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Sorry Anders, I am glad you are finding ways to cope. It is really too bad the sailing will have to wait. I have a boat(It's ugly but it's mine...) that I never get to use... Hopefully times will change. I look forward to a time where I can escape normal worries and just be out on a boat. I don't even have to be sailing as long as I am out anchored away from everyone else out in nature. Sometimes I even take my guitar out. Maybe one day that will be something you get to do more of later.
Have you not noticed the religious value ranking of first men ( the authors), then offspring, then women, then "us" ( as the selected religious folk ), then the other ( subhumans ) and at the final end as commodity, the animal world and nature? How long ago has it been that clerics insisted that animal had to not be considered by gender, but as the thing "it"? How long ago that it was obligately frowned upon the consideration of animals thinking? How long ago the obligate exclusion of them playing for fun, using tools, loving / solidaring deliberately and mourning? How long ago that you were ( still are ) allowed to treat animals to your liking?
There will always be random bits that can be referred to as either self-contradicting statements ( which all holy books are composed of ) or as exceptional examples of empathical representatives or individual histories.
But individual cases of exception won´t cancel out generally segregating, incongruent, arbitrary and unnatural votives and premisses and their practical historical impact on people´s mentality.
There exist scientifical works on this, but just reading the ancient writings and their secondaries with open eyes can do too. You might also look around in civilisations of the grand mythologies, and afterwards have a visit to e.g. island Tanna, to get a principle idea of how it used to be before the great detaching.
If you like to elaborate on this further, I suggest to open an extra thread. It would be better for me however to not go too far into the wordly background of such matter, for currently being situated in a religious dictature that wouldn´t hesitate with booking delinquents a room in Dante´s underground city for who dares to mention that there is a difference between subjectivity and objectivity / belief and entity. Let alone analysing the evil outcome of mythological misled and the menace that it has brought over mother earths creatures.
Ruphus
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Have you ever read Hemingway? Just curious. He might be fun for you.
I'm Areligious personally- not atheistic or agnostic or non believing, but simply non religious. I'm a skeptic of 90% - 95% of all codified religious practice. So you're preaching to the choir here as they say when you enumerate on the ways in which the great religious books treat the subject of animals.
The three largest religions all come from the same area and originate at about the same time and feature the same characters. The big three are what I call ' The Desert Religions', not the great religions. They are all from the desert and the laws and ethics are those of ancient desert dwelling societies. The ways in which animal husbandry is dealt with is based on the ancient techniques of keeping animals in hot arid climates. So I agree there are hierarchical moral constructions in those Desert Books which are rooted in a paternalistic world view and at that time of writing the world was pretty darn small for those writers. If only those boys had had Google Earth, a better search engine or Encyclopedia Britannica they could have cross referenced their patriarchal ethical system with those of other of the peoples of other parts of the globe living at the same time.
You can't really fault those fellas then can you? They were doing the best they could out there in that hot dusty environment to keep stuff together. And what with those hostile Egyptians and Romans trying to subjugate them, life must have been a real bitch. But, wait, who went out a thousand years later in Western Europe and the New World and said "Hey we have these Desert Books and golly our geography and world view and knowledge has expanded since these were written, but we must keep doing and saying these things they mandated in the desert 4000 years ago because if we don't bad things will happen". ~?
Oh I'm scared now, bad things will happen? But what bad things? "Well, we'll lose patriarchal control of this big blue mud ball and that we can't have. We've been running the show ever since we wrote those books in the desert two to four thousand years ago and we just can't change any of that because, because we, .....we.... just can't. Now stop asking questions." But those those books were written for desert dwellers, why do we have to stick to them? " Just because you do. You'll just have to pretend you live in the desert and stick to those books."
Ok.
But if King Solomon had had google he could have done a search on 'Nearby Kingdoms and Royalties' to see if there were other guys like him to talk to. He may have found some dudes over in India who were writing books too. Only those books were the Tropical-Sub Tropical Upanishads and Vedas. Goodness can you imagine if they had hooked up? The Songs of Solomon could have had Sitar and tabla accompaniment it could have been like a world music fusion band before Paco de Lucia and without those stupid lyrics that Paco's band members insisted on writing. Bwana Bwana King Kong! What the fukc is that all about? If Solomon had hooked up with the writers of the Upanishads they could have caravaned over to his pad and had ten day long spoken word poetry jams and eaten ripe mangoes while prancing around with court groupie chicks.
Yes there is a hitch. You have all these college folks saying the Desert books are treasures and must be understood because all the great writers secular, religious, dissenters or non dissenters over the last one thousand years of literature were taught to read and reason by reading those three Desert books. The great novels, poems and texts of Western Literature are based on ways in which the Desert books were written, remember the same three books written at the same time, in the same desert, with almost all the same characters who could never get along? The Desert Book read like a script from The Cosby show or Fawlty Towers, only in a huge tent, and the production set would have been sandier, drier and hotter, because they were in the desert.
