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techstepgenr8tion
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26 May 2015, 6:08 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Bythos, Bishop!

GnosticBishop wrote:
Especially when our friend does not understand what he is talking about.


Don't worry, Techstep, he means me. Hehe.

Heh, the 'he' threw me a bit, was wondering if he meant Ban-Dodger or someone else.

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
GB - Where do you get this idea matter is evolving perfection? I see no evidence of this. I see no evidence of perfection, period, anywhere. It could exist out there and according to Pleroma, it does but it's not here.

I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.


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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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26 May 2015, 6:20 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.



ASS-P
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26 May 2015, 6:27 pm

..Hm...........



aghogday
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26 May 2015, 6:51 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.


Truly, it's the tribal instinct.

Folks are raised to believe

common stuff for social bonding.

Social bonding for human animals is the most important general need for
any social animal. The tribal instinct among humans is integral to that.

IN some countries, female genital mutilation is considered part of the
moral social norm; in others it is slicing off
foreskin, for a 20% member discount,
at birth, for males, including
ours of course, as part
of social esteem;
and religious
ideology.

Truly the only escape is back
to human innate, instinctual
and intuitive nature in smaller
population groups; sharing
and unconditionally loving
in mind and body
balance, as all
social animals;
even wolves
in the wild
live
to
survive in strength
and social cooperation.

The true new age is the
old age; I do it with
freedom on my own;
and am seriously
PERFECTLY HAPPY.
IT takes work but
it is worth all
the sweat
and all
the
blood; yes
blood, sometimes
literally; challenge;
adaptation; change
is the way to both
HUMAN STRENGTH,
SURVIVAL
AND SIMPLE
ANIMAL human
HOMEOSTASIS
AKA
NIRVANA;
BLISS;
OR THE
Heaven of Now.

And another way to 'Christos Energy'
is through the exercise of 'Yogi
Meditation'; and associated
'Kundalini Energy'
as metaphor
for Christos
Energy,
as well.

This video is simplified
enough for a small child;
to both understand and
practice.

It's
worth
watching;
if nothing
but for the
philosophical
lessons in the
greatest wisdom
of peace of mind
and body GREATER
balance, in a life that
is evolved to be much
more in old ways, than
illusions of new ways
of com-
plex
cultures..:)

And also too, providing the link below; that also addresses the metaphor of Quantum
Human Awareness that I love to use; For me, it's just a metaphor; but the Truth
may 'lie' in Quantum Physics, for the Collective Cosmic Consciousness of ALL;
even beyond Google and such as that in TECH Life, Haha!



http://www.quantum-physics-spirituality.com/Quantum-Physics-Christos.html


_________________
KATiE MiA FredericK!iI

Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !

http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick


GnosticBishop
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26 May 2015, 6:54 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
GnosticBishop wrote:
Sweetleaf wrote:
Probably a bit of both...I mean for one it was initially a collection of various ancient scrolls/documents that where eventually put together into the singular bible, so it wasn't even written as one book and had various authors so it would not make sense for it to be 100% consistent. I imagine some things in it are just stories, other things might be historical accounts written from the perspective of the writer of that segment....also it should be taken into account the ancient mindset it is quite possible things that happened and do have a more 'scientific' explanation where described without that kind of language. For instance say a group of ancients saw a modern day plane flying through just hypothetically....are they going to say 'one day a large plane flew over' or are they going to say' a large bird like creature that spits fire and makes a large roar as it passes by without flapping its wings' or something to that effect? and perhaps think God sent it as some kind of omen or something. I mean keep in mind when european settlers came to the american continents the natives did not see/perceive the ships until they where essentially up on the beach they initially just noticed more ripples in the water because they had no concept of a large ship on the ocean let alone the white men that came off of them. Though Columbus was an a** and enslaved people and killed them off all simultaneously...at least the Vikings when they discovered the northern hemisphere of america left the natives too it mostly after finding they met their match in battle. Anyways back to the bible.

So a collection of myths, human accounts of events(which of course consider how they may have perceived things in ancient times and general human error of reporting events 100% accurately), also some could be hallucinations at the time things like psychosis may not have been understood and depending on if people got any toxins/molds or other weird things in their foods that could have caused psychotic like states, delirium so there is that potential factor in some of the stories as well.

And to go way out of the box what if.....aliens, lol. There are a few accounts that seem to describe large and strange things in the sky which if those ones aren't myths, hallucinations or misunderstandings of weather phenomenons and what not perhaps extra-terrestrial space crafts cannot be ruled out. Then again why would anyone from another planet really care so much about the goings on, on this one or even bother to stop here. Or someone figured out time travel lol.


I have tried reading the bible literally and it really makes no sense that way...the numerous translations its undergone also don't help the flow/smoothness of the writing, very choppy...hard to follow and lots and lots of lists of names I mean good god how many Abrahams are there.


Well put. Thanks.

Do you see it as portraying a moral God or one who is not s moral?

Regards
DL


It's hard to say...exactly, of course there are plenty of things that are described as happening in the name of god I certainly think are horribly immoral, but where those things actually in the name of god? Or where humans just using that. Though of course the thing with the story where the father is about to kill his son because god commanded it, and then is stopped by god...the moral of that is 'it's good you where willing to do anything I ask' well to me that is not moral..If i was in charge of the test I'd fail them, because I'd think they should be willing to disobey the all powerful deity if it meant doing the right thing.

Have you ever seen Pans Labyrinth? well at the end of that there is a scene where the main character a girl has to pass 3 tests to reach her rightful place as princess of the underworld or something the last test is the being testing her demands she kill her baby brother because innocent blood is needed......if she refuses she can never return home to her rightful place. Well she refuses and that was the test, she risked it all to do the right thing....rather than having been willing to kill her brother and then being rewarded. Well I like what that story says a lot more than Mr. I'd even kill my own son just to satisfy my god.


