Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Sun Feb 13, 2011 2:35 pm**

Murrin wrote:Why must things have meaning?

What do you mean?

and

What do YOU mean?

I could post something like:

" x,chfktg;pltyrjdcfhnbfdbpcn,
rd04jn4nf99dsl;"

to prove....uh, that I can produce something without meaning. But in general, we post hoping that there is something transcendent that can be grasped by others; the miracle of rational thought and communication of it.

Posted: **Sun Feb 13, 2011 4:10 pm**

rusmeister wrote:
Fist and Faith wrote:
rusmeister wrote: Well, I think not. You see your meaning now. Where is your now a moment after your death? Where is your meaning?

The most common response is "in my children" or something of that sort, which just bypasses the obvious fact that the same thing must befall all of us, including our descendants. It's like answering "What's the purpose of a hammer?" with "To make more hammers".

But maybe your answer is different. So far I still see meaninglessness. If we are all dead - and we are in that sense, in that ability to see one second beyond death - and that is all, oblivion, then nothing means anything. Even the "now" means nothing. The "now" is gone, and with it, the meaning. Might as well never have been.
We are still in complete agreement. Where is my now a moment after my death? Where is my meaning? They no longer exist. Of course you still see meaninglessness. That's the name of the thread, eh? There is no meaning that second beyond death. Might as well never have been. The only kind of meaning is the transient kind. While there is a now. Then it's gone.

I don't see what we disagree about.
I say that "now" therefore means nothing, as ultimately there IS no "now". The transience of now means that it does not exist outside of eternity. As a phenomenon within time and limited to that, its very existence is illusory. You seem to be insisting that meaning itself must be transitory. That is self-contradiction. We cannot speak of things "meaning" anything - of a definite sense that can be communicated - unless they have some kind of transcendence. "Lex" means "law" in Latin - a dead language, by the way. Yet it MEANS "law", wherever we encounter it, not "meant" law;any beings at any time that encounter it, if they learn its meaning, will find that it STILL means that. An ancient hieroglyphic or rune means something, even if we do not know what it means. If Trell married Atiaran, that means he did not marry Taramantha. And so on.

As "now" therefore means nothing, there is no meaning in existence. If it might as well have never been, then it HAS never been.

Only we reject that - most of us are not so blinded as to accept that self-contradiction between what we know with our senses and heart, and the logical conclusion. We DO feel that things mean something; that they mean something beyond our mere subjective existence, and would mean the same things if I did not exist at all; in a word, that meaning is transcendent.

I think you cut off the logical train which continues relentlessly on to that conclusion of meaninglessness right now just before the train makes that fatal collision. The thought stops just short of it. I also think you'll go on defending that contradiction of now both meaning something and ceasing to mean something, and don't wish to go ten, let alone a hundred rounds over what ought to be obvious.

But you are wrong. I exist now. Regardless of the fact that I won't exist in X years. Regardless of the fact that nobody will remember me in X+ years. Regardless of the fact that my life will have meant anything to the universe. The fact that you could not take joy in such an existence while it is in existence doesn't mean that others cannot. The fact that you can't even see more than one set of tracks does not mean there is not another. My train goes down another. What you perceive as contradiction is not. Just because I don't fall into depression, or insanity, or whatever, from riding that track doesn't mean I'm not really on that track. It just means I am perceiving what you do not. And your inability to understand and refusal to accept that does not mean it is not exactly as I say it is.

Posted: **Sun Feb 13, 2011 5:35 pm**

I guess a better question would have been "Why must things have purpose?", but to be honest I don't think it's really worth much trying to go down that route, so you can disregard that question.

It might be worth looking at this side, though:

rusmeister wrote:But maybe your answer is different. So far I still see meaninglessness. If we are all dead - and we are in that sense, in that ability to see one second beyond death - and that is all, oblivion, then nothing means anything. Even the "now" means nothing. The "now" is gone, and with it, the meaning. Might as well never have been.

This position from you, I think, can be boiled down to a simple fallacy: "Nothing" is better than "not-everything". If you don't continue to exist forever beyond death, then it's not worth existing at all - it's a joke, a false argument, and I doubt anyone could justify the position that nothing is better than something.

I can understand that it's easy to fall into this, thinking that if nothing remains after to appreciate what came before, then what was the point? But here is the answer to this: You cannot control your own existance. You cannot prevent yourself from existing, it is not something that is in your control. This is what leads to the conclusion that it does not matter what comes after, or if nothing does. We are here, now, and we might as well treat it like it matters regardless of whether it does or not. You can't choose for your existence to have purpose, but you can choose to act as though it does.

Not to mention the countless others who have to go through the same and whose brief existences can be made better or worse by that of those before them.

Posted: **Sun Feb 13, 2011 5:43 pm**

Fist and Faith wrote:
rusmeister wrote:
Fist and Faith wrote: We are still in complete agreement. Where is my now a moment after my death? Where is my meaning? They no longer exist. Of course you still see meaninglessness. That's the name of the thread, eh? There is no meaning that second beyond death. Might as well never have been. The only kind of meaning is the transient kind. While there is a now. Then it's gone.

