no relevant similarity between democratic socialism and Christian democratic capitalism. They are both ideas, ideals, maybe - true, but totally different. I agree with you on heroism: like war, who needs it? In a fair system, no one, except perhaps in a genuine unforeseen emergency.
And systems are with us always- if you are talking 8 billion people - and even far less: It then becomes the question, what is the best system? In democratic socialism, heroes are obsolete, have no relevance whatsoever. In practice however, that's a horse of a different whinny. Who knows the future? It is still possible some asshole might attempt to exploit the system to their advantage: false flags, lies, corruption - these are not genetically compelled, but can erupt nevertheless, from habit and example. I say, democratic socialism is the best system: it presents realistic and commendable values and does not intrinsically lend itself to corruption, as does capitalism., especially the innocuous, allegedly fair-play Globalism. Its values are superior: materialist (but not by any means exclusively) but not materialistic. Some people believe that good intentions, apparently as opposed to openly bad intentions, are bound to produce the opposite result. Something odd about that logic. Not quite compelling.
Particularly, Christianity can be seen as continuation of Plato's cosmology of a universe bound together by unity and subordination in a long tree of ownership relations. No surprise that the Western models of the state have all followed the principle of encompassment and domination from above, which is not always usual in social orders, and definitely not seen as a necessity by all.
No, systems are not with us always. That's the origin myth of the PMC, renouncing evidence-driven anthropology which has found numerous counterexamples in peoples across time and land. I think we can say the same thing about the myth of religions as tools for people to understand the world (no, the actual history of human agriculture over cultural splits and mergers would help people understand). What you mean when you say "system" is "empire", a synonym which dates back to Adam Smith's time, that "man of system". The UN can be abolished at any time, for example, and (owing to its Wilsonist heritage) probably should be. So to tell us that total global order is permanent is to catapult the globalists' propaganda.
Further, the idea that there exists a "best" system reeks of value-fact confusion and speculative self-flattery. Under this facile "love of system" you have simply swept several particularly liberal or English doctrines which have produced huge amounts of useless drama and wasted effort: the primacy of the individual, moral perfectionism, legitimacy of profit, a reformist theory of change, and you still have competition which is an inherently heroic activity. In this very argument you yourself have asserted the moral rights of the victor in a set-piece debate celebrating competition and valuing one's ability to subordinate others, straight out of the heroic script!
It seems apparent that your social democratic project seems far more interested in perfecting or "improving" people than bringing about the material conditions for the end of capitalism. Such projects, IMHO, are best referred to in terms of religion rather than public administration, as a sacrificial (another heroic concept!) waste of time.
I hope you're getting some sense of how pervasively this particular flavor of drama undermines the things we think are right and important, and of the degree of deprogramming that is going to be necessary. But we can reject competition and sacrifice as perversion and waste.
>It is still possible some asshole might attempt to exploit the system to their advantage
It is certain, and they will have been influencing it from inception by manipulating participants' sense of what is "pure" and acceptable, telling you x is necessary or y is impossible or only z works, all in an authoritative code and tone of voice. I understand that they are not genetically compelled, but this belief that unity is possible if only people would subordinate themselves to their station is yet another of Plato's failed (but ever-fertile) myths.
Very interesting Jamenta, and deserves a more careful response than I have time for at the moment. I'd like say right now though, that civilization was built around the idea of hierarchy of forces - God, or -Gods, and us. Of course, the Devil countervailing. Christianity added angels in an hierarchy - and I'm not sure if that was entirely original. Every civilization with a written record was built around the concept of God, one or several. In any case, folklore never died out completely and the idea of unpredictable , rather whimsical and unorganized lesser.but powerful entities. Officially, and it is clearly stated, the Christian religion opposed itself to nature, which it considered a source of "sin'. Interestingly, Joan of Arc, believed in "fairies," or at least, the right of the folk to believe in them, as they did. Sorry to rant on- I'll get back to you later. Beliefs, huh? I suppose that's what makes us and our life on this plane interesting.
What I find interesting is Jung's claim that religion is an instinctive (inherent) aspect of our human psyche, and if you attempt to ignore it, or eliminate it - that "religious" (or "spiritual") impulse then gets channeled elsewhere (into politics, or war, or making money, etc.) Thus Jung's line in the excerpt, "You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return."
Aniela Jaffe, one of Carl Jung's closest colleagues, who also helped him when he was in his 80s write his now famous "Memories, Dreams Reflections" autobiography, wrote a book herself called "Apparitions and Precognition." May be one of my own personal favorite books I have in my collection - as she writes about psychological phenomena that is known to happen spontaneously to people (i.e. instinctively in the psyche) whether they were looking for it or not. Psychological apparitions especially have been well known to occur around the death of a family member or loved one. Whether the Apparition phenomena is real - or simply a concoction of a grieving mind was besides the point for Aniela and Jung. What they deemed significant and analyzed from a psychological perspective, was the emergence of such phenomena within the psyche - which there is considerable documented evidence for. This kind of phenomena, of course, falls into the common category of "spirituality" and "religion". But is often repressed by the culture of "Rationality" dominating Western society today.
Do you agree that perhaps language has a tendency to obfuscate meaning? We have to keep clear, for one, that spirituality and religion are two very different things. You say, for instance, that Atheism is another kind of belief. But does atheism incorporate dogmas and codes of behaviour? I don't think so. If I don't believe in the existence of leprechauns, does that imply a belief in the non-existence of leprechauns? "Belief" here, obviously means two entirely different things. Now, it may be, is, in fact, a very bad idea to be too harsh on religious beliefs and believers, because that often ends in cruelty and marginalization - even war. But it is also true that religion has and does facilitate war. The christian religion was the result of a revolt against a materialistic and rather cruel way of life. But when Christians gained ascendance, they became the cruel power. Yet, there is a reason for religious beliefs that is quite practical: it gives people a sense of identity and organizes them against exploitation.
So, a good thing in a certain context, that can become a bad thing in other contexts.
Context is not all, perhaps, but it is a great deal. And while language is very basic and important, it has pitfalls: we must strive to be clear about what the hell we actually mean.
Atheism's ethos is essentially Deism with the Creator painted over. Its code of behavior is essentially bourgeois liberal Perfectionism, a derivative of Protestant Pietism. It is allowed to exist because it does not break with Platonic slave values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionist_liberalism
Now there is nihilism, which jamenta would rather deny. It recognizes no general obligations; any such order would issue specifically from other, more situated power centers, recognized only tactically in terms similar to a right of innocent passage. It respects no special property or origin myth and demands none. It demands only the level of self-knowledge that destroys bureaucratic or heroic societies.
