End of the World

Ierrellus · December 3, 2017, 2:02pm

The veil? Is this something like Plato’s parable of the cave dwellers or like Paul’s recognition that “we see through a glass darkly”? Those who are awake to changes seem to agree that we exist in an age of transition, but do not clearly note from what to what. How do you see this age? Some have called it the age of information. If this is true and the information is toward the betterment of the human race, one might look to evolutionary psychology to inform us on how to join religion and science in a common goal.
In the hopes of what we can be we must never forget who and what we are. All skipped steps in growth and development must be repeated.
On evolutionary psychology see the Primer by Cosmides and Tooby.

Ierrellus · December 3, 2017, 2:13pm

http//:www.cep.ucsb.edu/primer.html
This does not seem to work. To find the work cited search Cosmides and Tooby “Primer of Evolutionary Psychology.”

Mr_J · December 3, 2017, 4:40pm

World War III, socio-economic collapse, and the desperate attempt at trying to preserve modern technological infrastructure at great costs to the natural environment.

Will religion or science save us? No, they’re both the biggest problem and orchestrator of all this. World would be better off without each.

Mr_J · December 3, 2017, 4:45pm

Arminius:

Ierrellus:

End of the World.

A recent t.v. program showed a mile long patch of plastic debris floating in the Pacific Ocean.
There are over 7 billion people living on a globe that has limited natural resources.
“This is the way the world ends==
Not with a bang, but a whimper.” --T. S. Eliot
How do you think the world will end? Or d0 you see the concern as just some religious or political propaganda?
Will science save us from ourselves? Can religion?

The ecological catastrophe is merely one of some more options for the end of humans and many other living creatures.
Other options are, for instance, military catastrophes, technical/scientifical research catastrophes, natural catastrophes.

But all these catastophes will not mean the “end of the world” and not mean the end of this planet either; but they will just mean huge catastrophes for humans and many other living creatures.

There is no total end of the world until things reach nuclear to any great extent.

Mr_J · December 3, 2017, 4:47pm

That’s funny considering technological innovation is ultimately itself nihilistic.

Meno2 · December 3, 2017, 4:51pm

The ultimate wit of the universe is IT’ s saving grace.

Mr_J · December 3, 2017, 4:54pm

The universe or cosmos is a big place and human beings are rather unimportant.

pilgrim-seeker_tom · December 3, 2017, 9:58pm

Ierrellus … naming conventions create mental blocks and/or myopia.

Nested in the frame of my above comment I would say … “Another Age of Transition”

Ierrellus · December 4, 2017, 1:44pm

Mach,
The universe has allowed the creation of beings that can opine on the nature of the universe–a mirror glimpse maybe. But that creation is a big deal.
As of yet, we have not fully explored the possibility that genetic determinism, which produces all organisms, can explain for us the characteristics of our minds. There may be hope for us yet.

Ierrellus · December 4, 2017, 1:52pm

There seems to be a move toward mindfulness in the Western world. PBS ran a special on how this type of here and now awareness meditation is being used even by the police to combat the mental clutter that plagues us all. Maybe it is time for another infusion of Eastern wisdom into Western mentality.

Mr_J · December 4, 2017, 2:51pm

A species that keeps on being unable to understand each other will never have the ability to understand something as complicated as the rest of the cosmos.

Meno2 · December 4, 2017, 4:09pm

And yet there is something about mirroring . reflection . which overcomes lack of understsnding

pilgrim-seeker_tom · December 4, 2017, 6:55pm

Ierrellus:

pilgrim-seeker_tom:

Ierrellus:

The veil? Is this something like Plato’s parable of the cave dwellers or like Paul’s recognition that “we see through a glass darkly”? Those who are awake to changes seem to agree that we exist in an age of transition, but do not clearly note from what to what. How do you see this age?

Ierrellus … naming conventions create mental blocks and/or myopia.

Nested in the frame of my above comment I would say … “Another Age of Transition”

There seems to be a move toward mindfulness in the Western world. PBS ran a special on how this type of here and now awareness meditation is being used even by the police to combat the mental clutter that plagues us all. Maybe it is time for another infusion of Eastern wisdom into Western mentality.

Ierrellus … bidirectional infusions have been in high gear for the past century … the momentum seems to be accelerating.

Ego is the constraining factor … the “not invented here syndrome” and the “my dick is bigger than yours syndrome”.

The universe/cosmos marches forward despite human ego.

Gnostic Gospel of Thomas … the word “gospel” as in “good news” … number 70

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Mr_J · December 5, 2017, 1:19am

Such as what exactly?

Mr_J · December 5, 2017, 1:21am

The end of the world won’t happen, Jesus will hop on down from the sky riding on a flying dinosaur where the rapture will save everybody. Don’t you see, there is nothing to fear after all.

Ierrellus · December 5, 2017, 1:00pm

Your sarcasm is based on a severely limited view of who or what Jesus is.

