I take the view that I think Ramana Maharshi would lean towards: it's okay to feel you know God or the foundation of everything, in one or more forms outside of language, which means any language around such knowing is generally and exceptionally likely to be flawed-- and to say that reality is fully non-dual, or is fully something other than non-dual, both appear to be fallacies, and it most likely appears to be neither.
In my view, two big problems with this are.. language, and believing fear is more powerful than love, because if you are able to temporarily peel language off of your consciousness.. and the sense of that leads you into feeling fearful rather than sufficiently loved in some way, you'll simply bounce back into a language out of fear. But in this post I'm not trying to introduce any kind of metaphysical ideas into this apart from the possibility that something foundational to consciousness and existence is being sensed in some way that is non-threatening and more outside of linguistic interpretation.
When I was young I loathed the religious authoritarianism of the Catholic Church (and my school). In hindsight it wasn't the religion itself that actually bothered me but the certainty that arises from such beliefs and forms justification for authoritarian behavior and imposition. As an adult I later met more people who were religious without any of this certainty, whose company was most appreciated. The strident anti-religion, woke-scientism folks of today are cut from the same cloth as the religious authoritarians of the past.
Both fail to consider they do not possess any existential authority over others nor seek to reconcile this understanding with the power they do wield over others.
Perhaps this is more to Ethical Skeptic's liking - an exhaustive interview with Jean Baudrillard; I would describe his work as a take down of post WWII modernity as promulgated by the Americans.
"The implicit premise shapes the direction and nature of the arguments" describes the trans ideology and the best rebuttal is to deny that sex can be changed because it can't.
God's love for His creation is felt and thus proven every moment of our existence. While we may not recognize or even deflect this affection, either out of ignorance or willful action, the fact that He exhibits His love does not change.
I would never have imagined the deviousness and deception shown by and/or financed by mammon worshippers if not for the false pandemic. Amazing Polly on Twitter has exhibited an amazing skill at pointing out their names and faces. Imagine paying a failed comedian $250 million a year to do a paid podcast as well as financing dozens of gatekeepers, 'fact-checkers' and assorted trolls to deflect attention away from the truth. The combined financial resources of Big pharma exceeds $1 trillion. A true devotee to the truth such as biologist JJ Couey (gigaohmbiological.com) can barely afford to pay his rent.
The irreducible complexity of genetics/immunology may be a red flag to some; experimenting with bioweapons, assorted pathogens, related electronic warfare and other weaponized systems are all facilitated by the US's military-industrial-censorship complex. For a minutely detailed description of how the complex's vast legal protection and constitutional immunity (no pun intended) were built up over many years, see here - https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/.
I will tentatively defend Mr. Wicker Man as load-bearing and utility-maximizing.
Say that someone’s life isn’t going well and this is unlikely to change. They become extremely religious. Through their religion, they become part of a supportive peer group and their average level of happiness rises significantly. Rational arguments that contradict their faith threaten everything they hold dear. Without their faith, what do they have that’s worth living for? As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, why poke holes in their self-conception?
Thank you, ES. I've put in a reminder to myself to try and rehydrate my thinking and look back on your writing to help understand the concepts a bit better.
Many of these deflections and tactics you mention which are exercised by our favourite nihilists and panic-panderers, I know that I've come up against them again and again during this astounding time of aggressive non-engagement and denouncements of heretics. Most of these have been your bog-standard appeal to authority ("you're not a doctor/scientist", "you don't know how to understand scientific articles"), which is intended to shut you down immediately. And, I think, inverse scepticism (would that be your typical attacks on things such as acquired immunity, or the idea that sun activity, volcanoes, clouds etcetc may contribute to or mitigate against catastrophic climate change therefore rendering models dodgy type of scepticism?). However, I'm struggling to think of examples of the other types! I will try and read up more, or comb back on your writing!
At the risk of sounding like a lazy schoolchild who doesn't want to put in the hard graft (!), I would love it if you could draw up a primer for us of more feeble mind, using real-life examples of these various concepts, in the context of one of the current debates. Or, more accurately, "non-debates", since debate is not permitted.
