Ohtori Akio posted:

One of the most important aspects of most religious practice is that it is extremely social. How many different traditions have figured out a specific way to have a cup of tea or coffee together after the service?

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Josef bugman posted:

If people could please offer prayers or invoke something for me and my Mrs. The government of my country may be banning trans stuff and she is really going through it because of it.

Edit: Not teams stuff, trans stuff, sorry everyone.

Josef bugman posted:

If people could please offer prayers or invoke something for me and my Mrs. The government of my country may be banning trans stuff and she is really going through it because of it.

Edit: Not teams stuff, trans stuff, sorry everyone.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Azathoth posted:

Josef bugman posted:

If people could please offer prayers or invoke something for me and my Mrs. The government of my country may be banning trans stuff and she is really going through it because of it.

Edit: Not teams stuff, trans stuff, sorry everyone.

Prurient Squid posted:

I read the section on Dialectic today. Plotinus talks about how different types of people reach the absolute. Lovers, musicians and metaphysicians.

For metaphisicians he advises the study of mathematics followed by the study of dialectics. Wow maybe the 6 years studying math followed by 12 years as a marxist wasn't a waste afterall. Unconciously I've been moving through the steps of neoplatonist initiation.

sinnesloeschen posted:

sometimes i feel like this is how our conception of self-actualization works. like, i spent 10 years studying music rudiments so that i could get into the wild perotin-leonin math theorem poo poo, or learn about scriabin wanting to write a symphony to bring about the apocalypse, or think about the purposes of like the hurrian hymns. i think maybe this is how we train up our brains to do higher-level thinking.

or maybe the western concept of education is built upon neoplatonist convention (sinnesloeschen, you dingus)

Ohtori Akio posted:

spending ten years studying european tonality to post about how its aids

Ohtori Akio posted:

the difference between a contralto and a tenor is gender

Prurient Squid posted:

Seneca uses the metaphor of the building on firm foundations vs. the building on soft foundations. In his version the building on soft foundation is a person who is easily convinced of anything readily agreeing to a teaching whereas the one on firm foundations is the person who has to wrestle with himself and overcome doubt before believing.

Hakuin Ekaku posted:

With greatest respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth.

I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, "At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment ... From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment."

Nessus posted:

I wonder this since one of my pet unpopular theories about many of the ills of modern society are not from a lack of critical thinking, they are from an imbalanced surfeit of critical thinking, which can be manipulated by various parties so that these critiques and thoughts may be encouraged into a particular form.

Keromaru5 posted:

One of E.D. Hirsch's criticisms of modern education is the way it treats "critical thinking" as a generalizable skill, when it really depends on expertise on a particular domain, and tends to come naturally with that expertise. For example, a PhD mathematician can think critically about mathematics, but perhaps not about history, unless they also had a solid knowledge base in that subject. So I think you're basically right: a lot of what you're describing is people applying critical thinking in areas where they're unequipped to do so. It's a lack of epistemic humility.

(Not to mention that there are areas of modern life where I'm not sure any expertise even exists, like using AI or running a social media site.)

Nessus posted:

There is also the presumption that people would use the relatively abstract concepts of critical thinking and come to, basically, the same results as the speaker.

It reminds me dimly of when I asked in one of my education classes, 'if a student submits a beautifully prepared, well researched, well written and well cited report on how the Holocaust didn't happen, how should this be graded?'

A_Bluenoser posted:

Yes, one of my big concerns with the idea that somehow all of our conflicts will be resolved by better information is that it misses the very common situation that two well-intentioned and rational people can come to very different conclusions about the same issues based on a common set of facts.

Prurient Squid posted:

I think the laws of logic can show that an argument is structurally valid but they can't actually determine if an argument is convincing. There's an irreducible element of judgement involved in the process. Like I could produce a logically valid argument in favour of a certain theory as to why the charge of an electron is what it is but whether that argument convinces is another question.

Nessus posted:

I think that logical, classical, rigorous reason is one of the great treasures humanity has, but it is not the only mode or aspect in the human mind. You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

A_Bluenoser posted:

This tearing down is particularly damaging when we do it to people: we are very good at seeing through other people but not very good at actually seeing other people.

A_Bluenoser posted:

Yes, one of my big concerns with the idea that somehow all of our conflicts will be resolved by better information is that it misses the very common situation that two well-intentioned and rational people can come to very different conclusions about the same issues based on a common set of facts.

Paul Tillich posted:

Another element, or the third element in the religious experience, is the element of "ought to be." This is the ethical or prophetic element.

[...]

You know the meaning of the term, profane, "to be before the doors of the sanctuary," and the meaning of secular, "belonging to the world." In both cases, somebody leaves the ecstatic, mysterious fear of the Holy for the world of ordinary rational structures. It would be easy to fight against this, to keep the people in the sanctuary, if the secular had not been given critical religious function by itself. And this makes the problem so serious. The secular is the rational and the rational must judge the irrationality of the Holy. It must judge its demonization.

The rational structure of which I am speaking implies the moral, the legal, the cognitive and the aesthetic. The consecration of life which the Holy gives is at the same time the domination of life by the ecstatic forms of the Holy, and the repression of the intrinsic demands of goodness, of justice, of truth and of beauty. Secularization occurring in such a context is liberation.

In this sense, both the prophets and the mystics were predecessors of the secular. The Holy became slowly the morally good, or the philosophically true, and later the scientifically true, or the aesthetically expressive. But then, a profound dialectic appears. The secular shows its inability to live by itself. The secular which is right in fighting against the domination by the Holy, becomes empty and becomes victim of what I call "quasi-religions." And these "quasi-religions" imply an oppressiveness like the demonic elements of the religions. But they are worse, as we have seen in our century, because they are without the depths and the richness of the genuine religious traditions.

And here, another telos, the inner aim of the history of religions, appears. I call it theonomy from theos -- God -- and nomos - law. If the autonomous forces of knowledge, of aesthetics, of law and morals point to the ultimate meaning of life, then we have theonomy. Then they are not dominated, but in their inner being they point beyond themselves to the Ultimate.

Paul Tillich posted:

The first of these critical movements is mystical. This mystical movement means that one is not satisfied with any of the concrete expressions of the Ultimate, of the Holy. One goes beyond them. Man goes to the one beyond any manifoldness. The Holy as the Ultimate lies beyond any of its embodiments. The embodiments are justified. They are accepted but they are secondary. One must go beyond them in order to reach the highest, the Ultimate itself. The particular is denied for the Ultimate One.

nice obelisk idiot posted:

Re Seneca: here's a quote from a remarkably intense person who felt strongly about doubt being important to religious practice.

Nessus posted:

There is also the presumption that people would use the relatively abstract concepts of critical thinking and come to, basically, the same results as the speaker.

Prurient Squid posted:

I think the laws of logic can show that an argument is structurally valid but they can't actually determine if an argument is convincing. There's an irreducible element of judgement involved in the process. Like I could produce a logically valid argument in favour of a certain theory as to why the charge of an electron is what it is but whether that argument convinces is another question.