Your moral head is on straight. Nice.

If you are into movies as well as religion then you might watch this one.
Israel means to strive with God. Meaning to strive both for and against God.
The depth of thought that this one movie can generate is quite an mind opener as to how we create our Gods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx7irFN2gdI

Regards
DL



pcuser
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26 May 2015, 6:57 pm

aghogday wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.


Truly, it's the tribal instinct.

Folks are raised to believe

common stuff for social bonding.

Social bonding for human animals is the most important general need for
any social animal. The tribal instinct among humans is integral to that.

IN some countries, female genital mutilation is considered part of the
moral social norm; in others it is slicing off
foreskin, for a 20% member discount,
at birth, for males, including
ours of course, as part
of social esteem;
and religious
ideology.

Truly the only escape is back
to human innate, instinctual
and intuitive nature in smaller
population groups; sharing
and unconditionally loving
in mind and body
balance, as all
social animals;
even wolves
in the wild
live
to
survive in strength
and social cooperation.

The true new age is the
old age; I do it with
freedom on my own;
and am seriously
PERFECTLY HAPPY.
IT takes work but
it is worth all
the sweat
and all
the
blood; yes
blood, sometimes
literally; challenge;
adaptation; change
is the way to both
HUMAN STRENGTH,
SURVIVAL
AND SIMPLE
ANIMAL human
HOMEOSTASIS
AKA
NIRVANA;
BLISS;
OR THE
Heaven of Now.

And another way to 'Christos Energy'
is through the exercise of 'Yogi
Meditation'; and associated
'Kundalini Energy'
as metaphor
for Christos
Energy,
as well.

This video is simplified
enough for a small child;
to both understand and
practice.

It's
worth
watching;
if nothing
but for the
philosophical
lessons in the
greatest wisdom
of peace of mind
and body GREATER
balance, in a life that
is evolved to be much
more in old ways, than
illusions of new ways
of com-
plex
cultures..:)

And also too, providing the link below; that also addresses the metaphor of Quantum
Human Awareness that I love to use; For me, it's just a metaphor; but the Truth
may 'lie' in Quantum Physics, for the Collective Cosmic Consciousness of ALL;
even beyond Google and such as that in TECH Life, Haha!



http://www.quantum-physics-spirituality.com/Quantum-Physics-Christos.html

I'll be as kind as possible. You need to stop posting all this gibberish. It ruins the threads you go on. I'm sorry and don't want to hurt you, but it is irritating dealing with this garbage. You put up so much crap that makes no sense. You need to rethink this...



aghogday
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26 May 2015, 7:27 pm

pcuser wrote:
aghogday wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.


Truly, it's the tribal instinct.

Folks are raised to believe

common stuff for social bonding.

Social bonding for human animals is the most important general need for
any social animal. The tribal instinct among humans is integral to that.

IN some countries, female genital mutilation is considered part of the
moral social norm; in others it is slicing off
foreskin, for a 20% member discount,
at birth, for males, including
ours of course, as part
of social esteem;
and religious
ideology.

Truly the only escape is back
to human innate, instinctual
and intuitive nature in smaller
population groups; sharing
and unconditionally loving
in mind and body
balance, as all
social animals;
even wolves
in the wild
live
to
survive in strength
and social cooperation.

The true new age is the
old age; I do it with
freedom on my own;
and am seriously
PERFECTLY HAPPY.
IT takes work but
it is worth all
the sweat
and all
the
blood; yes
blood, sometimes
literally; challenge;
adaptation; change
is the way to both
HUMAN STRENGTH,
SURVIVAL
AND SIMPLE
ANIMAL human
HOMEOSTASIS
AKA
NIRVANA;
BLISS;
OR THE
Heaven of Now.

And another way to 'Christos Energy'
is through the exercise of 'Yogi
Meditation'; and associated
'Kundalini Energy'
as metaphor
for Christos
Energy,
as well.

This video is simplified
enough for a small child;
to both understand and
practice.

It's
worth
watching;
if nothing
but for the
philosophical
lessons in the
greatest wisdom
of peace of mind
and body GREATER
balance, in a life that
is evolved to be much
more in old ways, than
illusions of new ways
of com-
plex
cultures..:)

And also too, providing the link below; that also addresses the metaphor of Quantum
Human Awareness that I love to use; For me, it's just a metaphor; but the Truth
may 'lie' in Quantum Physics, for the Collective Cosmic Consciousness of ALL;
even beyond Google and such as that in TECH Life, Haha!



http://www.quantum-physics-spirituality.com/Quantum-Physics-Christos.html

I'll be as kind as possible. You need to stop posting all this gibberish. It ruins the threads you go on. I'm sorry and don't want to hurt you, but it is irritating dealing with this garbage. You put up so much crap that makes no sense. You need to rethink this...


ARE you seriously so controlled by your environment that scrolling past some text makes you uncomfortable.

At YOU over 60; I can only say I'm sorry that you have no mastery over your mind and body in balance over that.

No one; and I do mean no one or anything makes me uncomfortable; And that my friend is the whole point

of my posts; ways to avoid being controlled by the environment; and ways to develop mind and body in balance.

If you ever get there; trust me then, you will be the one in control; not your environment; particularly cultural

environments that are diverse; and much further than what your mind can comprehend; obviously.

There is no way you can possibly hurt me 'little' man;

I've been to places of hurt you cannot possibly fathom,

per medical literature, literally, speaking.

