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Growing Thoughts on a Tree.

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
The communal interchanges that takes place here are each one like a tree. They branch out in all directions such that the seed of each thread (the thread-seeder), produces multifarious branches, directions, as it expands out into new territory pretty much like the branches from the stump of a more traditional tree.

If the one who plants the seed, the thread-seeder, is willing to water it, and prune it, so that unruly branches don't threaten the beauty, or even the existence of the tree, then the tree, once mature, can provide a long-lasting source of beauty and shade for forlorn travelers traveling the same path where the tree was planted.

Case in point is the recent threads discussing Meiosis and Messiah (there was a veritable garden of them over the last month or so). The gardener cross-bred the various trees and their fruits to produce a shade-tree large enough to provide a relaxing rest-stop for anyone now or in the future who might be crossing over similar territory.

The point of bringing this up is what seems like an important relationship between the kinds of dialogues that take place here, and the possibility of producing valuable, edible, fruit, from the interchanges.

Every word in the essay, Meiosis: The Science of Messiah, was produced in the threads discussing that topic which grew here over the last month or so. The gardener merely had to harvest the discussions, clean them up a bit, to make them fit for a larger marketplace of ideas. The spirit, thoughts, work (if their was any) of every person who participated in those threads is alive and well in the essay brought to the market.

I felt compelled to point this out so that should someone one day find one of their ideas being sold in the marketplace of ideas they not reckon me a thief or a bum but merely someone who saw value in what other may have taken for granted and given away too thoughtlessly.



John
 
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PureX

Veteran Member
No one can own an idea. Some try, of course, but it's like trying to capture gravity in a jar, like a firefly.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
No one can own an idea. Some try, of course, but it's like trying to capture gravity in a jar, like a firefly.

. . . Have you heard of a legal concept called a patent? Have you heard of plagiarism? Have you heard of copyright laws? Trademarks?

Some Masons or alchemists might jar you into believing gravity can be caged like a beast of burden if you know the right formula.



John
 

PureX

Veteran Member
. . . Have you heard of a legal concept called a patent? Have you heard of plagiarism? Have you heard of copyright laws? Trademarks?

Some Masons or alchemists might jar you into believing gravity can be caged like a beast of burden if you know the right formula.



John
Those are all about selling ideas for money. Not about stopping anyone from having them. We can control the money flow, but not the idea flow.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Those are all about selling ideas for money. Not about stopping anyone from having them. We can control the money flow, but not the idea flow.

. . . It's easy to stop them from having them. Set a TV in front of them with a six-pack of beer, and some popcorn, maybe a Lazyboy recliner. Ain't a person within a mile of here who wouldn't sell their very soul for the afourmentioned [sic] accoutrements of Eden.



John
 

Treasure Hunter

Well-Known Member
Man...
Another example of how the intellect can be such an obstacle to spiritual development for cognitively gifted people. The parable of Luke 5:36-39 applies here.

With that said, I hope a lot of people read your paper, especially the first half. There is plenty of truth to be gleaned.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
. . . It's easy to stop them from having them. Set a TV in front of them with a six-pack of beer, and some popcorn, maybe a Lazyboy recliner. Ain't a person within a mile of here who wouldn't sell their very soul for the afourmentioned [sic] accoutrements of Eden.

John
We can distract people, but not for long. Needs want to be met. And that drives us to consider ways of doing that. Distraction only works for a little while.

The real reason I've commented, here, is that I object to the idea that humans can control the minds of other humans, against their will. I simply do not believe this is possible, and I think the people who believe it are a huge pain in everyone else's a$$. Religious fundamentalists are very often examples of people who think they can and should be in control of the thoughts of other people. And who are constantly trying to institutionalize that control. They think if they write enough laws, and impose enough monuments of public propaganda, and shout louder than everyone else, they will eventually drive everyone else to acquiesce. But it doesn't ever work, so then they resort to force, and to violence. Which also doesn't work because all those can do is force people to pretend to 'believe'.

Don't blame the TV for the fact that people choose to be distracted. The TV only gave them the option. They are still choosing it.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
Man...
Another example of how the intellect can be such an obstacle to spiritual development for cognitively gifted people. The parable of Luke 5:36-39 applies here.

With that said, I hope a lot of people read your paper, especially the first half. There is plenty of truth to be gleaned.

. . . How are you interpreting the parable in Luke to apply here?



John
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
We can distract people, but not for long. Needs want to be met. And that drives us to consider ways of doing that. Distraction only works for a little while.

