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Mr. Pessimistic 
Assistant Professor
Silver Contributor
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 3399
Gender: 
Location: NJ - www.myspace.com/mrpessimistic
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 Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 10:17 am Post subject:
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| Penelope wrote: |
I did want to point out to Mr. P that he said, 'If I prayed, I was not in the same club' but I never said to him 'If you don't pray, you can't be in my club'. So who is the fundamentalist here?
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Oh now I said MUCH more than that in my full post. Lets not make me seem like I excluded anyone. What I did was strip away something that causes exclusion and elevate our sameness to a level that is more pure and true.
I said the same thing as you Penelope. The only club that matters to me is the Human club...any regional myths and distinctions just do not matter to me.
Mr. P. |
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Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender: 
Location: Cheshire, England
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 11:12 am Post subject:
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OK Mr. P |
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Ophelia
Beyond Awesome
Fiction Moderator
Book Discussion Leader
Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 1098
Gender:
Location: France
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 3:27 pm Post subject:
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I see that the EU flag has appeared below "Cheshire, England."
Well done Penelope!
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Robert Tulip
Freshman
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 204
Gender:
Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 3:33 pm Post subject:
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| Penelope wrote: |
Robert said:
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| The connection with nihilism, the belief that nothing matters, is that the Cartesian assumption that only I exist creates a logical method for the doubting of all facts and values, rejection on principle of the possibility of divine revelation, and loss of all transcendent meaning and purpose in life. |
Bloomin' Heck Robert - you are a brainbox. I thought St. Augustine was a clever clogs until I met you. Is nihilism like existentialism? Is it the same theory as Albert Camus and friends were proclaiming? What were the Bloomsbury Group doing? Virginia Woolf's search for truth and beauty seems to be more psychologically healthy to me. Of course, they were a very privilidged lot. But I do have a lot of affection and respect for William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites - only having read about William Morris in various biographies....I have never studied the code of ethics or philosophy involved. I did want to point out to Mr. P that he said, 'If I prayed, I was not in the same club' but I never said to him 'If you don't pray, you can't be in my club'. So who is the fundamentalist here? I am very aware that my posts sound very childishly worded compared to Robert and Will's and Constance et al.....if I am lowering the tone/quality of the discussion. Do tell me to shut-up. I promise I won't be offended and will still read your posts carefully. |
Good morning Penelope, and thank you for your very kind comments. All this stuff is very interesting for me, as I have not previously found anyone able to engage in conversation about these themes. My academic career was stillborn, with my thesis received like David Hume’s book on human nature, ‘falling stillborn from the press.’ Perhaps it is because discussion on topics like the relation between nihilism and atheism is too hard for people. Nihilism has a strong cultural link with existentialism and atheism, as each have been entwined cultural memes for modern thought. As a formal movement of the philosophy of despair, nihilism has its roots in Russian anarchism, where the absurd dogmas of the Tsarist regime found an equally absurd antithesis which eventually produced the Bolshevik tragedy. Our friend Conrad discusses these themes at length in The Secret Agent, which would be a great fiction book to read here. Existentialism, for Sartre and Camus, was the theory that only the present moment exists, and was in my view an absurd logical product of Cartesian rationalism. Existentialism has a drifting meaning, also applying more broadly to human finitude, eg in the concept of existential threats, as well as to Dada. The link between existentialism and nihilism is that if we say only the present is real, following Sartre's celebrated theory that existence precedes essence, we directly deny the existence of eternal values. This is understandable where claimed eternal values involve serfdom, absurdity and political reaction, but is not coherent as a theory of time. My view is that to understand time we must proceed from the Platonic assumption that essence precedes existence. You know, I have never read any Virginia Woolf. Perhaps the closest I have come is Sartre, Camus, Hemingway and Doris Lessing. My mum, Marie Tulip, is a keen ‘Room of Her Own’ feminist theologian, although getting old now. She did her MA at Northwestern on the love poems of Paul Clodel, and I have picked up some Bloomsbury ideas on truth and beauty from her. Apropos, you may have heard of John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn. Existentialism, in its modern degenerate relativist presentation, is a form of atheist fundamentalism, with its withering politically correct scorn and censorship of any discussion of higher values. This scorn about values is precisely why existentialism, and its bastard brothers atheism, relativism and positivism, is nihilistic – they are all devoid of a theory of value.