I don't know about you, but I'm just waiting in for a huge plagiarism lawsuit to come thundering down on every writer from Pliny to Norman Mailer. Hi I'm the lawyer for the God of the Three Desert Books and we are serving you a with a lawsuit for copyright infringement on two of the chapters in the one of the Desert Books.
You can just see old grouchy Solomon sitting on this throne saying. "Yeah, you gonna sample, my songs and write about it bitches you gonna pay me royalties!" Makes Hollywood hack writer thefts look like kindergarten....oh, well bad analogy. A thousand years of royalties must add up to something.
How did the Norse write Beowulf without consulting the Desert Books? Or is Grendel character in one of the Desert Books, but we just can't tell because the name was changed to protect the Norse writer of Beowulf? And those Central Africans and Indian had the audacity to sit down with a scribe and write about their lives without even talking to those Desert guys up there in the hot dusty desert. I almost forgot about the Chinese too, they had this other way of writing around five or six thousand years ago that was revolutionary, it worked with small pictures. Like tiny abstract films made on cow scapula bones with inks.
If only those ancient Chinese had lived in the other desert with the guys who wrote the Desert Books, if that had been the case we could all be fluent in Chinese!
In sight of archaic and primitive layouts, yet worshiped by people who allow themselves the use of modern achievements like comfy cars, cell phones etc. ( my respect to the at least consequent Amish at this point ) ...
There is lack of intellect and factual education needed to provide the dance around a golden calf. ( And that is what there actually is, if you check conditions in corresponding landscapes.) And where there is a breakaway like say in central Europe where clerics have progressively been kicked out of the academies, there you see though badly reluctantly and delayed a gradual give in. Like with the catholic church, which found itself forced to finally ( about three years ago) admit officially that humans can´t be declared as created out of a sudden just about some 6000 years ago, and that Darwin´s findings cannot be denied anymore. And over the past years now finally ( and still reluctantly ) even admitting sexual abuse by clerical staff in the shelter of their institutions.
Such pity concessions only under alert focus in the most modern ambience, whereas elsewhere with an educational standard not much ahead of the one of centuries ago, the clerics allow themselves to conserve and sustain the desert sand castle you mentioned. At times even passing the backwardedness of the early conception. ( And it is no coincidence that there is to be found most of prejudice, violence, sexual abuse, ethical abyss and animal mistreat.)
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ORIGINAL: estebanana
If only those ancient Chinese had lived in the other desert with the guys who wrote the Desert Books, if that had been the case we could all be fluent in Chinese!
Are you certain? Where I am, I have met so many fellows who claimed to know well their holy book. However, each and every time I proved to them that they really didn´t. And they didn´t even need to have learned the language it is written in, as there are laying translated editions around literally everywhere.
Not enough muse to once study what is die-hard believed in ( !?!), yet enough energy to fully or partially learn by heart original text without even understanding the words.
That and much more is even further away from profane approach than just a firm look at fellow humans and animals would be, to realize what obsolete and baseless premisse and ready-made stereotype is, and possibly even discover the sensibility and loveliness of fellow creatures around oneself.
Nature provided humans with the only eye that has a visible white of the eye-ball, so that his fellow men could realize his viewing direction. And it also provided to humans the other way around, sensitivity to realize the objects condition / sensation.
Only that under all too unnatural ( detached ) conditions, no higher developed species on earth will be as blind as homo stupiens can be in the same time.
Thousands of years ago and still today in the desert, simple-minded culture dismissed nature altogether, deeming sophistication out of all in the detached-being of men. ( Not too long ago, also still that way with western cultures. Remember the times when natural landscapes used to be regarded as unkempt / neglected? Beautified yet with lumbering, flattening and concrete flooring?)
No. I only said that so I could end that ridiculous thing I wrote. But I will say the last 1500 years of Christendom to me looks a lot like really, really long play with new actors replacing old actors as they die off. Actors and a never ending plot.
I veered away from my real point, which was that I'm glad Anders has a dog. I mentioned the monk with the rat as a companion pet because he said the little rat was very affectionate in its own ratty way. Which seems to me to be more about religion and taking solace than a book.
Rufus I really wish you would try to write a comical prose piece. You are such a serious guy I worry about you.
the last 1500 years of Christendom to me looks a lot like really, really long play with new actors replacing old actors as they die off. Actors and a never ending plot.
Couldn't have said it better myself. The plot of course is to mask the truth. They don't want you to know.
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Rhythm, grace & passion. El ritmo, gracia & la pasión Be the change you want to see in this world - Gandhi
Anders, I just read this and my heart goes out to you and your wife. Life can be terrible yet also beautiful. I hope things go as best they can in this situation. My dearest regards...
Gummy. I´m out there floating. I´m selling my little yacht in Denamark, but I finished my Thames rowing skiff this summer and I also find the time to use it here and there
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Anders, my heart goes out to you and your wife in a time of trouble.