Heroic lies do run deep in Western culture. The principle that people tend to subordinate themselves to masters for protection is another Greek heroic myth for the shredder. No state has ever stopped exploitation; they only enforce the "division" (actually abrogation) of labor and leisure.
I don't think I would place spirituality and religion into two "very different" things (or categories). My view is there can be a wide blend of the two - depending on your definitions and interpretations. I think spirituality can incorporate aspects of known religious traditions, just as religion (which I often think as organized religion with dogmas) can incorporate many known spiritual beliefs. And again there have been throughout human history a wide variety of religious and spiritual systems and beliefs. You are right though, that language can obfuscate and attempting to define concepts can be part of the "language" barrier.
I do believe Atheism is another kind of belief system. Simply because (I personally) believe there are quite a few still open ontological and metaphysical philosophical questions that have not been resolved yet by Science or human philosophy. Open questions about the nature of our reality, the nature of our being (such as the mind/body problem) - and Atheists, much like anyone MUST base their beliefs on something - whether it be Materialism, Judaism, whatever - but whatever critical thinking Atheists use to come to their fundamental belief there is i.e. No God - whatever they think God may be - and there have been thousands of variations of God over the history of humankind - whatever thinking Atheists make to come to their conclusion - cannot at all be based on what we currently know about the ontological origins of our reality or the unknown meaning or purpose of our Being - these remain UNKNOWN at the moment - therefore any TRUTH an atheist attempts to BELIEVE regarding reality and their being - is not based on anything but their own faith in Atheism - much like any other religion or spiritual belief is. Although, yes Neo-Atheists will tirelessly repeat the Neo-Atheist talking point that their Atheism is not based on beliefs. I often respond to this talking point by asking them - then what is their Atheism based upon? How did they come to their Atheism? Which usually gets crickets or some uncritically thought out response. Or some other silly response which I don't bother to pursue.
I am not really that fond of playing definition games. And you certainly can go down the rabbit hole with definitions when dealing with ontological arguments or arguments regarding the nature of reality. And I don't think of myself as some kind of academic scholar of language or philosophy. My background is mostly science and psychology. Psychology fascinates me probably the most - thus my interest in Carl Jung and Aniela Jaffe's work. Carl Jung wrote a lot about "meaning" - where in the hell does "meaning" actually arise from? And how is it possible the unconscious is autonomous and more interesting, Jung later in his life claimed the unconscious was not only autonomous but objective (as opposed to subjective). Quite a jump.
Every empire has had to deal with this ennui of its pampered, lazy, corrupted people down thru the ages. Usually just as it was crumbling. Wise marginalized people in those empires have always offered an alternative, which is always, go inside. “The kingdom of god is inside you” “The happiness you seek is within you”. “Who knows the Tao does not speak of the Tao”. They all involve some sort of meditation or quietism and they all involve eschewing the material world. And they all work. But this present generation of Yuppies, the most material people in a century, is absolutely incapable of looking within. There’s various reasons of course and I’m glad Caitlin has taken a whack at those reasons. Personally, I think this current bunch of bourgies can’t look within because of what they fear is in there—a Hieryanamous Busch painting that is licking flames in their souls. Poor things. (And apologies to Busch for my egregious spelling of his name.). I say try acid. Or shrooms.
Also I agree about acid and shrooms, which gave me wonderful visions, but I think it also depends on the person who takes them. It enhances what’s (more or less) already there.
Wonderful reply. “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. What Caitlin said about the world as it is is extraordinary is spot-on; but what’s missing is to understand the significance of the “loss of the sense of sacredness” in the world. We can’t find a good perspective on changing the world if the earth we live on and everything in it is not meaningful to us and if we view ourselves as without purpose or responsibility. Thus a true “conviction” of the sacredness of all things – not merely a “sense” of it – has to be there to truly make a difference...by simply being, at that point. :)
Yes. It’s a conundrum. As the Zen saying goes, you can’t bite your own teeth. I can’t change “it” until I can change me. And I can’t change me until “it” changes. The thing I rely on is like this—if I throw a tantrum and decide to hold my breath until I die just to show you!…As soon as I pass out and the Great Thinker in my brain shuts up, the automatic nervous system kicks in and I start breathing again. So it seems to me that there is a homeostasis of being, not just physically but all parts of being, and it will right itself. Sometimes it seems like “well not THIS time. This time we’ve gone too far.” But I’ll see that when I believe it. We’re a very young and spirited species,I think, and we really need a nanny. And I think each person has a nanny to get them through. Ya just gotta find it. Whatever gets you thru the night—it’s alright, alright! That’s the sacred to me.
I don't think that's missing at all. Sacredness is an error. So is meaning. So too is the very idea that the "world" is something that "exists", is necessary, and is anything more than the accumulated property rights of names we can and should forget.
It is this very same Christian-Greek theory of "spirit" that has been used to enslave for 2400 years or more, since the Myceneans knocked over the matriarchal Minoan society of the 3rd-2nd century BCE.
IMO, desecration is what is necessary right now. Greatness and Oneness, in particular, only create forms of slavery and their nonsense rationalizations, and they can and should be destroyed starting now, along with the rest of Plato's oeuvre.
That might be an acquired taste. The reason societies tend to prohibit psychotropics to their working classes is because they know that smoking a bowl gives exactly the same benefits as religious rites without the toxic class-forming indoctrination.
Or here is another way to look at it. You have been raised in the narrative matrix that UFO's are not real and never will be. So you comfortably place them in the category of the impossible, and no matter how many Pentagon flight videos, UAP reports, pilot testimonials, or insider whistleblowers come forward to tell you otherwise, you dismiss them out of hand because to do otherwise would destroy the narrative matrix you have been raised to believe is true.
And as we all learned from Plato's Allegory of the Cave, when humans are confronted with information that reality is different than the version they were taught, they instinctively run back to the narrative matrix/cave that they are more comfortable with. The key to being a wise human being is to learn to fight this instinct, and follow the evidence, wherever it may lead.
You're presuming that epic heroic drama is desirable, not pathological. All heroic societies are built on enforced lies and mysticism, and they are full of trite, petty personal intrigues and other self-glorifying emotional violence. It would be far better to grow out of heroic bullshit and start cherishing our lived experiences, and start dickpunching people and systems of emotional manipulation.
