Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Holy Matterimany, a Manifestivus for the Rest of Us!

As I said, Petey and I are going to continue running through the 20 "Coon questions" posed a couple of days ago by Anonymous, so long as the questions remain interesting and we can come up with answers so plausible that they convince even ourselves.

Please note that this is live blogging, or "extreme seeking," which is the only way to capture Petey's interest. Nothing has been rehearsed and there are no second takes. Well, maybe a spell check.... and I usually find some awkward passages when I reread things later in the day, so I do edit those.... And sometimes I later add in a few jokes.... But that's not the point. As I said, we want this to be an exercise in improvisational metaphysics, or O-->(k), which is to say cross-coontry intellection, which is not the same as making it up as you go along, Bob, even though it may sometimes look like that.

Which, by the way, applies to the Coonifesto. Thus far it has only received positive reviews, but believe me, I have no illusions about this, because these reviewers have been sympathetic to the coonspiracy theory presented in the book. If you are, say, a primitive New York Timesman who is not sympathetic to my tiptopsiturvical vision, or just a sufficiently malignant and black-hearted agenda-driven critic, you could easily pick it apart from the bottom up, which will no doubt happen: Bob, you said the cosmos is 13.7 billion years old. Scientists now know that it's 15 billion years old, you fool! Homo sapiens didn't emerge 120,000 years ago, it was only 100,000 years ago! Etc.

This is a species of what Bion called "attacks on linking," which is a defense mechanism aimed at dismantling what we might call a "threatening whole" in order to turn it into a bunch of meaningless parts. There are two kinds of intelligence, an "analytic" kind and a "synthesizing" kind, and although two people can have the identical IQ, it is very easy for the intelligent-analytic person, if afflicted with mind parasites, to attack the links of the visionary kind. Just so, it is equally easy for the synthetic type of intelligence to be hijacked by paranoid mind parasites which essentially conflate perception and projection. This type of person has the opposite problem, in that they must scrupulously avoid any new evidence, or "links," that threaten the projected vision.

In our scientific age, we are much more aware of the latter problem than the former, but both are equally catastrophic to the soul. For example, we all know of religious yahoos who are threatened by science because it contradicts a very narrow "vision" of how God operates in the world.

But even more common are the leftists, tenured wackademics, and anti-science secular fundamentalists who have a completely unhinged vision of mankind, and thus must reject basic economics, or the self-evident truth of innate gender differences, or the abundant evidence that some cultures are much better than others, and so on. I won't say "ironically," because it's not: atheists and leftists are no less attached to a "religious vision" than the religious, and use the identical defense mechanisms to ward off any threats to this vision. What did Dr. Sanity say just yesterday? "The political left has created and fully integrated specific ideological tools that facilitate ongoing psychological denial."

In order to be a "good faith Coon" we must always harmonize the synthesizing and analytic modes of intelligence, which is just another way of emphasizing the truism that the proper Raccoon habitat is at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal, which is to say reality. For reality is neither the vision of the whole nor the perception of the parts, but an evolutionary dialectical relationship between them, similar, if not identical, to the body's balancing of metabolism (building up) and catabolism (tearing down). We tend to identify "life" with metabolism, or "building up," but it is equally "tearing down." It reminds me of weight lifting, which causes microscopic damage to muscles, which grow larger in response.

When you see a materialist "innocently" using the analytic function to tear down a non-materialistic vision such as mine, always be on the lookout for the critic's own threatened vision, which is generally -- so far, at least -- the true motivation for the attack. It is very much like those homeless schizophrenics who look so frightening. In reality, few schizophrenics are actually dangerous. Rather, they are terrified, in particular, of people. Thus, they appear frightening in order to scare people away.

We had a transparent example of this yesterday, when a completely ignorant -- and therefore "innocent" -- critic barged into the Cosmos and naively blasted away at my vision. Presumably she thought that she was a threat to me, when the opposite is true. In her case -- just like the religious person with the narrow vision alluded to above -- she has a thin and shallow understanding of psychoanalysis that excludes any spiritual truth whatsoever. All of us, by our very nature, recognize the Absolute, but in her case it is something she calls the Unconscious, a word that both she and I use, but in entirely different ways. The main point is that my vision easily accomodates the very important truths of psychoanalysis, whereas her vision is so narrow that it excludes even the barest hint of spiritual knowledge. Rather, for her, a spiritual person is simply "worshiping" his own unconscious.

