Nihilism is always seen by me to be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be used to rationalize any behavior…however ghastly the consequences may be for others. On the other hand, any number of objectivist “kingdom of ends” – secular or sacred – have historically been employed to rationalize any behavior…however ghastly the consequences may be for others.
To be a nihilist allows you to jettison moral and political narratives that reconfigure the is/ought world into just another facet of the either/or world. You’re either one of us or one of them.
But no doubt about it: nihilism can be equally ghastly. I often point to those who own and operate the global economy only in order to sustain their entirely selfish interests.
How is not “show me the money” but one of the most nihilstic agendas around?
If Blake were still around I’d ask him to reconfigure this into an analysis of a particular context in which we could explore particular human behaviors as reflecting “poison from the standing water”.
But my whole point is that those who reject nihilism and insist that peace on Earth can be attained [and then sustained] only if everyone thinks about it as progressive Christians do, then have to deal with those other than progressive Christians who insist that, on the contrary, peace on Earth is only within reach if everyone subscribes to their own religious and moral and political agendas.
All I then do is to ask these conflicted parties to bring their own assessments of peace out into the world of actual human interactions that come into conflict over value judgments. Godly or otherwise.
Call that trolling if you must, sure. But I suspect that reflects more on you than it does on me.
Nihilism, though not thoroughly exempt from any human activities especially when pertaining to war and peace, is still a separate subject from the OP especially since there is not simply one type of nihilism. A complex subject worthy of its own OP.
Even so Sky Father and Earth Mother have always been wed. But sometimes they were close to divorce. These caused some of its most creative events even though it may not have seemed so at the time.They aren’t always friendly to each other and even when there is a symbiotic relationship creating stability the likes of us even before we were completely human caused devastation to any megafauna they encountered. Humans have been the most deadly distruptors from day one.
Not least, in all of our historical annals peace has been the exception to the rule. It begs the question whether conflict and not peace is essential to the development of our type of species.
Sure, from the perspective of some that is clearly a reasonable assumption to make. But when peace on Earth is broached in the religion and spirituality forum and the sky father and earth mother are not being spoken of from the perspective of the scientific community, I can only react to it as value judgment. And I subsume them in moral nihilism.
Again, from the perspective of science, the forces that prevail in the sky become intertwined with the forces that prevail on earth in order to create such things as hurricanes and tornados and prolonged rain events that precipitate devastating floods.
And then when you include such earthly events as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, as well as things from the skies like asteroids and comets, nature is clearly a match for man-made calamities.
But, again, in a religion forum, God is almost always going to be invoked as factor in explaining these things. Especially among those who insist that their own God is both omniscient and omnipotent.
It’s hard to imagine that somehow conflict is not hard-wired into us…genetically? A biological imperative that, particularly in regard to the male of the species, is never not going to be a part of human interactions.
Still, when God becomes part of the discusion, it can go on almost any direction. Same with nihilism.
Iambiguous,
For the second time, please tend to your own thread and leave mine alone. You have nothing to offer toward a better future for mankind. I ask you nicely to leave my thread alone.
Shakyamuni taught: “As the light of a small candle will spread from one to another in succession, so the light of the Buddha’s compassion will pass from one mind to another endlessly.”
Okay, just as I once agreed not to use anything you post here in my God and religion thread, I will cease and desist from contributing anything to this thread in turn. And I promise not to respond to any other thread you begin here.
Note to monad:
If you wish to continue our own discussion we will need to take it to another thread.
I’m not certain whether the wording of the OP can even be considered a value judgment. Its terseness strikes me more as an allusion to the times when gods were created for any and all reasons. It makes sense that at some late point nihilism, in one form or another, ensues as a necessary consequence.
When all the reasons which caused a single god or a multiplicity that people once implored, worshiped and prayed to no-longer exist then a slow-moving fog sets in growing ever more dense with each generation, its former beliefs less visible though some of its traditions may still persist for purposes of identity and social cohesion. In that sense, traditions are the ghosts of former beliefs.
I don’t believe peace is possible. Even if not overtly genetic, conflict is inherent in the human psyche where habits can be as powerful as instincts. Propensities to violence can be diminished but never eradicated and likely not desirable if they could be. Everything in our past alludes to violence…a tendency which requires discipline and thought to be constructive, not annulment.