Stinky: "dickpunching" sounds like "emotional manipulation" to me.
can't be done because this poem's too good:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses
see we need a more sophisticated definition of heroism
The tastes for such things are cultivated by a society that celebrates lying, drama, and conflict instead of dismembering the perpetrators and erasing their names and deeds. We can start doing those other things in our daily lives, right now, however figuratively for the moment.
Hahahahaha. Dickpunching! 😁😆😂. My arm would be so tired! And I’d have to start with Hillary, aka Jobba the Hut. Sometimes just pointing and laughing works.
This could be hotwired: http://www.amazon.com/Extendo-Punch-Boxing-Glove-Extendable/dp/B00N1UHPLS
The problem with pointing and laughing is that it affords them the impression that it's a messaging problem, already a deep tendency on the left side of capitalism. If they are receiving anything from the public at all — more likely, it will be displaced onto the staffers seen to allow the performance to "be failed" — it is that elites' adverse actions are a mere misdemeanor that can be repaired by abstaining from that behavior. That is akin to shutting the barn door after the horse has already impregnated two mares in the next county. But to hold them to reverse their actions is tyranny, because the hero's actions are sacred or some such aristocratic shit. The net effect is to envelop state actions in a sacrificial narrative envelope so that they can reach their destination without undue wear or tear. Whichever lucky priest drew the short straw steps forward and performs the kabuki, then takes their grief out on dead girls or live boys provided by the ruling class, and complains "Eh, it's a living" over brunch the next day.
Booing actually rejects *them* without recognizing their speech or actions, in fact, by interfering with their performance of those speech or actions and with those who would care to "bear witness" to them. Also it's easier on the arms.
Stinky: You remind me of the stupid American brother (played by Kevin Kline) in the movie "A Fish Called Wanda". You read the books and essays and quote them, but you haven't a clue as to what they are really about.
You remind me of a leg-humping chihuahua that hasn't been fixed yet. Get lost, feeb.
Hahahahahaha. Yes, ok. I’ll order the punching glove! 😁😆😂🤣.
"Dreams, omens, coincidences, luck, sortilege, magic and other experience which shun rather than court inquiry and deserve notice chiefly, because every man has usually in a lifetime two or three hints in this kind which are specially impressive to him. They also shed light on our structure." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson #CW #WiseCo #p947
Jonathan T: But I WANT reality to be different from the one I've been programmed to believe.
"Every time I open my eyes I see the face of God." Emerson (Nature)
"We are symbols, and inhabit symbols." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
No one is ever going to experience a Ponderosa pine by watching a Twitter-posted video of a group of hikers dancing around it --- your perception will generally focus on those hand-holding humans, instinctively. Hug it; palpate the the sinuous recesses of its bark, draw your nose close and imbibe the vanilla/butterscotch terpenes while forgetting the terminology "terpene"; most of all, quiet your mind and relate to its essence as a magnificent complex system buzzing with messages to and from the soil fungi, probably for many more years than your brain has been processing pre-/ mis-conceptions about its true essence. Most of all, feel the love it—all of it— encompasses.
Is it logical to conclude that Bigfoot does not exist because so few people are capturing images of Bigfoot with their smartphones? If that is true, it is also true that, based on this theory “things don’t exist unless some large number of people have photographed it with their smartphone”, such constellations as the Big Dipper and Southern Cross do not exist either, because unless you really know how to tweak the settings in your iPhone, or unless you are willing to buy an app that can modify the iPhone photography algorithms, most stars cannot be photographed by the iPhone. So does that mean the Big Dipper doesn’t exist? Obviously not, because I can verify its existence with my naked eye. The Big Dipper exists, even though the iPhone photography algorithms cannot prove it. Obviously, we must distrust all digital photography.
OTH, extension of our senses by technology can be a good thing. The invention of the microscope allowed us to see what could not otherwise be known to exist. I wonder if we are just waiting for a technology to be invented that will properly extend our senses so we can see Bigfoot and other creatures of that magical or interdimensional realm that is almost always just slightly beyond our field of vision.
And finding Bigfoot is merely finding a species of primate, not like ET. Why do we lump all “mysteries” together? Truth is NOT equal to the status quo or commonly shared perceptions. So of course, I’ve seen enough scientific evidence from simply plaster casts of footprints showing viable populations of such creatures as measured by specialists using bell curves etc. And sounds that are not similar to any other animals. Of course some are misidentifications. Same is true for insects. But because these are large and bipedal they suggest we may not be the only such primate on the planet. Wasn’t enough debunking to discover the octopus as a creature who is essentially “all brain”?
I suspect we haven't figured everything out yet. And that some things many insist cannot be true (such as precognitive dreams) are actually true. And some things many insist are true (locality, non-contextuality) are not actually true.
jamenta: Nihilists say that truth cannot be found.
Nihilists don't even believe nihilism is true.
See also the liar paradox: "This sentence is false." If that sentence is false, then it is true. If it is true, then it is false. So could the nihilists be onto something?
Jack Sirius: Nihilists could be onto something but we can't function if nothing is "true" or "good" or "evil". We have to have something we call reality or society would fall apart. It would be Bizarro World.
Though I'd love to see a Nihilist judge, lawyers, and courtroom. That would be a funny skit.
JackSirius: I agree. Viruses haven't been photographed. Do they exist? I think not.
And yet every official scientific article ever published about Covid-19 contains an “image” of the virus. So, because a picture is worth a thousand words, the average person thinks/believes/assumes the “image” is a photograph, thus verifying to them the existence of the Covid-19. In fact, that “image” is always, always almost entirely an artist’s rendition, but it is also the essential “proof” that makes such propaganda work.
Of course, viruses—whatever they are, probably nothing more than molecular artifacts of cell metabolism, perhaps the cellular/molecular equivalent of shed skin cells—are smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so optical microscopes simply cannot “image” them. Instead they use electron microscopes, which manipulates data from a stream of electrons beamed into dead, highly processed organic material which, we are told, contains the virus. The imaging “magic” (or deception) happens when the computer algorithm assembles the collected data into something that vaguely looks, to a human, like a black-and-white photo of a spectral blob. Of course, a computer and the right software can take any string of data whatsoever and manipulate it into an image. (This is done all the time with sound wave data, for example.)