I don't want to get sidetracked into cataloging all of the a priori errors manifested in this defective mode of thought. Suffice it to say that if her narrow vision were correct, she would certainly not be excluded from it, so an equally ignorant and sufficiently motivated person could dismantle her position on the grounds that she is worshiping her own unconscious in a religiously irreligious way. It is a completely logically self-refuting position, as is any absolute relativism, which is strictly absurd. How could the relative possibly be absolute? If it were, then it would be absolute, which is to say, not relative.

So when one person is attacking another's vision, a Raccoon should always employ his or her Coon scent to sniff out the hidden agenda. An important historian -- I can't remember his name offhand -- said words to the effect that "every historian has a bee in his bonnet. When you read his work, listen for the buzzing." The buzzing, you see, is his "vision," his "whole." I suppose there are still naive historians who believe that history can be written without a vision, or that the vision results from simple induction of historical "facts," but this is utter nonsense.

Rather, being that history represents a pool of literally infinite facts, only an antecedent historical vision can even tell the historian which facts are historically "important." In other words, to write "history," one must precisely exclude 99.99% of historical facts. But on what basis? On the basis of a vision, usually a metaphysically naive and unarticulated one. Not only that, but secular historians make all kinds of faulty assumptions about the nature of time, about human nature, and about vertical influences, so that much contemporary history is only useful for the facts it might contain as opposed the banal vision within which the facts are woven. Needless to say, the identical facts can support radically different visions, but very few visions include both vertical and horizontal facts.

Oops. Got sidetracked. But then again, perhaps not, for the next questions are, "How do I reconcile my multiplicity with God's inherent unity?," and "Why would ultimate perfection choose to manifest at all, let alone in fallen, shattered souls?"

With regard to the first question, this is just another way of asking how we reconcile verticality and horizontality, analysis and synthesis, spirit and matter, interior and exterior, whole and part. We do so by doing so, both on a micro level (within ourselves) and on a macro level (with the cosmos). To be honest, the former must precede the latter, for, as the Master said, The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. What this means is that, in order to have a comprehensive and vivifying vision of the One, we must ourselves be truly one, for our own shattered unity -- or fallenness -- will obscure our interior vision of the whole.

We must first seek to unify our own little portion of the cosmos -- ourselves -- before we can presume to unify others, which is why leftism is always wrong and against the law. It proposes the imposition of a false top-down unity, which is no unity at all, merely totalitarianism in disguise. For unity -- or internal coherence -- can only be achieved, not imposed, and this is the catastrophic error made by leftists and Islamo-nazis alike. Both wish to impose their narrow, crimped vision on the rest of us. Both are pathological adaptations to modernity, romantic attempts to recover the lost wholeness that occurred with the industrial revolution and the decline of traditional religion. But this backward looking unity will never work, any more than the Christian fundamentalist's will (not to perversely equate the latter with leftism or Islamism, which are infinitely more dangerous).

Rather, unity is ongoing. It is a constant dynamic synthesis of parts into whole and of whole conferring meaning and coherence upon the parts. This is Raccoon religion in its generic sense, and it is a religion that easily fits science under its warm and expansive cap. The converse is never true, for parts can never account for the whole of which they are parts. When we say "God is One," we are equally saying that Oneness is God (a reflection of God, to be precise), which is to say that the immanent One exists in the parts, which thereby perpetually transcend themselves in our own recognition of the transcendent One. This is how you reconcile your multiplicity with God's inherent unity, for multiplcity is simply unity in action, or eternity in time.

And "Why would ultimate perfection choose to manifest at all, let alone in fallen, shattered souls?" Because, among other reasons, it is the nature of the perfect sovereign good to radiate its goodness from the divine center to the cosmic periphery, for which reason offenses must come. For it means that God, by his very nature, "relinquishes" a portion of his own omnipotence by virtue of his infinitude, which of necessity extends into a horizontal herebelow. Which is just another way of saying that man alone is privileged to live at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical -- and which is why the "cure" for our own "shatteredness" is never an impossibility but always at hand, for we are a living mirrorcle of the Absolute, a little whole in Oneness.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

The "game" analogies, just work so well, things of beauty, validation of worth for both.



lis(a)er,
Three or four fifteen minute miles, five or six times a week, little less WRT these days, still, no clothing hangs on my Soloflex. heh heh

NoMo said...

I confess. The "B" in my bonnet stands for Bible. I guess it could be worse. Bzzzzzzz.

