the land compared to our world

[shadowbinding shoe]

Do you believe small children that are ignorant about the existence of God have no love and beauty in their world? They just mechanically seek food sources and protection until the concept of God is revealed to them?

Of course small children have no understanding of love and beauty - that's why they pull the wings of butterflys.

(My the way - you focus way to much on the God thing. My argument is about the fundamental difference between the materealist and idealist world views.)

You're the one who brought up God in your post. Platonic ideals don't need a God to exist.

So I take it you despise kids? Beside the fact that you seem to be talking about morals when the subject was perception of beauty and love, you need to add the word some to that statement you made.

[Orlion]

Keep it civil, guys. I don't mind discussion straying from the strict confines of the Chronicles, but try and keep some connection to them. If you want to simply talk about Platonic worlds and perceptions of beauty outside of this connection, take it to the Close.


Nooo! Not the seventh pit of hell!!!

[Vraith]

Keep it civil, guys. I don't mind discussion straying from the strict confines of the Chronicles, but try and keep some connection to them. If you want to simply talk about Platonic worlds and perceptions of beauty outside of this connection, take it to the Close.


Nooo! Not the seventh pit of hell!!!

Hah! to paraphrase the current media: There's a THREAD for that!

But, as the master of yanking drifts back on topic:
I think it's pretty dang important to note that in an essential way, all the troubles of the Land [especially the threats to beauty and love] are intimately and fundamentally caused by the imposition of the Ideal on the non-ideal world inside the Arch.

[Cambo]

Keep it civil, guys. I don't mind discussion straying from the strict confines of the Chronicles, but try and keep some connection to them. If you want to simply talk about Platonic worlds and perceptions of beauty outside of this connection, take it to the Close.


Nooo! Not the seventh pit of hell!!!

Hah! to paraphrase the current media: There's a THREAD for that!

But, as the master of yanking drifts back on topic:
I think it's pretty dang important to note that in an essential way, all the troubles of the Land [especially the threats to beauty and love] are intimately and fundamentally caused by the imposition of the Ideal on the non-ideal world inside the Arch.

Interesting...elaborate?

Peter, I don't think I can reply to you in depth while staying remotely on topic, so hopefully I'll see you in the seventh pit of hell. (see vraith's post above)

[peter]

So I take it you despise kids?

Of course I don't despise kids - I'm just not naive enough to believe that their conception of things such as beauty, truth and love is as fully formed as those of adults - hell, those things are not truly understood untill life has honed ones aesthetic sense almost into old age! Show me a 16 yo who can appreciate Wagners Ring Cycle or Shakespears Hamlet or come to that who doesn't get bored on a car jorney through the mountains.

[peter]

Peter, I don't think I can reply to you in depth while staying remotely on topic, so hopefully I'll see you in the seventh pit of hell. (see vraith's post above)

I sincerely hope not Cambo - that, if my memory serves me correctly, is the one for suicides!

[thewormoftheworld'send]

So I take it you despise kids?

Of course I don't despise kids - I'm just not naive enough to believe that their conception of things such as beauty, truth and love is as fully formed as those of adults - hell, those things are not truly understood untill life has honed ones aesthetic sense almost into old age! Show me a 16 yo who can appreciate Wagners Ring Cycle or Shakespears Hamlet or come to that who doesn't get bored on a car jorney through the mountains.

...And I'll show you an Emo!

[peter]

So I take it you despise kids?

Of course I don't despise kids - I'm just not naive enough to believe that their conception of things such as beauty, truth and love is as fully formed as those of adults - hell, those things are not truly understood untill life has honed ones aesthetic sense almost into old age! Show me a 16 yo who can appreciate Wagners Ring Cycle or Shakespears Hamlet or come to that who doesn't get bored on a car jorney through the mountains.

...And I'll show you an Emo!

And are Emo's noted for thier elevated levels of aesthetic sensitivity then?

[Lord Zombiac]

My brother understood Shakespeare, read several of his plays, and could recite quatrains of the bard at the age of six!
I'm supposed to be smarter than him somehow-- yet all I ever did was smoke pot and play guitar!

