Why Do I Post Here?

I often find myself asking myself rhetorically, "why do you post here?" Its a question motivated by insecurity, of course, since I am well aware that my viewpoint on things clashes with the religiosity of the people who post here. Nevertheless, It doesn't take long before I discover what it is. It's two things:

1) I've developed a connection with this site. With it's colors - its name - and its users.

2) I think I can help people here, because I feel, however "narcissistic" it may seem to others, like I got the sort of thinking needed to help people stuck in nihilism.

Developmental Psychology Is Important

When I reflect back on all the reading I have done in developmental psychology, self-psychology, relational psychoanalysis and traumatology, I often muse on how sensitive the human being is. Initially, in studying this field, I was also reading deeply into anthropology, "evolutionary psychology" and "sociobiology". These fields were so intensely out-of-touch with the psychological insights that come from clinical psychological fields, that I found myself wondering in two ways: what is wrong with these people that they emphasize such trite/insignificant things? And: what can I do to help others metabolize the utter-necessity of helping the next generation of human beings become a little-less-damaged than we are?

Naturally, Jews populate these sorts of fields, yet one of the leading thinkers in modern day developmental psychology is a non-Jew named Peter Fonagy. John Bowlby, another non-Jew psychiatrist, was the guy who got attachment theory rolling.

In any case, why do I bring up the issue of "Jewishness"? Because I feel, or rather, know, that some people are dominated by a point-counterpoint mental structure that places the human species on one side, and God on the other.

About God

I'm currently reading Eric Voegelin, who was a professor of political science at Louisiana State University and later the University of Munich. The book is title 'Science, Politics, and Gnosticism". The aim of the book is to link Comte (positivism) Hegel (subjective idealism), Marx (socialism), Nietzsche and Heiddeger (existentialism) to the mystical doctrine of gnosticism.

For the most part, Voegelin is an incredibly perspicacious writer, yet, being so knowledgeable of the cognitive sciences, complex systems, and human affective/cognitive development, I found myself resenting his lack of sensitivity to points made by Marx, which, even if they are "gnostic" in origin, make a great deal of sense, if one only relaxes the God-doctrine for a moment, and try to understand.

My belief is simple: our minds are entirely the product of relational dynamics, so much so that each state is a sign that reacts to other signs. What we feel is a sign; and the things we say through feelings provide a "shape" to the meaning of the affective signs we find ourselves experiencing. Signs upon signs, in other words.

God, too, is a sign. Indeed, perhaps I was being a bit one-sided in an earlier post when I picked out the two types of gnostics who are leading the world towards societal and environmental destruction - what I called the "pleromas" (love is everything i.e. an effort to help/heal the self) and the nihilists, who only care about the "will-to-power".

I thought to myself: ok, so Mike, what do you feel about this? Being ever-so-observant of my experience, and having the traumatic history that I have, plus the additional trauma of knowing what other people believe, think and assert about reality (i.e. Nietzsche, Heidegger, etc) I experience this intense painfulness inside of me: I hate like they hate, yet I'm tired of suffering, tired of not living and not feeling enlivened. What this means is, I understand them (nihilists/gnostics) and I understand them (progressivism, science, empiricsm). What this also meant was that I understand my own past (kabbalah, Judaism) and how, from their perspective, the overwhelming semiotic conviction of Judaism, with its intense sense of being on a mission to convert all people to "knowledge of God". Voegelin, indeed, quotes a few kabbalistic texts about the Golem (from Scholem), as if to point out that this belief system of "man vs. God", goes very far back in history, way before the protestant reformation, before Christianity and ancient Gnosticism, and indeed, is clearly evident in all major civilizations on Earth.

Developmental Stages

Marx writes (about religion: i.e. "sacredness")

Its subject is its enemy, which it seeks not to refute, but to annihilate...it no longer acts as an end in itself, but only as a means. Its essential emotion is indignation; its essential task is denunciation

I found myself nodding my head to these words, even if Voegelin quotes Marx to the purpose of showing how he was an intellectual 'swindler', I couldn't help but acknowledge the apparent truthfulness of Marx's claims.

