idlecuriosity wrote: ↑Fri Nov 12, 2021 9:45 am I must simply add that when you are defining a human's best option as the one you're given, that just veers eerily close to a theatrical narrative presupposition for me given it's insistent on a 'right answer for all' and the lack of falsifiable traits that prepackaged narratives must necessarily present with. The accused cannot even admit to spinning one, being that they themselves cannot see the folly behind their selfishness. However, if anything looked like one of those narratives, it's a 'right answer for all'. So here's hoping it's not despite sounding a lot like that.
If only communism was even that transparent about it...
All the best, from some irate reformed sinner who never wanted to start pointing hands at the miscarriages of others (not referring to you as an example at all here) for wont of hypocrisy but is just fed up of current society and it's superabundance of 'perfect solutions'
That was quite the screed
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
Ironically, I disagree with almost none of it. I am a consumer bankruptcy attorney and business has really started picking up. This is usually the time of year when things slow down, so that goes to show the overall state of crushing financial burden on people in my neck of the woods. There are fewer things which trigger more stress, frustration, anxiety, shame, guilt, etc. than crushing financial debt in a capitalist economy. But there are always a few clients who seem to fare better in their cases than others - they are more motivated to stay organized, provide the documents I need, listen to my counsel, and generally cooperate without letting ego get too involved. The difference is not in their circumstances, which are just as dire as anyone else's, but in their self-awareness of their circumstances and how they got there.
I only identified this difference recently, even though it has always been there, because I now know to look for it. So I completey agree that coercive state-run or church-run "solutions" will never lead anywhere, only genuine transformation at the individual level which allows one to clearly perceive one's own flaws, shortcomings, and lack of knowledge. And if you were to look through my posts on the old BK forum, you would also see that I was incessantly commenting on the need to avoid collectivist policies and applauding JP's stance against anything which limits free speech, which is practically synonymous with free thinking and the path towards becoming aware of our co-creation of the phenomenal world. As I wrote in the latest essay:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=619
Ashvin wrote:From our considerations in this essay, the pathological phenomena of mechanism could be summed up as a general failure to ask questions. It manifests most acutely when our holistic attention is thrust down into fragmented digital pictures of what people who we "follow" had for dinner or what books they are claiming to read; of viral memes which claim to capture deep "wisdom" in a few prosaic words. The cure to this pathology of mechanism could be summed up as Self-knowledge. But, both of those abstract summations are generally counter-productive, since they rely on the same mechanistic mindset that they are claiming to critique. The same applies to blanket policies of any sort, targeted at materialistic desire, but conjured up with little thought and imposed on the population under the guise of "environmental protection" - these policies seek quick and dirty "solutions" by coercing is targets into an 'arranged marriage' between Nature and cognitive activity. As Barfield rightly observed, "those who mistake efficiency for meaning inevitably end by loving compulsion".
But to only perceive the negative qualities within oneself is just as one-sided as any other approach. We should also perceive our capacity to genuinely transform ourselves and the world around us, in whatever seemingly limited ways possible, through our Self-knowledge. As we come to understand ourselves better and more deeply, we come to understand the phenomenal world and vice versa, as well as the noumenal relations underlying both. It is that understanding which mitigates our projection of repressed and ignored negative qualities onto the world around us. I think it is no understatement to say this sort of projection via unawareness underlies a huge portion of our fragmented political, social, and cultural relations. And I feel much of your post above is projection onto spirituality. Your name is "idle curiosity", and idle hands can truly be the devil's playground. We idle from serious investigation of the spiritual through our own cognitive activity because, to not idle means to take on an increasingly large amount of responsibility, and who really wants that? Steiner called his philosophy "ethical individualism" and that is truly what it is - each individual taking responsibility of their own destiny.
Ashvin wrote:Humanity risks losing those fruits if it, through each of its individual members, fails to manifest its intention to continue evolving with Nature through a deeply thoughtful participation in her appearances. To right our ship and remain connected to Nature's ship is nothing more complicated than syncing our temporal cognitive rhythms with hers. It is nothing more complicated than treating all of her appearances like answers to deep questions which we have not thought to ask yet. The cognitive activity that we fear is most time-consuming and difficult is actually what makes experiential time accelerate and what makes all of our daily tasks so much more easier to accomplish, by making them all the more rich in meaning. To avoid becoming what we all too often perceive ourselves to be - lifeless machines - we only need to start Thinking.