Ierrellus · December 5, 2017, 1:06pm

Tom,
I’ve enjoyed reading The Book of Thomas. Your quote is especially pertinent to our discussion. The source of our redemption is inside.

Ierrellus · December 5, 2017, 1:08pm

Absolutely!

pilgrim-seeker_tom · December 5, 2017, 9:52pm

… and it seems patience while holding on to tensions is the most significant challenge.

Just read this article … Ron articulates the above comment …
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Scripture and Christian tradition emphasize that Jesus could only be born out of a chaste womb, just as Christian Spirituality emphasizes he can only come to full bloom inside of a chaste heart. Why? Why this emphasis on chastity?

Chastity needs to be properly understood. For too long we have had an overly-narrow and mostly false concept of chastity. Chastity is too commonly identified with sexual abstinence and sexuality is then seen as something that, in itself, militates against chastity and spirituality. But chastity is not the same thing as celibacy; indeed it is not even, first and foremost, a sexual concept. Someone can be chaste but not celibate, just as someone can be celibate but not chaste. My parents were not celibate, they gave birth to a large family, but they were wonderfully chaste persons. The reverse can also be true. Someone can be celibate but far from chaste.

What is chastity? We are chaste when we stand before the world, others, and God in a way which allows them to be fully themselves without letting our own impatience, selfishness, or unwillingness to remain in tension violate their reality and their natural unfolding. What is meant by that?

Allow me to present three images for this:

• In her book, Holy The Firm, Annie Dillard shares this story: One evening, alone in her cabin, she was watching a moth slowly emerge from its cocoon. The process was fascinating but interminably slow. At a point she lost patience and needed to get on to other things, so she picked up a candle and applied a little heat to the process. It worked. The added heat sped up the process and the moth emerged more quickly from its cocoon, but, since a natural process had been interfered with and unnaturally rushed, the moth emerged with ill-formed wings which didn’t allow it to fly properly. A fault in chastity led to stunted growth.

• The movie, Sense and Sensibility, based on Jane Austen’s classic novel, presents its leading character, a woman played by Emma Thompson, as someone who is asked to carry an extremely painful tension for a long time, one having to do with unrequited and unconsummated love. She has no one with whom she can really share her pain and her circumstance requires her to carry on as if she was not carrying this pain. She carries that tension for a long time, sublimating her pain into a graciousness that she extends even to the very persons who are the source of her tension. Only after a long time is the tension is finally resolved and her forbearance in not forcing an earlier, premature resolution, her willingness to carry the tension to term, helps bring about deeper life for everyone, not least for herself. This is the essence of chastity.

• After the Italian, spiritual writer, Carlo Carretto, had spend a number of years living as a hermit in the Sahara desert, he was asked what message he would give to the world if someone asked him the question: What, in your solitude and prayer, do you hear God saying to those of us who are living active lives in the world? Carretto replied: God is saying: learn to wait, learn to wait for everything – for love, for fulfillment, for consummation, for God! Learning to wait, giving God and life the space to unfold as they need to, is the very essence of chastity.

In a number of his books, Nikos Kazantzakis, both fondly and bitterly, makes this assertion: God, it seems, is never in a hurry, while we are always in a hurry. He’s right: Life unfolds according to its own innate rhythms which try our patience and it will not let themselves be rushed, except at a cost. Life and love demand both the time and the space within which to unfold according to their own internal dictates. Whenever, because of impatience, selfishness, or our unwillingness to stay inside a tension, we short-circuit that process we, in slight or deep ways, violate their reality.

Chastity is the virtue that invites us to live in patience, to wait, to respect what’s other, and to carry tension long enough so that the other can truly be other and gift can unfold precisely as gift.

The word sublime takes its root in the word sublimation. Nothing can be sublime unless there is first sublimation. Nobody gives birth to a baby without a long period of gestation, nobody writes a doctoral thesis in two hours, nobody creates an artistic masterpiece without long hours of sweat and labor, and nobody becomes a heroic individual without carrying unbearable tension. Cinderella only got to go to the ball after she had spent sufficient time in the ashes. Jesus only got to the glory and freedom of Easter Sunday by first sweating blood in the garden.

That is why the Messiah can only be born from a chaste womb and come to life fully only inside of a chaste heart. Christmas allows for no shortcuts.

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Mr_J · December 6, 2017, 4:57am

I know that religious passivity in waiting for some fictional eternal heaven after death does nothing in changing or altering the world now in our present. People in power love the religious passive meek because they easily rollover on command in prayer.

Turning the other cheek and begging like slaves in passivity the perverse religious form of apathy, inaction, or indifference it is no wonder why those in power make sure there is a church on every street corner.

The world cries out for revolution but the religious fold their arms in passive inaction looking towards the sky pronouncing that God will one day return saving them where there is no reason to do anything whatsoever. I know this has always been a slavish mentality I could never embrace.