And survived and am stronger than

anyone you know in real life;

I promise you that.

Just carry on and ignore me;
or not; I do not care; you
are just a 'gnat' to me;
flying by;

Continuing in your
attempts to try to
bother me; but i'm not sorry;
I know 'your kind'; all to well.

Ha! you are

aMusing, at most, to me,

as you are, and yes I do like that 'kind'..;)


_________________
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Gravatar is one of the coolest things ever!! !

http://en.gravatar.com/katiemiafrederick


pcuser
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26 May 2015, 7:33 pm

aghogday wrote:
pcuser wrote:
aghogday wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.


Truly, it's the tribal instinct.

Folks are raised to believe

common stuff for social bonding.

Social bonding for human animals is the most important general need for
any social animal. The tribal instinct among humans is integral to that.

IN some countries, female genital mutilation is considered part of the
moral social norm; in others it is slicing off
foreskin, for a 20% member discount,
at birth, for males, including
ours of course, as part
of social esteem;
and religious
ideology.

Truly the only escape is back
to human innate, instinctual
and intuitive nature in smaller
population groups; sharing
and unconditionally loving
in mind and body
balance, as all
social animals;
even wolves
in the wild
live
to
survive in strength
and social cooperation.

The true new age is the
old age; I do it with
freedom on my own;
and am seriously
PERFECTLY HAPPY.
IT takes work but
it is worth all
the sweat
and all
the
blood; yes
blood, sometimes
literally; challenge;
adaptation; change
is the way to both
HUMAN STRENGTH,
SURVIVAL
AND SIMPLE
ANIMAL human
HOMEOSTASIS
AKA
NIRVANA;
BLISS;
OR THE
Heaven of Now.

And another way to 'Christos Energy'
is through the exercise of 'Yogi
Meditation'; and associated
'Kundalini Energy'
as metaphor
for Christos
Energy,
as well.

This video is simplified
enough for a small child;
to both understand and
practice.

It's
worth
watching;
if nothing
but for the
philosophical
lessons in the
greatest wisdom
of peace of mind
and body GREATER
balance, in a life that
is evolved to be much
more in old ways, than
illusions of new ways
of com-
plex
cultures..:)

And also too, providing the link below; that also addresses the metaphor of Quantum
Human Awareness that I love to use; For me, it's just a metaphor; but the Truth
may 'lie' in Quantum Physics, for the Collective Cosmic Consciousness of ALL;
even beyond Google and such as that in TECH Life, Haha!



http://www.quantum-physics-spirituality.com/Quantum-Physics-Christos.html

I'll be as kind as possible. You need to stop posting all this gibberish. It ruins the threads you go on. I'm sorry and don't want to hurt you, but it is irritating dealing with this garbage. You put up so much crap that makes no sense. You need to rethink this...


ARE you seriously so controlled by your environment that scrolling past some text makes you uncomfortable.

At YOU over 60; I can only say I'm sorry that you have no mastery over your mind and body in balance over that.

No one; and I do mean no one or anything makes me uncomfortable; And that my friend is the whole point

of my posts; ways to avoid being controlled by the environment; and ways to develop mind and body in balance.

If you ever get there; trust me then, you will be the one in control; not your environment; particularly cultural

environments that are diverse; and much further than what your mind can comprehend; obviously.

There is no way you can possibly hurt me 'little' man;

I've been to places of hurt you cannot possibly fathom,

per medical literature, literally, speaking.

And survived and am stronger than

anyone you know in real life;

I promise you that.

Just carry on and ignore me;
or not; I do not care; you
are just a 'gnat' to me;
flying by;

Continuing in your
attempts to try to
bother me; but i'm not sorry;
I know 'your kind'; all to well.

Ha! you are

aMusing, at most, to me,

as you are, and yes I do like that 'kind'..;)

Yeah, yeah, yeah...



GnosticBishop
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26 May 2015, 8:07 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
[

I only hope one day the devout will awaken to the true energy and create an environment that fosters kindness and nurturing. Look at how Christos gave all the loaves of bread and fish to people who were hungry!


All that is quite easy if you have a pocket full of miracle.

I do not believe that literally and have dithered out, I think, what he is teaching us that would make anyone able to do it.

If you are not reading it literally, do you have any ideas as to how that was possible?

Regards
DL



GnosticBishop
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26 May 2015, 8:20 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
GnosticBishop wrote:
Quote:
I'd fully agree with your definitions of it, and also add that I'm not a Gnostic - rather the thoughts I was expressing regarding my own beliefs are fundamentally Hermetic in their philosophic orientation. The two, Gnostcism and Hermeticism, are worlds apart on the issues of dualism, incarnate existence, and matter.


Especially when our friend does not understand what he is talking about.

Which is that?

GnosticBishop wrote:
He says that matter is not good yet Gnostic Christian Jesus says it is.

He says he is a Gnostic Christian but looks without instead of within.

Jesus said, "If those who attract you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is under the earth,' then the fish of the sea will
precede you. Rather, the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is
outside of you. [Those who] become acquainted with [themselves]
will find it; [and when you] become acquainted with yourselves, [you
will understand that] it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

----------------------------

The modern Gnostic Christian view on evil matter is that matter is not evil. It is evolving perfection.

We never really believed matter was evil but unfortunately the language of that day used the term evil. Gnostic Christians could not believe matter was evil because we believe that we have a spark of God within our bodies, (matter), and the kingdom of God is both within us and around us as Jesus taught.

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you and around you.

Gnostic Christians of that day were into duality of matter and non-matter. As above so below.

Above would have been seen as perfect while here below, at that time, Gnostic Christians did not see perfection. It was thus said that it was good above and evil below.