Several times in my working life, I sensed that one of my employees was having a rough time. If it was affecting their work, and it seemed appropriate, I invited them for a talk.
With a little experience I learned to begin the serious part of the conversation with a question. "What are the things most important to you, and in what order?'
Most often people would put family first, work somewhere high up the list, and their own health and well-being far down the list.
I would suggest that their own health and well being were the most important things, since without health and energy they would have little to contribute to family, work and other priorities. Often this seemed to be a new idea.
It seems to me that you have realized this some time ago. My best wishes for maintaining your own health and a positive attitude, so you will be able to contribute the support you desire to the most valuable person in your life.
I admire the strength and wisdom you have shown.
An enjoyable photo of you and your friend in the beautiful little skiff you built.
Rufus I really wish you would try to write a comical prose piece. You are such a serious guy I worry about you.
Hey, lighten up on Ruphus! The world needs serious people. Ruphus's understanding of the cause and cure of the world's problems is so brilliant, profound and comprehensive, we should elect him Emperor. While he beavers away repairing the universe, the rest of us could go on a picnic: swig some manzanilla, eat a little jamon serrano and olives, play bulerias, tell jokes....
Hey, lighten up on Ruphus! The world needs serious people. Ruphus's understanding of the cause and cure of the world's problems is so brilliant, profound and comprehensive, we should elect him Emperor. While he beavers away repairing the universe, the rest of us could go on a picnic: swig some manzanilla, eat a little jamon serrano and olives, play bulerias, tell jokes....
...Swig some more manzanilla, lie on divans with beautiful women popping grapes in our mouths, swig some more manzanilla, contemplate how the universe is mirrored in a single grain of sand, swig some more manzanilla, hold conversations with our doppelgangers like characters in a Jorge Luis Borges short story, swig some more manzanilla....
Cheers,
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
I'm just worried the Emperor is getting Emperors Fatigue and think he needs to take a day away from empereroring to revel with dancing girls too. That's all.
Actually, it seems as if I was not without talent for spontaneous jest, though certainly less active with it in the past decades. In school used to throwing out comments that entertained the class including teachers, and doing sorts of instant stand-up comedy on parties that must have been not too bad. After all, some of the beautiful girls who went with me might have been motivated by humourous reason too.
And still today, when with friends, funny moments are not really too scarce. And some, like the daughters of a friend of mine, must be thinking I am all poking and jokes. They already start laughing when I enter the place. :0)
However, yes, you are right. There is a heavy demon sitting on my soul, tearing guts.
And frankly, though absolutely intersted in staying merry and informed all in the same time, I wouldn´t know how to do. Neither have I seen someone who could to date. None who would had made himself widely aware of the global gist and stayed a basically happy camper in the same time.
And the question is: Would it be possible at all?
After all, when you roam the chambers of psychology you will find that what indicates pathological state ( which isn´t what people commonly think, who take irritations and inbalances as signs of mental desease ) basically is the moment when a person will feel fine while thinking of / wittnessing detrimental situation in the same time.
Further, can one completely turn off perception of injust, switching back and forth between global situation and cheerful privacy? Must be some can, I can´t.
What Richard mentioned above certainly makes sense. "...maintaining your own health and a positive attitude, ... will be able to contribute ... support ..."
On the other hand: If we won´t get all pissed first, developing intense crave for change, the current tendency will continue ( as it does ) and desert this planet in a historical blink.
And taking notice of status quo will inevitably induce that craving for any mind, except of the pathological. Which again only shows that the majority of us is neglecting the degree of cultural, ethical and environmetal devastation.
Something that won´t surprise psychologically, considering irrational mechanism of sensed self-defense with emotionally fragile ( detached ) psyche / contemporary culture of mind.
And there is the background for what makes you tease the "emperor".
Yes, I belong to those trying to break up a common neglection of status quo and its ordinary psychological mechanism before a profane significance like a distroyed evolution that we are heading at.
Not too far in the future people world-wide will be pulling their hair how e.g. todays TV program would have been all soap opera etc. instead of being cramped with reports on intoxication, geological shiftings and exctinction etc., to no escape.
I am having a hard time accepting that things are needlessly left to go such a way for insanely trivial reason ( psychological fragility ).
Besides of that, me always digged the Cosby Show, Stephen. Really sweet.
And still today, when with friends, funny moments are not really too scarce. And some, like the daughters of a friend of mine, must be thinking I am all poking and jokes. They already start laughing when I enter the place. :0)
Even Lenin, who was hardly a merry prankster, could appreciate a little humor. Louis Fischer, in his great biography of Lenin, recounts the time that Lenin laughed uproariously when someone told the old joke about the definition of ambivalence is watching your mother-in-law go over the cliff in your favorite automobile.
Cheers,
Bill
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And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."