tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post5284988960667629620..comments2024-03-18T19:37:21.040-07:00Comments on One Cʘsmos: The Path of Lust ResistanceGagdad Bobhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-39996128671254665322011-02-08T08:41:24.379-08:002011-02-08T08:41:24.379-08:00Blogger is occasionally sending innocent comments ...Blogger is occasionally sending innocent comments into the spam file. I'll post these comments as soon as I become aware of them...Gagdad Bobhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14249005793605006679noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-42984969589227437582011-02-08T08:31:16.989-08:002011-02-08T08:31:16.989-08:00One more from Don Colacho, in the section on Intel...One more from Don Colacho, in the section on Intelligence & Wisdom (& Stupidity). It's off topic, but resonates nonetheless:<br /><br /><i>Phrases are pebbles that the writer tosses into the reader’s soul. The diameter of the concentric waves they displace depends on the dimensions of the pond. (#43)</i>juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-55036971477976530412011-02-08T08:12:27.801-08:002011-02-08T08:12:27.801-08:00Odd. I've had this post disappear twice. Perha...Odd. I've had this post disappear twice. Perhaps it ran afoul of some spam or prn filter. I'll skip the disgusting topic, and try it again. You must read the comments. <br /><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/02/06/now-nyt-reviewer-lauds-explicit-depiction-of-bestiality/" rel="nofollow"> Article from Second Hand Smoke</a><br /><br />JWMJWMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05564732483476859555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-36746927230593449762011-02-08T07:50:00.958-08:002011-02-08T07:50:00.958-08:00Damn. Lost a post. I'll repeat: Any time you t...Damn. Lost a post. I'll repeat: Any time you think you've seen the bottom of leftist depravity, you are wrong. This article is a must read. The comments could disgust a fly.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/02/06/now-nyt-reviewer-lauds-explicit-depiction-of-bestiality/" rel="nofollow"> Sex with a chimp</a><br /><br />I'm not kiddin'<br /><br />JWMJWMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05564732483476859555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-76124716526849283482011-02-08T07:44:36.731-08:002011-02-08T07:44:36.731-08:00Every time I think that leftism has no bottom to i...Every time I think that leftism has no bottom to its depravity I get unpleasantly surprised. This is a must read- not as much for the article, as for the comments.<br /><a href="http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/secondhandsmoke/2011/02/06/now-nyt-reviewer-lauds-explicit-depiction-of-bestiality/" rel="nofollow"> Sex with a chimp</a><br /><br />I'm not kidding.<br /><br />JWMJWMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05564732483476859555noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-68205215905535256412011-02-08T05:45:06.123-08:002011-02-08T05:45:06.123-08:00People give the Church a hard time about this, but...People give the Church a hard time about this, but we understand that if you allow one part of sex- union or procreation- to over-power the other, it's not whole-some.<br /><br />Wonderful comments, everyone.<br /><br />oh, and: Will!Salhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13201226644704622876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-66222363769707805972011-02-08T05:31:51.383-08:002011-02-08T05:31:51.383-08:00Think
you know all there is to of Adi Da?
what&...<a href="http://www.cesnur.org/2009/slc_skalsky.htm" rel="nofollow">Think</a> <br />you know all there is to of Adi Da?<br /><br />what's this, reviving old guru devil advocacy month, ge?<br /><br />+ an old web-pal who ran the main Da skeptics site has had some revisions in his opinion of late...gehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02015936407999495181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-25640913302715901732011-02-07T17:51:06.270-08:002011-02-07T17:51:06.270-08:00Hey, you know that metaphor about the sphere passi...Hey, you know that metaphor about the sphere passing through a horizontal plane? <a href="http://i.imgur.com/sqUvc.gif" rel="nofollow">There's a graphic of that</a>...<br /><br />(Source <a href="http://insideinsides.blogspot.com/2010/12/onion.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>, with many more cool images on the main page, via Neatorama)juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-90568178997205566602011-02-07T17:06:06.946-08:002011-02-07T17:06:06.946-08:00GB, Thank you for this series - good work is so ha...GB, Thank you for this series - good work is so hard to find. <br />_____________<br /><br /><br />"It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, an immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation."<br /><br />- Octavio PazMizz Ehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02325435271880036807noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-57620049830352551772011-02-07T16:56:31.094-08:002011-02-07T16:56:31.094-08:00Moving back to the opposite side of the love spect...Moving back to the opposite side of the love spectrum, <a href="http://cubiclebot.com/videos/old-couple-rocks-out/" rel="nofollow">this made me grin</a> (give it a minute - it makes more sense when she comes into the frame). These two have apparently been at it for quite some time, and still find it just as wonderful.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-54916826385258230122011-02-07T15:43:22.920-08:002011-02-07T15:43:22.920-08:00Lust is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Eve...Lust is certainly a force to be reckoned with. Even long after the body no longer reacts impulsively, the compass needle of the heart still moves when opportunities arise.