Lisa said...

Go glasr! Walking is the best exercise you can do for your body besides Pilates (of course!). Actually the combo is the perfect body alignment and toning system. Think about your spine elongating through space as you walk without the ribs flaring. Imagine the crown of your head lifting to the heavens with each step. Create space in the discs between your vertebre with each inhale and try to capture that length and space on the exhale. Let your arms swing freely(opposite arm and leg move together) and notice a tiny bit of rotation in your torso with each step. Don't forget to smile! ;0)

If that is all too much to think about while walking pick out one or two things and start with that. Don't let it screw up your natural gait. Sometimes it's best to think of nothing when walking like those Buddhist monks do and meditate on each step and breath. Have fun!!!

Anonymous said...

Bob, I think your quick treatment of why God has chosen to manifest the cosmos (the last one or two paragraphs) will require elaboration. I didn't really get what you meant by how goodness must "radiate from the center to the periphery."

The antecedent question would be, "Why have a center and aperiphery? Why not just one central locus?"
I believe in attempting this question we quickly step into the uncharted waters that you mentioned yesterday, where solid answers are simply not to be had.

I still like the elegant proposition offered by the ancient Vedic Rishis, that God is at play in the cosmos, creating the "Lila.:

Play, a combination of ananda (delight) and tapasya (effort/artistic expression) is an elemental activity that requires no further elaboration or motive, so perhaps it the best call we can make on this question.

Anonymous said...

I'm digging the fervor of your coonception today. Your earnest, deep trust in and expanding understanding of our Creator warms my Wholeness, the way a furrycoonskinthrow might warm one on a chilly winter day.

Anonymous said...

Hanuman's helper:

Is it possible that you have not felt the vertical radiation to which we are referring, which descends like the proverbial dove?

Anonymous said...

From the wreckage of Jung Freud's disastrous crash here, I think we can extract a profitable idea.

Although her assumption that God is all in our minds must be wrong on logical grounds (after all, we didn't create ourselves), her idea that some parts of our experience of God do arise within our unconscious minds has some validity.

Sri Aurobindo wrote extensively on the contaminating influence of the mind on incoming stimuli from God.

Take the process of intuitive inspiration--an extracorporeal idea descends from Supermind, and is recieved in a human being.

Immediately, the unconscious part of the mind grabs onto this idea and adds to it flavors from its own primitive anxieties (attachment hunger, engulfment fears, etc). Then, the divine idea moves into the conscious mind, where it is futher encrusted and modified with assumptions, opinions, conditioned beliefs, dogmas, etc.

By the time a divine idea enters into the frontal lobes, the place of impartial judgement and expression, it retains only a vague outline of its original shape.

This is why silencing the mind is so important in religious practice, because it mitigates the contaminating and distorting influence of the conscious mind on the perception of God.

Silencing the unconscious is another matter altogether. Good luck on that one; there is nobody who can claim mastery here.

Jung Freud, go in peace. You have been rehabbed as well as can be done here.

Gagdad Bob said...

Interlocutor:

You cannot silence the unconscious with your conscious mind, nor would you ever want to, for, among other reasons, it partakes of the greater ground of being and employs a mode of hyperdimensional logic (i.e., the Dreamer who dreams the dream) that far surpasses the capacities of conscious mind.

What we are primarily concerned with are mind parasites that lodge there and take on omnipotent proportions because of the logic of the unconscious. But it is possible, as Dilys has said, to "drain the swamp" -- at least partially so -- through the descent of spiritual force, or of grace.

And now it's off to work. Behave yourselves.

Anonymous said...

Petey:

Yes, I feel the radiation, and agree with the phenomenon of the radiation of good throughout the manifestation.

However, the question on the table, as I understand it, is "Why did God initiate the manifestation?"

To that I question I directed my comment.

Gagdad Bob said...

This is addressed on pps. 7 - 17 of the Coonfesto.

Must run.

robinstarfish said...

improvisation
keith jarrett shoots the green curl
harmonic lotion

NoMo said...

"But it is possible, as Dilys has said, to "drain the swamp" -- at least partially so -- through the descent of spiritual force, or of grace." (GB)

I love that. For me, this "descent of...grace", or as I view it, being "born again from above", initially wipes out certain parasites and then continues to work on others over time -- I assume for the rest of my physical life.

For what its worth. Still buzzing.

Anonymous said...