I don't see what we disagree about.
I say that "now" therefore means nothing, as ultimately there IS no "now". The transience of now means that it does not exist outside of eternity. As a phenomenon within time and limited to that, its very existence is illusory. You seem to be insisting that meaning itself must be transitory. That is self-contradiction. We cannot speak of things "meaning" anything - of a definite sense that can be communicated - unless they have some kind of transcendence. "Lex" means "law" in Latin - a dead language, by the way. Yet it MEANS "law", wherever we encounter it, not "meant" law;any beings at any time that encounter it, if they learn its meaning, will find that it STILL means that. An ancient hieroglyphic or rune means something, even if we do not know what it means. If Trell married Atiaran, that means he did not marry Taramantha. And so on.

As "now" therefore means nothing, there is no meaning in existence. If it might as well have never been, then it HAS never been.

Only we reject that - most of us are not so blinded as to accept that self-contradiction between what we know with our senses and heart, and the logical conclusion. We DO feel that things mean something; that they mean something beyond our mere subjective existence, and would mean the same things if I did not exist at all; in a word, that meaning is transcendent.

I think you cut off the logical train which continues relentlessly on to that conclusion of meaninglessness right now just before the train makes that fatal collision. The thought stops just short of it. I also think you'll go on defending that contradiction of now both meaning something and ceasing to mean something, and don't wish to go ten, let alone a hundred rounds over what ought to be obvious.
But you are wrong. I exist now. Regardless of the fact that I won't exist in X years. Regardless of the fact that nobody will remember me in X+ years. Regardless of the fact that my life will have meant anything to the universe. The fact that you could not take joy in such an existence while it is in existence doesn't mean that others cannot. The fact that you can't even see more than one set of tracks does not mean there is not another. My train goes down another. What you perceive as contradiction is not. Just because I don't fall into depression, or insanity, or whatever, from riding that track doesn't mean I'm not really on that track. It just means I am perceiving what you do not. And your inability to understand and refusal to accept that does not mean it is not exactly as I say it is.

If one is on a train which is on tracks that come to an end at the edge of a cliff, one may be able to take joy in the ride out of blissful ignorance. The gloomy fellow who sees the cliff and puts his mind to thinking how to save himself and others on the train, including the ones who don't know - and may even not want to know) is not 'unable to understand' the gaiety of his fellow passengers. He does understand. But he also sees the cliff, and does not want to die himself, or even leave the other passengers to die, like Batman and Ras al Ghul in "Batman Begins".

Eat, drink, and be merry, was the ancient hedonist philosophy. It ended in despair, and when this was finally and utterly realized, Christianity spread like wildfire. Hedonism, like materialism, works until it no longer works. When the hopelessness and despair of it are finally realized, its adherents are ripe picking for an ascetic faith that offers hope. (Islam certainly succeeded in the lands that did not accept Christianity.)

Posted: **Sun Feb 13, 2011 7:29 pm**

And yet, I don't despair. Your inability to see the other set of tracks that lead away from the cliff does not make me unable to see them. It's not even me calling it paradox and you calling it contradiction. It's neither paradox nor contradiction to find meaning in the now. This has also been understood by quite a few taoists and zen folks. Perhaps those who see it and do despair - those to whom the thought of non-existence brings terror - must embrace a faith like yours. But those who do not despair need not. Life is what it is; and it ends when it ends. There is no despair in that. Repeating that no eternal meaning means there cannot be meaning now is just nonsense. I do not agree. And I am the final authority on what is meaningful to me. You do not have the power to pound despair into me, and you do not have the authority to define things as you want them so that I must fall into despair.

And I'm rather confused by your motivation. As I've said many times, I have no desire to take your worldview from you. I'm not arguing that my way is the objective truth of existence. I believe it is, but I have no proof. It's just what I've seen and felt every moment of my life. But I'm not trying to make you believe it. I'm just saying there is a worldview that you do not understand. What's wrong with that? Do you honestly think you understand all worldviews as thoroughly as all people who hold them? You do not, and mine is one that you do not. Why are you so determined to convince me that I must despair? Is your faith weakened by my existence? Can you not accept that others do not feel as you do without it causing you to question what you feel? What's this all about?

Posted: **Mon Feb 14, 2011 1:42 am**

Fist and Faith wrote:And yet, I don't despair. Your inability to see the other set of tracks that lead away from the cliff does not make me unable to see them. It's not even me calling it paradox and you calling it contradiction. It's neither paradox nor contradiction to find meaning in the now. This has also been understood by quite a few taoists and zen folks. Perhaps those who see it and do despair - those to whom the thought of non-existence brings terror - must embrace a faith like yours. But those who do not despair need not. Life is what it is; and it ends when it ends. There is no despair in that. Repeating that no eternal meaning means there cannot be meaning now is just nonsense. I do not agree. And I am the final authority on what is meaningful to me. You do not have the power to pound despair into me, and you do not have the authority to define things as you want them so that I must fall into despair.

And I'm rather confused by your motivation. As I've said many times, I have no desire to take your worldview from you. I'm not arguing that my way is the objective truth of existence. I believe it is, but I have no proof. It's just what I've seen and felt every moment of my life. But I'm not trying to make you believe it. I'm just saying there is a worldview that you do not understand. What's wrong with that? Do you honestly think you understand all worldviews as thoroughly as all people who hold them? You do not, and mine is one that you do not. Why are you so determined to convince me that I must despair? Is your faith weakened by my existence? Can you not accept that others do not feel as you do without it causing you to question what you feel? What's this all about?

OK. I say I DO understand this worldview, and think I understand it better than you do. I think I see BOTH what you see AND what I see about it. If a worldview doesn't see something that IS, then it is in some way blind, whatever else it may have to commend it. I'm sure both that the revelers are having a jolly time on the train, AND that the tracks DO lead off the cliff.

