I feel like Bernardo is getting carried away in a scary direction

[Soul_of_Shu]

This about the opposite of what I wrote, I’m thinking you and can not communicate at all

Any meaningful or productive communication with Ashvin is impossible, so I quit trying a while ago.

BTW, there are friend and foe options on the user control panel. You can almost tune it out if you want.

Anyone counting how many times Eugene has quit now? May need a self-tune-out option

[Lou Gold]

Speculatively, I suspect that M@L-God-Great Mysteriousness will continue to create diversity despite whatever philosophy-religion-ideology accompanies the diverse views generated. I base this speculation on the ample evidence that Nature consistently pushes toward diversity and against monocultures of any kind. It is this diversity, its contests/competitions and search for cooperative/mutual balance that yield the dynamic process called "Life". There is no tune in-or-out button for this.

[Lou Gold]

That's a very simplified take on what my problem is. I don't really have time to elaborate now, but the conclusion I'd rather avoid is that there's no positive and no negative, there's nothing to strive towards, there's no good and bad. That's nihilism.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi


Fear of nihilism is one of the ego's last defences. Stop flinching. Religious tradition is full of the terror of annihilation. Then to a man, they speak of the fullness and perfection they encounter on the 'other side'.

I love this oft-quoted fragment from Rumi but, for the full play of nuance, it is worth contemplating the full poem, which interestingly ends on a note not dissimilar to the ending of Bernardo's challenging essay.

THE GREAT WAGON
by Rumi

When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.

In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.

You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside
are lame!

~

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

~

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

~

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

~

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.

But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.

~

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

[Eugene I.]

Speculatively, I suspect that M@L-God-Great Mysteriousness will continue to create diversity despite whatever philosophy-religion-ideology accompanies the diverse views generated. I base this speculation on the ample evidence that Nature consistently pushes toward diversity and against monocultures of any kind. It is this diversity, its contests/competitions and search for cooperative/mutual balance that yield the dynamic process called "Life". There is no tune in-or-out button for this.

I very much agree

[AshvinP]

Speculatively, I suspect that M@L-God-Great Mysteriousness will continue to create diversity despite whatever philosophy-religion-ideology accompanies the diverse views generated. I base this speculation on the ample evidence that Nature consistently pushes toward diversity and against monocultures of any kind. It is this diversity, its contests/competitions and search for cooperative/mutual balance that yield the dynamic process called "Life". There is no tune in-or-out button for this.

Lou,

Could you let me know if, when you say "speculatively", you are inserting that because you don't want someone to take it as a positive assertion and present a counter-argument? In other words, are you only looking for comments like Eugene's, "I very much agree", or are you interested in hearing reasons why we can observe the integration of diversity in very concrete ways over the last few millennia and why there is no reason to assume it will stop? If it's the former, then I won't bother.

[Starbuck]

That's a very simplified take on what my problem is. I don't really have time to elaborate now, but the conclusion I'd rather avoid is that there's no positive and no negative, there's nothing to strive towards, there's no good and bad. That's nihilism.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi


Fear of nihilism is one of the ego's last defences. Stop flinching. Religious tradition is full of the terror of annihilation. Then to a man, they speak of the fullness and perfection they encounter on the 'other side'.

I love this oft-quoted fragment from Rumi but, for the full play of nuance, it is worth contemplating the full poem, which interestingly ends on a note not dissimilar to the ending of Bernardo's challenging essay.

THE GREAT WAGON
by Rumi

When I see your face, the stones start spinning!
You appear; all studying wanders.
I lose my place.

Water turns pearly.
Fire dies down and doesn’t destroy.

In your presence I don’t want what I thought
I wanted, those three little hanging lamps.

Inside your face the ancient manuscripts
Seem like rusty mirrors.

You breathe; new shapes appear,
and the music of a desire as widespread
as Spring begins to move
like a great wagon.
Drive slowly.
Some of us walking alongside
are lame!

~

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.

~

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.

Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

~

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

~

They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.

In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.

But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.

~

Come to the orchard in Spring.
There is light and wine, and sweethearts
in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter.

Rumi, the great Nihilist!

[Lou Gold]

Speculatively, I suspect that M@L-God-Great Mysteriousness will continue to create diversity despite whatever philosophy-religion-ideology accompanies the diverse views generated. I base this speculation on the ample evidence that Nature consistently pushes toward diversity and against monocultures of any kind. It is this diversity, its contests/competitions and search for cooperative/mutual balance that yield the dynamic process called "Life". There is no tune in-or-out button for this.

Lou,

Could you let me know if, when you say "speculatively", you are inserting that because you don't want someone to take it as a positive assertion and present a counter-argument? In other words, are you only looking for comments like Eugene's, "I very much agree", or are you interested in hearing reasons why we can observe the integration of diversity in very concrete ways over the last few millennia and why there is no reason to assume it will stop? If it's the former, then I won't bother.

I say speculatively because I'm not a philosopher, because this is a forum about speculations, and because I am speaking personally. I am not cleverly offering an adverb in hopes of manipulating any particular type of response. I'm just being lou and expect you to just be Ashvin, which is my way of honoring the diversity.

[Lou Gold]

Rumi, the great Nihilist!

Hardly, but perhaps you jest?

[Soul_of_Shu]

Rumi, the great Nihilist!

Hardly, but perhaps you jest?

"If you do not come, these do not matter.
If you do come, these do not matter."

Rumi the dispeller of 'matter' For this Rumi-lover, in the ending that is the ever-present origin, what eternally remains is the great emptifullness ... And betwixt the utterly empty and the utterly full, what could possibly be missing, but yet another mystery revealed and the uncaused Conceiver to whom it is revealed, posing as the Many who might ask "What does it mean"? And Who else could conceive the answer?

[Starbuck]

Rumi, the great Nihilist!

Hardly, but perhaps you jest?

I jest greatly. And calling Kastrup a nihilist is as absurd as calling Rumi a nihilist.