<br /><br />That said, it occurs to me that the problem these days is not so much that people have too much sex with too many people, but that they are doing so for the wrong reason.<br /><br />English has this beautiful expression, to "make love". And yet, often it would be more correct to say that people take love. It is all about using other people, not to increase the amount of love radiating outward.<br /><br />That is my impression though. I am hardly an authority, being celibate from my youth. That's certainly an interesting life in today's world, but I suppose it was worse in the past, when a man needed a wife to milk the cows as well...Magnus Itlandhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18445902788427523461noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-80794139627996134552011-02-07T14:26:10.870-08:002011-02-07T14:26:10.870-08:00>> . . . being swamped by lust -- or by ange...>> . . . being swamped by lust -- or by anger, or booze, or anything else -- temporarily disables the ego, bringing with it a subjective sense of freedom and expanded space<<<br /><br />Also, I think, the swamping might expand the ego to the degree that it feels inviolate - the universe suddenly becomes one's fiefdom, populated by those who are under the bidding of the ego. Quite the heady feeling, this false enlightenment.<br /><br />Anger, for example - doesn't it actually feel like one is "expanding" in power and self-assuredness? It even brings a sense of false "clarity" . <br /><br />One way or the other, it is a false enlightenment. Fur shore.willnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-38574164539008276362011-02-07T14:12:25.462-08:002011-02-07T14:12:25.462-08:00What Mushroom said at 10:40.What Mushroom said at 10:40.Rickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10589423819039764711noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-76858990861599266722011-02-07T14:11:30.129-08:002011-02-07T14:11:30.129-08:00Julie - bingo!
I do suspect that pre-60's Ame...Julie - bingo!<br /><br />I do suspect that pre-60's America was a bit naive, or at least not entirely self-aware of its own virtues. Thus the 60's plunge into Hades whereby those virtues you mentioned were questioned, put to the test, and, I think, eventually vindicated in many respects. I mean, if nothing else, I like to think we are a bit more self-aware than we previously were.<br /><br />Of course, there is an army of slow learners out there.willnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-56314336908290055452011-02-07T13:34:45.283-08:002011-02-07T13:34:45.283-08:00It was so full of fail, DH rewound and watched it ...It was so full of fail, DH rewound and watched it again a couple of times because he just couldn't believe it the first time 'round. The stony expressions on the troops' faces pretty much said it all, though...juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-869196093917412092011-02-07T13:29:02.475-08:002011-02-07T13:29:02.475-08:00Julie said "I doubt it can be honestly said t...Julie said "I doubt it can be honestly said that there was a golden age, but at least in the fifties everybody knew what the ideal family life was like, and it showed in our popular culture."<br /><br />Yes, it wasn't so much that people were naive enough to believe that everything would work out for the best, but they had an ideal they were aiming for which was worth hoping they'd successfully attain.<br /><br />Now that the myth of Ward & June Cleaver has been banished... what is there that is worth aiming for? Nothing, of course... and never has a goal been so widely achieved.<br /><br />Speaking of which, anyone see the Nat'l Anthem sung at the Super Bowl? Forget about what she got wrong, far worse is what she thought she got right. Ugh.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-48467292140974478652011-02-07T13:20:49.555-08:002011-02-07T13:20:49.555-08:00"Think, for example, of what motivates the ga..."Think, for example, of what motivates the gambling addict. In that fleeting moment when his money is on the line, he experiences a kind of infinite hope. But like a rubber band, he is then snapped into an infinite despair when he loses the wager. In this way, his displaced hope keeps him simultaneously alive and dead in a pseudo-eternity of perpetual acting out.<br /><br />In reality, such a person has turned against Spirit, but has "spiritualized" something unworthy of the name. The souls in this circle are blown about by the wind, just as they were in this life. "<br /><br />Yep, hope for hope's sake, rather than <i>for</i> anything at all, which is just reveling in power as well... though power which is unable to power anything worthwhile.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-29951441994230194552011-02-07T13:13:25.481-08:002011-02-07T13:13:25.481-08:00"It is the same with lust. Like the appetite ..."It is the same with lust. Like the appetite for food, it is a kind of real power that can become detached from the central self that would "humanize" and elevate it, so to speak."<br /><br />It seems like that detachment, dis-integration, underscores most if not all issues. When power is separated from the purpose it serves, it serves its own purposes, and they are necessarily arbitrary, fragmented, impulse driven and ever hopeful (for no reason), rather than of seeking to serve reasonable integrated principles. And of course,<br /><br />"Note that these are sinners who do not just lust, but who vilely yield / Their reason to their carnal appetite. And please do not confuse "reason" with mere rationality -- as if the correct path would involve the rational ego merely repressing these lower urges from above. Rather, Dante is talking about the higher intellect, the psychic being, the central self, what we symbolize with the pneumaticon (¶). "<br /><br />Yep.Van Harveyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08470413719262297062noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-60519302559311063202011-02-07T10:40:38.585-08:002011-02-07T10:40:38.585-08:00Wow, Julie, that is a worthy post in itself.Wow, Julie, that is a worthy post in itself.mushroomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07651027035577798096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-61170760018411386072011-02-07T10:33:12.785-08:002011-02-07T10:33:12.785-08:00The only good reason to make this descent is becau...