Nietzsche and Runaway Audio Consumption


Came across this today. A lot of posts bring up the issue of "how much is enough?" or "when is audio consumption justified" etc.

Does this Nietzsche aphorism apply to audio buying? You be the judge! 

Friedrich Nietzsche“Danger in riches. — Only he who has spirit ought to have possessions: otherwise possessions are a public danger. For the possessor who does not know how to make use of the free time which his possessions could purchase him will always continue to strive after possessions: this striving will constitute his entertainment, his strategy in his war against boredom. 

Thus in the end the moderate possessions that would suffice the man of spirit are transformed into actual riches – riches which are in fact the glittering product of spiritual dependence and poverty. They only appear quite different from what their wretched origin would lead one to expect because they are able to mask themselves with art and culture: for they are, of course, able to purchase masks. By this means they arouse envy in the poorer and the uncultivated – who at bottom are envying culture and fail to recognize the masks as masks – and gradually prepare a social revolution: for gilded vulgarity and histrionic self-inflation in a supposed ‘enjoyment of culture’ instil into the latter the idea ‘it is only a matter of money’ – whereas, while it is to some extent a matter of money, it is much more a matter of spirit.” 

Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1996. Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits. Cambridge University Press. (p. 283-4, an aphorism no. 310)

I'm pretty sure @mahgister will want to read this one! (Because they speak so artfully about avoiding the diversion that consumption poses to the quest for true aesthetic and acoustic excellence.)

128x128hilde45

I hear things are much better in La La land.

Fussing about capitalism on a high end luxury web site is an interesting scenario. 

Like i already said, Bernard Mandeville the master mind behind liberal capitalism, not Adam Smith who plagiarize it, is the redactor of the manual of mass control, which would make Machiavel a children... I read Machiavel also by the way... It is a children compared to Mandeville...

Now the bankers behind capital controls always DECIDED which will receive capitals and for what....It is not complotism doctrine but only a human fact about greed...

Is it not simple?

By the way Dr. Mabuse film precisely described the manipulation behind financial speculation and wars in the first thirty minutes...No Hollywood movie describe it better than he already did one century after it....

 

Basically most of the major wars since 1815 have been bankers wars, and yet...

Not a single movie has dared to depict them as such.

A war unplanned with no money never existed save in victimized country or people...

By the way between conditioned sleepwalking mass and their masters, there is no "controls" there is not much a "plot" but a SIMILAR make up of the mind by the endoctrinated mass and those who endoctrinated them..

The difference between Hitler, Stalin, Rockfeller, Pierpont-Morgan etc and any power man and the ordinary people, is that the Hitler, Stalin, Rockfeller, Pierpont-Morgan BELIEVE more in their ideology that even the people who are conditioned by them... The mindframe of Stalin is even Narrower that any communist leader under him and narrower than any russians, WHY ?

Because their narrow mind reflect their total focus on only ONE target : control...They concentrated focus of attention is the only reason of their power...

Then Stalin , Hitler or any powerful man are the FIRST VICTIM of  their ideology...

There is much less of a complotism here in history  than a complete closure of the mind and a narrowing of the attention...

Are Hitler, Stalin, Rockfeller, Pierpont-Morgan, or any other man of power reflect that  they are only  EVIL and mostly  evil ?

Not at all, in many cases , they are sleepwalking more deeply in their sleep than even the mass of the people they indoctrinated in their beliefs about states, capitalism or any other ideology....

Murderers are evil for sure but i spoke here about  the power perspective...

 

Pfizer for example  is one of the worst proven criminal  enterprise which had payed many billions of dollars in criminal fines in the past decades....

I dont need to add anything to this fact....

We can trust big pharma.

History never repeat itself like in a circle, but repeat itself like on an helicoidal cycle.. The same and not the same ....

The "Great Year cycle" in traditional astronomy, is a perfect illustration of that...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Year

 

Thinking that events in the universe and on Earth were completely unrelated and did never affect one another is now scientifically ridiculous...

Guess what happened when mankind detonated thermonuclear weapon in the sky ?

Guess what happen to our sun crossing different parts of the galaxy and "coughing" toward Earth ?

 

There exist proven scientific facts, but also science give us way more than numerous small proven facts, science give to each ERA his own abilty to imagine new rational and possible perspectives even if these perspective cannot be strictly proven to exist... Darwin never strictly  proved that man descend from the ape, he gives us a rational relation and new perspective by pointing to ape and man in an  environmental context.......

Basic human needs dont change but they express themselves in new ways through all evolution and through all history....These transformation of their expression is history...

When Cesar decided coming back from his  Gallic wars  to cross the Rubicon river WITH HIS ARMY  it was a SYMBOLIC gesture of rebellion against the Rome republic, which expressed a basic need for total freedom but in a new context...

Semiotic teach us that symbols are real like a tree is real for consciousness...Rubicon is not just a mass of flowing water....

Well, some people do say that history has a way of repeating itself. Perhaps not surprising given that human needs and desires remain the same as they always did.

I will add something to Feynman because focusing on a problem or on a question could be damaging by itself in some case..

Focusing and AT THE SAME TIME learning how to not focusing, but giving the problem to a part of our mind and going on on some other related or not related questions and field is very important in philosophy...Anyway philosophy is by definition multidisciplinary... Poetic and even astrology or mathematics can be philosophical tools and concern or any other fields ...

