Greetings Wim,
I am glad that there is so much on which we agree (where I don't comment,
you can assume that we are in agreement).
Some comments:
You wrote:
I agree that "if we managed to argue this down to fundamentals
there wouldn't be a huge amount on which we would disagree". It
would be primarily difference of valuation of our respective
methods and traditions used to seek God's will. Well, that's
where we started anyway: my criticism on a tradition employing
priests to interpret God's will, thereby disempowering the other
believers. They get used to thinking that they can't or shouldn't
seek God's will for themselves.
Sam:
Do you believe that primary school teachers disempower their students?
Secondary school teachers? University teachers? At which point does a
teacher become something disempowering? (I would say: when the teacher
doesn't realise that he or she doesn't have anything further to teach, and
becomes a static block). Or are you saying that all religious teaching is
illegitimate, with the corollary that we all (should?) start from the same
place? Do books count as teaching, or just living human beings? Does the
Bible disempower all the people that read it? Surely it's not the role that
is at fault, but the capacity or incapacity of the person performing the
role. [BTW The last sentence from the above seems largely a relic of 16th
century propaganda (acknowledging that the target still exists in the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican; but it doesn't
exist elsewhere, so far as I know - certainly not in Anglican circles).]
Wim:
Religion is not the static patterns associated with it. They are
only the result of DQ experienced in the past. Once experienced
DQ sometimes latches and creates a new static pattern of value.
Even if it doesn't latch, the platform that was used for jumping
gets the credit. Different religions are like different platforms
humanity uses for jumping to the moon. That which connects and
defines them is the act of jumping, the pursuit."
Sam:
I'm not sure that I follow you here. I suspect it is largely because of
ambiguity about the word 'religion'. (Just by way of background, the term
'religion' was yet another of the inventions of the 'enlightened'
seventeenth century. It's not something that can be used as a neutral term -
even though I'm just as guilty of using it carelessly as anyone else) Again,
I suspect if you unpack what you mean when you say that static patterns are
not religion, we would be in agreement.
Wim:
Using the ladder metaphor: at what relative rungs would you
position Anglicanism and Quakerism...?
Sam:
Isn't that a contender for loaded question of the year? ;-)
In any case, who says we're on the same ladder - or need to be?
Wim:
You reacted 13/10 11:17 +0100 with "Ha! Touché!" on what I wrote
8/10 22:35 +0200:
"I tried to do most of my own thinking before reading a lot of
books."
Sam:
I think there is a distinct temperamental difference between us, which
underlies much else. I recall you once saying (I haven't got a chance to
track it down) that you tended to be suspicious of the mainstream or
conventional thought. I think it would be fair to say that I'm the opposite,
in that I tend to think if something has become mainstream, it must have
*something* going for it. Hence I'm happy to burrow around in books and
refer to them, and you tend in the opposite direction. Is that fair? (Of
course, there must be a lot of overlap, otherwise we wouldn't both be
participating in a forum derived from Pirsig, who is both non-mainstream and
a writer of books...)
Wim:
Because of the negative subjective value some of the other
contributors to this list attach to Marxism, I felt much more
"touché" however when I wrote the next sentence:
"I was influenced quite a bit by an American neo-Marxist
sociologist writing about the history of capitalism, however,
Immanuel Wallerstein."...
I hope the subsequent description of my struggle to clear and
eventually take off my neo-Marxist spectacles got across.
Sam:
I found it very clear. Which doesn't (of course) mean that I agreed with it
all, but I found it fruitful for further thought. Which I will come back on
at some point. (Sending posts related to Christianity etc I can do without
much effort; talking about other things, like metaphysics or economics,
needs a bit more preparation, and bringing out some rusty equipment from the
recesses of my brain.)
Cheers
Sam
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