<i>The only good reason to make this descent is because the lower vertical places an upper limit on how high one may ascend without being blindsided and dragged back down to hell.</i><br /><br />This points up a weakness of quite a bit of evangelical Christian thinking. Christians just want to be "free", identifying with the Resurrected Christ without first identifying with the Crucified and "descending" Christ. <br /><br />Speaking of food pr0n (it's lunchtime) when did cooking and chefs and all that take over television? Don't these people have anything to do? Cooking is what you do so you can eat. Eating is what you do so you can do something worthwhile.mushroomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07651027035577798096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-88383497647641071582011-02-07T10:25:27.082-08:002011-02-07T10:25:27.082-08:00It is the same with lust. Like the appetite for fo...<i>It is the same with lust. Like the appetite for food, it is a kind of real power that can become detached from the central self that would "humanize" and elevate it, so to speak. </i><br /><br />On a related note, the <a href="http://nymag.com/news/features/70976/" rel="nofollow">effects of porn on the male libido</a>.<br /><br />On poetry, which these days perhaps isn't so far a turn from pornography as it ought to be, I often find myself going back to the observation that in recent decades, romance has all but disappeared from popular music. People still sing about "love," of course, but in a generation where hooking up for a few months is considered a "long term relationship," what they're really talking about is something disposable. And when women sing about it, especially, there is almost always a jaded cynicism and an either implicit or explicit assumption that they are going to be betrayed, if they haven't already.<br /><br />In other words, it has become <i>adulterated</i>. Not just by pornography, which is really more a symptom of the underlyin' problem, but by the cultural norms that have been corrupting American relationships in the latter half of the past century. I doubt it can be honestly said that there was a golden age, but at least in the fifties everybody knew what the <i>ideal</i> family life was like, and it showed in our popular culture. By the time I was growing up, that ideal was already becoming a fading memory of a supposedly more naive era. Yet that ideal - two parents, a mom (usually) at home raising the kids - is exactly the sort of environment that works best at shaping nascent humans into adults who can love in the truest sense.<br /><br />How are the children of divorce and abandonment (in the sense that so many, lacking a stay-at-home parent, have either been raised by people who have no love for them if they are in daycare, or have been simply left alone, locked in an empty house with the television, a bag of chips and two liters of soda) supposed to be able to withstand the whirlwind of passionate, lustful feelings at the start of a relationship and broaden those fleeting emotions into something lasting, deeper, and grounded in its proper place?<br /><br />Lots of people do manage, of course, but I suspect that it is in many ways harder now than it might have been in the past.juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-64689559168380064162011-02-07T10:04:51.758-08:002011-02-07T10:04:51.758-08:00Now, the first thing that occurs to us is that thi...<i>Now, the first thing that occurs to us is that this is the inverse of the celestial spheres, which also represent a series of concentric circles. However, in their case, they have the paradoxical quality of becoming more expansive as one approaches the center.</i><br /><br />Like being in the bottom of a well versus being on a mountaintop.mushroomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07651027035577798096noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-38536420795119541762011-02-07T09:30:28.163-08:002011-02-07T09:30:28.163-08:00Re. Don Colacho, thanks for the link, and I though...Re. Don Colacho, thanks for the link, and I thought this one was quite apropos, as well:<br /><br /><i>Eroticism, sensuality, and love, when they do not converge in the same person are nothing more, in isolation, than disease, vice, and foolishness.</i>juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8580258.post-5421740279695895152011-02-07T09:14:01.641-08:002011-02-07T09:14:01.641-08:00He wishes to remind us all that he is no more a sc...<i>He wishes to remind us all that he is no more a scholar of Dante than you are, so this verticalisthenic exorcism is venturing perilously close to resembling actual work, heaven forfend. </i><br /><br />That said, and not that it really matters, but I at least am glad you're sticking with it. There's so much <i>there</i> there, it would seem a shame to let it slip away. Especially when both the Upton chapter and its referenced Canto can usually be read in about 10 minutes as a refresher.<br /><br />Speaking of which, let me just get back to speed...juliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15975754287030568726noreply@blogger.com