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Of course I don't despise kids - I'm just not naive enough to believe that their conception of things such as beauty, truth and love is as fully formed as those of adults - hell, those things are not truly understood untill life has honed ones aesthetic sense almost into old age! Show me a 16 yo who can appreciate Wagners Ring Cycle or Shakespears Hamlet or come to that who doesn't get bored on a car jorney through the mountains.

...And I'll show you an Emo!

And are Emo's noted for thier elevated levels of aesthetic sensitivity then?

There is an all-round sensitivity to this type:

www.luv-emo.com/

The term for the teenagers who listen emocore is emo kids. The society thinks about them as failures; they are not strong enough to hide their emotions, they're sensitive, shy, introverted, and often quiet. Usually, Emo kids like to express their feeling writing poems about their problems with depression, confusion, and anger; all because the world fails to understand them. Emo poetry uses a combination of any of: a highly emotional tone, stream of consciousness writing, a simple (ABAB) or nonexistent rhyme scheme, references to the flesh, especially the heart, heavy use of dark or depressing adjectives, and concern over the mutability of time, love or both.

An Emo quote:
www.emo-corner.com/what-is-emo/

I write tons of poetry,and I'm in middle school.I am not ashamed to say I like girls,ever since I was 9,I have liked girls.I can't help how I feel! But over the summer,I've changed a bit.I'm not AS sensitive,but I still am.I don't let people put me down.Emo is just about being sensitive and expressing how you feel about something.If you get suicidal thoughts,talk to someone,trust me!Don't make the mistake I did.I am a lot better off without blades.

[peter]

Good post WOTWE, but I can't help feeling that this sounds like normal teenage angst to me rather than the fully matured sensitivity that comes almost as a by-product of increasing age and experience - hellfire, (bit of TC there to keep it on topic - not) age has little else to recommend it! I'm not descrying the feelings of the young or saying that they have no value - just that (with exeptional cases aside) I doubt that most have the emotional depth to truly take full value from the more complex or demanding aesthetic experience. This is only in the main built up by the successive experience of life with it's tragedy and pathos.

Incidentally, I read a book by Harold Bloom (The Western Cannon) in which talking of the poems of one American poet - either Whitman or Dickinson, I don't recall which - he said that the intelectual depth of the poems was such that the value of the aesthetic experience would be forever unavailable to many people because (to put it bluntly) they just would not have the intellect to grasp it. Nothing could change this - it was a sad fact of life that the aesthetic experience of art (like the beauty of mathematics at it's highest level) in it's upper reaches, was forever closed to the bulk of people. Much as my pride rails against such an idea (because I suspect I am one of those unfortunates who will never reach the summit) I think it's probably true

[thewormoftheworld'send]

Good post WOTWE, but I can't help feeling that this sounds like normal teenage angst to me rather than the fully matured sensitivity that comes almost as a by-product of increasing age and experience - hellfire, (bit of TC there to keep it on topic - not) age has little else to recommend it! I'm not descrying the feelings of the young or saying that they have no value - just that (with exeptional cases aside) I doubt that most have the emotional depth to truly take full value from the more complex or demanding aesthetic experience. This is only in the main built up by the successive experience of life with it's tragedy and pathos.

I'm not sure what "descrying" means in this context. But there is a personality type that could be called emo. (See text at that page starting at "Individualist, Artist, Over-Analyzer, Mystic or Melodramatic Elitist.")
Angst comes out in different ways, and this description at the link is normal for the teenaged Type 4.

Incidentally, I read a book by Harold Bloom (The Western Cannon) in which talking of the poems of one American poet - either Whitman or Dickinson, I don't recall which - he said that the intelectual depth of the poems was such that the value of the aesthetic experience would be forever unavailable to many people because (to put it bluntly) they just would not have the intellect to grasp it. Nothing could change this - it was a sad fact of life that the aesthetic experience of art (like the beauty of mathematics at it's highest level) in it's upper reaches, was forever closed to the bulk of people. Much as my pride rails against such an idea (because I suspect I am one of those unfortunates who will never reach the summit) I think it's probably true

I believe this is the Bloom quote you were thinking of:

It is an unhappy paradox that we have never got Whitman right, because he is a very difficult, immensely subtle poet who is usually at work doing the precise opposite of what he asserts himself to be doing.