I always get a lot of our reading this biblical passage when contemplating the conscious (husband) and subconscious (wife). To me it speaks quite elegantly about cleaning ourselves of mind-parasites.

Eph. 5:21-33
5:22 Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
5:23 For the husband is the head of the wife,
and Christ also is the head of the assembly,
being himself the savior of the body.
5:24 But as the assembly is subject to Christ,
so let the wives also be to their own husbands in everything.
5:25 Husbands, love your wives,

even as Christ also loved the assembly, and gave himself up for it;
5:26 that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
5:27 that he might present the assembly to himself gloriously,
not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing;
but that it should be holy and without blemish.
5:28 Even so ought husbands also to love their own wives as their own bodies.
He who loves his own wife loves himself.
5:29 For no man ever hated his own flesh;
but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord also does the assembly;
5:30 because we are members of his body, of his flesh and bones.
5:31 "For this cause a man will leave his father and mother,
and will be joined to his wife. The two will become one flesh."

5:32 This mystery is great, but I speak concerning Christ and of the assembly.
5:33 Nevertheless each of you must also love his own wife even as himself;
and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

NoMo said...

Alan - Whoa, jumping right into the deep end of the pool! I like it.

Anonymous said...

Why would ultimate perfection choose to manifest at all, let alone in fallen, shattered souls?"

Wow. That question, regarded sincerely, open-mindedly, and without haste, leads to Paradise. Well put, questioner!

One perspective on the subject says
--The Infinite did not have to create.
--The Infinite, redolent of creativity, love, and play, could not but create: creatures free according the law of their natures, not automata or OS over-ride.
--Having created, He c/would not abandon His own, His inheritance, perhaps, in Alan's terms, his wandering, exiled, matter-burdened Spouse. [Truth-and-Beauty Beyond Good And Evil being nonetheless what we know as Good, some things are simply not a measure to be entertained within the Nature].
--The Christian narrative, and perhaps others, demonstrates the cost, the outcome, and the implications for humankind, nitty-gritty, day-to-day, internal and external, of this Great Refusal to abandon.

Anonymous said...

Hanuman's Helper, I found this on the Web recently... it seems relevant to the question. (Haven't read the whole online book yet, just this chapter, but I thought it was a pretty interesting chapter.)

http://www.harvestfields.ca/ebook/01/076/07.htm

Anonymous said...

God’s Psychologist (Do You Feel L’oughty?)

“Is-Ought” Problem: See http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html:

The writer of http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html, believing all worthwhile answers are based in logic and materiality, yet presumes we “should” do some things, such as that we should give up all notion of god or of non-material spirituality. But, how do logic and material experience show that we “should” choose to make any specific choices?

Does the writer suppose there must be some sort of ultimate “should-particle”? How does the writer resolve cognitive dissonance in presuming that anything we should do is or should be governed entirely and exclusively by some combination of logic and material empiricism? He does not! He simply chooses to ignore the cognitive dissonance.

Why? Because he is uncomfortable with holding two seemingly inconsistent models (or dualisms) of reality in his mind at the same time. But, does ignoring the cognitive dissonance resolve it? Of course not.

The writer does well against various religiously literalistic strawmen. That is, he aptly demonstrates why we cannot empirically, literally, or consistently — but only figuratively — demonstrate any “God” who would relate to each of us as having independently separate souls or spirits that would somehow coordinate precisely with the limits of each person’s material body or brain. But, he does not consider that “God” need not have established any system of separately independent and conscious ghosts, souls, minds, or identities.

That is, he does not consider that each separate experience of consciousness may simply be a continuously fleeting and transitioning perspective among many, of but one God. That is, each perspective of consciousness may simply seem to be a separate “I-ness,” some, depending upon locus of relative integration, more or less so than others.

Nor does the writer address logical, empirical, literal limits to empirical science. Certainly, he does not endeavor to provide any ultimate or complete, coherent, and consistent explanation for what is a gene, a particle, or a “should.” That is, he “resolves” his own cognitive dissonance only by ignoring figurative limits in our idealizations not only of religious models, but also of scientific models.

In his drive to resolve all cognitive dissonance in religious dualism, he merely presumes that any notion of God must be merely derivative of a unifying Nature (whatever that is). He ignores that Nature may be merely derivative of the ongoing directives and choices of a Unifying Consciousness. That is, there may be one God, with Nature simply being mathematically expressive of an ongoing functional resolution of cognitive dissonance within an Imagination of God.