The real reason I've commented, here, is that I object to the idea that humans can control the minds of other humans, against their will. I simply do not believe this is possible, and I think the people who believe it are a huge pain in everyone else's a$$. Religious fundamentalists are very often examples of people who think they can and should be in control of the thoughts of other people. And who are constantly trying to institutionalize that control. They think if they write enough laws, and impose enough monuments of public propaganda, and shout louder than everyone else, they will eventually drive everyone else to acquiesce. But it doesn't ever work, so then they resort to force, and to violence. Which also doesn't work because all those can do is force people to pretend to 'believe'.

Don't blame the TV for the fact that people choose to be distracted. The TV only gave them the option. They are still choosing it.

Well said. . . And for the most part I agree.

Where I might beg to differ a bit, is the idea that religious ideologies (fundamentalism) can't control the thoughts of others. In Yuval Noah Harari's recent book, Sapiens, he discusses how the "alpha male" of the Catholic church specifically, and purposely, denies himself the primary privilege of primate alpha males: the opportunity to have sex with the majority of the females and thus father the lion's share (forgive the mixed metaphor) of the next generation's young:

. . . ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been able to change their behavior quickly, transmitting new behaviors to future generations without any need of genetic or environmental change. As a prime example, consider the repeated appearance of childless elites, such as the Catholic priesthood, Buddhist monastic orders and Chinese eunuch bureaucracies. The existence of such elites goes against the most fundamental principles of natural selection, since these dominant members of society willingly give up procreation. Whereas chimpanzee alpha males use their power to have sex with as many females as possible---and consequently sire a large proportion of their troop’s young---the Catholic alpha male abstains completely from sexual intercourse or raising a family. This abstinence does not result from unique environmental conditions such as a severe lack of food or want of potential mates. Nor is it the result of some quirky genetic mutation. The Catholic Church has survived for centuries, not by passing on a celibacy gene from one pope to the next, but by passing on the stories of the New Testament and of Catholic canon law.​

What Professor Harari doesn't address as directly as I would like, is the fundamental point, so to say, of Catholic fundamentalism: Mind, thought, ideas, are the actual germ-cell of the new humanity of the future. The bodies that mother nature took billions of years to perfect, are [clearing through], embarrassingly shoddy in comparison to what Mind will create to house itself in just the next hundred years or so; a twinkling of the eye in cosmic time.

Go to the gym Jimmy. Put on you makeup Mary. . . . But thank you both, I'll work on the muscles in my head, in the perhaps misplaced belief that I'll need them far more than I will need my physical body in a couple hundred years or so.



John
 

Treasure Hunter

Well-Known Member
. . . How are you interpreting the parable in Luke to apply here?



John
The garments we are wearing, our belief system, is not to be patched up using the intellect. Instead, we are to become like children, strip off our garments, and then after we are re-clothed, strip off those garments as well. Children operate by awareness and instinct/desire.

If we drink the old, familiar wine, then we will not drink the new wine. We must fast from the old wine first. When the new wine becomes the old wine, then we must fast from that wine also.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
The garments we are wearing, our belief system, is not to be patched up using the intellect. Instead, we are to become like children, strip off our garments, and then after we are re-clothed, strip off those garments as well. Children operate by awareness and instinct/desire.

If we drink the old, familiar wine, then we will not drink the new wine. We must fast from the old wine first. When the new wine becomes the old wine, then we must fast from that wine also.

. . . This statement begs the question of what the new wine is such that its different from the old? Is it just a newer version of the old, or does it come from a completely different sort of vine?



John
 

Treasure Hunter

Well-Known Member
. . . This statement begs the question of what the new wine is such that its different from the old? Is it just a newer version of the old, or does it come from a completely different sort of vine?



John
We only respond like this when we are still attached to drinking old wine. Similarly, we don’t get to know what we’ll find in the chaotic unknown as long as we still consider staying in the counterfeit Garden.

It’s not about a new belief system replacing an old belief system within the domain of rationality. It’s irrationality vs rationality, truthful blindness vs deceptive vision.

Since we have invited death in — which you have effectively described — we have also invited in the resistance to everlasting life. What makes sense to us, the wide road leading to the wide gate, is not the way. Our desire is the way, but not the desires that are filtered through our concealed values. In that situation, we get what we value packaged with a counterfeit fulfilled desire rather than what we truly desire.
 