[Vraith]

Good post WOTWE, but I can't help feeling that this sounds like normal teenage angst to me rather than the fully matured sensitivity that comes almost as a by-product of increasing age and experience - hellfire, (bit of TC there to keep it on topic - not) age has little else to recommend it! I'm not descrying the feelings of the young or saying that they have no value - just that (with exeptional cases aside) I doubt that most have the emotional depth to truly take full value from the more complex or demanding aesthetic experience. This is only in the main built up by the successive experience of life with it's tragedy and pathos.

I'm not sure what "descrying" means in this context. But there is a personality type that could be called emo. (See text at that page starting at "Individualist, Artist, Over-Analyzer, Mystic or Melodramatic Elitist.")
Angst comes out in different ways, and this description at the link is normal for the teenaged Type 4.

Incidentally, I read a book by Harold Bloom (The Western Cannon) in which talking of the poems of one American poet - either Whitman or Dickinson, I don't recall which - he said that the intelectual depth of the poems was such that the value of the aesthetic experience would be forever unavailable to many people because (to put it bluntly) they just would not have the intellect to grasp it. Nothing could change this - it was a sad fact of life that the aesthetic experience of art (like the beauty of mathematics at it's highest level) in it's upper reaches, was forever closed to the bulk of people. Much as my pride rails against such an idea (because I suspect I am one of those unfortunates who will never reach the summit) I think it's probably true

I believe this is the Bloom quote you were thinking of:

It is an unhappy paradox that we have never got Whitman right, because he is a very difficult, immensely subtle poet who is usually at work doing the precise opposite of what he asserts himself to be doing.

Interesting stuff. Heh...the Land, Emo, enneagrams, and aesthetics all tied up.
Peter, I think the difficulty with what you propose is this: for the great majority they learn not a refinement of the aesthetic, but an isolation from it, either by rationalizing/intellectualizing, or by shutting out/turning off or desensitization.
I have a love/hate with Bloom [in my limited exposure to him]...he's right basically in his conclusions [as what he says of Whitman], but wrong...or incomplete and narrow, anyway...in laying the blame/assigning the causes. He also elevates the role of intellect, and denigrates the experiential/non-rational too much. [Reminds me a bit of certain kinds of Shakespearean scholars that worship the texts, and dismiss the performances]. Referring back to something I said earlier: he's basically Idealist at root [again, from my limited knowledge of his work].
Now, for my next trick, I magically put us back on topic! Or at least something similar to on topic.
Many of the troubles of the Land [which are really extensions/extremes of the real world] are rooted in the conflict of Ideal with non-Ideal. LF, [and now, a nameless other that I'll leave alone cuz it's not a LC thread]. IF the whole Ideal were in the world [the Creator as well as LF] it wouldn't matter so much...be not just a different story, but a different KIND of story. Same if LF was "outside" where he belongs. But what we have is not a world going through "natural" troubles, but un-, super-, and/or non-natural ones. And the "good guys" and "their" power is a specific sort of non-ideal...it is axiological [ethics and aesthetics] based on individual/experiential/PASSION, vs the absolute structures of the Ideal LF. Even the Elohim, who have a certain kind of immortality, and always make seemingly Absolute judgements, are axiological beings. And it matters, of course, to my thoughts on this theme, that Despite is not a passion/emotion [though you can arrive at despite through rationalizing emotional triggers...hate, despair, mostly]. It is an Ideal, absolute, intellectual judgement. We act out the ideal/non-ideal conflict in our world in almost every human activity. We just don't have a concrete/present target like LF to engage with.