Then the artist gets involved, adding all the colors and even adding structures that don’t appear in the “image”. In fact, even the CDC and NIH refer to the resultant artwork as a “representative image” or a “representation”, not a photograph. But for most people, the propaganda damage has already been done, and the existence of the “virus” is proven.
What a scam.
Jack Sirius: Your comment about the virus "Image" scam is right on the money (pun intended).
JackSirius: Fun Fact: The stars in the Big Dipper are actually getting closer to Earth every day. In some millions of years they will impact our solar system.
The magic in the world is in ourselves, for generations the soothsayers and snake oil salesman, money changers in the temple if you like have sold us fantastic stories to fill that longing but the truth of the matter is that the best and only magic is what is inside each person.
A great deal of spirituality *is* based on the magic inside each person - which Atheist/Skeptics routinely insist on telling us these days is simply wishful thinking. One clear example is the last 30+ years of NDE (Near-Death) research. There have been over 65+, retrospective and prospective - peer reviewed scientific studies (some multiple years long) of what turns out to be, a not too uncommon experience many people will have when they are considered clinically dead: of which the Atheist/Skeptics will inform us are simply "fantastic stories" - "wishful thinking" and they ignore or deny the large amount of scientific research that has now been conducted in the last number of decades regarding NDEs. Making many of them, in my view, scientific hypocrites.
Consciousness itself remains an open scientific question of which the reductive materialists have yet to come up with a shred of evidence consciousness itself is simply a product of multiple random particles that managed to come together over aeons and become self-aware. Materialists have no idea how consciousness even experiences the color red, or how consciousness is self-aware. Their preconceived world-view falls short when it comes to attempting to understand or model the reality of consciousness - of which, much like Freud, they want to reduce it to a cause-and-effect existence, motivated only by some sexual aberration of the past as a "survival" trait, in a deterministic mechanistic reality that they insist you ought to find meaning in - while they fool themselves into believing their brand of nihilism (determinism, materialism) is superior to all other forms of metaphysical beliefs that they so hate.
Science is about admitting what we don't know.
I am one of those wretched Atheists but I don't deny what is obviously a phenomenon, rather I see it as an area where scientific understanding is incomplete and the rejection of research in those areas is akin to politics rather than science.
I am an AI developer and work extensively with a variety of different technologies, I strongly suspect that the human brain has some hidden structures that allow for non-linear processes. Essentially quantum computing with each neuron of the brain. If that is the case then multidimensional access from inside our own brains could be a game changer in regard to our perception of reality. Small minds exist in the scientific community like anywhere else and regardless of where you find a small minded person the one truth is that they reject what they dont understand.
I have literally died on the table and I didn't experience anything except a missing moment, I think it was because I was only officially gone for a few seconds. That doesn't mean I have not experienced spirituality. It may well be because I didn't believe I would experience anything, perhaps thats the message Christ tried to give, if you don't believe (have faith) then there is nothing for you after your gone. That would fit well with Schrodinger theory about sub-atomic particles only being defined in our reality when they are observed. If you don't believe can you still be spiritual ?
Strange musings of an old atheist.
https://www.nature.com/articles/440611a
"wretched Atheist"
Reminds me that in the early Roman empire, Rome was tolerant of all religions. But you might guess what group was among the most disliked among the religious- yep Atheists.
So I feel your pain. But who knows, I think in many ways the verdict is still out regarding the ontological underpinnings of the reality you and I find ourselves in right now (and soon to perish - maybe forever). Science has not resolved many open philosophical questions, including the mind/body problem. But I feel that's no reason we should just stop asking important questions regarding the meaning of our lives, or pretend we've already got the big questions figured out. In the end, it may all just be some short meaningless jaunt into nothingness. An absurdity. Or ... maybe not.
I also worked in AI (chess learning) many moons ago and worked at NASA for about a year - on the space shuttle's launch control system.
I've had two good friends (not many) who did die briefly then came back, and did relate to me personally the typical experience scientifically reported for an NDE (i.e. tunnel, separation of body, emotional detachment from the body ...). I had no reason to disbelieve these two friends of mine, no reason to believe they made it all up.
There are a wide variety of concepts/beliefs one could call "spiritual". I think the key to it all, that still remains a scientific puzzle, is consciousness itself. What is consciousness? Is consciousness a product of the body, or does the body host consciousness like a radio hosts a mozart symphony broadcast?
jamenta: Why do we sleep 1/3 of our lives? Why do we have vivid dreams? Where do the dreams come from?
Is the dream world real or the waking world or both?
Humans can't even explain how or why they spend 1/3 of their lives sleeping.
I don’t belong to any atheist organization, so I don’t accept your characterizations regarding what I reject or believe. I don’t speak for any other atheists, and they don’t speak for me.
I simply reject the arguments that look at, for example, dolphins’ or octopuses’ intelligence as evidence of a deity. I do believe that, as Gore Vidal argued, Christians ought more accurately be called Paulists, because most of what they claim to believe about the Christ has been from St Paul’s mind and pen.
My position is believe what you want, but don’t infuse your politics with those truths. The human-centric, material world is the only appropriate realm of politics.
I reject the argument that phenomena currently unexplained falls in the same category as leprechauns and unicorns.
I believe in the separation of church and state.
But I also believe the persecution and intolerance (in whatever form it might take) of people's spiritual values is arrogant and smacks of moral superiority which Skeptic atheists do not have the right to claim.
Atheism is just another kind of metaphysical belief system - even though many will make the absurd argument Atheism is not a system of belief at all.
I don’t attack any believers, but I do react negatively to ideologues letting their ideology frame their arguments, and I’m curious who you are referencing when you declare your opposition to...spiritual persecution. Christianity is an ideology that is threaded through American politics, and its followers see themselves as persecuted. We don’t have separation of church and state!
If the subject is unconscious belief or the manipulated mind or conditioned attitudes, Marx and Engels wrote about alienation and ideology, which touch on all of those topics. Neither Emerson nor Jung are typically referenced in political discussions, but I can appreciate their contributions on perception and cognition.
I said I believe in separation of church and state. I didn't say whether I think we have completely achieved that in the US or elsewhere. Which also by the way, just because church & state are integrated doesn't mean a society cannot flourish - take the ancient Egyptians for example. But I am still of the opinion a culture is better off not having any kind of officially adopted "religion" and there needs to be a tolerance for all spiritual practices, including Atheism.