Treasure Hunter

Well-Known Member
I want to try to clarify my last post. So much of spiritual development involves going in one direction, then having to cease, and move in the opposite direction in seeming contradiction. In other words, what is true at one phase is often in opposition to what is true for the next phase.

Using rationality to replace an outdated belief system is like a child growing up to adulthood. There is truth in that. I only meant to de-emphasize that truth because that isn’t where most of us get stuck.

Where we get stuck is contradicting that process in order to go from ”adulthood” back to “childhood”, which requires separating from rationality. The child is naive and we learn quickly that naivety leads to pain, but the child is also idealistic which is necessary to be able to aim at our highest desire. Otherwise, the adult’s pragmatism will cause us to become complacent.

As adults, when we begin to intuit our unfulfilled desire, death will concede incremental “progress” to us as long as we maintain our relationship with the rational intellect. This is what we have to rebel against if we are to get unstuck. We do that, not by handing over the reins to the child, but by further including the child so we are able to aim at the transcendent. We also do it by opening ourselves more to the ally of the child which is the conscience.
 
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PureX

Veteran Member
Well said. . . And for the most part I agree.

Where I might beg to differ a bit, is the idea that religious ideologies (fundamentalism) can't control the thoughts of others. In Yuval Noah Harari's recent book, Sapiens, he discusses how the "alpha male" of the Catholic church specifically, and purposely, denies himself the primary privilege of primate alpha males: the opportunity to have sex with the majority of the females and thus father the lion's share (forgive the mixed metaphor) of the next generation's young:

. . . ever since the Cognitive Revolution, Sapiens have been able to change their behavior quickly, transmitting new behaviors to future generations without any need of genetic or environmental change. As a prime example, consider the repeated appearance of childless elites, such as the Catholic priesthood, Buddhist monastic orders and Chinese eunuch bureaucracies. The existence of such elites goes against the most fundamental principles of natural selection, since these dominant members of society willingly give up procreation. Whereas chimpanzee alpha males use their power to have sex with as many females as possible---and consequently sire a large proportion of their troop’s young---the Catholic alpha male abstains completely from sexual intercourse or raising a family. This abstinence does not result from unique environmental conditions such as a severe lack of food or want of potential mates. Nor is it the result of some quirky genetic mutation. The Catholic Church has survived for centuries, not by passing on a celibacy gene from one pope to the next, but by passing on the stories of the New Testament and of Catholic canon law.​

What Professor Harari doesn't address as directly as I would like, is the fundamental point, so to say, of Catholic fundamentalism: Mind, thought, ideas, are the actual germ-cell of the new humanity of the future. The bodies that mother nature took billions of years to perfect, are [clearing through], embarrassingly shoddy in comparison to what Mind will create to house itself in just the next hundred years or so; a twinkling of the eye in cosmic time.

Go to the gym Jimmy. Put on you makeup Mary. . . . But thank you both, I'll work on the muscles in my head, in the perhaps misplaced belief that I'll need them far more than I will need my physical body in a couple hundred years or so.
I think Harari's observation is off. Even if the pope and all the bishops were alpha males, and sired as many babies of the 'tribe' as they could, they still would not have come close to genetically dominating the tribe. And the priests are certainly not all alphas, as they exists to 'serve', not dominate. The tribe is simply too big, and too diverse, for that sort of Darwinist effect to apply.

And even if it did apply, the result would not be obedient offspring, necessarily. The result would be more likely be increased alpha inclinations, which tend not to lead to obedience, but to challenge for dominance. Their offspring may well have been more trouble than they were worth, from the church's perspective.
 

John D. Brey

Well-Known Member
I think Harari's observation is off. Even if the pope and all the bishops were alpha males, and sired as many babies of the 'tribe' as they could, they still would not have come close to genetically dominating the tribe. And the priests are certainly not all alphas, as they exists to 'serve', not dominate. The tribe is simply too big, and too diverse, for that sort of Darwinist effect to apply.

And even if it did apply, the result would not be obedient offspring, necessarily. The result would be more likely be increased alpha inclinations, which tend not to lead to obedience, but to challenge for dominance. Their offspring may well have been more trouble than they were worth, from the church's perspective.

I think Harari's point, and mine, is that whereas in the past spreading one's genes was the closest thing to immortality one could achieve, now, we know that spreading one's memes, ideas, ideologies, religious beliefs, is more potent by far than spreading genes.