For sure if like Andrew Wyles you want to solve a mathematical problem, you must focus on it only non stop for 7 years to do so... Or if you must solve some a precise physic problem like Feyman related to an Apollo rocket mistake engineering piece, you must focus non stop for some days..

But philosophy is not mathematics nor engineering... Problems are not enigma to be solved but deep mysteries to be cautiously and indirectly approached with reverence and deep devotion... Problems here cannot be "solved" they can only be described in a new perspective for a new consciousness...

Goethe method in his natural science morphological observation deeply pointed to the fact that solutions and problems are interrelated perceived individual and at the same time universal "symbolic forms" like a particular undulated line drawn on a sheet of paper will be very differently perceived and described , by a monk, a painter, a shaman, a musician, a geometer, a mariner thinking about waves, or an alchemist, or by a physicist specialized in Fourier analysis, or by a meteorologist describing the sky....

There is no form without meaning and there is no meaning without form.... The formless is itself a "form"....And any form speak from the formless...

Then going back to your observation : most people are unable to focus consciously, and much more unable to learn how to not focus consciously and mastering the art of attention...

Attention imply 2 levels polarity : the foci, and the periphereal....

If you can accept the Feynman theory of learning ie focus, understanding, being able to recall and then to explain to others, then you can see where the problem might lie....

The human mind is a great thing, no doubt. Unfortunately it doesn’t come with any kind of user manual.

@mahgister 

 

"I am flabbergasted by history....By psychological science , by the minority of people in a spiritual resistance..."

 

 

Well, some people do say that history has a way of repeating itself. Perhaps not surprising given that human needs and desires remain the same as they always did.

Mind you, only some people say that. The majority seem to be blissfully unaware of any history other than that portrayed by the Hollywood propaganda department.

If you can accept the Feynman theory of learning ie focus, understanding, being able to recall and then to explain to others, then you can see where the problem might lie.

Just how many fall at this first hurdle?

 

Media driven fear porn addiction seems to robbed far too many of their ability to even focus, let alone do any of the rest.

Voting patterns have long established just how show the collective memory can be.

The human mind is a great thing, no doubt. Unfortunately it doesn't come with any kind of user manual.

Basically most of the major wars since 1815 have been bankers wars, and yet...

Not a single movie has dared to depict them as such.

A similar fate awaits the end of the Plandemic.

The lovely Dr Fauci has already hinted that another p(l)andemic is likely. And still, even after a global disaster no one asks why we need we need so many of these highly dangerous BSL-4 labs.

Of course, we shouldn't worry.

We can trust big pharma.

They would never ever deliberately release deadly viruses just for the sake of profit, would they?

Of course not!

The owners of big pharma are totally above human vices and greed, aren't they?

Dr.Mabuse film reminding us of the mass hysteria climate at the dawn of the second world war , just after the first war, is not only a great piece of cinema but an occasion to think about the factors which related our own crisis to this crisis at the beginning of the last century...

Mass hysteria and crowds psychosis in Germany is related to the media controls, the fear and anxieties growing diffusion, the lost of any rationality, the division of the population in 2 new groups among all others divisions, the pervert use of the emissary goat process by some "elite in control", and the creation of an "artiicial" consensus in the population to be controlled, and with that the suspension of any democratic process..

I am flabbergasted by history....By psychological science , by the minority of people in a spiritual resistance...

I wish for the world a new better year than the last 2...

There is no death, save the lost of thinking and the lost of hope because of fear..

 

What about consumerism? It will be no more the tool for controlling the mass peacefuly, hidden  totalitarian dictatorship is the only way our "elite" sees a future...

Those who own something and are possessed by what they own, without this free spirit about which spoke N. will the first to be crushed...It is time to be free, listening music with the bare essentials, to cure ourself not to go in an artificial hiding from reality...

Music is a poison or a cure....

To all i wish the best from my heart for this year....

 

@snilf

May you give me ( us ) , some names of good quality recording Cello music.

Cello and English Horn have become my prefered instruments .


I am dependant of my audio gear’s possession .

But I use streaming ( Tidal )  . No CD 

thanks

Music is a 2 way power...

Something that put all of us on a "spell"...A mass hypnosis tool...

A deceptive rapture of our mind and soul...music is a tool for control in all armies and publicities of the world for example...

But music is also a tool to heal us like any drug who comes from a poison or could be one if dose is not right, is designed to be a bliss and a "rapture" in heaven or toward spirit like in native people or religious ceremony... Or like used in therapeutic...Or written to elevate the brain OUT of itself like in Bach...

 

Money also is born like any poison, a destructive agent, but also a "pharmakon" a possible remedy...

Spin doctors, "eminence grise" plays on these two modalities for music like for money...

Fritz Lang probably never read Bernard Mandeville, but his Dr. Mabuse is a perfect allegory between the "nevrosis" of those under a spell and the "perversion" coming from those who look for controls...Like in Mandeville Hive allegory...

Art may be more powerful than Science...I repeat: Art MAY BE more powerful than science...

Because science is divided in many fields, and each fiels is divided in an indefinite number of skills and specialities...No scientist can create a synthesis , the price to pay is loosing his scientist status...The artist could and must, true art is always a SYMBOLIC SYNTHESIS, never only an entertainment or a provocation...

