Cosmic Consciousness: meta-cognitive or non-meta-cognitive?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Yes, the word 'bliss', much like the word 'love', has become greatly abused and misapplied, as if these might be good words to describe the feeling of getting a new phone. Yet a Van Gogh painting is a telling example of how great art evokes an integral and poignant confluence of woundedness><bliss, at least in this psyche.

[Eugene I]

There is a difference between accepting our own suffering and finding meaning in that (form our first-person perspective), and us inflicting suffering on others without their consent (again from our own first-person perspective), even if that suffering may eventually lead to a greater good. The former we can all do if we have enough courage and wisdom. The latter is impossible for a person with highly developed compassion and conscience (God including), and that is exactly what Dostoevsky was saying through Alyosha's words.

[Lou Gold]

There is a difference between accepting our own suffering and finding meaning in that (form our first-person perspective), and us inflicting suffering on others without their consent (again from our own first-person perspective), even if that suffering may eventually lead to a greater good. The former we can all do if we have enough courage and wisdom. The latter is impossible for a person with highly developed compassion and conscience (God including), and that is exactly what Dostoevsky was saying through Alyosha's words.

In no way do I assert the developed compassion might prefer or rationalize suffering. I am saying that such a person might accept the reality of suffering and then do something in hopes of reducing it such as become a therapist, or a painter like Van Gogh, or a writer like Dostoevsky out of concern for self and others. The compassionate alter is acting as a compassionate God even in complaining about or denying God. NO! This is not saying that this makes God compassionate. It is saying that compassion is available in God's creativity, which we enact. In other words, no problem is given without an accompanying responsive action.

[Shaibei]

I've started reading BK's on Jung. What i'm reading now, at least, doesn't sound like a blind M@L to me.

"(Jung writes) "It not infrequently happens that the archetype appears in the form of a spirit in dreams … Often it drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws the subject under its spell "(ONP: 137, emphasis added)    .This way, the events of our conscious inner life may result not only from psychic dynamisms we consider our own, but also the actions of other agencies in the depths of the collective unconscious. Their activity impinges on our subjective field of experiences, attempting to shape the patterns of our thinking, feeling, believing and acting according to the archetypal templates they embody. The daemons pull ego-consciousness along a teleological path oriented towards the future achievement of psychic wholeness"

[Eugene I]

In no way do I assert the developed compassion might prefer or rationalize suffering. I am saying that such a person might accept the reality of suffering and then do something in hopes of reducing it such as become a therapist, or a painter like Van Gogh, or a writer like Dostoevsky out of concern for self and others. The compassionate alter is acting as a compassionate God even in complaining about or denying God. NO! This is not saying that this makes God compassionate. It is saying that compassion is available in God's creativity, which we enact.

Lou, together with Dostoevsky I'm asking a very simple question. Forget about philosophy and religion, just look at it from your own first-person perspective exercising your own conscience and compassion: if you would be God, would you be able to inflict suffering on conscious beings without their consent or not (providing that they are capable of making a consent), even though it may eventually lead to a greater good. Alyosha answered "no" on behalf of God, and how would you answer for yourself?

For example, if you would be God, could you set up a tsunami that would kill thousands of people including innocent children? Or, if you would be Harry Truman, would you be able to make a decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan killing hundreds of thousands of civilian people including children, even though it would eventually lead to a greater good, would end the war and would prevent from possibly larger death tolls if the war would continue?

[Shaibei]

Eugene,

If you don't mind my intervention, I do not think that even if there was a rational answer to the suffering in this world it would be aproved by emotion. The question of evil is an ancient one, and probably not been given an answer that will satisfy the intellect. The question is, when we come to criticize God, we criticize him through the same conscience he instilled in us. What need do we have to assume that this conscience is our invention and has not been imprinted on us before? The arena in which we find ourselves is an arena in which there is good and evil, chance and intention. If chance and evil are what underlie reality, then the question of the meaning of existence is void. Anyway, I would not sacrifice much for a meaning that is solely a fiction of my imagination

[Eugene I]

Shiabei, I am aware of such version of the answer to the "problem of evil", and this is indeed a possible answer. My personal take is that it is a "Veritas ad Absurdum" answer, it may work for other people but does not work for me. This position is also very similar to materialist's position of New Mysterianism on dealing with the "hard problem of consciousness". So if one is open to accept the Mysterianism position on the "problem of evil", then one losses the right to criticize the materialist Mysterianism position on the "hard problem of consciousness".

Also, I don't agree that compassion and conscience are emotions. They are faculties of consciousness that also bear high-level meanings and values. They also include emotional facets, but are not reduced to them.

[Lou Gold]

In no way do I assert the developed compassion might prefer or rationalize suffering. I am saying that such a person might accept the reality of suffering and then do something in hopes of reducing it such as become a therapist, or a painter like Van Gogh, or a writer like Dostoevsky out of concern for self and others. The compassionate alter is acting as a compassionate God even in complaining about or denying God. NO! This is not saying that this makes God compassionate. It is saying that compassion is available in God's creativity, which we enact.

Lou, together with Dostoevsky I'm asking a very simple question. Forget about philosophy and religion, just look at it from your own first-person perspective exercising your own conscience and compassion: if you would be God, would you be able to inflict suffering on conscious beings without their consent or not (providing that they are capable of making a consent), even though it may eventually lead to a greater good. Alyosha answered "no" on behalf of God, and how would you answer for yourself?

For example, if you would be God, could you set up a tsunami that would kill thousands of people including innocent children? Or, if you would be Harry Truman, would you be able to make a decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan killing hundreds of thousands of civilian people including children, even though it would eventually lead to a greater good, would end the war and would prevent from possibly larger death tolls if the war would continue?

[AshvinP]

There is a difference between accepting our own suffering and finding meaning in that (form our first-person perspective), and us inflicting suffering on others without their consent (again from our own first-person perspective), even if that suffering may eventually lead to a greater good. The former we can all do if we have enough courage and wisdom. The latter is impossible for a person with highly developed compassion and conscience (God including), and that is exactly what Dostoevsky was saying through Alyosha's words.

Yes, but I am not sure how the latter argument came up, because it was not relevant to the theodicy I presented. How can we live in a Good/Just universe when there is pain, suffering and malevolence? Because we are all partaking in a metaphysical process through which our spirit-freedom expands and we become more and more meta-cognitively reconciled with those aspects of the world, others and ourselves which are causing the suffering. We cannot possibly envision what the 'end stage' of such a process will be or whether there is any 'end stage', and therefore we must have faith that it will lead us towards sufficient meaning to overcome the existential difficulties of life.

[Lou Gold]

Eugene,

I am not claiming that God is COMPASSIONATE as with a completed static perfection. I am claiming that God is lawful and that all action has consequences. Creativity itself is full of opposites, freedom and responsibility, use and abuse, etc. To have a dynamic creative system this must be so and process is where the compassion of God is revealed. In other words, it is revealed in the Passion of Christ.