The world is under the sway of Jesus and Paul's thoughts far more than it's under the sway of any two people's genes. Western Civilization is a construct founded on Jesus and Paul's interpretation of the Tanakh. Their memes, ideas, have been more fruitful, and powerful, than any gene-line.

Jesus has been more fruitful, by orders of magnitude, than Abraham, even though he (Jesus) kept his gene-spreader sheathed his whole life.

There's a new replicator. And it will lead to a new humanity. The days of the gene are numbered. The new replicator will soon be fashioning its own body out of non-biological materials that aren't subject to want or decay. Hope to see you in one. . . I have my order in, and it's being manufactured as we speak.



John
 
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Thief

Rogue Theologian
I felt compelled to point this out so that should someone one day find one of their ideas being sold in the marketplace of ideas they not reckon me a thief or a bum but merely someone who saw value in what other may have taken for granted and given away too thoughtlessly.
like the French army cape I bought as a teenager
trimmed it so I could get my arms out and about

and years later see the SAME idea on a clothing rack
made of thinner wool
and priced 10x the money I paid for the one I had
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
or looking through the bundle and save selections
of a movie sell for view app on tv

and there it was......John Wick movies bundled for the lesser price

and his face photo shopped unto a black rimmed clock
for the sales pitch

note my avatar
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
Have you heard of copyright laws?
yeah well.....this Forum sent me a notice
that I have copy right

but I cannot possess my postings
the search buttons don't work that well

and even when I DO find my stuff
I can't drag and drop the text to my computer

or anything else to have what I have written
 

PureX

Veteran Member
I think Harari's point, and mine, is that whereas in the past spreading one's genes was the closest thing to immortality one could achieve, now, we know that spreading one's memes, ideas, ideologies, religious beliefs, is more potent by far than spreading genes.

The world is under the sway of Jesus and Paul's thoughts far more than it's under the sway of any two people's genes. Western Civilization is a construct founded on Jesus and Paul's interpretation of the Tanakh. Their memes, ideas, have been more fruitful, and powerful, than any gene-line.

Jesus has been more fruitful, by orders of magnitude, than Abraham, even though he (Jesus) kept his gene-spreader sheathed his whole life.

There's a new replicator. And it will lead to a new humanity. The days of the gene are numbered. The new replicator will soon be fashioning its own body out of non-biological materials that aren't subject to want or decay. Hope to see you in one. . . I have my order in, and it's being manufactured as we speak.
I think it's more about control than immortality. I think what we humans want more than anything is control over our own destinies, and unfortunately we think that means we need to be able to control everything and everyone else. Religions talk and talk about self-control, but their intention is to gain control of everyone else.
 

Thief

Rogue Theologian
The communal interchanges that takes place here are each one like a tree. They branch out in all directions such that the seed of each thread (the thread-seeder), produces multifarious branches, directions, as it expands out into new territory pretty much like the branches from the stump of a more traditional tree.

If the one who plants the seed, the thread-seeder, is willing to water it, and prune it, so that unruly branches don't threaten the beauty, or even the existence of the tree, then the tree, once mature, can provide a long-lasting source of beauty and shade for forlorn travelers traveling the same path where the tree was planted.

Case in point is the recent threads discussing Meiosis and Messiah (there was a veritable garden of them over the last month or so). The gardener cross-bred the various trees and their fruits to produce a shade-tree large enough to provide a relaxing rest-stop for anyone now or in the future who might be crossing over similar territory.

The point of bringing this up is what seems like an important relationship between the kinds of dialogues that take place here, and the possibility of producing valuable, edible, fruit, from the interchanges.

Every word in the essay, Meiosis: The Science of Messiah, was produced in the threads discussing that topic which grew here over the last month or so. The gardener merely had to harvest the discussions, clean them up a bit, to make them fit for a larger marketplace of ideas. The spirit, thoughts, work (if their was any) of every person who participated in those threads is alive and well in the essay brought to the market.

I felt compelled to point this out so that should someone one day find one of their ideas being sold in the marketplace of ideas they not reckon me a thief or a bum but merely someone who saw value in what other may have taken for granted and given away too thoughtlessly.



John
I wasn't ignoring your op

just ranting

but to answer your op........it is written
what was freely given
must in return be ......freely given

I can't say .....what I hold to my own.....AS my own
was paid for
my handiwork is my own creation
and perhaps you can see that.......if you have been here reading my postwork

I really am a rogue theologian
and what my Lord has dealt into my hand.....
no one should claim otherwise
 
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