tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post9174951677930648867..comments2024-03-28T21:32:26.550+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: Jim Kalb - from the commentsBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-72249966393122744262011-06-23T03:37:28.763+01:002011-06-23T03:37:28.763+01:00What would the world be, without its islands?
Not...What would the world be, without its islands? <br />Not everyone, or everything can be - would want to be - one. <br />Islands are places where evolution explores different avenues. Takes different turns. Revelation, you might say. Often only possible away from the mainstream.The Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04323413604073160469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-4715982276895287642011-06-22T21:36:27.515+01:002011-06-22T21:36:27.515+01:00@The Crow:
I have learned to distrust the desire ...@The Crow:<br /><br />I have learned to distrust the desire to be an island. To assume that I am the cause of myself is error. <br /><br />It is denial that I am an intermediate result of a long chain of calculations stretching back to the dawn of time and concluding in an indeterminate future. Denial of this is denial of (part of) reality.<br /><br />Despite all the wacky twists and turns of life and logic, I have never found the truth to be anything but a friend. That requires we stop isolating ourselves from the world, realize where we are constructs of our time, and then play the role we are allotted.<br /><br />And if we're really lucky, we get to be the good guys :)Brett Stevenshttp://www.amerika.org/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-89916581006199874502011-06-22T18:34:35.969+01:002011-06-22T18:34:35.969+01:00"No Man is an island: not even in his 'pr...<i>"No Man is an island: not even in his 'private' thoughts; humans are necessarily social even in solitude... ...A desert-dwelling hermit may exemplify the fullest membership of humankind."</i> <br />Interesting observations. <br />Some men are very much "islands". While being aware that islands always comprise a bigger picture. Some men have no private thoughts, indeed no thoughts at all. This absence of thought is what enables a man to be an island, in an archipelago, in an ocean, on a planet, in a solar system, in a galaxy... <br /><br />This absence of thought does not denote <i>stupid</i>, in this context. But a re-discovery that the mind comes with an "Off Switch". <br /><br />The desert-dwelling hermit may be the best equipped to understand his place within the whole. <br />Jesus discovered this, in the desert: that he was - in fact - God, and that God - in fact - was him. <br />That while he was an island, he was - in fact - everything else, too.The Crowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04323413604073160469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-70178219769283519432011-06-22T15:16:57.687+01:002011-06-22T15:16:57.687+01:00Mr. Kalb's analysis of the split between Buddh...Mr. Kalb's analysis of the split between Buddhism and Christianity seems accurate to me. The problem is that self-negation doesn't seem to work, at least on a practical level; it makes one a de facto liberal eventually.<br /><br />Liberals talk about freedom from parts of reality; conservatives talk about finding the meaning behind reality. To a liberal, suffering and death are bad; to a conservative, they are unavoidable and must be necessary to lead to a better thing.<br /><br />My favorite example are the terrifying forest fires. They are awful, indeed; however, they also provide a necessary service in cleaning away the detritus and weaker plants. A similar idea can be extended to the horrors of natural selection, war and competition. While they are terrifying to us little creatures as individuals, on the broad scale they guarantee a highly functioning world of inner beauty.<br /><br />From that I think the split originates: our liberal society has for centuries been insisting that nature is not an order, natural law does not exist, and that our world is "random" (a false extreme produced by a false dichotomy; there's a middle state between "random" and "deliberate, personalitied, and specific").<br /><br />As a result, people believe this world is meaningless and without order, and like most predictions, it can be self-fulfilling. Phooey on them.Brett Stevenshttp://www.amerika.org/noreply@blogger.com