Knowledge is not science, science is not technology...

Art may integrate knowledge, science and technology sometimes revealing some aspects of their possible integration or contradictions.. Like a philosophy inspired by spirit can do it...Like some man also driven by a spiritual quest....like a scientis who is also an artist and a spiritual man...

A Swiss economist wrote a book about the relation between money and economy inspired by the Goethe Faust for example...

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/duke-university-press/money-and-magic-a-critique-of-the-modern-economy-in-the-light-of-qw787UpvP1

N. was right speaking of the spirit and the weight and unrecognized burden of the material possessions, but for N. what he call the owner of spirit MUST be read in these 2 way manner: the owner of the spirit could the master who control himself first but the master mind who can " fall" into the role of leading the mass with the deceptive offer of marketting illusions, with money, with a "spin" mass art who will put people to sleepwalking...These 2 way to understand N. put N. himself in an impossible doublebind situation at the end...

Religion is not the only opium, money is another one...N. seeing all the hypocrisy of religion putting man on a sleep and reading Darwin, thought that a man is free only when he liberate himself alone over his apeness : the ubermensch...But this freeing by oneself alone is also an illusion explained in Buddhism and in Christianity alike...Schopenhauer never FORGOT that lesson contrary to his disciple Nietszche...

N. after all was himself a genius under a spell....

Doistoievsky never was... Nor Goethe....

 

Thanks i am very happy that you had like my article post...

Egoistically to save my posts frenzy from delirium crisis hypothesis by some, and because almost no one seems to be interested in thinking here save a few ...

Like in the audio hobby they buy ideology  and upgrade BEFORE thinking and studying acoustic....N. was right....I like very much the OP use of N. lucidity...

Without the OP no discussion about spirit/ music/ consumerism and others "miracles" and "conspiracy" or mass manipulation would have been possible in audiogon...Thanks to him....

And in this crisis times we must think together... Not one against the other....

 

Great article.

The relentless intrusion of the corporate world into the scientific one is one there doesn’t seem to be any protection against.

It’s appalling to think that global leaders are now reduced to acting as sales reps for big pharma.

 

I will made an another apology to all for my posts here telling a story....

One day a french doctor who was a devoted christian but was interested in Zen and in martial art visited not long after the second world war a monastery of Zen Buddhism directed by a great master...

The young french doctor speaking about the christian virtues of charity and explaining why he was interested by zen and martial art but will never convert to Buddhism because love and charity is for him the essential above anything was very surprized when the monk reply: "you are totally right and i do not recommend that you change the great teaching of Christ for the Buddha, but the most important virtue is humility, because if you give rice to someone by force and not waiting humbly  for his hand to open itself the rice will fall on the dust and will be lost"...

i read that and i was stunned  and discover immediately that i lack humility and in this thread i did it  again putting posts without waiting for any question...

it seems old ape are tough to reform...

Happy new year to all....

@mahgister 

 

20 years ago interview of an enlightened scientist whose worst fears are coming true in the world....

 

 

 

Interview, Richard Strohman, PhD.

[Interview conducted in 2000; Previously published at the original Truth Barrier, 2009.]

Q: My understanding is that Gene Therapy, as a field, suffered a crisis after the death of Jesse Gelsinger, but it’s gaining momentum again...

A: Yes. It’s quick to wash out. Our memory of these things is so readily overcome by the next news hype about the newest gene and the newest potential cure. The world is full of potential cures that never happen.

Q: You lecture on the misinterpretations of genetic medicine, is that right?

A: My perspective on this is a little bit wider. It’s my new career, looking at the limitations of genetic determinism, looking at the shortcomings of the science that I myself practiced for 30 years.

I did a lot of work in MS, which is a real genetic disease. My take on that is that there are genetic diseases. GT is in theory something to be looked at but at the same time we have to say that there isn’t a single case of any genetic therapy that has ever worked successfully. Not one.

Q: But the other side claims success in France and so on

A: I don’t know where the data is. In the newspapers? All those people at Penn were totally carried away by their own hype. There’s always, in these medical centers, a resident bio-ethicist who is completely a spinner, what he’s there for is to acknowledge the difficulties and then explain them away.

But these people assume that molecular genetics can actually do what is says it can do. They prepare us for what they think is inevitable. Then they grease the skids for all these things to go forward.

I was interviewed by Swedish TV about Gelsinger.

The broadcast criticism is that if you take a simple case, putting genes into plants, genetically engineered plants, where the testing can be done on large numbers without having to worry about ethics, what you see is: If you put the gene in with a viral vector and the vector is there because - and here we get back to our old friend Peter Duesberg - it’s a strong promoter, the gene of choice will be expressed at levels it’s never expressed in nature so... this faucet of gene expression that is always on for this protein that we’re talking about now is itself a totally abnormal phenomenon. Another problem. In the lab you see that the gene is turned on [to make the] plant resistant to the pesticide. In that narrow analysis of success you see that the gene transferred was successful, its incorporated into the host genome, its stable, it can be inherited, third you see that the protein that the gene encodes for is present, it’s expressed. The unnaturalness tends to disappear. The questions that are not asked are: What other side effects [are there] of this gene transfer? It’s like going into a room full of people and inserting an opinion that they’ve never heard before and expecting it to go down without reverberations. In New York City, say. It never happens. And it never happens in these cells either.