The test of "no eternal meaning means there cannot be meaning now" is simple. Where are the 'nows' of my youth? Or of any past? When the thing that is "I" ceases to exist (assuming that there is no continued existence), then all of that is just as thoroughly and surely gone. All that is only transient is really already gone. When the one thing that seems to give them any meaning - a continuous "I" - is also gone, then the whole concept of meaning unravels. If one is only a vapor, he is more intelligent, and certainly has more common sense, if he desires to not be undone. And that is what you seem to say: "it doesn't matter if I am undone", if I come to a complete and final end. I think it matters very much, and it can't matter if it is meaningless. Your children (I certainly hope) will not find it meaningless. (And this is where some begin to speak about meaning continuing in something else, as I have said.)
We do in fact speak and act as if our actions and lives DO have a meaning beyond them - in transcendent meaning. Among other things, it is the reason people have been willing to give their lives for something else - the paradox that they do think their lives to be important but that some things are MORE important and that this importance transcends the moments of their lives and the moment of their deaths.

Motivation? A foolish hope that someone else might also come to see that this is what IS, and not merely "a point of view". Else we could change the title of the thread to "Meaningless".

Posted: **Mon Feb 14, 2011 5:49 am**

Fist wrote:There is no meaning that second beyond death. Might as well never have been. The only kind of meaning is the transient kind. While there is a now. Then it's gone.

There's no more meaning for you. (Or me.) But that doesn't mean that "meaning" doesn't go on. Hell, even your (or my) life can continue to have meaning after death. It'll just be its meaning to other people, not to us.

Rus, the I is important. And it has value. It might even have very long lived value. But it's not preserved eternally. Neither in itself, or in its value.

--A

Posted: **Mon Feb 14, 2011 8:33 am**

Harbinger,

Harbinger wrote:I just have to pop in here and mention that most people become "saved" after the death of a loved one.

I wasn't. Of course I'm not a member of a "born again" faith. That said I don't use the anthropic principal as evidence for my faith or demand much in the way of evidence for my faith in the first place. It is, after all, faith.

Posted: **Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:35 pm**

Avatar wrote:
Fist wrote:There is no meaning that second beyond death. Might as well never have been. The only kind of meaning is the transient kind. While there is a now. Then it's gone.
There's no more meaning for you. (Or me.) But that doesn't mean that "meaning" doesn't go on. Hell, even your (or my) life can continue to have meaning after death. It'll just be its meaning to other people, not to us.

Sure. But I'm speaking of eternal meaning. In the "cosmic" sense. Any influence you or I might have on those we leave behind will fade, eventually. Even the influence guys like Jesus and Buddha had doesn't mean anything to the moon, sun, Andromeda, or any part of the universe outside of humans. And if there comes an end to humans, even that meaning will be gone.

rusmeister wrote:OK. I say I DO understand this worldview, and think I understand it better than you do. I think I see BOTH what you see AND what I see about it.

I know full well that you believe this. You believe you know more about every worldview than anyone else does, including their adherents. Aside from Orthodoxy, of course, of which you've only begun to scratch the surface.

All others, you know inside and out. You believe it is not possible to see things about a worldview from the inside that cannot be seen from without. Aside from Orthodoxy, of course, which is the only worldview that can only be fully understood from within.

rusmeister wrote:If a worldview doesn't see something that IS, then it is in some way blind, whatever else it may have to commend it.

Precisely what I've said to you many times. Leading to this:

rusmeister wrote:I'm sure both that the revelers are having a jolly time on the train, AND that the tracks DO lead off the cliff.

You are being told that many people see a second set of tracks, leading away from the cliff. In a way, this is the same evidence that you accuse me of ignoring in regards to your faith - personal revelation. You see/feel/perceive something that I do not, and you insist that I take your word on it, and choose to embrace it. Well, I say I see/feel/perceive something you do not. (Two differences, though. 1) The thing I perceive is not something outside of myself. You believe your God would exist if you, and every other person who believes in him, did not; but I do not think my view would exist if I, and every other person who sees it, did not. It's not a thing ourside of ourselves. It is an understanding. 2) I don't say you should embrace my understanding.) But despite the assurances that something is, the same assurances that you give me, you say "No, it is not. You are wrong." Which is another difference between us. I do not say what you see does not exist, and that you are wrong. I simply say I don't see it.

rusmeister wrote:The test of "no eternal meaning means there cannot be meaning now" is simple. Where are the 'nows' of my youth? Or of any past? When the thing that is "I" ceases to exist (assuming that there is no continued existence), then all of that is just as thoroughly and surely gone. All that is only transient is really already gone. When the one thing that seems to give them any meaning - a continuous "I" - is also gone, then the whole concept of meaning unravels. If one is only a vapor, he is more intelligent, and certainly has more common sense, if he desires to not be undone. And that is what you seem to say: "it doesn't matter if I am undone", if I come to a complete and final end. I think it matters very much, and it can't matter if it is meaningless. Your children (I certainly hope) will not find it meaningless. (And this is where some begin to speak about meaning continuing in something else, as I have said.)
We do in fact speak and act as if our actions and lives DO have a meaning beyond them - in transcendent meaning. Among other things, it is the reason people have been willing to give their lives for something else - the paradox that they do think their lives to be important but that some things are MORE important and that this importance transcends the moments of their lives and the moment of their deaths.