[peter]

Wow Vraith. I'm not going to pretend that I get all that - I think it may be an example of just what HB was talking about - but I will make an observation regarding the development of the aesthetic sensibility in any given individual. It does seem to me that where we finish up in terms of our 'receptivity' to the aesthetic experience is so dependant upon the sum total of what we have been surrounded with, what we have experienced, what we have felt to date (ie the totallity of our lives and everything in them), that not only would it be impossible for one to direct how this experience would be for oneself, but that it will be different for every inividual who experiences it. For this reason I have a problem with the idea that people can become desensitised or indeed isolated from the aesthetic in any 'learned' way (conscious or otherwise). It seems to me that the experience is what it is - if this makes sense.

[Orlion]

Had to check to make sure... and Harold Bloom is the commentator in my book of Blake poetry... I like him

But I think we're reaching a heart of the issue of the regular post. We have this emotional beauty embodied in the Land, that we could enjoy for its sake, however that's not the only reaction. We can have cerebral reactions, as has been demonstrated in this topic or also through Covenant's reactions to the Land (at least, initially)

[Vraith]

Wow Vraith. I'm not going to pretend that I get all that - I think it may be an example of just what HB was talking about - but I will make an observation regarding the development of the aesthetic sensibility in any given individual. It does seem to me that where we finish up in terms of our 'receptivity' to the aesthetic experience is so dependant upon the sum total of what we have been surrounded with, what we have experienced, what we have felt to date (ie the totallity of our lives and everything in them), that not only would it be impossible for one to direct how this experience would be for oneself, but that it will be different for every inividual who experiences it. For this reason I have a problem with the idea that people can become desensitised or indeed isolated from the aesthetic in any 'learned' way (conscious or otherwise). It seems to me that the experience is what it is - if this makes sense.

It does make sense. And it's true that what you experience [aesthetically or otherwise] IS what you experience. But your life/society/culture/basic attitudes filter out what comes in to be experienced. If we have a bad experience of love, we set up attitudes/filters that alter how we experience...or even allow...love after. We are all [or at least the vast majority] born with at least some potential for aesthetic experience. But it is not a valuable trait in the modern world [except for some narrow kinds of it], and many filters are established that limit our ability to experience it...or to consider it important. Just like, growing up, my city cousins reaction to a hint of manure smell on a breeze was just "yuck," but for me carried all kinds of information about when/where/what was going on...and not at all yucky unless it was coming from having stepped in it. Even today, driving an interstate, the smell is a good smell, when it comes.
Long ago I wrote a post about health sense, showing that even poor us are born to have it [though not to the extent of the Land's peeps]...but it is shamed/ridiculed/dismissed to such an extent that we might as well not have it...and when, once in a while, something somehow breaks through the filters, we don't understand what it is.
edited to add: and the ideal/metaphysical LF is structurally opposed to the passion aesthetic of Earthpower...one limits, defines, one expands/opens possibilities.

[peter]

Thankyou for your courtesy as a 'Watcher' Vraith (Interesting title that, the significance of which re the Apocrypha only now strikes me. Weren't the Watchers (or Grigori) the fallen angels who mated with human females to give rise to the Nephilim). You will no doubt be able to tell that this is a subject where (and it does happen) I am reaching the limits of my ability to coherently express the concepts that have formed in my mind so that their true meaning is preserved. These deficits, so clear to me when I re-read what I have written cannot have escaped you and I again thankyou for your kindness in not 'rubbing my nose' in them.

That the 'Aesthetic' is devalued in our modern world is an undeniable and tragic fact - much of the richness of existance is lost thereby, and your comments re the 'filtering' make absolute sense. The cow dung analogy is perfect for me in that having spent half a life involved with agriculture I can even tell the health of a group of cattle from the smell of their manure! The latent health sense that we all posses should come as no suprise to us - which of us has never experienced that thing of feeling we are being watched only to turn around and find it so. We are picking up subliminal/subconscious signals all the time that our brains are registering even if they are not allowing them to intrude at a concious level. That this ability is of even greater significance to our animal cousins is perfectly accepted - the fabled 'Sixth Sense' of animals is surely no more than a facet of the health sense that SRD transposes in to his human protagonists.