Monsanto knows that this is true. All these corporate agricultural technologies know what’s going on but they willfully - and here is the deep ethical problem that science has to deal with and [isn’t] - it willfully chooses the narrowest boundaries for the evaluation of success. That’s a criminal act. And I think the FDA buys it.

When you have to use these methods in the lab, and apply your criteria of success then take that same criteria of success and, apply it to the goods and services that come out of the lab and into thousands of acres of cropland or into young men in Philadelphia hospitals - those narrow criteria are overwhelmed by the realities of the real world. And that’s the criminal act that’s going on here and it’s totally carried along by the chutzpah of these scientists and their ignorance of complex biology. That’s the best you can say for them because a lot of them are aware of the measurements that could be made to check on all this but are too expensive to make.

These people don’t want the FDA to approve any labeling of these things. We have a lot to learn from genetically altered foods that we can take over into the very rare events of genetic modifications in humans.

There’s a whole raft of new biology of DNA that these people are not aware of. The liquidity and fluidity of the genome itself in this to the slightest environmental perturbation in the process of gene transfer changes everything.

It’s the machine metaphor in biology. Biology is dominated by a mechanistic point of view. And it’s one of the profound mistakes. Living things [laughs] are not machines. They may act like machines but they’re not.

The science, which we need to attribute some good to, is totally capitulated to corporate interests, and how do we get out of this? It’s really hard stuff.

Q: How can we trace this historically? Where does it start?

A: It all started when Barbara McClintock [in the 1940s and 1950s] showed that genes could be transferred horizontally between organisms, and even between species, but when the technology got better and better, it became clear that you could manipulate genes in the lab and transfer normal genes. We were part of this picture in MS, we had animal models and we could do very simple experiments in the lab and transfer normal genes into the cells with the mutation. That’s what fed this hype that you could cure whole human beings or whole organisms, you could do very interesting things with individual cells, but that’s in culture under limited conditions.

So, yeah there was a lot of excitement about all of that but it wasn’t well thought through. We didn’t know a lot that we knew five years later about the complexity of the genome and its ability to become destabilized when you did these things. You could get a positive effect from putting in a good gene but you weren’t able to measure what the other side of that coin was. What was the response to the cell, what would it be like if it was in a whole body, interacting with this enormous computational array of possibility.

That’s why the corporations don’t want to look at it because it’s so complex. The amount of money and effort that would have to be put into that denies the technology. You can’t afford it; you have to take these shortcuts.

[These things are] transcalculational.

The whole idea of the ability of the simplest living organism to resist our scientific interpretation in any complete way I think is well accepted.

These are interactions that reach what’s called a catastrophe of computation. The computer people say that there is no computer that could make the calculation and there never will be such a computer.

Q: But GT depends on that not being the case right?

A: Right, there are two things. First, you shouldn’t expect that we could compute the organism from the genome, because the organism doesn’t compute the organism from the genome.

The organism computes itself from a vast array of data including genetic data. The idea of the success of GT is that you put a single gene in there and that it will be expressed and that the insertion and the accommodation to the insertion will be normal in all other respects. That’s an assumption. That’s a huge assumption

Q: But that’s what the whole thing is riding on.

A: That’s what the whole thing is riding on! And they’re avoiding all of the other [aspects.]

The only breakthrough I’ve seen, it was the last issue on the west coast last week’s issue AAA, their committee on germ line therapy has issued a report in which they say it’s too dangerous, should not be done with eggs and cells. Too many things that we do not know about and maybe cannot know.

The transfer of genes in such a way that they cannot be inherited.

Gene transfer should not be done in germ line cells, in eggs and sperm. This is the first time that the committee has given some signs of constraint to the corporate interests that they have to slow down. That the researchers must slow down

Q: Why was their alarm limited to gene line therapy?

A: That’s a good question. I don’t know.

If you understand what the assumption is that’s being made — there is no proper scientific response to that. There is no way that they can say, "Don’t worry about it, we’ll fix it."

If you get them that far, you say: "You mean to say you really don’t know what you’re doing?"

They don’t know what they’re doing.

They got into this idea that what we need to know is that there are gene programs that are responsible for the more complex traits of human beings and other organisms, and that if we really could understand totally the human genome, if we could know what it was in some sort of a printout, then all of a sudden somehow in the picture itself we would get some kind of illumination. It was almost like some kind of a religious experience was expected here. Some epiphany would come once this picture was published. Ten years ago we were all yawning at that, or most of us were anyway, but not in the ranks, not in the training of young people, these molecular laboratories went right ahead with this whole notion of somehow everything would be understood and wait and see and don’t sell science short this and what it’s all about waiting and blah blah blah and that was it, and its still it, and these guys are out there with their big computers and they don’t understand the limits the way physicists do. And the physicists seem to be remaining silent on all this, you’ve noticed. So the HGP [Human Genome Project] is now desperately looking for a way to explain what it’s going to do with the data that it’s got and it’s an oncoming embarrassment that is almost at the level of the HIV/AIDS phenomenon. These people do not know how to go from the genome to the organism, period. They can’t do anything and the reason they can’t do anything is the reason that Tom Kuhn spelled out: If you’ve got a paradigm that’s losing steam you can’t turn it in for a new one until the new one is up and running. We don’t have a new paradigm up and running and we’re stuck with this and it’s very hard to work your way out.