Motivation? A foolish hope that someone else might also come to see that this is what IS, and not merely "a point of view". Else we could change the title of the thread to "Meaningless".

All of your arguments come down to a fundamental difference between us: You are prone to despair. This is obvious to others in the life story that you have painted for us. That being the case, you cannot see the tracks that lead away from the cliff. The terror that you see in meaninglessness does not let you look off to the side. (Did you, by chance, read Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" Star Wars books?) So you construct these arguments that are just... lacking in understanding.

Posted: **Tue Feb 15, 2011 4:03 am**

Fist and Faith wrote:
Avatar wrote:
Fist wrote:There is no meaning that second beyond death. Might as well never have been. The only kind of meaning is the transient kind. While there is a now. Then it's gone.
There's no more meaning for you. (Or me.) But that doesn't mean that "meaning" doesn't go on. Hell, even your (or my) life can continue to have meaning after death. It'll just be its meaning to other people, not to us.
Sure. But I'm speaking of eternal meaning. In the "cosmic" sense. Any influence you or I might have on those we leave behind will fade, eventually. Even the influence guys like Jesus and Buddha had doesn't mean anything to the moon, sun, Andromeda, or any part of the universe outside of humans. And if there comes an end to humans, even that meaning will be gone.

rusmeister wrote:OK. I say I DO understand this worldview, and think I understand it better than you do. I think I see BOTH what you see AND what I see about it.
I know full well that you believe this. You believe you know more about every worldview than anyone else does, including their adherents. Aside from Orthodoxy, of course, of which you've only begun to scratch the surface. All others, you know inside and out. You believe it is not possible to see things about a worldview from the inside that cannot be seen from without. Aside from Orthodoxy, of course, which is the only worldview that can only be fully understood from within.

rusmeister wrote:If a worldview doesn't see something that IS, then it is in some way blind, whatever else it may have to commend it.
Precisely what I've said to you many times. Leading to this:
rusmeister wrote:I'm sure both that the revelers are having a jolly time on the train, AND that the tracks DO lead off the cliff.
You are being told that many people see a second set of tracks, leading away from the cliff. In a way, this is the same evidence that you accuse me of ignoring in regards to your faith - personal revelation. You see/feel/perceive something that I do not, and you insist that I take your word on it, and choose to embrace it. Well, I say I see/feel/perceive something you do not. (Two differences, though. 1) The thing I perceive is not something outside of myself. You believe your God would exist if you, and every other person who believes in him, did not; but I do not think my view would exist if I, and every other person who sees it, did not. It's not a thing ourside of ourselves. It is an understanding. 2) I don't say you should embrace my understanding.) But despite the assurances that something is, the same assurances that you give me, you say "No, it is not. You are wrong." Which is another difference between us. I do not say what you see does not exist, and that you are wrong. I simply say I don't see it.

rusmeister wrote:The test of "no eternal meaning means there cannot be meaning now" is simple. Where are the 'nows' of my youth? Or of any past? When the thing that is "I" ceases to exist (assuming that there is no continued existence), then all of that is just as thoroughly and surely gone. All that is only transient is really already gone. When the one thing that seems to give them any meaning - a continuous "I" - is also gone, then the whole concept of meaning unravels. If one is only a vapor, he is more intelligent, and certainly has more common sense, if he desires to not be undone. And that is what you seem to say: "it doesn't matter if I am undone", if I come to a complete and final end. I think it matters very much, and it can't matter if it is meaningless. Your children (I certainly hope) will not find it meaningless. (And this is where some begin to speak about meaning continuing in something else, as I have said.)
We do in fact speak and act as if our actions and lives DO have a meaning beyond them - in transcendent meaning. Among other things, it is the reason people have been willing to give their lives for something else - the paradox that they do think their lives to be important but that some things are MORE important and that this importance transcends the moments of their lives and the moment of their deaths.

Motivation? A foolish hope that someone else might also come to see that this is what IS, and not merely "a point of view". Else we could change the title of the thread to "Meaningless".
All of your arguments come down to a fundamental difference between us: You are prone to despair. This is obvious to others in the life story that you have painted for us. That being the case, you cannot see the tracks that lead away from the cliff. The terror that you see in meaninglessness does not let you look off to the side. (Did you, by chance, read Timothy Zahn's "Heir to the Empire" Star Wars books?) So you construct these arguments that are just... lacking in understanding.

Having to retype replies...

As to who and what will fade and be forgotten:

Jesus Christ wrote:Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

(found in all three synoptic Gospels.) (PS - I don't know how to change "Jesus Christ wrote" to "Jesus Christ said")
A rather megalomaniac statement from someone who was supposedly just "a good man" and "teacher". That's just one of a number of statements that don't fit into the "wise teacher" scenario. Was He a nutcase, or Who He said He was?

Its consistently unfair (or a continuation of gross misunderstanding) to express my view as claiming to know more about every worldview... I know enough to know that to one degree or another, they are untrue. Nor would a person who claimed to know a truth or even Truth bother claiming to know all of the false scenarios that could be imagined or claimed. Seeing things, merely HAVING a worldview, proves nothing. So many examples can be offered to show that people can see things that are not so, or not the ultimate reality. So the questions of 'which of them is true, and to what degree does this worldview contain truth?' still apply.