Positivism, via Carnap and Popper, is an uva bruva in this motley crew. Their Vienna School held there is no meaning outside science, attacking Plato for his essentialist claim that we can understand ultimate ideas through hermeneutics, and rejecting the possibility of a theory of historical meaning. Hence, following Keynes’ penetrating observation that men of action are applying second-hand philosophy, atheist science proceeds on Carnap’s road to nowhere by collecting facts, constrained by its dogmatic presuppositions into acting like a stumbling adolescent – see for example Dawkins on ‘The Enemies of Reason.’ The refutation of positivism, drawing from Plato and Keats, is that without an essentialist hermeneutic, viewing time as the moving image of eternity, we cannot bring facts together into a coherent narrative.
Relativism is the theory that it is impossible to formulate a coherent doctrine of truth, and I should explain why I see it as a form of fundamentalist atheism. It goes back to Protagoras’ claim to Plato that man is the measure of all things. Relativism is a key theory of modern anthropology, with its observation that many claims about truth are highly contestable. Like nihilism, existentialism and positivism, relativism is an absurd toxic antithesis of a flawed original idea, and is refuted by Aristotle’s logical observation that a claim cannot be true and false. In Hegel’s terms, the task in assessing these historical movements of thought is to define a synthesis, recognizing the validity in both the thesis and the antithesis through a transformative synthetic integration. |
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Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 4:25 pm Post subject:
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Robert said:-
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| we cannot bring facts together into a coherent narrative. |
Oh dear, dear Robert. I somehow know that you and I are on the same wavelength. But how can we bring facts together into a coherent narrative (make a pattern) when you so obviously come from educated and academic stock, and I, had a father who was a coal-miner who quoted Shakespeare and a very socially aware mother who was 'in service'?
That is what I always thought was so grand about the Gospels. They could speak to people like you, and to people like me and even to little children. I understood what Jesus meant when he said, that he was God's Word.....because what is 'Word.'.....but communication.
I have no scientific understanding in my head. I have a lot of intuitive understanding. Let us keep trying please.
I know I could look up the difference between nihilism and existentialism on the internet; But it would take a lot of time to read and digest and I just don't have that amount of time at my disposal. So forgive me if I ask you for info.
Many thanks. Pen |
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Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 4:31 pm Post subject:
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Dear Ophelia - I don't like flags, but the European Flag is acceptable.
When I went to the British Museum, it struck me that the Goddess Isis in the Egyptian Section and the Virgin Mary in the Christian section, both that the twelve stars around their heads....... 
If the symbol is good enough for those two.....it's good enough for me. |
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Robert Tulip
Freshman
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
Posts: 204
Gender:
Location: Canberra
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| Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 7:45 pm Post subject:
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| Penelope wrote: |
Robert said:-
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| we cannot bring facts together into a coherent narrative. |
Oh dear, dear Robert. I somehow know that you and I are on the same wavelength. But how can we bring facts together into a coherent narrative (make a pattern) when you so obviously come from educated and academic stock, and I, had a father who was a coal-miner who quoted Shakespeare and a very socially aware mother who was 'in service'? That is what I always thought was so grand about the Gospels. They could speak to people like you, and to people like me and even to little children. I understood what Jesus meant when he said, that he was God's Word.....because what is 'Word.'.....but communication. I have no scientific understanding in my head. I have a lot of intuitive understanding. Let us keep trying please. I know I could look up the difference between nihilism and existentialism on the internet; But it would take a lot of time to read and digest and I just don't have that amount of time at my disposal. So forgive me if I ask you for info. Many thanks. Pen |
I agree with you about Jesus having a simple message, but my view is that finding a coherent narrative requires analysis of a complex message that underpins the simplicity. This complexity was lost in mainstream Christianity with its various absurd dogmas. As I have said before, my view of coherent historical narrative requires integration with cosmology. I interpret this through the precession of the equinox, and assert that Jesus also held this cosmological understanding as being basic to mythic meaning.
I have just read the wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism which drew me on to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilist_movement . There is much there on Nietzsche, Turgenev, Heidegger, Dada and other luminaries, all well worth exploring. Reading on the nihilist assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 pointed me to a relation to precession that to me is astounding about the nihilist movement. This event marked a big rupture, from Tsarist reform to reaction, opening the confrontationist path towards 1917.