God in all this should have no mention. It’s a completely useless entity since it’s humans who have trained the gods to train us, a long affair which only served to make conflicts worse and more violent…a stupid way to do business on planet Earth!
I have referred here to two authors who are into what I called progressive Christianity. Both dislike the OT God as Dawkins describes him (See the Dawkins quote in Greatest I Am’s thread), and both see Jesus as the way of Love. This love includes everybody on Earth and is a ray of hope against the bleak darkness of postmodern philosophy. At my advanced age I am happy to find such a hopeful trend for the future of humans.
When she was alive, my wife and I discussed much religion and philosophy. In self-examination we decided that our rage against the waste land only contributed to its viability. We needed to engage in active hope. The new religious trends seem to offer hope for anyone concerned with the future
of life on Earth.
Thanks for your candle–ray of hope.
Beyond the two is the concept of plenitude as an ultimate variety comprising one thing. Certain oriental philosophies and Christian mysticism agree that enlightenment as an experience is realization of the One that is All, of one belonging to the all. Western philosophy still thrives on belief that the two are in conflict. Blake did not believe in dualism.
In mysticism it’s always easy to visualize or conceptualize what can never be accomplished. What mysticism strives for and incorporates can be denoted as the myth of transcendence, without any god inclusions, by those who can only imagine it. Unlike all the poetizing and philosophizing, Eastern or Western, it’s possible to dispense with any such enlightenment infusions and instead think of the universe as the All which is One containing all multiplicities. There is its true simulacrum transcending all our frames of reference. It’s mysticism resides in how it came to be that way, its so-called ontological imperatives, if such even exist! In that respect, as in most others, Eastern philosophy isn’t any more inspired or enlightened than its Western counterpart since mysticism attempts to fuse all distinction into one ontological I whose complete summary is the universe itself.
I see transcendence as growth and development; but perhaps that’s just quibbling over words. Apparently the One that includes all already exists. Forgetting our belonging puts us in conflict with each other. I am a part of you and both a part of god, the Whole.
Eastern and Western thought do align in mysticism. I am interested in seeing Western naturalism mature to include religion. I’ve heard too often that this cannot be done. Science and religion are like oil and water, they do not mix. Isn’t it just possible that evolution of humans can be seen as god in action? Or to state that further–“Every Thing that lives is Holy.”----Blake.
When one realizes all the near extinctions that humans and proto-humans have encountered; also the massive distruptions of both flora and fauna by those not yet acknowledged as fully homo sapien - not really knowing what they were doing - it’s kind of hard to think of evolution as god in action.
I think of god as a wholly impersonal process of nature; impersonal to the point of you, me and ALL being thoroughly dispensable if the experiment failed due to too many negative memes infecting the human psyche.Within nature we are still animals though of a kind where memes take over where genes end, the former with the greatest potential to be the most destructive. Do you believe there could be an echo of our demise anywhere in the universe? Perhaps so since we’ve recently sent out a profuse amount of broadcasts to attest to our existence…if it ever gets picked up and packed away in some cosmic archive. Time and evolution regrets nothing having killed or dispensed with anything.
For an intense mystic like Blake such a statement would make sense since, according to his view, all of creation derives from a divine mandate. For me it’s more akin to everything that lives is unique and adds to the diversity necessary in keeping the ecosystem stable.
BTW, I read a lot of Blake, not merely his most popular and quoted poems. In my much earlier days, I wrote a few of those myself though they were more metaphysical than religious. Like Blake and John Donne they all rhymed. What I’m saying is one can be inspired by their verse without submitting to their views. Nevertheless, referring to inner & outer, there’s still a great deal which remains mystical when everything turns inside-out in the persistent hope of coming into contact with some final goal and purpose.
Thanks, Monad, for your insightful post.
There has also been much good in the human reach for truth as the enlightenment exemplifies. That there has also been much bad does not exclude our propensity for hope as a viable meme with possible genetic underpinnings. On the mystical level, however, belonging to all that exists should awaken one to the responsibility of being a part of ecosystems. But the isolated “I” is still a most powerful Western idea.
Glad to hear you like Blake. I had a course in Blake in grad school and, like you. I was inspired to write imitative poems. Blake “woke me from my dogmatic slumber”, which at the time was Christian fundamentalism.