As to understanding Orthodoxy from the inside, there is such a thing as the catechumenate. People are generally NOT encouraged to rush and get baptized immediately. Most converts undergo a process that may last a few hours (as in Philip and the eunuch; Acts ch 8:26-40) but more usually a few months, and in some cases up to a couple of years, during which people learn about the faith that they are proposing to accept, so that they fully understand what it is they are accepting. It's entirely individual; I did not undergo the catechumenate. No reason was given; I suppose now it was because a) I had already been baptized and b)I did accept what the Church teaches, and so many things that people learn as catechumens I learned after Chrismation. So a person is free to walk at any time, and to inquire as much as they want without being pushed. And the people who DO accept it have a solid basis for knowing that their faith is reasonable and a well deeper than we could possibly exhaust- and not in the least cultish, as some have implied.

Your sum-up in paragraph 3 is quite good. I agree. However, since I DO see what I see and it IS external to me, then it is only logical that I insist that you are wrong. The highest good is not in asserting everyone's 'right to be right'. I could choose from a hundred scenarios, the train, a burning house, etc - if someone sees something to be true and external and a danger to others, they are logical in insisting on their rightness (and even the others' wrongness) and attempting to persuade them. Heck, the Baptists I grew up with are eminently logical in that regard, even though I would never do the door-to-door visitation again that they do. I respect them for that. They believe in something external as a threat to all of us (and they have a considerable amount of the truth) and they are acting on it for our good, even though we don't believe what they do.

If that is true - and surely you will admit that I see my own worldview to actually be the one and only true worldview - then it is not a case of me, or the Baptists for that matter, being "prone to despair" on a personal level. It's be like the person in the burning house or on the train saying, "Oh you're such a pessimist! Go away and leave us to have a good time!"
Don't be so prone to despair!"
Now the whole question is whether I, or the person in those scenarios, is just imagining a situation as true, or whether it is actually true. If the former, then the "joy-killer" who says there is a danger is just a pest. Hopefully he'll come to see that his view is not really so, that he is just hallucinating or whatever. But if it IS so, then it is the revelers in the burning house or on the train headed for the cliff that are in grave danger, and unable to see that danger.

I've already demonstrated that in a non-transcendent context, all "nows" are transient and illusory. We KNOW this when we hear Prince Philip (in Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" say "But Father - this is the 14th century!" You yourself admitted:

Fist wrote:I've often looked back on a growing number of years, and thought how any distance back was but an instant ago. Absolutely no time has passed since the moment I was born. And it will be the same at any point in the future. I'll look back on my life from my deathbed, and it will all have taken place in an instant. So, in a sense, it already is the moment of my deathbed. My life has already run its course, just like everybody else's.

Since they are in that sense already past, they are not. Might as well have never been, and you agreed. I went on to say that this is self-contradictory. You CANNOT say both that "now" has meaning and ultimately doesn't. My own context is that expressed by Lewis in "The Screwtape Letters":

XV
MY DEAR WORMWOOD,
I had noticed, of course, that the humans were having a lull in their European
war—what they naïvely call "The War"!—and am not surprised that there is a
corresponding lull in the patient's anxieties. Do we want to encourage this, or
to keep him worried? Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable
states of mind. Our choice between them raises important questions.
The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I
believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to
that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at
which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have
an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a
whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore
have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being
concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union
with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of
conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving
thanks for the present pleasure.
Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With
this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in
the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the
past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity.
.It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes
all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the
Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making
them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is,
of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal
part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all
lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those
schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or
Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of
temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to
the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.
Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin
(which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the
process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the
sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a
Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.
To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is
necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be
their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty;
though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is
in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the
Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man
who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation),
washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns
at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over
him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an
imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the
present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the
other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he
will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the
rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere
fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered
them in the Present.
It follows then, in general, and other things being equal, that it is better for
your patient to be filled with anxiety or hope (it doesn't much matter which)
about this war than for him to be living in the present. But the phrase "living
in the present" is ambiguous. It may describe a process which is really just as
much concerned with the Future as anxiety itself. Your man may be untroubled
about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he
has persuaded himself that the Future is, going to be agreeable. As long as that
is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good,
because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience,
for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that
horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to
meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and
there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his
state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. Here again, our
Philological Arm has done good work; try the word "complacency" on him. But, of
course, it is most likely that he is "living in the Present" for none of these
reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The
phenomenon would then be merely natural. All the same, I should break it up if I
were you. No natural phenomenon is really in our favour. And anyway, why should
the creature be happy?
Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

members.fortunecity.com/phantom1/books2/c._s._lewis_-_the_screwtape_letters.htm
I think the last paragraph in particular somewhat relevant to our discussion.

Oh, and no, didn't read Zahn. I heard of him, but my foreign adventures had begun and I eventually pulled away from sci-fi/fantasy. Writers like Donaldson and Niven/Pournelle still interest me - most of them don't anymore.

Posted: **Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:47 pm**

It's... I don't know. Staggering? Mind boggling? It's like Monty Python's Argument Clinic sketch.
"Something's going on."
"No it isn't."
"Yes, it is. I'm experiencing it."
"No you're not."
"I perceive something you don't."
"No you don't."

Whether you like it or not, it is possible to have transient meaning without eternal meaning. This moment will come and go. At some point, every moment comes, and it goes. Some may be remembered longer than others. Some may have a more lasting influence on one or more things than other moments do. But, eventually, even they will be gone. Forgotten. All influence lost. Meaningless.