I am currently desperately trying to steer my children (abetted by their science-haranguing and dooms-mongering father) away from the dangerously nihilistic thinking surrounding climate change. I have been trying to absorb as much about it as possible, but well aware that I could be at it for ever.
I've realised I need to try and counter the fundamental fallacies, but start feeling really insecure, because it sometimes seems so simple and stupid. Is that really the case? Are people just plain dumb? Or is it just me?
Am I right if I were, for example, to say that:
"CO2 is a product of temperature rising, and not the other way round, so the whole carbon zero thing is nonsensical."
That seems to me one of the more basic fallacies. Why does no-one talk about that?
What about the whole idea that gasses can't possibly be "trapped", as Earth is not suspended in a non-permeable glass sphere (ok that's one of my more fanciful notions, but have they truly proven that gas just hits some sort of impermeable "ceiling"?! 😬)
Or the idea that we are the main drivers of climate change. That just seems so dumb. And the rest of nature isn't?
I also want to be able better to identify all of the tricks that are used to give me the runaround, so that I can almost rehearse my responses, because when things get heated, that is when I'm least able to counter.
At any rate, any and all help is appreciated! If you ever have the time or inclination to write an "argumentation for dummies" piece, using the current climate hysteria as an example, my pencil and cue cards are readied!
I have found everything around covid to be a minefield and it is impossible for me to try and negotiate the many different lanes, so I have mainly watched and waited to see where the schemes, intrigues, plotting and conspiracies would take us. I admire your complexity of thought which is a good match for our very complex world.
I take the view that I think Ramana Maharshi would lean towards: it's okay to feel you know God or the foundation of everything, in one or more forms outside of language, which means any language around such knowing is generally and exceptionally likely to be flawed-- and to say that reality is fully non-dual, or is fully something other than non-dual, both appear to be fallacies, and it most likely appears to be neither.
In my view, two big problems with this are.. language, and believing fear is more powerful than love, because if you are able to temporarily peel language off of your consciousness.. and the sense of that leads you into feeling fearful rather than sufficiently loved in some way, you'll simply bounce back into a language out of fear. But in this post I'm not trying to introduce any kind of metaphysical ideas into this apart from the possibility that something foundational to consciousness and existence is being sensed in some way that is non-threatening and more outside of linguistic interpretation.
When I was young I loathed the religious authoritarianism of the Catholic Church (and my school). In hindsight it wasn't the religion itself that actually bothered me but the certainty that arises from such beliefs and forms justification for authoritarian behavior and imposition. As an adult I later met more people who were religious without any of this certainty, whose company was most appreciated. The strident anti-religion, woke-scientism folks of today are cut from the same cloth as the religious authoritarians of the past.
Both fail to consider they do not possess any existential authority over others nor seek to reconcile this understanding with the power they do wield over others.
I loathe them both.
My own pet conceit is to point out that atheism and theism is exactly the same error - but at least the theist has a layer of honesty.
Perhaps this is more to Ethical Skeptic's liking - an exhaustive interview with Jean Baudrillard; I would describe his work as a take down of post WWII modernity as promulgated by the Americans.
https://baudrillardstudies.ubishops.ca/this-is-the-fourth-world-war-the-der-spiegel-interview-with-jean-baudrillard/
Happy Easter! Christ is Risen!
Did you ever learn more about was was going on when you visited the standing stones on your vacation?
"The implicit premise shapes the direction and nature of the arguments" describes the trans ideology and the best rebuttal is to deny that sex can be changed because it can't.
God's love for His creation is felt and thus proven every moment of our existence. While we may not recognize or even deflect this affection, either out of ignorance or willful action, the fact that He exhibits His love does not change.
I would never have imagined the deviousness and deception shown by and/or financed by mammon worshippers if not for the false pandemic. Amazing Polly on Twitter has exhibited an amazing skill at pointing out their names and faces. Imagine paying a failed comedian $250 million a year to do a paid podcast as well as financing dozens of gatekeepers, 'fact-checkers' and assorted trolls to deflect attention away from the truth. The combined financial resources of Big pharma exceeds $1 trillion. A true devotee to the truth such as biologist JJ Couey (gigaohmbiological.com) can barely afford to pay his rent.