Modern Gnostic thinking has evolved somewhat and we now say that matter is evolving perfection. Many think this quote was not written seriously but to a Gnostic Christian it will be understandable as a truth.

Candide.
"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

This means that we all live in the best of all possible world and that is why modern Gnostic Christians call what we have around us, evolving perfection.

Be you a believer or not, the notion that things cannot be other than what they are and are, evolving perfection is irrefutable even though it is a fairly hard concept to grasp. This does not mean that we cannot improve as we each evolve further.


I'll admit the word 'Gnostic' got beaten up quite a bit when it was associated very speficially with sects like the Ophites, the Valentinians, the Sethites, etc.. and became symbolic of a Manichaean or Cathar type of stance on matter.

The way it tends to divide in terminology these days - you have Judao-Christian esotericism that leans toward panentheistic monist interpretations of the bible, to a broader extent that often gets termed 'Hermetic'.

On the flip side of the coin the Da Vinci Code type stuff, Pistis Sophia, Nag Hammadi texts, for the most part these aim toward an esotericism where there's a severe confusion between creator and a snapped-separate being referred to as the demiurge. Per the Tripartite Tractate the primary archon, after Sophia made her mistake of biting off more than she could chew and creating something of a blended nature, looked back at the pleroma and believed it was seeing a reflection of itself thus declaring itself God.

The modern Hermetic view, very much so, is one where it's not just evolution of all consciousness (ie. monatomic, mineral, plant, animal, man, angel choir, etc.) but it's a universe with nothing inimical. Lots of pain in the process of the evolution and a wealth of grueling life lessons no doubt but but we're brooded over by something that loves us far more tenderly and gently than we could fathom under our circumstances. YHVH, the 'I AM that I AM' is both the Mother Goddess and Father God. It's Osiris and Isis, Christ and Sophia (in the Solomonic context - incarnate as Mary), it's as much the Father God of the Hebrews as it's the Mother Goddess of the wiccans.

When people speak of the world as an archonic trap they're talking about something that the pleroma overlooks, being far more powerful than Sophia and far more knowledgeable just let the kenoma be, and the aspiration in that sense is to outrun it - if by reincarnating to gain enough wisdom to leave then it's that; it's the Eastern-style escape plan in Western garment.

I'm not going to say there aren't a lot of shades of gray in between, technically as I recall Martinism seems to very much sit in the gray area and it's a system that I've wanted to get to know more about just in terms of how much it's claimed that to whatever extent you'll wrack your brain on the lessons you'll wrack your heart (inflame thyself with prayer) far more so - which sounds like a wonderful challenge. It's just that, when people throw out the word Gnosticism - usually the first person people are going to think of is Elaine Pagels, thus the word has come somewhat to equal a Manichean/Cathar type of mysticism by way of texts like the Nag Hammadi.


Interesting read thank.

I agree that beliefs in the past were all over the place and that that continues to today.

That is primarily why I have tried to skip all the various comparisons in the varied belief and skipped to the bottom line. It is easier and received better because I think people are fed up with the various myths that try to compete against each other. That and not many are into esoteric reading.

I express it with these link and dialog. Let me know if you think this a reasonable way to proceed.

The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y

When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.

Regards
DL



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26 May 2015, 8:49 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
Bythos, Bishop!

GnosticBishop wrote:
Especially when our friend does not understand what he is talking about.


Don't worry, Techstep, he means me. Hehe. GB and I are just on two different sides of the gnostic coin. *shrugs*. No need to get salty about it, GB. We are just going to look like two Gnostics who can't get along. Then people will assume that's all there is to Gnosticism, when, in fact, it is a whole other world of discovery.

GB - Where do you get this idea matter is evolving perfection? I see no evidence of this. I see no evidence of perfection, period, anywhere. It could exist out there and according to Pleroma, it does but it's not here.


The evidence of the fact that Jesus taught that we live in the kingdom of God should open your eyes to it but that is what see from my view and I should try harder to see it from your inferior view. Just kidding this time.

You are correct that we should show more uniformity and fellowship. I am just so used to fighting literalism because of the evil I see in it that I do a knee jerk reaction to it. Especially when I see someone like you with such potential. My bad.

I use the words evolving perfection because when I think of this concept I look at the same thing at all points in time of it's existence.

I begin the logic trail by looking at creation, be it from nature which I believe, or from a God which I do not.

All life is produced for the best possible end. If you have children, you will confirm that you tried to start them off towards the best possible end. Nothing and no one creates anything for a poor end. Hence this quote.

"It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.”

Having said that, think of yourself, flaws and all, kidding again but serious as well, in the first hour when you were born. Whatever you were, you were created as perfect as your DNA and environment could produce. Life would have it no other way. That you I call perfect. The next hour you moved from that perfection to a more perfect baby that learned to reach for the tit. You evolved your initial perfect self to a new perfect condition. That progression never stops and so we can say that you are always perfect, even if you have flaws, at all points in time.

Candid, the play, states it as we are always living in the best of all possible worlds, because this is the only possible world. The same can be said for you. You are the best you can be because you are the only you that you can possibly be. I, instead of using best possible over time, use the term evolving perfection.

This is not an easy concept to grasp, especially with me using the term evolving perfection. Most are used to using the word perfect as a finished and stagnant non-evolving form. If you have a tough time with it just think good moving to better all the time. You are always the best you can ever be. That does not mean that you cannot improve. You can but even as you improve, you are still the best you can be at any given point in time.