But while the moment is, it has meaning. Further, I know that moment follows moment, and that one may influence the next. Is there a reason I would want the next to be painful? Transient as pain is (I'd be surprised if even you argued that any of the pains either of us has experienced are not transient.), I'll avoid it if I can. So this moment can prevent pain in the next. Great!

It's really not a difficult concept to understand. The voice within you that insists that no eternal meaning must cause one to just pack it in is despair. I'm not nearly as predisposed to despair as you are, so I don't see that as the only path, and I'm not even tempted to take it. This other other path is much better.

You can say "No it isn't" until the cows come home, but you'll never make it so. It does not work as you think it works. You have no way of knowing that, since you're not inside this worldview. The despair didn't let you see the other path, so you reacted to this worldview the way you would react to putting your hand on a red-hot piece of metal. But that doesn't mean others are not in it. You're arguing from a position of ignorance, thinking it is the height of clarity. It is not. No more than I can argue that you only embraced Orthodoxy to keep your despair at bay. Yes, I'm certain that is the case. But I'm not immersed in Orthodoxy, don't see it from the inside, so cannot prove that I'm right. Your history all points to one thing, but I can't know that there isn't something else there with it.

Posted: **Tue Feb 15, 2011 6:00 pm**

Fist and Faith wrote:It's... I don't know. Staggering? Mind boggling? It's like Monty Python's Argument Clinic sketch.
"Something's going on."
"No it isn't."
"Yes, it is. I'm experiencing it."
"No you're not."
"I perceive something you don't."
"No you don't."

Whether you like it or not, it is possible to have transient meaning without eternal meaning. This moment will come and go. At some point, every moment comes, and it goes. Some may be remembered longer than others. Some may have a more lasting influence on one or more things than other moments do. But, eventually, even they will be gone. Forgotten. All influence lost. Meaningless.

But while the moment is, it has meaning. Further, I know that moment follows moment, and that one may influence the next. Is there a reason I would want the next to be painful? Transient as pain is (I'd be surprised if even you argued that any of the pains either of us has experienced are not transient.), I'll avoid it if I can. So this moment can prevent pain in the next. Great!

It's really not a difficult concept to understand. The voice within you that insists that no eternal meaning must cause one to just pack it in is despair. I'm not nearly as predisposed to despair as you are, so I don't see that as the only path, and I'm not even tempted to take it. This other other path is much better.

You can say "No it isn't" until the cows come home, but you'll never make it so. It does not work as you think it works. You have no way of knowing that, since you're not inside this worldview. The despair didn't let you see the other path, so you reacted to this worldview the way you would react to putting your hand on a red-hot piece of metal. But that doesn't mean others are not in it. You're arguing from a position of ignorance, thinking it is the height of clarity. It is not. No more than I can argue that you only embraced Orthodoxy to keep your despair at bay. Yes, I'm certain that is the case. But I'm not immersed in Orthodoxy, don't see it from the inside, so cannot prove that I'm right. Your history all points to one thing, but I can't know that there isn't something else there with it.

I'd say the discussion is over. What I keep saying is that I see one step further than you, and you keep saying that I am prone to despair. I have already considered the possible justice of the latter and have responded to it.

Posted: **Tue Feb 15, 2011 9:31 pm**

When you stop telling me you know more about my worldview than I do, and that I'm wrong about that worldview that you do not have direct experience in, the conversation will be over. Let's use your own words:

rusmeister wrote:Av, I am here explaining the worldview to you, so you can hardly call it "a bad analogy" if I tell you that within the worldview it is a good analogy.

Only your worldview can explain itself, and be correct, despite someone outside it not being able to see what is seen from within, eh?

rusmeister wrote:As to Job: If you insist on reading the story without reference to the tradition that gave birth to it, you cannot possibly interpret it correctly. It'd be a lot like an alien seeing a man cutting up another man on a table with a knife and being shocked and horrified - until he learned that the man was a surgeon bent on saving the other man's life. You can have a different view and see the same thing - but be completely wrong in your interpretation. So saying that you will ignore both traditional Judaic and Christian explanations of Job and just see...what you insist on seeing in it is ignorance, not wisdom.

Only your worldview can interpret things from within in ways that are not seen from without, eh?

And you can stop having these "conversations" with me, and so many others here, when you stop trying to pass yourself off as the Watch's leading authority on every topic that comes along.

And you can ignore what I say about your despair. But it's an obvious pattern. Easier to see from without than within. Seriously, who wants to see it in themselves? But it's why you see death as a horrible, unnatural thing. And it's why you did the things in your past that you've told us about. Trying to keep the demons at bay. And you still do it. All the time. Your main activity here - from your very first post in the Close - is telling people they're wrong about, well, everything. If they are wrong, it means you're right. And you must be right. You require very specific answers - firm anchors - in all things. Without that, some people feel freedom. But others feel lost.

Posted: **Wed Feb 16, 2011 4:52 am**

And hey, it's fine to need those anchors. Don't think it's not. But don't try to weigh the rest of us down with them.