So, Marx says religious people, lets say Jews or Christians or Muslims, want to "annihilate" non-believers. Their words are not "ends in themselves", but a means to changing them. Poignantly, Marx complains of "indignation" and "denunciation", which, I must say, has a great deal of truth to it.

This is how I understand the situation: Humans are a single organism, so that the views expressed by one person (say a Jewish believer in God) to another person (an irreligious person, say, a dionysian "mask wearer") results in a feeling of dissonance and disconnection.

Barring real moral/ethical problems (i.e. killing, raping, etc), this situation can be explained thusly: the indignant/denunciating feeling of the religious person can be said to be a "reaction" against the perception of a behavior that, from the religious person's perspective, seems wrong.
Now, knowing much about the world of religious fundamentalism, it is absolutely true that their standards for "purity" are overwhelmingly grating/antagonistic to the secular conditions of our society. In a certain sense, a "battery dynamic" is built: I am "so holy", because God is my being, my friend, and my only truth, and you, the other person, because you oppose God, are evil! This is the typical reflexive position of the fundamentalist religious person. When the feel, their minds lead them this way; it goes this way because, given their particular culture context, this is what has become an attractor.

Marx criticism, on the other hand, speaks of 'indignation" and "denunciation", as if the words of the religious purist triggers and antagonizes such a ferocity of hatred/disgust, that the person who hears such words, like the religious person, "reacts" from the same alchemical background that the religious person works from.

Reacting. This is what I'm seeing: arrogance on both sides; and ignnorance on both sides. It is, it seems to me, the very centralization of God into the picture, that motivates these extreme feelings of dominance in either group.

Voegelin notes how much the gnostic-fantasy has changed from Comte, to Hegel, to Nietzsche, then Hegel. He doesn't recognize or not why this is happening, only that it represents the breakdown of a plausible-metaphysical picture being broken down, generation after generation, into its "bare bones" i.e. in Heidegger. The bare-bones admits to a complete nihilism that considers the "now" to be the only reality that matters.

This isn't true of course and is monstrously contradicted by the physical, biological and psychological evidence – yet, still, Heiddeger needed to believe it.

Viktor Frankl, the famous Jewish psychoanalyst and author of “Mans search for Meaning” spent four years in Auschwitz, which is detailed in the beginning of the aforementioned book. Frankl, surprisingly, befriended Heidegger, even though Heidegger seemed to conspire with the Nazi’s in helping get rid of Jews from university departments.

How was this possible? Indeed – the mystery may lie in Frank’s own emphasis: Man’s Search For Meaning places the human squarely within his own milieu, and seeing what was needed, both by the viciousness of Nazis and the people who were killed in the camps, Frankl understood that meaning is an existentially-needed force. Saying “man replaces God” simply replaces one object with another object, even if the former object is an illusion based upon the ignorance of fractal dynamics.

In any case, I spent time thinking about Frankls relationship with Heidegger, just as many other people have, but unlike others, I did not criticize him so much as feel wonder that such a man, despite falling victim to a system that killed other humans – which he had to suffer watching and knowing – could prioritize the man in front of him, his feeling-needs and mental organization, above the typical Jewish attitude that settles in knowledge-of-God, even if such knowledge, in being professed in the zealous way it is often expressed, often has the opposite effect intended.

My last post said this: God is too much. Indeed. We must turn towards humans, as humans, and be aware that the concept of God, insomuch as it is an “other” afforded power beyond us, makes humans feel puny and useless in comparison. Indeed, there is a “self-flagellation” quality to subjecting oneself again and again to one’s super-ego as if it were some super-ordinate image of God, demanding a response for righteous action.