Regards
DL



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26 May 2015, 9:05 pm

Cash__ wrote:
GnosticBishop wrote:
Cash__ wrote:
All gnostics claim they have the correct knowledge (gnosis). Yet, here they are arguing amongst themselves what this knowledge even is?
So the gnostics don't have the knowledge (gnosis).
Ironic, isn't it.


Who here said they have the correct knowledge?

What correct knowledge are your referring to?

You should remember that those who wrote most of what you know of Gnostic Christians are the ones who killed us and burned our scriptures. If you wish to trust those who helped usher in the Dark Ages of free thought and the Inquisition, then by all means do, but if you want to know of my religion, which is one of the few that is not homophobic and misogynous, then better to ask instead of making foolish statements.

Start with this.

A bit of history and then a mindset and method to do so that I promote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia ... =PLCBF574D

The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y

When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.

Regards
DL

I am very familiar with gnosticism. I am also not of the group that persecuted them. I find both orthodox and gnostic to be just as ridiculous.
The word gnostic or gnosis means knowledge. So to say your gnostic but that you don't have the knowledge of the truth is a contradiction. Gnosis and knowledge are the same word. It'd be like a Christian saying that they don't have christ. Or a follower of baalism not having baal. Change your name then.


So you think that a Gnostic should know every truth known to man.

Only a real fool would think he knows even a small % of all truths.

But if you reduce the number of truths, know that I do know some truth. Ask away and I will be pleased to share.

I will give you that our myths are just as weird as any other religious myth.

You though will have to admit that since we Gnostic Christians end being Universalists and not the immoral homophobic and misogynous divisive believers that Orthodoxy creates, that we are a cut above them morality wise.

And morality is what is important and not the myth we happen to use to enhance our seeking for God. God as defined as the best set of rules and laws to live life by.

Regards
DL



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26 May 2015, 9:18 pm

So you think that a Gnostic should know every truth known to man.

Only a real fool would think he knows even a small % of all truths.

Quote:
But if you reduce the number of truths, know that I do know some truth. Ask away and I will be pleased to share.

I will give you that our myths are just as weird as any other religious myth.

You though will have to admit that since we Gnostic Christians end being Universalists and not the immoral homophobic and misogynous divisive believers that Orthodoxy creates, that we are a cut above them morality wise.

And morality is what is important and not the myth we happen to use to enhance our seeking for God. God as defined as the best set of rules and laws to live life by.

Regards
DL


Yes, Everyone knows some truth.

Yes, I will agree you are better then the fundamentalists. But then again, atheist have better morals then most fundamentalists also.



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26 May 2015, 9:34 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
techstepgenr8tion wrote:
I won't answer for him but - in case I didn't articulate this one at my own end; it is a lot of work, a lot of incarnations, thousands if not tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a lot more pain and bloodshed, a lot more misery, a HECK of a lot of work. We'll be getting a better world but we're on the treadmill for it with very little in the way of breaks. It gets called the Great Work largely for that reason - the prospect is as daunting as you'd suggest.

Doesn't it seem more like, instead of getting better, for each step forward, we have to take a step backward, and if we don't, we see the problems we are experiencing now due to increased human activity and supposedly these problems will escalate and be challenges for future generations. Sometimes, civilization crumbles entirely and a Dark Age emerges and can exist for thousands of years where nothing much happens.

Unless you are referring to evolution alone. It doesn't appear that we are evolving much at the present time and physically, our evolution has been abysmal. We have evolved sophisticated language and cns capabilities but I do not see how we are anywhere near perfection. I see humanity as flawed and only able to access little slivers of knowledge at a time with great resistance and difficulty from those who despise knowledge. Why that energy is there, I have no idea. What it's purpose is baffles me. It's obstructive but it does exist.

At one point in time I felt that way somewhat, but the more I read between the lines of the history books and started catching up contextually as well as literally on the nitty gritty of what this world has been in the past, even a couple hundred years ago; I don't think there's ever been a time as good as now to be alive on this planet. I mean that in the sense not only of mans inhumanity to man, the constant warfare, feudalism, and supression of free thought by organized religions but I'm talking about things like the black plague, the largest semetary in Paris having something like a 20 foot groundswell from all the burials, people thinking it was the end times simply walking all over Europe aimlessly with their feet bleeding all over the ground, etc. etc.. In large part because of the black plague it was only in the last few centuries that people started showering or bathing again - prior to that the belief was that the plague was in the water.

I remember in reading John Ralston Saul's 'Voltaire's Bastards' that while he not only outlined significant swaths of French, Spanish, British, Canadian, and US political history he also talked about the development of France, talked about how Paris before public sanitation had a mound of feces down the middle of the street, certain people would come with carts to carry it out to bogs in the countryside, stranger still there were peasants with their shacks at the edges of these bogs who'd make a living diving into those bogs hoping to find things like missing jewelry and the like. All of that was even after the late Renaissance. Try on for size thinking about what things were like in time periods previous to that. Greece and Rome had somewhat of a stutter forward in terms of at least no black plague to discourage bathing and had working water but I'd imagine things were only so significantly better.

I think there's general tendency people have, particularly if going through a rough life or seeing a lot of pain inflicted, to feel like their era is the worst in their century or perhaps within a few centuries - I'd really argue from my own observations that the farther one goes back the worse man's inhumanity to man gets, the worse the bullying gets, the worst the mind-control by stigma becomes (stigma even as a death sentence) and while there may have been a few small islands of good things like Dabrovnik in the middle ages such pinpoints of light as that were surrounded by abject darkness. Just hearing about how the Catholic church higher ups treated each other from the time of the fall of Rome onward to the middle ages it's as if they were still only slowly growing out literal cut-throat assassination politics. In Rome an emperor rarely made it a few years without being assassinated, at the time of the sacking of Jerusalem it was three emperors in rapid succession before Vespatian took power (in fact many would suggest that the three horns in reference to Daniel's 4th beast was exactly that event). In comparison people in the baby-boomer generation still remember quite often exactly where they were and what they were doing when JFK was assassinated.