Now, with apologies for slightly digressing and delving into technical matters, I have been studying the correlation between the solar system barycentre (SSB - centre of mass) and the Great Year, noting that the 179 year Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune cycle which structures the wavelength of the SSB is precisely one twelfth of the length of the age (2147 years) and one 144th the length of the Great Year (25765 years). Developing an idea from Dane Rudhyar, I interpret the SSB cycle as the house of the age, in astrological terms. These patterns are to me the basis for weaving a coherent narrative. To me part of the dogmatic nihilism of mainstream science and atheism is the dudgeon bludgeon with which it responds to such ideas.
The relation to nihilism is in a structure that many will dismiss as mere astrology, but which I find fascinating. Saturn and Neptune come together every 35.8 years, exactly one fifth of the SSB period. The last four Saturn Neptune conjunctions were in 1989, 1953, 1917 and 1881. Part of my interest is to look at such dates in a cherry-picking style, to see if they have any similarities. What we have here is a natural cycle which corresponds precisely to Russian history – the four turning points of assassinating Tsar Alexander, the revolution, the death of Stalin and the fall of communism. Each event marks the beginning of a defined historical period for Russia, in an intriguing correlation with the Saturn Neptune cycle. It is not that the planets caused the events, but that they are markers for them.
To me this is a form of historical research with considerable meaning. I have come to the conclusion that the general rejection and indifference these ideas meet is a symptom of the nihilism of the modern world. The common fundamentalist idea held by theism and atheism is that we cannot on principle understand earthly life in relation to cosmic rhythms. If such rhythms exist, we will flounder in absence of meaning until we recognize them.
On your point about the simple ideas of Jesus, one I find beautiful and true is his claim to be the true vine. What this indicates to me is that through the ideas of Christ we can find a human connection to the cosmos. |
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Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 3:01 pm Post subject:
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OK Robert - in future I am going to re-christen you Bob-the-Boffin.
But I am very interested in what you say.....and I need to read and study it carefully...therefore I will print off your last post.
Then get back to you when I have absorbed it....or not....I may be asking you questions later. ....thank you for being so patient.... |
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Dissident Heart
Embodiment of Reason
Bronze Contributor
Joined: 29 Aug 2003
Posts: 1414
Gender:
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 5:15 pm Post subject:
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If by fundamentalist you mean: someone compelled to define for all persons, in all places and at all times...what is essential, integral and fundamental about any/all God, gods, or goddesses...who thinks there is simply nothing more to learn, improve upon, or change her mind about...every angle, all perspectives, or any insight regarding all things godly, divine, holy or sacred is already settled, finalized and completely understood...and, most importantly, her idea is the correct one, the best and most accurate among all others- the others not being simply mistaken, but downright wrong, stupidly mistaken, dangerously naive, maliciously idiotic and fundamentally deluded.....then I think there are more than a few fundamentalist atheist.
Nihilism, I think, is dangerous stuff: it is acid to the soul, demoralizing and debilitating. When understood as something more than simply chic intellectual posing...it fuels pitiful self-loathing and hateful disregard for others...it is a poisonous kind of distrust that breeds paranoia and fear...an all pervasive malaise and disgust of self, other, and life in general...actively, it inflames the worst sorts of sociopathic violence and terror...passively, it turns the soul against itself, internally decomposing into self-destructive despair and impotent hopelessness. |
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Penelope
Doctorate
Silver Contributor
Joined: 02 Oct 2007
Posts: 547
Gender:
Location: Cheshire, England
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| Posted: Sat May 10, 2008 6:06 pm Post subject:
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Dissident Heart....did you really compose this post?
It is excellent, and compellingly written.
Thank you.....
If we define fundamentalism first...maybe then we can discuss it.
I understand it as meaning - people who accept the Bible as absolute fact.......or Muslims who accept the teachings of the Ayotalah as absolute truth. Unquestioning.
I see these people as upholding their book, or their leaders or doctrine as 'the ultimate' truth. And not upholding.........God....I can't think of a simpler way of expressing it.
How clear their absolutes appear and how intangible mine seem in comparison. But intangible doesn't mean wrong. |
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