Given the power and money of the corporate interests, this thing is going to play itself out. It all comes together around the applications. The HGP [Human Gene Project] is funded — and it was funded from the very beginning — in order to cure human diseases and to provide the wherewithal to increase life expectancy.

Japanese are going to live to be 90 soon, genes aren’t even mentioned.

This is another problem: Life expectancy has nothing to do with genetics.

The excitement came because there was a time fifteen years ago, in the ranks of biologists that clung to the view that there was something called "gene programs."

The only thing left open to them is this GT, using the fruits of the HGP and using molecular tools to feed this hype that’s trying to become a major industry. It’s servicing basic research.

They simply didn’t anticipate this reality. Well, they did but...they decided to overlook their worries. There were other patients who showed signs of sensitivity. There were some warning lights flashing there. What killed Jesse Gelsinger was this insistence on the narrow focus of accounting in the lab.

They don’t know what happened.

They don’t know what happened!

There are lots of reports about all kinds of things that can happen when you put foreign DNA into a cell but they’re all disregarded. There are papers showing the bizarre things that happen when you take cells in culture and put DNA into them and put them into an animal.

Q: What kinds of things?

A: Cells become sensitive, they exhibit a hypersensitivity response, any DNA sequence as small as 25 or so base pairs will generate really unpredictable reactions on the parts of the cells. The simple act of putting cells in culture in order to do this manipulation created genetic instabilities, which are inherited. This is seen very clearly in plant cells. The idea that you’re not generating with the experiment is the huge amount of variability about which you know nothing is... you overlook that at great danger to everybody.

Q: An industry gets born out of some moment of eureka, surely?

A: Right.

Q: How can we explain why they thought this would work?

A: It’s so simple, it’s like the HIV thing, you just can’t believe it.

They were doing all their experiments under controlled conditions in the lab which made them work, you could see the results. Everything changed in a way that was predictable. Of course what they didn’t show you was the stuff that happened that wasn’t predictable. But that’s all data thrown in the ash can. And you continue to do the experiments in different ways until you find the way that gives you the answer you want.

Q: Then the gravy train got rolling?

A: Right. In days gone by, science might have worked this out but its been so captured by these relationships with corporate means and the rush to force things from the laboratory to the marketplace that created all this. So the [true] method of science is an old one.

We never had this incessant urging [in the past] to produce something useful — what that means is profitable. And under those circumstances everybody is caught up in it. Everybody is caught up in it, grants, millions of dollars flowing into laboratories, careers are made.

Q: Didn’t the gene therapy hype come via AIDS via cancer?

A: Oh yeah, everything is due to genes, whether it’s a human gene, normal gene, or a viral gene. All causality starts with the gene.

Q: And where did that belief come from?

A: That comes, my dear from, Gregor Mendel. A straight line and a straight simple line its absurdly, grotesquely simple. Going from Mendel to medical centers is the most absurd thing in the world.

Q: Why?

A: Because Mendel described very simple traits in plants.

This is what I published one year ago, the data is that there are these diseases in humans to which you can ascribe a single gene causality, and for which you can have some hope of doing something. But if you looked in the world almanac for the extent to which any one of these genetic diseases or all of these genetic diseases combined come into play in looking at life expectancy or mortality rates they aren’t there. There are thousands of genetic diseases but they only amount to less than 2% of our disease load. Now you’re taking that same logic which has been fruitless and you’re going to apply it to the complex diseases, now we’re talking about heart disease and cancer, and it’s totally strange — it’s weird and terrible science. Anybody who says it’s not going to fly is a Luddite and anti-intellectual and anti-scientific.

They think they’re doing science for science’s sake. They think if their work leads us into the tunnel of obscurity then they’re going to find their way out and they’re going to find the light and so forth. The question is, what do we do in the real world while we’re waiting for everybody to figure out where the light is? That’s another ethical question that science doesn’t have any answers for and we have to look at this from the point of view of giving science some guidelines and that’s also resisted mightily. That’s like a denial of a first amendment or something. I call it an invitation of the devil, this technology.
One of the most destructive phenomena in the history of the world.

Tape #2

Q: The paradigm that we’re in now is called what?

A: The machine model of biology. That life is a machine and the elements of the machine are genes and proteins, and that we can reduce the machine to its parts. The idea that we can control life.

Q: And what paradigm did that replace?

A: That’s an interesting question. There was never a monolithic paradigm other than evolution, which is coming under a lot of criticism these days. We’re in a state of revolution now I think. Lilly Kay at MIT wrote a book about this a few years ago.

Went through the archives at...50, 60 years ago there was a pluralism in the life sciences, we could have an evolutionary paradigm, or a holistic paradigm... but the powers that be.. even before WW2 decided that the direction we were going to go in was going to be molecular biology and a deterministic pathway. That life was controlled by these structures that we could get a handle on and therefore we could control life in that way.

Whether they were Machiavellian enough to say ’well that’s how we could all make a bundle’ I do now know. But [in the past] there was a pluralism there in science, and many different directions, [that’s gone.] Today, unless it’s genetics, it ain’t science in biology. That’s what happened. It’s reflected in the changing structure of the university. Fifty years ago we had organisms- we had zoology, botany. In most of the larger universities these departments have been phased out. I used to be the chairman of the zoology department; now its gone. I call it the intellectual urban renewal program, they tore down the neighborhoods and put up all these high rises and nobody talks to one another.