Emerson was a strong abolitionist, and Jung, contrary to the smears he has received over the years, was against Nazism and Hitler - he famously fled Germany when he realized the fanaticism that was about to overcome the entire country.
Interesting that Marx and Engels wrote about alienation and ideology .Carl Jung also spoke/wrote about it and you can read about his ideas in the book "The Undiscovered Self" - which was prompted by conversations between Jung and a Dr. Carleton Smith, director of the National Arts Foundation at the time.
An interesting quote from "The Undiscovered Self":
"Just as man, as a social being, cannot in the long run exist without a tie to the community, so the individual will never find a real justification for his existence, and his own spiritual and moral autonomy, anywhere except in an extramundane principle capable of relativizing the overpowering influence of external factors." #p24
Another quote from the book:
"You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return." #p65
I’m very fond of the last quote, and have used it to argue that all gods are creations of the mind. I also have no argument for the quote you cite from #p24. We are taught and browbeaten at times into believing we have intrinsic value, which I can only applaud. But then we are told to find meaning and justify our lives by that meaning, and that, IMO is insidious indoctrination.
The pagans are the unenlightened sods who haven’t been brainwashed and are not the least bit motivated to torchere themselves to answer the questions they exhibited no natural inclination to ask.
This is an interesting comment jamenta, I’ve always wondered about near death experiences and have searched specifically for what happens when atheists die and come back to life. Supposedly the longest someone’s ever flatlined and came back to life is around 4 minutes.
I’ll admit that I don’t believe in heaven or hell, I kind of think that when you’re gone it’s just over. But I’d also be curious to hear from people with no political, religious or anti-religious influences what actually happened to them
Thanks Han. You might check out Pim van Lommel, M.D.s excellent approachable book on the subject of NDEs "Consciousness Beyond Life, The Science of Near-Death Experience". Easy to look up on Amazon.
If anything, Lommel's book is a fascinating read. I've been following the subject i.e. the scientific investigations of NDEs now for the last few decades. There appears to be no bias regarding who may be the subject of an NDE, even young children have reported the phenomena. From the scientific studies conducted, it appears it does not matter what your religion or your belief system was before having an NDE. There are some cases of avowed Atheists also having an NDE experience.
I find the many studies well researched (all over the world, not just in the US) and the doctors and scientists conducting the research possessing solid scientific credentials. Of course, many Skeptics have tried do whatever they can to smear many of the scientists conducting the research, and/or claim the results are unscientific. Predictably so. Skeptics I find, are much like fundamentalists in the churches of old - but this time the religious belief is in the almighty particle of Materialism and a mechanistic universe where consciousness is a happenstance product of the brain, and nothing more.
I find the NDE scientific research hopeful and likely indicative that consciousness is more than just a product of the brain. I like to keep an open mind and not commit the fashionable stupidity that everything unexplained is in the same category as leprechauns and unicorns.
From your research is there a minimum amount of time to have an NDE ?
I was gone for 3 seconds and had no experience.
Here is a recent interview of Dr. Pim von Lommel on his NDE research: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsBFOB7H44
There is scientific criteria regarding NDE's: the Bruce Greyson NDE scale - that most scientific researchers studying the phenomena use for identification.
A good book on the subject (if you are curious) is Pim van Lommel, M.D.s "Consciousness Beyond Life, The Science of the Near-Death Experience".
Exactly. The miraculous is in the eye of the beholder. And that there is a mind looking through that eye.
And there’s something “collective” about what’s inside us, that can only be experienced by patient observation and an open (ie calm and aware, not busy) mind.
When electronic devices were simpler and less "obedient", one used to could turn off the input power to the receiver while tuned to an FM station, and hear the music's peaks become more clipped as the power supply's capacitors quickly but perceptibly were drained of charge through the speakers.
The need to emotionalize, celebrate, and believe systematic errors is sad but typical of heroic societies.
“a series of mental habits that can be willfully deprogrammed through conscious intention”
moments of nothing but pure perception are the most peaceful and sublime for me
getting there took some work, but it’s very worthwhile work to do imo
The power of Now
Indeed, Caitlin.
What we have yet to discover but will very soon is that our Perception "CREATES" our reality. That CONSCIOUSNESS creates matter, not the other way around? That we ARE the gods that we assign to the heavens? That the difference between horrifying despair and eternal satisfaction and contentment is just a stones throw away, and is completely within our power to imagine it?
What if the UFO's and Inter-dimensional beings are US? Other manifestations of our Consciousness on other planes of existence - or future focuses of ours disabling Nuclear Missiles before we blow ourselves to kingdom come?
What if we were to discover and embrace that we are all interconnected? Not only with each other, but with all of creation?
Welcome to my world.
Philip Mollica: What if this is all a video game I invented millennia ago and somehow I got trapped in it?
Video game is an apt analogy, but we only seem trapped from this perspective.
These lives are just a blink of our larger reality, which is a good thing to remember when we take things too seriously.
Philip Mollica: I hope you are right. But part of me hopes to die when I die.
I agree that we shouldn't take things too seriously, but human suffering is real.
Love this. It sounds like Seth.
<<< "touches nose"
🙏
I wish I could get my people to read Caitlin's unique style and alternative view of, well everything, I encourage but some can't get off their phones long enough to experience life... simple, mundane life ...
dixieray53: I find nothing simple or mundane about life. Quite the contrary.
There are not many extremely well-trained US aircraft carrier pilots, or veteran commercial airline pilots who report they have seen "Big foot". The fallacious "Categorization" argument, often used by Atheist/Skeptics of the Skeptic's society - who lump everything they deny into one big category without discrimination, is unfortunate and lacks objectivity.
Reminds me of a quote by Thomas Mann in 1929:
"I aver that there can be no true skepticism which is not skeptical of itself; and a skeptic, in my humble view, is not merely one who believes the prescribed things and averts his eyes from everything that might imperil his virtue."
Definitely. And Bigfoot is now the idea that maybe there’s a species of primate we haven’t yet discovered. Which is hardly in the category of magic, fantasy, or religion. Also I believe the knee-jerk debunking of all unusual ideas, observations, or phenomena to be the historical stance of those adhering to the status quo, which generally dislikes “the unknown.” Not the ideal mindset for people who want to actually “change the world.”
Siham Karami: I hate that word "debunking". When I was young debunking meant getting thrown out of a bunk.