How else “should” we experience a resolution (“canceling out”) of infinities that fuzz up our individual experiences of perspective, were there no unifying God on the mirror side to each of our perspectives? Indeed, how could any “material facts” evolve, were there no method for recording information? How could there be recordable information, were there no unity to the recordation? How could there be unity to the recordation, were there not, at least potentially, a Unifying Consciousness?

I do not claim to resolve the cognitive dissonance of “should” versus “does,” nor of “ought versus “is.” I only assert that neither has the writer of http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html.
As for “ought’s,” we have “no choice but to make choices.

So, Bob, were you God’s psychologist, do you suppose “cognitive dissonance” may be some sort of universal property? May every non-trivial “fact” merely be functional, as opposed to “true”?

*********************

From: http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html:

If your decisions are not free-willed and are the result of a mechanistic chain of cause and effect, it is logically possible to build a working prediction machine. Conversely, if it is logically impossible to build a prediction machine, then hard determinism must be false.

A similar reason explains why prediction machines are impossible. The reason such a machine cannot be built is because, in the real world, prediction requires measurement, measurement requires interaction, and interaction unpredictably changes the system being interacted with. These unavoidable perturbations make the accurate prediction of a free-willed person's actions impossible.

Simply because no individual nerve cell or electrochemical reaction possesses the property of consciousness, it does not follow that a great number of them, suitably arranged, cannot possess this property.

ximeze said...

"This is a species of what Bion called "attacks on linking," which is a defense mechanism aimed at dismantling what we might call a "threatening whole" in order to turn it into a bunch of meaningless parts."

Thanks Bob. Again you expose the Core & articulate/clarify for me one of those justunderthesurface amorphous thingies.

Wondered why Trolls are so clearly "off" somehow. Even when their logic appears to be sound, somethingeverything does not jive, or......

This is why it's so frustrating & such a waste of time, to engage them.

It's as tho they live in a maze, with very high walls, endless paths leading nowhere, and lots of deadends. It is their aim to draw one into their jumbled confusion & try to do battle over irrelevancies. They usually go bananas when this is pointed out to them. "You guys are in lockstep" & "You won't listen to opposing views" is the best they can come up with.

Busy mapping paths & cataloging the furnishing: trying to make themselves comfortable within the maze. "It may be sh*t, but it's MY sh*t."

And then there are Raccoons In Training who appear. There's something "on" about them, right from the start.

"Rather, unity is ongoing. It is a constant dynamic synthesis of parts into whole and of whole conferring meaning and coherence upon the parts."

For my part, it's all about clearing away debris & getting the hell out of the maze. Perhaps that's what I scent in other RITs.

ximeze said...

Dlanorrenrag:

Doesn't your hair hurt?

Mine does, after reading your comment.

And what the heck is "material spirituality"?

Are you sure you're not just lost in a maze?

Anonymous said...

Dianeontherag,

You seem to worship at the alter of cognitive dissonance (confusion). Is it at all possible in your universe for cognitive dissonance to be overcome or set aside?
Bob spoke of it’s overcoming with this quote: The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.

And as an aside, sniff, sniff, I'm smelling inty coming in through the back door the last couple days.

Anonymous said...

Bob, I started reading this article from TIME (http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1580394,00.html) then realized it was by your friend Steven Pinker. Thought you might be interested.

Reliapundit said...

bob, i apologize for this; it is OT:

this excerpt succinctly makes the point i was trying to make:

[source: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTk2N2I0MmY4OWZjYjQ3ZWQ3NmJjZTVmYTZlMGEwYTc ]

“Almost without exception,” [Russell] Jacoby begins, “each essay is lucid and articulate.” “Would it be possible to assemble a countercollection by leftists that would be equally limpid?”

“Unlikely,” Jacoby answers.

The leftist professorate, he admits, “distrusts clear prose as superficial.

Oddly, English and literature professors led the way....they became convinced that incomprehensibility equals profundity....

Compared to that, much conservative writing has a deft, light touch.”

many - not repeat NOT all - of your posts depend on and devolve deeper into post modern gibberish, in my opinion.

this gibberish is not merely bad language usage, but it also obfuscates clear thinking - by making things more complicated than they really are.

[btw - as long as i'm at it: i also dislike all the puns and made up words you use.]

but OBVIOUSLY... you have many MANY fans. they must like the way you write. continue to write however you wish, of course. all i can offer is my opinion. make of it what you want.

all the best!

Anonymous said...