All these directions of research may still be there but they’re still dancing to the same tune. The old metaphysical ideas, that life was only partially materialistic and that something called a vital force was required to fully explain life... It was obfuscatory in many ways, biology struggled to free itself from that for a long time when Mendel came along with inherited particles. In the early part of the 20th century we began to put Mendel’s conceptual particles together with things called chromosomes and then genes, in a way which enabled that whole structure of biology to relay itself to the big cosmological question of evolution. That was the end of any kind of soft-headedness. A full-throttle shift into materialism and determinism.

Dick Rowan said in one of his NY Review Of Books pieces: "You have to understand that modern biology is materialistic. We have a prior commitment to materialism. And we’re not going to let God get his foot back in the door."

In the name of not letting God get back in the door we’re not facing reality. What you might think of as mystical is simply something that other people call complexity and complexity is scientific, it just doesn’t coincide with this linear thinking that characterizes most of genetics.

Epigenesis is everything about the genome that is not the gene. It’s an old word. The modern form of epigenesis is the scientific finding that is not talked about by these corporations... if you perturb a cell in culture, the genome will respond to that change in very specific ways, part of a cell’s response to stimuli, many things will change in the way genes are expressed. Genes that were silent before you gave it a stimulus are now caused to express themselves in a pattern that is different from the one you had just been using. And not only that, genes will be marked by chemical pathways that we know about now but don’t understand the pattern.

You change the organizational structures of the genes without changing the genes themselves, because that would be heretical - if you could change the genes other than by random mutation.

All these complicated changes [occur] in the genome exposure of the cell to any number of stimuli, certainly the intervention with foreign DNA. Genes make proteins, proteins interact with one another. They form networks and those networks take on a life of their own. They have a logic that isn’t found in the genome. The come only in the real world of expression. Epigenetic phenomenon, the [immense] complexity is nowhere to be seen in this corporate thrust to cure everything by intervention.

Q: What do you worry about? What is the most dangerous scenario at the end of this road?

A: I worry that we’re going to contaminate the entire planet with genetically modified plants. And that this will be irreversible. And we haven’t even got the slightest idea what might happen here.

The chief CEO of Sun Microsystems Bill Joy had a big piece in Wired, in march of this year. Bill Joy is calling for a slowdown in technology. The co-founder of Sun Microsystems. You know what he’s afraid of? He’s afraid that what we’re going to do... this is already part of this whole business of genetic manipulation of humans, embryos... Joy is afraid we’re going to start making hybrids, between human beings and nanotechnology circuits made in place like Sun Microsystems, and that these hybrids will take over. This is the director, talking seriously. This is a serious guy. And we biologists...I’m worried that before we make the robots we will already have created the conditions that will demand the robots because there won’t be anything called agriculture left anymore.

[Mentions a newsletter about technocratic eugenics.]

Q: Is it the potential loss of organic life on earth?

A: Yes.

Q: What worries you most when you think about so-called Gene Therapy?

A: My worry there was the worry expressed by William Blake:

’What seems to be is, to those to whom it seems to be and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be.’

If we think that the world of organisms is a world of machines, we will begin to treat each other as machines. That is the huge danger of this whole mechanistic model of organisms. That’s this terrible nightmare coming true.

 

Great article.

The relentless intrusion of the corporate world into the scientific one is one there doesn't seem to be any protection against.

It's appalling to think that global leaders are now reduced to acting as sales reps for big pharma.

 

Let's not also forget that the most important drug by far far away, penecillin, was discovered by accident.

Most of the people alive today, wouldn't be, without it.

The other great drug, anadin or its various anti-inflammatory counterparts has also been known for centuries.

 

 

Just a remark about polarity...

If you wanted a mathematical clue about the existence of at least these two levels of existence for any being, look at the mathematical intuition in "Topos theory" explained by Alexander Grothendieck himself in his writing when he revolutionized, category theory and algebric geometry at the same times..

In the simplest possible way of speaking a "point" is no more a point object in space but a category which hide also an entire cosmos....

Grothendieck was a deep mystic like Ramanujan and the two are almost "extraterrestrial " geniuses like the young Sidis or Archimedes...It humble us all...

We can also read the "Correspondance treatise" of Swedenborg who influenced deeply the 19 century for ALL genius in ALL countries, they all read him, it is easy to demonstrate it...Swedenborg described precisely the relation between 2 levels of reality, the terrestrial and the spiritual in his own way and with the knowledge of his time... But his model is holographic and fractal way before these concepts were officially created in modern times if we read between the lines of his work... Swedenborg I..Q. is not a small number...Amazing...

An anecdote: he was a seer and know the future, he travelled each years from Sweden to Holland for publishing reason , and enjoyed unlike Balzac but with him for this one, only ONE vice: coffee chain drinking all day long...The 2 or 3 captains that travelled with him yearly discovered that the number of days taken by the boat to reach destination were easy to predict if they spot the amount of coffee the seer was keeping for the travel at sea... The story is in the most interesting bio about Swedenborg....i studied it in my younger years...i hope you will enjoy the anecdote...I hope because my post are damned if not... 😁😊

At the question what is death? The stuttering genius who spoke latin wrote in latin: "the  reversal of the internal and of the external"....I will not explain it here, my goal is to comminucate to you the most elegant and concise and deep description of death in 3 words... Amazing? no ?