Personally, I haven't seen much that convinces me Bigfoot is a possibility. But that's not where my beef lies. Like you say, one often sees a knee-jerk debunking of everything that is unexplained, which I find intellectually distasteful. It's often the anomalous phenomena, the phenomena that lies on the fringes of scientific inquiry, usually disdainfully ignored by the 'status quo' that often ends up becoming the largest breakthru's in science and human understanding.
I am not at all ready to believe UAPs are actual off-world technology, but I have reached the point where I will state categorically that there is some UAP phenomena that remains "unexplained" and those who claim to be able to explain UAP phenomena I find unconvincing. But that's just me.
jamenta: I looked up Thomas Mann. He was an interesting man who led a very interesting life. Why does everyone seem to end up in California?
As for aircraft carrier pilots or commercial airline pilots seeing Bigfoot, that is of course impossible. Those planes fly way too fast to see an animal the size of Bigfoot. Bigfoot lives in the forest.
"He's credentialed, he's incapable of lying" More professional-managerial class self-worship, I see. You must have a whole backyard swimming pool full of it.
"Is it not possible that this, right here, is the miracle we are yearning for, and that it always has been? That we’re not really searching for Bigfoot, but for a different kind of relationship with the ordinary?"
Yes, it's possible, but not under the current circumstances of our reality which is pretty much controlled by the Evil Globalists who want us all dead to the truth and buried in lies and deception.
It seems to me, that the universe is no less miraculous for being different from the way we imagine it ought to be.
The see the mystical everywhere in nature and I strenuously object to anyone's attempt /claim to control it, or persuade others that they have control over it: the God on a leash idea. But I am absolutely positive something exists that we can never comprehend. Occasionally, it makes tangible contact, but I reiterate, it's a very bad idea to attempt or claim to own it, that is, count on it to do your bidding. No one can explain how life came to be, except for general environmental principles, and even they do not hold for all species.
I have no use therefore for religion, and I think it is an objective fact: most of the evil in the world has come about from some kind of religion, mainly the Christian, because it has been dominant, and dominant because ruthless, along with deliberate polices of procreation promotion, using the most absurd logic. Most wars are connected to the superior god idea and concomitant "values". Terrible crimes against women and homosexuals were rendered "acceptable" for "the cause".
Religion is the attempt to own or explain, categorize, regulate the unexplainable on the basis of alleged superior arcane knowledge, and rule over others on that basis. The result of this duplicitous arrogance has been socially, psychically, psychologically and environmentally catastrophic. Have we forgotten how GW Bush claimed God told him to attack Iraq? And then joked on video about the whereabouts of the infamous missing WMD: "They're not here" he quipped, checking lower kitchen cabinets: "They're not here" he smirked, extending the search to the upper cabinets.
Religion is a concept enforced by autocrats, and indeed even fascist governments have traditionally employed it. Plato said his Utopia - translate- soulless and sterile ideal society - could only work if enforced by religion. Religion involves faith in the ridiculous diktats of human beings, usually men: a higher faith is required to believe in the universe and the mystery of life itself. I am a socialist, and perceive no contradiction: socialism is about the best system to eliminate a number of basic human, practical, existential problems - in this world: it makes no vapid assertions or promises about any other.
"Whereas the man of today can easily think about and understand all the "truths" dished out to him by the State, his understanding of religion is made considerably more difficult owing to the lack of explanations. ("Do you understand what you are reading? And he said, "How can I, unless some one guides me?" Acts 8:30.) If, despite this, he has still not discarded all his religious convictions, this is because the religious impulse rests on an instinctive basis and is therefore a specifically human function. You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
The leaders of the mass State cannot avoid being deified, and wherever crudities of this kind have not yet been put over by force, obsessive factors arise in their stead, charged with demonic energy - for instance, money, work, political influence, and so forth. When any natural human function gets lost, i.e. is denied conscious and intentional expression, a general disturbance results. Hence, it is quite natural that with the triumph of the Goddess of Reason a general neuroticizing of modern man should set in, a dissociation of personality analogous to the splitting of the world today by the Iron Curtain. This boundary line bristling with barbed wire runs through the psyche of modern man, no matter on which side he lives. And just as the typical neurotic is unconscious of his *shadow* *side*, so the normal individual, like the neurotic, sees his shadow in his neighbor or in the man beyond the great divide. It has even become a political and social duty to apostrophize the capitalism of the one and the communism of the other as the very devil, so as to fascinate the outward eye and prevent it from looking at the individual life within."
~Carl Jung, "The Undiscovered Self" #p66
I am not a fan of Carl Jung, but disagree on the equivalence of religious belief and political belief: they are both rife with superstition, obfuscation, error, lies , treachery - well, I could go on. But the Christian religion has hung on for 2000 years, and Neoliberalism only dates to about 40. So draw conclusions: religion is a lot more difficult to throw off, once established. It seems obvious: we can't get by without some form of government, for had we none, there would be no consensus as to infrastructure needs and who it serves, the food and supply chain would be much more precarious, and slavery would have no bounds.
The mystical is what is always with us and is actually negated by religion which purports to have the answers -when it has none. It was common among astrophysicists, mathematicians and others to believe the universe was just a machine, input in, input out. This on the intuitive basis that matter, therefore facts are limited, must be limited, what is, is, and there is nothing more: Big Bang and then Big Silence and Stasis: All bullshit from small arrogant minds. We cannot understand the universe, and it is the ultimate in arrogance to believe we can. We understand snippets, that's all. But we can devise a system of government that gives everybody a fair start: democratic socialism. That's a reasonable objective.
Christianity aka Greek religion could be seen as the continuation of Platonism and its totalitarian utopia of rules.
Unfortunately, democratic socialism is only a theory of Christian democratic capitalism, which preserves the problems as sacred under the pretext that they can be "reformed" by pleading with them. The absolute root problem is heroism and, frankly, the entirety of classical culture starting at Homer if not before is lousy with it. You'll have to erase competition and private property, along with every institution of social rivalry, to create a "system".
That's before we even get to the ridiculous Neoplatonic idea of the Great Chain of Being, that there is an "objective" total order of things, and that all humanity needs to submit to it in their due station. Greatness is a lie and so is Smallness. And so we must also erase the prizes for stupid games and stop rewarding heroic exhibitionism and arrogance.
It's far better that peoples decide for themselves how they wish one another to behave, assort themselves accordingly, and shut down (and to encourage them to shut down) heroic drama wherever it appears.