On another topic, Manichaean Gnosticism, don't get me wrong - if the shape of your life, your own emotions, your upbringings, and your longings point you toward this particular system of belief it's a thing between you and your own soul, in that sense it's probably exactly where your soul wants you and I have no interest in debating you out of it because it's not at all my place to. Since that's the case I'll try not to cross the line into persuading you against it, again it would be none of my business to do so, but I still at least prefer to say something on the perceptual issues - like history - just so you aren't in that belief system based on a few common distortions of perspective.


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26 May 2015, 10:30 pm

GnosticBishop wrote:
I express it with these link and dialog. Let me know if you think this a reasonable way to proceed.

I can't tell you what not to do, like I said to Ana a minute ago that's your own soul, you're own HGA leading and if it's your own Will's leaning (one thing I'd agree with Crowley on) 'nobody shall say nay'.

My own preference - while I don't mind private liberality in one's exploration of themselves and with intimates - is to really emphasize the normality and wholesomeness of occultism (something I think Manly P Hall did wonderfully), emphasizing that the real values and simple integrities that people think came from the Bible come even moreso from the high-pagan mystery schools and that the Bible is a holy book to the extent that imports such texts. I tend to feel like people are trying to find things that will work in their lives, make society work better, but particularly a lot of people these days are looking for reasons to be ethical as things like fundamentalist Christianity breaks down. They run from the hippy-dippy because they're used to seeing new-agers go nutty, wrap themselves in crystals, and seem to go purile while talking about crystal ships up in the sky or doing weird things with magnets - part of that of course is pejorative, part of it's truth, but quite sadly it's part of why people run like heck from so much stuff related to what was considered 20th century 'new thought'. Needless to say, as I mentioned in one of Goebel's threads on art and post-modernism that the public, generally into very simple life, tends to look at the larger things going on around them as clouds sailing overhead, they take a few tangent remarks from a satirist or political spindoctor as the right way to view it, they ridicule it, minimize it, and are done with it to keep their own inertia (which I have to admit - if one's particularly early in their evolution I don't know if there's much else they really can do without throwing their responsibilities up in the air and having their lives fall apart - they simply quite often aren't people with a lot of internal resource to go around and those who per say do have a lot of energy to be hot-shot egotists or narcissists are actually perhaps right over the boarder from falling into the negative consequences from that, reforming through the pain, and moving a step beyond into a realization that the world as it was taught to them is for a rubric of education that they've outgrown and that they need to reconsider how they handle that energy).

From that perspective I love that with occultism - particularly things like Rosicrucianism, Martinism, Golden Dawn diaspora, in a lot of cases it's not only very highly functional adults - professionals, great family men and women, role-models for the youth even - but also very devout and pious people who are looking for ways to really find their own grip with the boyscout, eaglescout, or Masonic type of civics. Sadly for what I've been through with autism most of the damage done to my desire to be out there doing that came from the notion that because people couldn't read my body language that I was a monster and that my help, my influence, my presence in general simply wasn't wanted - it's part of what I'm really using the white light of esotericism to try and grow out from underneath.

All that said I have a lot of open-minded friends, ie. very intelligent guys even if they're the same types who'll take their sportbikes up to 190 on the highway, obsess over different ways to do water sports, have macho obsessions about social code, or get almost as excited about finding novel ways to light a bong as they get excited about kyte-surfing; they're seeking the same things I am, looking into the QM and physics they learn in school (several of them are engineers), and while they're a bit conservative about things that seem 'wooh' or unmanly they do recognize a good argument one way or another when they hear it - they know I'm in the orders I'm in (one or two are particularly factious in general and it's almost entertaining to tell them things that just blow their tops - one particularly said he wouldn't let me live it down that I'm actually considering having a ritual room in my house) but I feel like I'm kinda opening a door that other people in the group have sometimes dabbled with or looked at to a certain extent, and going all in with it. Lent my five-book series of Promethia to a friend this weekend just because, short of having him trudge through Dion Fortune, it was one of the quicker ways he could get some of the overtures of this stuff.

I suppose part of why I want to normalize it - I really emphatically believe its the way forward, ie. it's the next spiritual step for mankind, and part of that is people actually knowing what it is, how it's useful, how it can help them live more fulfilling lives (ie. it's not all about goetia or doing 'The Secret' to manifest 'stuff') but that it's a huge stretch of roadmap for self development into territories, even just on a psychological and within materialist-scope level, that are beyond any roadmap we currently have for positive psychology and cultivation of astounding mental health. It's a technology that the ancients had before the term 'psychology' came into vogue and I really think that psychology is still quite infant and minimally effective in comparison to what mystic and ceremonial operations can do for a person.


GnosticBishop wrote:
The thinking shown below is the Gnostic Christian’s goal as taught by Jesus but know that any belief can be internalized to activate your higher mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alRNbes ... r_embedded

Thank you for that. To be honest I'd just call that Alan Watts kicking arse. That's probably one of the best speeches I've actually heard from him in that kind of time allotment.

GnosticBishop wrote:
This method and mind set is how you become I am and brethren to Jesus, in the esoteric sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdSVl_HOo8Y

I remember a recording a few years back of this guy talking about something like the zodiac and the cerebral cortex. He seems to flirt with Anthroposophy quite a bit!


GnosticBishop wrote:
When you can name your God, I am, and mean yourself, you will begin to know the only God you will ever find. Becoming a God is to become more fully human and a brethren to Jesus.