RelIaPundit

Anyone who derides obfuscation and delights in clarity, then claims 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' as his favorite book and 'all' as his favorite music, is not to be taken seriously.

Anonymous said...

I'm baffled. If the writing bothers you, why do you keep coming back?

Van Harvey said...

reliapundit said... "this gibberish is not merely bad language usage, but it also obfuscates clear thinking",

followed by this:
". all i can offer is my opinion. make of it what you want."

Hmm. Seems to fall under the law of unconscious self-parody which many trolls succumb to when attempting to go against their nature; you know, making painful attempts at simulating good language, clear thinking, grammar, punctuation and so on. Still, there may be something to gain from this "make of it what you want."; let me print that out and give it a try, back in a second....

[dum de dum dum....]

Nope, even if you try to soften the paper up it's no good even as toilet paper. I’m afraid that reality just insists on asserting itself again and again, trash is just trash, no matter what else some might want to make of it.

Van Harvey said...

Oh, yeah, I forgot... got to add the magic self-rightiousizing comment:

All the best!

Jamie Irons said...

This is a terrific passage:

We must first seek to unify our own little portion of the cosmos -- ourselves -- before we can presume to unify others, which is why leftism is always wrong and against the law. It proposes the imposition of a false top-down unity, which is no unity at all, merely totalitarianism in disguise. For unity -- or internal coherence -- can only be achieved, not imposed, and this is the catastrophic error made by leftists and Islamo-nazis alike. Both wish to impose their narrow, crimped vision on the rest of us. Both are pathological adaptations to modernity, romantic attempts to recover the lost wholeness that occurred with the industrial revolution and the decline of traditional religion. But this backward looking unity will never work, any more than the Christian fundamentalist's will (not to perversely equate the latter with leftism or Islamism, which are infinitely more dangerous).

Thank you.


Jamie Irons

Van Harvey said...

Along with Jaime Irons, I particularly liked

"We must first seek to unify our own little portion of the cosmos -- ourselves -- before we can presume to unify others..."

There in a nutshell, is the thinking behind Classical Liberals and a Leftists nuts-hell.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Guy T, for the excellent link. Here's a line from the essay that sums up a certain veiw of what God is up to:

"God himself at play, himself the play, himself the player, himself the playground."

That's some pretty serious play, as the essay is quick to point out. Suffering must be reconciled, and indeed it is. It turns out that suffering is actually a form of delight. Masochism is vindicated!

But seriously, this is good stuff. I'll compare it to the coonifesto to see if there are any doctrinal differences that can be diced.

Anonymous said...

G-BOB: Excellent, excellent post! A Definite Keeper. Spot-on w/so many topics...can't Thank You enuf for giving voice once again to those topics near & dear to my hearts, Dear Leader!

Reliapundit: Please comment on actual blog-substance instead of unduly criticizing the Writer. It's his blog, he can write any way he wishes; he isn't taking polls to see if we like it or not. It's obviously the manner he adopts & is how he writes his book. If its not your cup o tea, fine, move along. Thats the way it is here at One Cosmos; G-Bob's not here to please US, you or anyone, so be Realistic. Some of my clients wear cologne I don't like, do I complain? No, I give them Grace, ignore it (tolerate it) & proceed forward. You can too.

We come here to absorb & ruminate on HIS thoughts & insights which conveniently give voice to topics we wish we expressed HALF as well. Most of us enjoy what G-Bob puts into his Blog - its entertaining, humorous, comforting, informative, challenging, stimulating. Is your own Blog similar? Is the "Comment on the Topic" process evident in any of your recent posts? Nothing but the same inane one-note criticism. Complaints as vacuous as going to another's house & whining about their chosen paint colors, the color of their dog, or their SUV - it doesn't matter. Nothing substantive, just self-centered complaints. G-Bob's expressive neologisms & unique phraseology manifest his creative-flow in action, which you apparently do not appreciate as you've indicated. Why read here if its so "painful" for you?

If this is all you have to offer, then perhaps it's best you chew the posts longer before you comment. Comments instead of insipid complaints would be refreshing as I'd rather read what you have to share concerning pertinent subjects & substance within G-Bob's posts instead of anally insisting on repeating your disdain of G-Bob's creativity & preferred method of delivery - which most of us here happen to truly appreciate. Sorry it's lost on you. More for us Merry Men, then! :D

- PrincessSpirit -

Anonymous said...

sorry to interrupt. Had a very big (?!) moment today, listening to Roy Orbison... and a smaller (?!) moment from the song below, which I'd like to share. (Do you think that it's possible that a songwriter can pull a message from O out of Spiritus Mundi withiout intending to?)