The irreducible complexity of genetics/immunology may be a red flag to some; experimenting with bioweapons, assorted pathogens, related electronic warfare and other weaponized systems are all facilitated by the US's military-industrial-censorship complex. For a minutely detailed description of how the complex's vast legal protection and constitutional immunity (no pun intended) were built up over many years, see here - https://bailiwicknews.substack.com/.
I will tentatively defend Mr. Wicker Man as load-bearing and utility-maximizing.
Say that someone’s life isn’t going well and this is unlikely to change. They become extremely religious. Through their religion, they become part of a supportive peer group and their average level of happiness rises significantly. Rational arguments that contradict their faith threaten everything they hold dear. Without their faith, what do they have that’s worth living for? As long as they aren’t hurting anyone, why poke holes in their self-conception?
Some call these situations false binaries, where people are convinced to argue over two opposites that are mostly meaningless, eg left vs right.
Implicit assumption= all climate change/ global warming is bad.
Is this an appropriate example of what you are describing?
We had a rabbit infestation problem at our previous home ... we bought a whippet.... that mostly solved the rabbit problem.
Thank you, ES. I've put in a reminder to myself to try and rehydrate my thinking and look back on your writing to help understand the concepts a bit better.
Many of these deflections and tactics you mention which are exercised by our favourite nihilists and panic-panderers, I know that I've come up against them again and again during this astounding time of aggressive non-engagement and denouncements of heretics. Most of these have been your bog-standard appeal to authority ("you're not a doctor/scientist", "you don't know how to understand scientific articles"), which is intended to shut you down immediately. And, I think, inverse scepticism (would that be your typical attacks on things such as acquired immunity, or the idea that sun activity, volcanoes, clouds etcetc may contribute to or mitigate against catastrophic climate change therefore rendering models dodgy type of scepticism?). However, I'm struggling to think of examples of the other types! I will try and read up more, or comb back on your writing!
At the risk of sounding like a lazy schoolchild who doesn't want to put in the hard graft (!), I would love it if you could draw up a primer for us of more feeble mind, using real-life examples of these various concepts, in the context of one of the current debates. Or, more accurately, "non-debates", since debate is not permitted.
I am currently desperately trying to steer my children (abetted by their science-haranguing and dooms-mongering father) away from the dangerously nihilistic thinking surrounding climate change. I have been trying to absorb as much about it as possible, but well aware that I could be at it for ever.
I've realised I need to try and counter the fundamental fallacies, but start feeling really insecure, because it sometimes seems so simple and stupid. Is that really the case? Are people just plain dumb? Or is it just me?
Am I right if I were, for example, to say that:
"CO2 is a product of temperature rising, and not the other way round, so the whole carbon zero thing is nonsensical."
That seems to me one of the more basic fallacies. Why does no-one talk about that?
What about the whole idea that gasses can't possibly be "trapped", as Earth is not suspended in a non-permeable glass sphere (ok that's one of my more fanciful notions, but have they truly proven that gas just hits some sort of impermeable "ceiling"?! 😬)
Or the idea that we are the main drivers of climate change. That just seems so dumb. And the rest of nature isn't?
I also want to be able better to identify all of the tricks that are used to give me the runaround, so that I can almost rehearse my responses, because when things get heated, that is when I'm least able to counter.
At any rate, any and all help is appreciated! If you ever have the time or inclination to write an "argumentation for dummies" piece, using the current climate hysteria as an example, my pencil and cue cards are readied!
I have found everything around covid to be a minefield and it is impossible for me to try and negotiate the many different lanes, so I have mainly watched and waited to see where the schemes, intrigues, plotting and conspiracies would take us. I admire your complexity of thought which is a good match for our very complex world.
Alternatively: The Wicker Rabbit
As my father said, whenever you open your mouth make sure you know the difference between hubris and humility.
Fabulous post. Woke in a nutshell.