Whether or not it's a naughty thing to do by occult standards (more so often than not it's quite frowned upon) I've had plenty of go-rounds with things like DXM and psilocybin. Had particularly powerful results with DXM and I remember at one point, after blubbering my heart out in confusion after just having gone back from some Theosophic study toward a fundamentalist Christian viewpoint that I was apologizing my head off to the Lord and what I saw - with a very deep sense of severity (not severity of it's emotional energy but you know how when you see something that you know is off the deep end, ie. so sacred, private, or just extreme that you feel like you're almost not supposed to be seeing it?) - within myself and within my own interior space a glowing sphere of light with several, perhaps five, six, or seven, layers of glowing light, as if they were each spheres of glowing dust slightly dimming its presence at each distance. It felt like the very center of that presence was an eye, an eye or really an I so profound that I was truly staring at the ultimate, something that had known me not just in this life, not for a few incarnations, but for all of eternity, and I felt the sublime profundity of it staring back at me - even though it seemed absolutely inert with respect to judging me in any way shape or form (really it seemed almost emotionless aside from just the core value of what it was). In so many ways it's the kind of presence I'd relate back to if thinking of a 'divine spark', what Max Heindel as I'm reading now in Cosmo Conception considered the core atom that's always with us in our incarnations (we all evolve from somewhere I guess), or just as well when Theresa of Avila wrote about the Interior Castle she seemed to be talking about an experience that hits in such layers that the light in the core of the castle - by each 'mansion' of ingress one makes - gets brighter by degree of proximity. Dion Fortune's three-ring and seven-shelled universe from The Cosmic Doctrine seems like a giant representation of a similar kind of concept.

I had many times of scrying in the astral, getting a sense of what it was light to perceive huge, realer-than-real, but simultaneously fuzzy concepts, like planet-sized concepts, beings, deities even, under the kind of blur one might have when they're just opening their eyes. Similarly there was a time a few years back when I invoked Isis in times of trouble and had one of the most profound experiences of my life over the subsequent two weeks (ecstatic currents weaving through my torso, sensing benevolent presences within a foot of me as if I had some kind of extended 'touch' or radar, a few times the ecstacies hit hard enough and my heart was glowing and fluttering strongly enough that I was afraid I'd either have a seizure or pop out of body). Occultism and particularly Hermetic Qabalah was where I found the footprint of the fourth-dimensional framework without drugs. Once I knew what it had to offer, something that was like a diving board over the edge of what I used to think of as psychedelic urgency or severity off into the abyss of the Real - THAT got me. All of that of course has tamed a bit, found equilibrium, and I live it in a manner in my life where, other things contextualized around it, it's not a wild ride nor do people around me feel like they're dealing with a spaceball. Regardless I'm finding out that so many of the personality traits, natural reflexes, chases for sublime beauty in things like music and art, all these things that pragmatist society would call a weakness or vice - not only was virtue and was strength after all but additionally was a thing with real roadmap to it rather than something that I'd be pining away with as my friends and family made grim jokes as I became a lonely old spinner with no wife or kids all because I didn't 'get real' or live by the mullet-man rules of life enough to make society's grade. I finally have not only a healthy framework to express my inner proclivities through but I also have a framework where while I feel like I'm studying things that would make a lot of people's brains bleed I find myself actually becoming more functional and adapted as an adult rather than less as a result of it - which is a possibility of living, again, way off most people's radars.


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26 May 2015, 11:32 pm

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
At one point in time I felt that way somewhat, but the more I read between the lines of the history books and started catching up contextually as well as literally on the nitty gritty of what this world has been in the past, even a couple hundred years ago; I don't think there's ever been a time as good as now to be alive on this planet. I mean that in the sense not only of mans inhumanity to man, the constant warfare, feudalism, and supression of free thought by organized religions but I'm talking about things like the black plague, the largest semetary in Paris having something like a 20 foot groundswell from all the burials, people thinking it was the end times simply walking all over Europe aimlessly with their feet bleeding all over the ground, etc. etc.. In large part because of the black plague it was only in the last few centuries that people started showering or bathing again - prior to that the belief was that the plague was in the water.


In this sense humanity has made advances. European medicine and industrialism in the UK propelled parts of North America and most of Europe into life as we know it, with increased spans, antibiotics, better hygiene, conveniences such as climate control, water treatment plants, various forms of transportation and advances in refrigeration. However we have been plagued with problems that accompany this such as pollution and now concern exists bacteria are becoming resistant to antibiotics.
Sources of fuel might not always be reliable. Fear, unfounded or not, over shortages lingers. Other species humans share the planet with have been threatened by our existence in larger numbers than ever before due to our impact. So there's a serious of drawbacks to how we live and just think only a tiny portion of the world actually lives like this. When the entire world is developed, these problems we see now will become worse.
So, we are not without worries even though we do have a better lifestyle. How long will it last? Is it possible to exist like this for thousands of years? Will civilization return to what it once was when and if resources become depleted? Will the US simply become a jobless society with a low value currency which will slow economic growth in this country and decrease standards of living? It's happening right now, in Europe, too. Americans and Europeans want the factory salaries but not the pollution and toll on the environment. It keeps factories from opening. What's left is a vacuum filled by low paying and government jobs such as social workers, teachers, regulators and clerks. Military employment is paid by the government. A lot of the defense contracting - financed by the government. A great deal of our economy is. So even though construction workers can find work, the government is paying them.
Our warfare casualties are lesser, land ownership greater, sense of freedom increased. All this is true in the West so it is easier to exist at this time but it is not "perfect" and with unresolved issues looming, doesn't look like it is going to be perfect in the future because once some of these are solved, more will crop up to take their place. We can keep improving but can we obtain perfection not that I am a pessimist. The opposite, in fact. I am an optimist!
Another thing to keep in mind, the more time elapses between events like American Civil War, World Wars i & ii and the Vietnam war, the more likely the return of that kind of warfare since people will not have direct experiences with the lessons of those wars and might become more lapse about the lives of soldiers. They will not understand the importance of keeping the casualty count down. The only reason it is so low now is because of activism over the Vietnam War.