Everything can be seen as the continuation of something else: that is a mere truism: what is significant and informative is - in what respects? I see no relevant similarity between democratic socialism and Christian democratic capitalism. They are both ideas, ideals, maybe - true, but totally different. I agree with you on heroism: like war, who needs it? In a fair system, no one, except perhaps in a genuine unforeseen emergency.
And systems are with us always- if you are talking 8 billion people - and even far less: It then becomes the question, what is the best system? In democratic socialism, heroes are obsolete, have no relevance whatsoever. In practice however, that's a horse of a different whinny. Who knows the future? It is still possible some asshole might attempt to exploit the system to their advantage: false flags, lies, corruption - these are not genetically compelled, but can erupt nevertheless, from habit and example. I say, democratic socialism is the best system: it presents realistic and commendable values and does not intrinsically lend itself to corruption, as does capitalism., especially the innocuous, allegedly fair-play Globalism. Its values are superior: materialist (but not by any means exclusively) but not materialistic. Some people believe that good intentions, apparently as opposed to openly bad intentions, are bound to produce the opposite result. Something odd about that logic. Not quite compelling.
Particularly, Christianity can be seen as continuation of Plato's cosmology of a universe bound together by unity and subordination in a long tree of ownership relations. No surprise that the Western models of the state have all followed the principle of encompassment and domination from above, which is not always usual in social orders, and definitely not seen as a necessity by all.
No, systems are not with us always. That's the origin myth of the PMC, renouncing evidence-driven anthropology which has found numerous counterexamples in peoples across time and land. I think we can say the same thing about the myth of religions as tools for people to understand the world (no, the actual history of human agriculture over cultural splits and mergers would help people understand). What you mean when you say "system" is "empire", a synonym which dates back to Adam Smith's time, that "man of system". The UN can be abolished at any time, for example, and (owing to its Wilsonist heritage) probably should be. So to tell us that total global order is permanent is to catapult the globalists' propaganda.
Further, the idea that there exists a "best" system reeks of value-fact confusion and speculative self-flattery. Under this facile "love of system" you have simply swept several particularly liberal or English doctrines which have produced huge amounts of useless drama and wasted effort: the primacy of the individual, moral perfectionism, legitimacy of profit, a reformist theory of change, and you still have competition which is an inherently heroic activity. In this very argument you yourself have asserted the moral rights of the victor in a set-piece debate celebrating competition and valuing one's ability to subordinate others, straight out of the heroic script!
It seems apparent that your social democratic project seems far more interested in perfecting or "improving" people than bringing about the material conditions for the end of capitalism. Such projects, IMHO, are best referred to in terms of religion rather than public administration, as a sacrificial (another heroic concept!) waste of time.
I hope you're getting some sense of how pervasively this particular flavor of drama undermines the things we think are right and important, and of the degree of deprogramming that is going to be necessary. But we can reject competition and sacrifice as perversion and waste.
>It is still possible some asshole might attempt to exploit the system to their advantage
It is certain, and they will have been influencing it from inception by manipulating participants' sense of what is "pure" and acceptable, telling you x is necessary or y is impossible or only z works, all in an authoritative code and tone of voice. I understand that they are not genetically compelled, but this belief that unity is possible if only people would subordinate themselves to their station is yet another of Plato's failed (but ever-fertile) myths.
Very interesting Jamenta, and deserves a more careful response than I have time for at the moment. I'd like say right now though, that civilization was built around the idea of hierarchy of forces - God, or -Gods, and us. Of course, the Devil countervailing. Christianity added angels in an hierarchy - and I'm not sure if that was entirely original. Every civilization with a written record was built around the concept of God, one or several. In any case, folklore never died out completely and the idea of unpredictable , rather whimsical and unorganized lesser.but powerful entities. Officially, and it is clearly stated, the Christian religion opposed itself to nature, which it considered a source of "sin'. Interestingly, Joan of Arc, believed in "fairies," or at least, the right of the folk to believe in them, as they did. Sorry to rant on- I'll get back to you later. Beliefs, huh? I suppose that's what makes us and our life on this plane interesting.
What I find interesting is Jung's claim that religion is an instinctive (inherent) aspect of our human psyche, and if you attempt to ignore it, or eliminate it - that "religious" (or "spiritual") impulse then gets channeled elsewhere (into politics, or war, or making money, etc.) Thus Jung's line in the excerpt, "You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return."
Aniela Jaffe, one of Carl Jung's closest colleagues, who also helped him when he was in his 80s write his now famous "Memories, Dreams Reflections" autobiography, wrote a book herself called "Apparitions and Precognition." May be one of my own personal favorite books I have in my collection - as she writes about psychological phenomena that is known to happen spontaneously to people (i.e. instinctively in the psyche) whether they were looking for it or not. Psychological apparitions especially have been well known to occur around the death of a family member or loved one. Whether the Apparition phenomena is real - or simply a concoction of a grieving mind was besides the point for Aniela and Jung. What they deemed significant and analyzed from a psychological perspective, was the emergence of such phenomena within the psyche - which there is considerable documented evidence for. This kind of phenomena, of course, falls into the common category of "spirituality" and "religion". But is often repressed by the culture of "Rationality" dominating Western society today.
Do you agree that perhaps language has a tendency to obfuscate meaning? We have to keep clear, for one, that spirituality and religion are two very different things. You say, for instance, that Atheism is another kind of belief. But does atheism incorporate dogmas and codes of behaviour? I don't think so. If I don't believe in the existence of leprechauns, does that imply a belief in the non-existence of leprechauns? "Belief" here, obviously means two entirely different things. Now, it may be, is, in fact, a very bad idea to be too harsh on religious beliefs and believers, because that often ends in cruelty and marginalization - even war. But it is also true that religion has and does facilitate war. The christian religion was the result of a revolt against a materialistic and rather cruel way of life. But when Christians gained ascendance, they became the cruel power. Yet, there is a reason for religious beliefs that is quite practical: it gives people a sense of identity and organizes them against exploitation.
So, a good thing in a certain context, that can become a bad thing in other contexts.
Context is not all, perhaps, but it is a great deal. And while language is very basic and important, it has pitfalls: we must strive to be clear about what the hell we actually mean.
