Federica wrote: ↑Thu Jun 02, 2022 11:02 pm
No no, I haven't been clear then. At a micro level I do think science is fruitful and relevant, and there's clearly plenty already gained and still to be gained from it. Science is not materialism. Although many scientists call themselves materialists (many do it by default), science, at least in its essential gestures, is neutral and doesn't require a philosophical view to be practiced.
And even at a macro level, referring to materialism in general as dominant worldview, even here I agree with you that it must be part of some trajectory that must have some logic and meaning in some sense. Rather this, than claiming that we are victims of some cosmic mistake, that some of us have now cleverly discovered and will explain everyone else how to undo. Again: I don't resist reality. (written before reading the Steiner quote)
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Right, however, as I was trying to say in myprevious post, by realizing and calling out the morbid attachment we have developed to these, we could elevate a little out intellect, or if you prefer let it play its role, instead of derailing its already limited and basic function with the fumes of epochal and national culture, habits, etc etc.
I'm glad we agree that the modern descent isn't a Cosmic fluke and should be considered as one stage within a more holistic, logical and meaningful progression. That being said, it is an age of great concern and potential disaster (more than already experienced in the last 100 or so years), not because of any particular world-conception, materialism, idealism, scientism, etc., but because of the increasingly abstract mode of thinking which is common to practically all world-conceptions at this late stage. This gives me a chance to add some thoughts to the polar relation between natural tendencies/laws and moral consequences.
The critique of abstract thinking across the board can be understood as a caution that it inevitably inverts the significance of all that is under its consideration, like clockwork. When we abstract away from our living Thinking (spiritual activity) as the World Process, we increasingly separate our being as experienced in perception-will, feeling, and thought from Being as such. Naturally, this makes what is outwardly professed by the intellect, inwardly rejected, and vice versa. It leads to what psychology calls 'projection' and "compensation'. The fact that these things can be made into laws of the psyche (soul), at least for the modern age of human evolution, tells us just how regularly this occurs. We should keep in mind, though, that limiting ourselves to only those abstract psychological conceptions of living soul dynamics will itself lead to their manifestation if clinged to for too long (and, really, now is already too long).
When the human organism is conceived as an atomized 'dissociated' unit in abstract ontology, inwardly the effect is that the intellectual ego feels it encompasses the entire Cosmic depth structure with its thoughts. Outwardly this is denied - the ego says "the Cosmos is a great mystery and we are prideful to think we can reason our way through it". But what stance does the ego have to take
inwardly to make such an assertion? Implicit in that assertion is that the ego has surveyed the entire boundaries of reasoning and logic, across all individuals and all epochs of time, and determined they are finite and limited and there is no point even considering the possibility otherwise. So the ego is inwardly inflating itself to outwardly make this assertion. This isn't really about what the ego claims about human reason, but about practically whether it tests the limits of that reason or simply continues with endless speculation, which is then implicitly assuming the precise reasoning can go no further. It's as if we are given a math problem and we simply voice our opinions endlessly about what the solution could be, rather than get to work trying to solve it.
Similarly, when the ego abstractly conceives that hierarchical ideational structure kills creativity and novelty for the individual, inwardly we stop thinking creatively. For how long have academic philosophers across the board been asking the same exact questions about fundamental essences, substances, processes, ideas, will, matter, energy, consciousness, etc., without ever advancing concrete and practical understanding? How long have physicalists speculated about how mindless material things can be combined into continuity of consciousness, and idealists speculated how unified consciousness can be decombined into material things we perceive? Then they wax philosophical about the "subject combination or decombination problem" like it's a real meaningful probe into Cosmic secrets, when it's actually the intellect's own abstract creation and has nothing to instruct us about our living experience.
Or when the ego abstractly refuses to acknowledge a moral order because it "kills freedom", it becomes a slave to its own unconscious desires, impulses, sympathies and antipathies, and habits. The moral task of growing in conscious awareness of one's innermost being has been declared "tyrannical" from the outset and discarded. Inwardly, the ego is wholly enslaved while outwardly it continues to profess its freedom. We could go on with many more examples. It says the world is "Maya" but the ideas we experience inwardly are "just thoughts" and outer perceptions are more reliable. Can we call this projective inversion of the abstract intellect - this demonizing of that which it fears to confront livingly within itself and therefore casts outwards onto others and onto Reality itself - anything other than "immoral"? Many of the deepest problems riddling humanity today, especially the conflicts between various factions of ideologies, are a direct result of this abstracting and projective tendency.
There is certainly an asymmetry between our knowledge of 'good' and 'evil'. We cannot exactly know what is Good with our radically incomplete knowledge, not yet, but we can easily discern what is evil when it confronts us in this manner. The lack of completing our living knowledge, to even attempt at such completion, is itself the root of evil. It ensures we will only throw abstract words, concepts, theories, and models at the world's problems while never knowing enough to actually address them in a way that mitigates their destructive potential over time. And every day which passes with more of the same abstraction widens the gap between the ego’s ignorance and the knowledge of its higher Self, and therefore digs its hole deeper, not only for its own current incarnation, but for future generations to come. It is an entirely self-imposed problem born of the ego's pride of what it knows abstractly and its fear of what still remains unknown within the depths of the human soul.