 

We are betwwen christmast and the new year...

I want to give hope...

Look at this documentary who described a miracle in world war one...

I am suprized that no one look at the documented story of Bruno Groening i posted... Which is so extraordinary story... I apologize for my long and 3 last posts...

 

Another deep aspect of the B. quote :"God’s transcendence is at an end. But he is not dead; he has been incorporated into human existence." is very deep..

Man is double, a polarity , like his heart is a beating polarity in his dynamic and geometry...

We are eternal consciousness without a limited "ego", a spirit and at the same times, we are a limited ego...

Sound/music for me is an expression in the limited world of the Plenum or pleroma of souls singing which is the pure meaning of music itself manifested in Bach or in any other musical experience playback or playing ...Remember that music is not reducible to physical sound....No more than meaning is reducible to spoken words or written one...

Then the soul/body polarity and the ego/spirit polarity or the sound/music are all expression flowing from one eternal source on earth and other cosmos kingdoms...

A finite object exist seemingly on one level of the scale, it is why we claim it is finite...But infinite being or spirit lived on at least 2 levels at the same time...Any finite object is the emerged tip of an hidden "iceberg" manifesting an another dimension anyway....

If everything exist all in the same level or dimension or "bag" so to speak, everything is meaningless. Structure imply design and design cannot exist without 2 levels of reality...

There is a clue about the apparent noise in the world and an hidden order manifesting through it...I posted an article from a doctorate thesis about the "fractal notion of the Brownian noise"... It is readable without too much mathematics but those mathematically inclined may look at the thesis attached to the article.... I am the first to read Mandelbrot, unknown completely when he publish his first book in french in 1975 when it arrived the first day from France in quebec city... This is a book who changed my intellectual landscape...I am very proud of that and i apologize for my pride... 😁😊

Great post!

Benjamin is spot on even when he is slightly wrong like N. he points to some truth, because there is no lies in a "sismograph" indicating the tremors agitating mankind...B. and N. are disguised angels on a mission to awake mankind...

These spirits are treasure to meditate, hard to read and easy to contempt like someone contempting a tool he cannot use or would never dare to try to understand...

if we read this Benjamin quote to the letter , this quote is true to the letter, the only piece who lack to understand B. about N. is the unrecognized "possessed" in a way "daemonic" genius of Bernard Mandeville who before N. himself generated in advance the essential tools and deep methods of mass controls and manipulation and foundation  of the Capitalist and Marxism cult to come...Others will refine them...

Hitler was more a german idiosyncrasy of the German defeat created by Banks With Versailles treaty and the full capitalist  backing of the Monster in spite of his disgusting racism...

Thanks for this great thread indeed at least for me et few others...

As much as people deride Nietzsche, wow -- what energy he generates. If I want a short thread that dies quickly, I’ll go with Kant or Aquinas! In fact, I think Nietzsche is better than even Chomsky for generating light and heat.

Then again, there’s Benjamin...he could light things up! Viz., "capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed….Capitalism is the celebration of the cult [without dream or mercy]…each day commands the utter fealty of each worshipper….entirely without precedent, in that it is a religion which offers not the reform of existence but its complete destruction. It is the expansion of despair, until despair becomes a religious state of the world in the hope that this will lead to salvation. God’s transcendence is at an end. But he is not dead; he has been incorporated into human existence. This passage of the planet “Human” through the house of despair in the absolute loneliness of his trajectory is the ethos that Nietzsche defined. This man is the superman, the first to recognize the religion of capitalism and begin to bring it to fulfillment." [Capitalism as Religion (Benjamin, 1921)]

But let’s not attack all our gods at once! Ignorance is bliss, amirite? ;-)

 

a god is a pasta-being, would a lasagna be the consorting of gods and mortals?

Sort of like communion only tastier. 

If a god is a pasta-being, would a lasagna be the consorting of gods and mortals?

I don't think anyone would attack the Flying Spaghetti Monster, who doesn't like noodles? 

As much as people deride Nietzsche, wow -- what energy he generates. If I want a short thread that dies quickly, I'll go with Kant or Aquinas! In fact, I think Nietzsche is better than even Chomsky for generating light and heat.

Then again, there's Benjamin...he could light things up! Viz., "capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed….Capitalism is the celebration of the cult [without dream or mercy]…each day commands the utter fealty of each worshipper….entirely without precedent, in that it is a religion which offers not the reform of existence but its complete destruction. It is the expansion of despair, until despair becomes a religious state of the world in the hope that this will lead to salvation. God’s transcendence is at an end. But he is not dead; he has been incorporated into human existence. This passage of the planet “Human” through the house of despair in the absolute loneliness of his trajectory is the ethos that Nietzsche defined. This man is the superman, the first to recognize the religion of capitalism and begin to bring it to fulfillment." [Capitalism as Religion (Benjamin, 1921)]

But let's not attack all our gods at once! Ignorance is bliss, amirite? ;-)

…and I thank you for always sharing your learnings with others here as well. Perhaps if we are fortunate we will learn something as well.  🙏

Your post really moved me because you are sincere... and for sure right..

It is a great gift to regain faith in humanity... Thanks...

I thank you...