Must we go down this path again? Isn’t it already obvious that religious-feelings inspire the most intense hatreds, beliefs and convictions? Can we not, instead, trust what the empirical sciences have shown us, and, even if you believe in God, could you not, when relating to others who do not, recognize how these people interact/experience such ideas – that is, against the referent of early-life trauma?

It is precisely because the past cannot be rewritten or changed – that the brainstem stays the same – that Marx attitude of directing attention away from God, towards human-beings, makes so much sense, and is not, contrary Voegelin, evidence of Marxian mendacity.

I believe that if we can situate the suffering of one another before one another, we can bring such a healing to ourselves that we will realize that healing STARTS with the human – not God. God may indeed be true, for now, let us move according to science and NOT MYSTICISM, as the latter, it seems, provokes intense existential feelings of alienation.

This is also the highest evidence of love – an example taught so beautifully by Jesus and the Buddha, and by others: we must start to recognize the signs in one another’s faces, voices, and realize what it demands from us, relationally. The world is beautiful, and can be made beautiful again. But we mustn’t – out of spiritual egotism – project our theological needs on Others, when everything about them and their history demands another approach.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I post cause I 'm a mr. knowit all jerk.

originally posted by: seasonal
a reply to: Astrocyte

I post cause I 'm a mr. knowit all jerk.

Yeah, me too.

a reply to: Astrocyte

So, Marx says religious people, lets say Jews or Christians or Muslims, want to "annihilate" non-believers. Their words are not "ends in themselves", but a means to changing them. Poignantly, Marx complains of "indignation" and "denunciation", which, I must say, has a great deal of truth to it.

When Marx used 'annihilation,' I think he was seeking to express the suppression of personality or the smothering of Self through peer pressure. Denunciation is one of the traditional tools to 'annihilate' whether it's wielded by a militant atheist or a religiously dogmatic person. I agree that it's often poignant to see this in practice as it touches on innate empathy.

This is also the highest evidence of love – an example taught so beautifully by Jesus and the Buddha, and by others: we must start to recognize the signs in one another’s faces, voices, and realize what it demands from us, relationally. The world is beautiful, and can be made beautiful again. But we mustn’t – out of spiritual egotism – project our theological needs on Others, when everything about them and their history demands another approach.

You're advocating tolerance. It's an ideal that promises a lot and apparently lacks impetus. Although most of us fall short, it's not a bad ideal to seek our own best nature instead of waiting for the intercession of 'Others.'

Why Do I Post Here?

Paycheck.

Im from another planet, I'm the know it all!!a reply to: Metallicus

a reply to: Astrocyte

Wonderful post OP. I too see the challenges that we face while being human and adopting the dogmatic belief systems of the religious sort.

The only issue is that even once a belief in the supernatural is chased out of a human, it leaves them vulnerable to be controlled by mass movements or by the state. People have this sort of magnetic behavior towards mass movements such as a belief in God, because it makes them feel a part of something bigger than they are. When we live mostly solitary lives, we will still wish to either share knowledge or seek out like minded people to share life with... as you are now and you stated in your post!!

I did want to respond to one thing in your post:

and the nihilists, who only care about the "will-to-power".

Nietzsche is as far from Nihilism as I've read from any author. I'm a sort of self-proclaimed Nietzsche apologist, because I've read his own writings rather than listened to what other people had to say about him down a grapevine. Let me just quote something from this "Nihilist"

The higher its type, always the less often does a thing succeed. You higher men here, have you not all been failures? Be of good cheer; what does it matter? How much is still possible! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as you ought to laugh! What wonder even that you have failed and only half succeeded, you half-shattered ones! Does not man's future strive and struggle within you? Man's furthest, profoundest, star-highest issues, his prodigious powers, do not all these foam through one another in your cup? What wonder that many a cup shatters! Learn to laugh at yourselves, as you ought to laugh! You higher men, oh, how much is still possible! And verily, how much has already succeeded! How rich is this earth in small, good, perfect things, in well-constituted things! Set around you small, good, perfect things, you higher men. Their golden maturity heals the heart. The perfect teaches one to hope.