--A

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 1:06 am**

Fist and Faith wrote: When you stop telling me you know more about my worldview than I do, and that I'm wrong about that worldview that you do not have direct experience in, the conversation will be over. Let's use your own words:
rusmeister wrote:Av, I am here explaining the worldview to you, so you can hardly call it "a bad analogy" if I tell you that within the worldview it is a good analogy.
Only your worldview can explain itself, and be correct, despite someone outside it not being able to see what is seen from within, eh?

rusmeister wrote:As to Job: If you insist on reading the story without reference to the tradition that gave birth to it, you cannot possibly interpret it correctly. It'd be a lot like an alien seeing a man cutting up another man on a table with a knife and being shocked and horrified - until he learned that the man was a surgeon bent on saving the other man's life. You can have a different view and see the same thing - but be completely wrong in your interpretation. So saying that you will ignore both traditional Judaic and Christian explanations of Job and just see...what you insist on seeing in it is ignorance, not wisdom.
Only your worldview can interpret things from within in ways that are not seen from without, eh?

This is something like saying "Only a person who learns Russian can correctly and completely understand (Alexander) Pushkin, eh?"
The answer is "Yes." Whatever translations you read, there are things in language that are untranslatable to the person who does not learn the language. There are dual meanings, only one of which translates. There are concepts which exist in one culture that really don't exist in the other culture. There are words which mean one thing, which, when given their standard translation, mean something else to others. Thus, expats who come to Russia wind up adopting some Russian words into the language. "Babushka" is a good example. You can, with a dictionary, look it up on your own and find "grandmother". But until you come and live here, and see that it is used to apply to any old lady as well as to one's actual grandmother (the much narrower English meaning), that these old ladies tend to wear head scarfs and in urban environments seem to ubiquitously stand by subway, bus and train stations hawking stuff, you have a somewhat different understanding of the word.
So there certainly ARE some things that you CANNOT completely understand merely as an outside observer, and it is my assertion, having been on both sides of the fence, that this is so with faith.

I'll never pretend to know everything you think. I CAN make confident and solid assertions about certain particular ideas, and materialism is one of them. If you demonstrate that you are de facto a materialist, then statements I make about materialism are relevant and not a pretense of knowing everything in your head, but knowing a concept - and especially having held it myself, if not as dogmatically and certainly as you -is definitely within my grasp.

Fist and Faith wrote:And you can stop having these "conversations" with me, and so many others here, when you stop trying to pass yourself off as the Watch's leading authority on every topic that comes along.

And you can ignore what I say about your despair. But it's an obvious pattern. Easier to see from without than within. Seriously, who wants to see it in themselves? But it's why you see death as a horrible, unnatural thing. And it's why you did the things in your past that you've told us about. Trying to keep the demons at bay. And you still do it. All the time. Your main activity here - from your very first post in the Close - is telling people they're wrong about, well, everything. If they are wrong, it means you're right. And you must be right. You require very specific answers - firm anchors - in all things. Without that, some people feel freedom. But others feel lost.

I'd say it's unreasonable to suggest that I try to pass myself off as "the Watch's leading authority on everything that comes along". There are a great many things that I do not claim authority on. The few things that I do, I do so either through extensive personal experience - foreign languages and education, or by accepting them from an Authority that I acknowledge as superior to myself - and yes, to everyone here, even if you don't.

You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens. He thinks politics has nothing to do with what he believes; that belief is personal and private and does not reflect what one should see in public - to me that's ridiculous and self-contradictory. He holds politics in a high place - I hold it in a much lower place. But he doesn't engage me, and I don't engage him. You can do that with me if you want. Just ignore me if you're so sure that I'm illogical and wrong. But if you do engage me, then I'll offer my answers on the things I do have answers to.

For my part, I'm just going to ignore the claims that I am expounding on a personal need of my own. That is simply a transparent effort to avoid any possibility of objective logic in what I say, and it's not an intellectual answer to my arguments. I'm not going to engage with that. I'll leave it to those who CAN see any justice and sense in anything I say.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 1:52 am**

Well, *I* knew a bábuška was both a headscarf and an old lady who wears one, because my mother told me so. Except she pronounced it with the emphasis on the first syllable (BAH-boosh-ka) because she was Czech.

(Fun Facts to Know and Tell: The Czech word for grandmother is babička (pronounced BAB-ich-ka). It's also the title of a famous (in the Czech Republic, anyhow) book by Božena Němcová, which I probably ought to read someday.)

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled shouting match.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 12:20 pm**

rusmeister wrote:You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens.

You're in my garden. You're insisting that you know more about it than I do. The arrogance it takes to make such a claim - to outright say it - is extraordinary. Never in my life have or will I tell a Christian that I know better than him/her what it feels like to accept Jesus into my heart. To set yourself up as that kind of authority... Honestly, it's staggering. The statement is so absurd that I would normally be take it as a joke. But you've said it, and similar things, often enough that I know you do believe it.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 3:10 pm**

Fist and Faith wrote:
rusmeister wrote:You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens.
You're in my garden. You're insisting that you know more about it than I do. The arrogance it takes to make such a claim - to outright say it - is extraordinary. Never in my life have or will I tell a Christian that I know better than him/her what it feels like to accept Jesus into my heart. To set yourself up as that kind of authority... Honestly, it's staggering. The statement is so absurd that I would normally be take it as a joke. But you've said it, and similar things, often enough that I know you do believe it.

Although only a couple of months into KW, I've been following a few more contentious threads with interest and find myself unable to resist chipping in with my humble opinion at this increasingly bizarre point.

Fist, you're on a loser here, a guaranteed cast-iron 100% take it to the bank loser. Your (to me) perfectly rational and valid viewpoint is that there are absolutes, but those are subjective absolutes - it's a given to anyone who has the faintest rationality that your absolutes/belief sets/call-them-what-you-wills may be necessarily different from mine or anyone else's. That's straight back to Descartes with quite possibly the only self-validating statement in all of history in "cogito, ergo sum", which of course is limited by its very nature to only validating the subjective consciousness.