Quote:
I remember in reading John Ralston Saul's 'Voltaire's Bastards' that while he not only outlined significant swaths of French, Spanish, British, Canadian, and US political history he also talked about the development of France, talked about how Paris before public sanitation had a mound of feces down the middle of the street, certain people would come with carts to carry it out to bogs in the countryside, stranger still there were peasants with their shacks at the edges of these bogs who'd make a living diving into those bogs hoping to find things like missing jewelry and the like. All of that was even after the late Renaissance. Try on for size thinking about what things were like in time periods previous to that. Greece and Rome had somewhat of a stutter forward in terms of at least no black plague to discourage bathing and had working water but I'd imagine things were only so significantly better.


It still happens in parts of the world and if the economy gets bad, it could be like that here. Where I live, people still collect aluminum cans, though not as much as when I was a kid, and they will go into homes under construction and rip the copper right out of them (yep, stealing.) They take the copper from power stations, too. Since copper is available and at a decent price, they do not have to scavenge in places like graves, dumps and bogs, but desperate people are still trying to recycle metals and thieving copper has been worse seen the economic turn in 2007. It's just the copper's there so people do not have to resort to such sordid tactics but keep in mind, men still work as garbage collectors, corpse preparers, chemical toilet emptiers, medical examiners, plumbers. All these jobs are on the unsavory side and they perform them for money so it's not that different from collecting waste on the street, is it? We just don't want to look at what happens under our noses. Imagine what it is like working at a landfill. The one near here has something like a hundred plastic bags circling in the wind at any given time. It's not that I work there, I have driven past it, and the ones who live in the houses nearby, their yards and houses look like extensions of the land fill with fences made of discarded hub caps and all kinds of junk they scavenged from the landfill. So yep the unsavory layers are here, even in a developed nation, one that some consider the richest in the world.

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I think there's general tendency people have, particularly if going through a rough life or seeing a lot of pain inflicted, to feel like their era is the worst in their century or perhaps within a few centuries - I'd really argue from my own observations that the farther one goes back the worse man's inhumanity to man gets, the worse the bullying gets, the worst the mind-control by stigma becomes (stigma even as a death sentence) and while there may have been a few small islands of good things like Dabrovnik in the middle ages such pinpoints of light as that were surrounded by abject darkness. Just hearing about how the Catholic church higher ups treated each other from the time of the fall of Rome onward to the middle ages it's as if they were still only slowly growing out literal cut-throat assassination politics. In Rome an emperor rarely made it a few years without being assassinated, at the time of the sacking of Jerusalem it was three emperors in rapid succession before Vespatian took power (in fact many would suggest that the three horns in reference to Daniel's 4th beast was exactly that event). In comparison people in the baby-boomer generation still remember quite often exactly where they were and what they were doing when JFK was assassinated.


Advances in medicine. It's the number one thing that has improved our quality of life compared to theirs. Abolition of slavery. Ownership of land. And we have benefited, the problem being, how long will it last? Already talk exists of bacteria that is resistant to antibiotics so if that trend continues, it will undo all those advances made because of antibiotics. They will no longer work. Luckily we have soap and water but what if the water becomes more scarce because so many people are competing for over allocated water sources? See how a step back is needed. We cannot afford to think, well we have all this water because we are living in the best time so we can do whatever we want with it and waste as much as we want. We can water daily our acreages in the middle of the desert, it's fine. People do think that way in this country. In the future what we have now might not be here but the population will continue to increase all over the globe due to advances in medicine. If the water isn't available, they can't keep themselves clean. They get sick, the antibiotics will not work because the bacteria has developed resistance to those available and the one needed costs something like a thousand dollars more. Money is scarce because the currency doesn't have as much value. Huge population, not enough jobs for them all. So, you see? It hangs by a thread only because we think it can continue like this indefinitely. All we need to do is keep procreating and we don't have to worry about anything. It will always be like it is now. Already, many places around the globe have these problems and just because this is America, do not think those same problems can exist here. People are in denial.


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On another topic, Manichaean Gnosticism, don't get me wrong - if the shape of your life, your own emotions, your upbringings, and your longings point you toward this particular system of belief it's a thing between you and your own soul, in that sense it's probably exactly where your soul wants you and I have no interest in debating you out of it because it's not at all my place to. Since that's the case I'll try not to cross the line into persuading you against it, again it would be none of my business to do so, but I still at least prefer to say something on the perceptual issues - like history - just so you aren't in that belief system based on a few common distortions of perspective.


I do not subscribe to their exact methods. I see them as a window into the past. Looking at them could be like looking at the very origins of the Christian tradition even though I am not talking about Christianity as it is practiced, for the most part, today, more a way of grappling with an unjust, brutal world in crises where hope seemed lost. Much of what Christianity started as, I suspect, has been lost and is replaced by strict adherence to the KJV of the Bible and a desire to see theocracies in response to their insecurities, or Catholicism which is rocked by scandals and criminal behavior and has a reputation for being less than stellar through the ages what with people buying up the indulgences and the inquisitions. I am not interested in joining their religion, just examining. I do not like the idea of joining any religion or system of thought.