This is from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which is what Nietzsche claimed was his masterpiece. Read it if you haven't - there isn't a shred of nihilism in it.

It was Nietzsche's hope that mankind could recover from destroying God themselves - just as his parable warned far before anyone noticed we as a human race would run into this crisis of faith. Nietzsche's hope was that we could become like the overman and take control of our life without needing to be a slave to a master. If you do not obey yourself, you will obey someone else. So is human nature.

I personally feel Nietzsche is one of the true cures to Nihilism - the full acceptance of being a creator in life. Being a forger of your own IDEAS, taking control of your life, while affirming its difficulties and striving on. The man who made up "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger".

"If you want to achieve peace of mind and happiness, have faith. If you want to be a disciple of truth, then search."

I think you are seeking thanks for the post

Because as you age here you know and meet those of like minds. Not everyone is a provocateur. Common ground can be found, and you are made to think and accept not everyone will be raised as you were with the same moral compass.

a reply to: AugustusMasonicus

I needs my tree fiddy yo.

Its another job muricans juss wont dooz.

a reply to: Astrocyte

I post to help encourage conscious development.
Also at times I post to personally learn things from feedback related to what I post...

NAMASTE*******

Well okay, but not every "Jersey shore" type character is exactly clambering for a therapist, and if it was so, its presumptuous of you to assume it'd be you.

Hey we all come and go in this thing called life and if you need to find Buddhism to do so, sure why not...

Nobody's clamboring all over you either we've all gotta find a way to get by..

And the Jewish thing? You write like someone out of 1942, I mean I've never seen anything like it, and if that's what your trying to say, that you're a Jew, uhh just say it man it's not like anybody cares...

Sheesh man.. well I wish you well whatever you are (little cute alien icon goes here..)

originally posted by: Ophiuchus 13
a reply to: Astrocyte

I post to help encourage conscious development.
Also at times I post to personally learn things from feedback related to what I post...

NAMASTE*******

Hey, ophiuchus 13..

a reply to: mericks74

Greetings mericks74

This sermon might help. I listened to it today and it was immensely powerful.

The Christian strives always to walk in the spirit and not the flesh. Christ said to be in the world but not of the world. The world is of the flesh. It's what we see and experience with our eyes, through our bodies. It's our carnal and worldly desires.

It is so much of what the secular world is centered around: materialism and pleasures of the flesh and the moment.

So, of course, the two seem and sometimes are diametrically opposed.

a reply to: Astrocyte

Interesting OP…

You might want to check this OP about Spiral Dynamics, popularized by the
“ Einstein of consciousness” Ken Wilber who started his career in transpersonal psychology but later adapted this modern arcane psychological theory--Spiral Dynamics—to his Integral Theory

www.abovetopsecret.com...


Regarding your insight about God and our puniness and how God centered people are often too dominating or violent.

Well, God is a dominating concept in itself, many, often are attracted to that power symbol for that alone.

Which speaks for itself

a reply to: Astrocyte


To me it sounds like your trying to blame a specific Ideology for the worlds problems.


Bull#.

a reply to: Astrocyte


Ideologies are not the cause of the words problems. The problem with the world is that about 20% of the peoples of every culture, race or creed, that has ever existed upon this planet are Assholes.

a reply to: ketsuko

Know wisdom when you hear it..............

a reply to: Astrocyte


You seem to present that your background is consistent with that of a Clinical Psychologist. But at the same time an inconsistency in relation to your OP is relatable to why we stopped using the term Manic/Depressive and now refer to the
condition as Bipolar Disorder.


Despite your efforts to express the idea that you are well educated but, you apparently do not understand the difference and its implications.

Which is really strange to me because I do.

Its kind of like your father was a person who smoked cigarettes (you also developed the habit) and in your 50's you tell your doctor its your fathers fault you have cancer.