[Barnetto]

I am afraid in your answer Zarathustra you have already killed any beauty our world posseses. For your materialist belief system there is no such thing as beauty or love - just random existence possesing only things that furthur the prospects of bundles of uncaring genes and that have the cheap illusion of those things that you vaunt so much in your answer. For your system the creation has no purpose, no meaning - it just brutely exists like some thick witted skinhead forever going forward with no God, no end point of glory. You cannot introduce beauty and love into your system without aknowledging them as illusory. You cannot have it both ways.

Gosh, Peter. I cannot possibly express how much I disagree with you!

As an atheist, I find a profound sense of wonder and beauty in the existence of the natural world (on astronomical and local scales). This is only increased by the "knowlege" that it all arises (randomly) out of the interaction of a limited number of physical laws and the operation of natural selection. Personally, my eyes were only opened to this sense of wonder and beauty when I was able to throw off the shackles of a purposive (religious, in this case) credo. The idea that there is any form of outside "creation" has the opposite effect on my world view ie it diminishes that sense of beauty and wonder.

I do find the assumption that someone who accepts a "purpose" or "meaning" to existence must necessarily be able to appreciate beauty and love more than someone who doesn't worrying. It seems to assume that my view of the universe and existence is objectively lesser than someone who accepts an (outside?) purpose and meaning? Isn't that in itself a greater arrogance than you accuse Dawkins of?

Apologies - I'm sure this thread has moved on by now - and don't get me wrong, I certainly wouldn't seek to deny that your own perception of beauty/love may benefit from the acceptance of meaning and purpose in existence. But I can't accept that this is something you can apply some objective measure too in the way you appear to have done!

(And I do feel that the terms of your analogy are a bit of a give away as to the subjective bias you bring to the concept!)

As to the Land's Healthsense, I marvel as much at how the people of the Land were able to overcome the mundane, the everyday, the prosaic so as not to become inured to the Land's beauty as much as the existence of that beauty itself.

[peter]

Barnetto, Hmmmmm.

We sit in a magic room together viewing all of creation in it's entirety. We are both reduced to tears - profoundly affected is too small a phrase, no we are quite literally blown away by the staggering, indescribable wonder of THE CREATION in the purity, beauty and not least impossibility of it's existence. This for you is just quite the 'The Greatest Show On Earth' there is nothing, can be nothing, will never be anything better.
For me it is almost exactly the same (hell, I'm in tears too!), exept ther is one small difference (or big one depending on your perspective). For me there is a reason I am there in that room. I am the second hand without which the one hand does not clap. I am the ear without which the falling tree in the forrest makes no sound. I am the 'Joy' that 'is in the ears that hear'. I am the eyes through which THE CREATION see's itself, the ears through which it hears itself. This is my purpouse. This is the reason for my being here. Without me THE CREATION cannot know itself. Should I not feel humbled by this role, this responsibility, and should I not try to pass on the knowledge of it to all, to any who will listen.

Barnetto, if this is my arrogance then I own to it. Is my view better than yours, I don't know. To you I am deluded by my clinging to something more than the physical world gives us - and thus perhaps I am reduced. But I cannot (willnot?) have it so. There must.... there must.....be a purpose.

Qed

[Cambo]

*jumps back in feet first*

Must one of you be reduced? Must the atheist be spiritually shallow or the believer deluded?

I think it's more likely that whatever answers an individual gains to these questions of ultimate meaning are his and his alone. They are the solutions to the dilemma of his existence that allow him to fulfil his life in the best, sometimes the only, way possible for him.

In the first trilogy, Covenant's Unbelief was absolutely necessary to him. It was a cornerstone of his identity. If he let go of it, he would have lost much of himself. And it enabled him to save the Land. Covenant's Eye of the Paradox required both Unbelief and love in order to create the opening to wild magic. Unbelief was essential not only to the meaning of his life, but to his redemption.

I am no longer an atheist, but I was for a long time. That was my most meaningful answer at that point in my life. I could have been otherwise, but it would not have been beneficial to me as a person. Only after I went through some other essential changes did I develop my personal spiritual beliefs. Similarly, I could not now embrace Christianity. That framework simply doesn't function for me. But am I lesser for it? Absolutely not.