Atheism's ethos is essentially Deism with the Creator painted over. Its code of behavior is essentially bourgeois liberal Perfectionism, a derivative of Protestant Pietism. It is allowed to exist because it does not break with Platonic slave values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionist_liberalism
Now there is nihilism, which jamenta would rather deny. It recognizes no general obligations; any such order would issue specifically from other, more situated power centers, recognized only tactically in terms similar to a right of innocent passage. It respects no special property or origin myth and demands none. It demands only the level of self-knowledge that destroys bureaucratic or heroic societies.
Heroic lies do run deep in Western culture. The principle that people tend to subordinate themselves to masters for protection is another Greek heroic myth for the shredder. No state has ever stopped exploitation; they only enforce the "division" (actually abrogation) of labor and leisure.
I don't think I would place spirituality and religion into two "very different" things (or categories). My view is there can be a wide blend of the two - depending on your definitions and interpretations. I think spirituality can incorporate aspects of known religious traditions, just as religion (which I often think as organized religion with dogmas) can incorporate many known spiritual beliefs. And again there have been throughout human history a wide variety of religious and spiritual systems and beliefs. You are right though, that language can obfuscate and attempting to define concepts can be part of the "language" barrier.
I do believe Atheism is another kind of belief system. Simply because (I personally) believe there are quite a few still open ontological and metaphysical philosophical questions that have not been resolved yet by Science or human philosophy. Open questions about the nature of our reality, the nature of our being (such as the mind/body problem) - and Atheists, much like anyone MUST base their beliefs on something - whether it be Materialism, Judaism, whatever - but whatever critical thinking Atheists use to come to their fundamental belief there is i.e. No God - whatever they think God may be - and there have been thousands of variations of God over the history of humankind - whatever thinking Atheists make to come to their conclusion - cannot at all be based on what we currently know about the ontological origins of our reality or the unknown meaning or purpose of our Being - these remain UNKNOWN at the moment - therefore any TRUTH an atheist attempts to BELIEVE regarding reality and their being - is not based on anything but their own faith in Atheism - much like any other religion or spiritual belief is. Although, yes Neo-Atheists will tirelessly repeat the Neo-Atheist talking point that their Atheism is not based on beliefs. I often respond to this talking point by asking them - then what is their Atheism based upon? How did they come to their Atheism? Which usually gets crickets or some uncritically thought out response. Or some other silly response which I don't bother to pursue.
I am not really that fond of playing definition games. And you certainly can go down the rabbit hole with definitions when dealing with ontological arguments or arguments regarding the nature of reality. And I don't think of myself as some kind of academic scholar of language or philosophy. My background is mostly science and psychology. Psychology fascinates me probably the most - thus my interest in Carl Jung and Aniela Jaffe's work. Carl Jung wrote a lot about "meaning" - where in the hell does "meaning" actually arise from? And how is it possible the unconscious is autonomous and more interesting, Jung later in his life claimed the unconscious was not only autonomous but objective (as opposed to subjective). Quite a jump.
Every empire has had to deal with this ennui of its pampered, lazy, corrupted people down thru the ages. Usually just as it was crumbling. Wise marginalized people in those empires have always offered an alternative, which is always, go inside. “The kingdom of god is inside you” “The happiness you seek is within you”. “Who knows the Tao does not speak of the Tao”. They all involve some sort of meditation or quietism and they all involve eschewing the material world. And they all work. But this present generation of Yuppies, the most material people in a century, is absolutely incapable of looking within. There’s various reasons of course and I’m glad Caitlin has taken a whack at those reasons. Personally, I think this current bunch of bourgies can’t look within because of what they fear is in there—a Hieryanamous Busch painting that is licking flames in their souls. Poor things. (And apologies to Busch for my egregious spelling of his name.). I say try acid. Or shrooms.
Also I agree about acid and shrooms, which gave me wonderful visions, but I think it also depends on the person who takes them. It enhances what’s (more or less) already there.
Yes. Very good point. As they say, no matter where you go, there you are. 🫣😁😆
Wonderful reply. “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle. What Caitlin said about the world as it is is extraordinary is spot-on; but what’s missing is to understand the significance of the “loss of the sense of sacredness” in the world. We can’t find a good perspective on changing the world if the earth we live on and everything in it is not meaningful to us and if we view ourselves as without purpose or responsibility. Thus a true “conviction” of the sacredness of all things – not merely a “sense” of it – has to be there to truly make a difference...by simply being, at that point. :)
Yes. It’s a conundrum. As the Zen saying goes, you can’t bite your own teeth. I can’t change “it” until I can change me. And I can’t change me until “it” changes. The thing I rely on is like this—if I throw a tantrum and decide to hold my breath until I die just to show you!…As soon as I pass out and the Great Thinker in my brain shuts up, the automatic nervous system kicks in and I start breathing again. So it seems to me that there is a homeostasis of being, not just physically but all parts of being, and it will right itself. Sometimes it seems like “well not THIS time. This time we’ve gone too far.” But I’ll see that when I believe it. We’re a very young and spirited species,I think, and we really need a nanny. And I think each person has a nanny to get them through. Ya just gotta find it. Whatever gets you thru the night—it’s alright, alright! That’s the sacred to me.
Jeano: "You can't bit your own teeth"??? What about dentures?
A lot of men screw the nanny.
I don't think that's missing at all. Sacredness is an error. So is meaning. So too is the very idea that the "world" is something that "exists", is necessary, and is anything more than the accumulated property rights of names we can and should forget.
It is this very same Christian-Greek theory of "spirit" that has been used to enslave for 2400 years or more, since the Myceneans knocked over the matriarchal Minoan society of the 3rd-2nd century BCE.
IMO, desecration is what is necessary right now. Greatness and Oneness, in particular, only create forms of slavery and their nonsense rationalizations, and they can and should be destroyed starting now, along with the rest of Plato's oeuvre.
Jeano: The Hieronymus Bosch reference was nice. Hard name to spell.
I did get a kick out of your spelling though. I think your subconscious was referring to the Hairy Anus Bush family. LOL!
"People hunger for magic and mystery"
That might be an acquired taste. The reason societies tend to prohibit psychotropics to their working classes is because they know that smoking a bowl gives exactly the same benefits as religious rites without the toxic class-forming indoctrination.
Thank you Caitlin🙏and yes, I think you are right.
Thank you.
Warning:
Stay away of anything with Gonzalo Lira -- he is controlled by Ukraine secret service. Everything he says is a pure BS.
See excellent recent Scott Ritter Extra #87 Episode.