How long before I get in?
Before it starts / Before I begin?
How long before you decide?
Before I know / What it feels like?
Where to, where do I go?
If you never try / Then you'll never know
How long do I have to climb
Up on the side / Of this mountain of mine?

Look up, I look up at night
Planets are moving / at the speed of light.
Climb up, up in the trees
every chance that you get / is a chance you seize
How long am I gonna stand
With my head / stuck under the sand?
I'll start before I can stop
before I see things / The right way up

And all that noise and all that sound
All those places I got found
And birds go flying at the speed of sound
To show you how it all began
Birds came flying from the underground
If you could see it then you'd understand

Ideas that you'll never find
All the inventors / Could never design
The buildings that you put up
Japan and China / All lit up
The sign that I couldn't read
or a light / That I couldn't see
Some things you have to believe,
but others are puzzles / Puzzling me.

And all that noise and all that sound
All those places I got found
And birds go flying at the speed of sound
To show you how it all began
Birds came flying from the underground
If you could see it then you'd understand
Ah when you see it then you'll understand

All those signs / I knew what they meant
Some things / you can invent
Some get made / and some get sent

Birds go flying at the speed of sound,
to show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground
if you could see it then you'd understand
ah, when you see it then you'll understan

Anonymous said...

I read in reliapundit's user profile that he calls himself a
"traditionalost". I was not familiar with that word, so I checked
the dictionary and it does not yet seem to exist, not even in the Oxford English Dictionary of obsolete words; however, as luck should have it, I found it in a book listing words and other linguistic items by a particular subject with specialized information about them, a.k.a. as The Bi-Cosmic Dicoonary.

tra.di.tion.lost
n.
A term used in referring to the self-righteous of post modern times,-- those who are quite sure that they know all that is to be known concerning language usage, and are satisfied, but clearly anxious, that the values their little world of troll tradition has handed down to them, are destined to be rejected by Raccoons at a live blogfest.

Anonymous said...

Which is just another way of saying that man alone is privileged to live at the intersection of the horizontal and vertical -- and which is why the "cure" for our own "shatteredness" is never an impossibility but always at hand, for we are a living mirrorcle of the Absolute, a little whole in Oneness.

That's worth the price of admission, right there, all by itself.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of spacy-age linguistic elites , here's a term I did not find at wordspy.com or in The Bi-Cosmic Dicoonary.

mamisma

NoMo said...

jacob c. - Ahhh, Roy could / can definitely take you there -- and Coldplay X&Y -- I love that album.

Music moments -- big and bigger.

Anonymous said...

Hanuman's Helper:

Your question and the responses got me thinking along these lines:

Artists, writers, and musicians often speak of the overwhelming need to paint, or write, or sing. It builds up inside them until they cannot contain it anymore. They are forced to do so, not in the sense that one person compels another to do something by threat of force, but rather in the sense that they cannot do otherwise. It is because of who they are that they they paint, or write, or sing. If they ceased to do so, they would cease to be themselves.

I think that need to create, nested so deep in man's soul, is a reflection of the same characteristic writ large in God. Man and the cosmos he lives in were created precisely because of who God is. He could not do otherwise, because that would mean that He would cease to be God.

Anonymous said...

Been delighting over the historian comment - just one point in a post jam-packed with delights - b/c of its personal resonance.

Reading history - the various versions of How We Got To This Point- was a major factor in my conversion from Anglican to Catholic, many years ago.
The Catholics had fewer bees.

Anonymous said...

I guess what I mean to say about her is that - as silly and superficial as it may have seemed to some - her music nevertheless sprung, even in its darker moments, from a sort of joy...a love of fantasy and of creation, an occasional glimpse of something Higher, an incredible enthusiasm for the gift of life. That enthusiasm showed even more in herself - in her real-life personality - than it did in her music, or in whichever of her stage personae she chose to adopt at any given time.

And she may indeed have been silly and goofy as all-get-out, but God doesn't pick His instruments for their dignity. I loved her, as I think all her friends did, because she was so much blessed fun - she was the most joyful person I have ever known. And I mean joyful in the spiritual sense...I'm convinced - from having known her - that, on some level deeper than I myself can go, she understood that life was a gift.

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