As such, you can in all good faith (no pun intended) allow believers their view while still allowing yourself your own. Sadly, in some more extreme cases, there is no possibility whatsoever of the reverse being true.

There is quite literally no point debating with those whose faith is dependant upon and predicated by supposedly external and supposedly objectively real absolutes - they will *always* believe that they experientially know more about such absolute external metaphysical truths than you. Is this arrogance or hubris? Megalomania or fanaticism? Possibly, but IMHO it's far more about pure fear... they *have* to believe as they do, and you *have* to be wrong/more ignorant in their eyes, because to admit any other possibility would cause their entire belief structure to come crashing down like a house of cards in a hurricane.

That is a terrifying prospect to them - and as such they simply *cannot* allow the faintest possibility of an alternate co-existent truth. In similar vein, this is at least partially the basis for religious sectarianism... numerous wars have been fought in the past in an attempt to wipe out the infidel, actions allegedly morally justified at the time because the infidel equally *had* to be wrong. Against that background mindset, Fist, I am afraid that you're entirely wasting your time - you and I are both benighted infidels and nothing we can say will ever have the slightest sway.

Personally speaking, I have huge ethical issues with those who base their belief structures on what to me seems to be no more than moral and intellectual fascism dressed up as being more enlightened, in communication with God, closer to the Buddha or whatever - I will of course defend their inalienable right to do so, as much as I'll defend my right to reject the (to me) exclusionary blindness of those beliefs.

I'll close by adding that those people of faith that I have met who have gained my great respect are those who freely admit the essential nature of their faith - they've described it as an entirely subjective and personal revelationary experience... they don't say it's right for everyone and try to pseudo-rationalisingly force-feed it down everyone's throats, but simply state that they've found it absolutely right... for them. That to me is a reasoned and frankly courageous standpoint, in that it's not based on a fevered and sadly necessitous denial of anyone daring to believe that there are indeed alternative viewpoints and other bases for morality.

PS I've not trawled back long enough to find any conversation between Cail and those of fervid belief solely based upon allegedly revelatory objective absolutes, but having seen a few of Cail's other posts in other threads by now, I imagine he decided long LONG ago that even the purest rationality will never have any relevance to or effect upon certain types of proselytising belief and went onto less futile pastimes instead

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 5:43 pm**

Fist and Faith wrote:
rusmeister wrote:You don't want to hear it - then don't engage me. Cail and I don't clash because we stay solidly out of each other's gardens.
You're in my garden. You're insisting that you know more about it than I do. The arrogance it takes to make such a claim - to outright say it - is extraordinary. Never in my life have or will I tell a Christian that I know better than him/her what it feels like to accept Jesus into my heart. To set yourself up as that kind of authority... Honestly, it's staggering. The statement is so absurd that I would normally be take it as a joke. But you've said it, and similar things, often enough that I know you do believe it.

Fist, you've basically described yourself as a materilaist. I say this is what materilaism is and what it leads to and you are outraged. You say you don't see thus-and-so - fine. I say I DO see it. I never make claims to know anything about your mind that you haven't directly told me, and I speak to the idea of materialism - that this life is all that there is. Nor do I claim personal authority when making claims of absolute truth, especially the kind that I don't think we can obtain on our own steam. I don't "set myself up as an authority" - unless the messenger is considered to "set himself up as authority". You can shoot the messenger, but he didn't originate the message, and more messengers will appear in different ways and forms even if you were rid of me. But you can't say that the messenger IS the authority.

What you seem to find offensive is the general claim that someone must be wrong - that not everybody can be right. And so you are outraged, staggered, beyond belief, etc.

It probably would be much better if we could fight a duel. Maybe someday you'll get over your barriers and read "The Ball and the Cross". You'd see that Turnbull gets treated with a good deal of dignity and sympathy; a pleasant surprise, even if the author doesn't agree with him. Not much has changed in a hundred years.

Posted: **Thu Feb 17, 2011 5:56 pm**

I'm going back and really just picking up snippets here and there rather than the full discussions, but it seems from certain parts -

rusmeister wrote:Av, I am here explaining the worldview to you, so you can hardly call it "a bad analogy" if I tell you that within the worldview it is a good analogy.

rusmeister wrote:As to Job: If you insist on reading the story without reference to the tradition that gave birth to it, you cannot possibly interpret it correctly. It'd be a lot like an alien seeing a man cutting up another man on a table with a knife and being shocked and horrified - until he learned that the man was a surgeon bent on saving the other man's life. You can have a different view and see the same thing - but be completely wrong in your interpretation. So saying that you will ignore both traditional Judaic and Christian explanations of Job and just see...what you insist on seeing in it is ignorance, not wisdom.

- that you are claiming no individual part of your arguments can be analysed and found to be inadequate because they make sense within the context of the larger worldview, and that this larger worldview itself cannot be analysed and found inadequate because it is an absolute truth from an "Authority".

In which case, I'm not sure why you take part in the argument at all, because it is not an argument. You have established a position which is true and correct because it is true and correct (unverifiability be damned), one that exists independant (and ignorant) of external analysis or criticism, and one which has absolutely nothing to gain in this discussion because it is already certain of its own rightness.

Kevin's Watch

Meaninglessness