And i wish you the best from my heart....

@mahgister I personally find your posts here very interesting and well informed  and I actually learn a lot of new things about philosophers and such. I suspect many others do as well.

I do think you could do better to stay on topic though. We all have things we can improve on. That is merely my suggestion to you. I say it in an honest attempt to help you be more effective. We should always encourage polite conversation however concise conversation that is on point is always more effective, persuasive, etc. I would not offer feedback in an attempt to help you be more effective were I not fond of the ideas you profess. Well except when things start steering towards conspiracy theories perhaps. We are all imperfect in many ways. The road to improvement often involves accepting and acting on constructive criticism. It is a gift on can give another with only the best intentions.

Anyhow, now I am off topic and may get flagged as spam so enough of that. Carry on!

It is true....I recognize it...

And these unsolicited posts on the 25 december without anyone with me here were adressed to alleged friends and were not delirium but interesting discoveries i made about some aspect of reality related or less well related to this thread... Recognize it also....Some people write to me and liked them and i even discussed with few of them...

I wish you the best... I will try to imitate your cool attitude...

By the way i was injust with you, you contributed with poems very well written....I will never call that spam, no more than a link to an interesting thinker...

 

It’s not all spam of course but a significant portion of it could easily be deemed unsolicited so maybe. Always best to stay on point in any public debate. The more one does that the more effective they become as a communicator and in conveying the intended message.

You are right about this...i shouldnt be insulted...But some negative people here crash my christmast because my posts are too LONG... I am then a bit sensitive..

i have another idea about friendshp...

 

Thanks for your polite reply to my rude post...

But do you think that your 3 words opinion is enough reason to call my posts spam and the last words on this complex subject? i think not...

Calling this constructive criticism is an euphemism to say the least...I take it personal because of the context...

Anyway i thank you for your controlled reaction...

You had a quality i dont mastered well , it is true: coolness...

My best to you...

 

You shouldn’t get insulted if someone sees things a bit differently than you do. Just take it for whatever it’s worth. Constructive criticism is exactly that. It’s always better to stay on point. Of course it’s a free forum so one can post whatever they want.

My value added on this topic is I think uncontrolled consumption is never a good thing in the end. Nor is uncontrolled anything pretty much.  The ability to control our impulses is something that should serve to distinguish us as a higher species compared to other more primitive species.   

 

The OP wisely linked a N. quote about spirit and consumerism in audio...Then think about what you just wrote...SPIRIT/ CONSUMERISM/ AUDIO this was the matter of the thread not audio ONLY... Then you just lied or you are slow brain ....

All my posts were by me directly related to the essential experience of the relation of sound/music and acoustic and psycho-acoustic and to some seemingly unrelated aspects of reality and history which are nonetheless anyway related to the human experience of music and of spirit .... All fields of human experience are related...Consumerism for example is not born in America, his roots are deep into history...Mandeville which i spoke about is one of this root...

Calling my posts spam is insulting ....Your non constructive posts adding nothing in information content maybe more spam than my commentaries with CONTENT to the complex topic of Spirit/consumerism/audio...

i dont hope that you will understand...

You have never added here any original concept in audio, unlike me, and most of your post are negative one against someone with no conceptual content...You miss arguing against geoffkait? And you call my posts spam...

Ridiculous dont kill ....

Well the posts are off topic and nothing to do with audio or music but so what?

 

Well the posts are off topic and nothing to do with audio or music  but so what? Technically it’s unsolicited so spam no matter and there are rules/guidelines about that. Solution is start a thread on the topic and tie it to audio or music. Then it’s legit and not spam.

It seems contrary to some who criticized me about beiing monologous that many people asked questions for me and i discussed...

My posts are numerous and lenghty yes... Is there no content in it? who will dare to claim that to my face?

Small people easily are jealous and spit instead of discussing...Some spit politely like the OP who never discuss any of my posts and some other who never discuss them spitted way less politely..

 

Thanks to the many others who make me feel less alone in Christmast...

 

«When the head cannot work  anymore or dont want it, the mouth spit»- Fictive invented maxim from unknown native american origin

To answer your post, it is now well accepted historically that the ancient mysteries schools around the mediterranean sea, for example at Eleusis, used probably different methods, like isolation, incubation, method of asphyxiation, tainted beer or wine with hallucigenic natural product and not so much to create pleasurable experience like in the hippies era but for a sacred very serious methodically planned OUT OF BODY and NEAR DEATH experience or induced coma like trance for direct spiritual transformation

 

Spiritual experiences are non propositional real experience which are undescribeable , transcending usual discourse...

Religions are based on original experience which were denatured or forgotten or reduced to propositional dogmas oblivious of the spiritual original event...

And now for something completely different. Do you believe one can cultivate the spirit through hallucinogenic substances? Does proper intention alongside hallucinogenic ingestion create space for seeing the unseen.

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Make you own referendum about me in audiogon and if you had more people who think like you i will QUIT audiogon forever...

How many threads has mahgister highjacked? 
Anyone keeping count?

You are not ashamed of anything it seems..

look at yourself before looking at me...

discussing WITH ARGUMENTS isnot hyjacking a thread..

posting filibuster accusation and now this is TROOLING ME...and the thread where the OP invite me at the first place... He shut himself off because he dont like my words count sum but NEVER EVER answer ANY of my arguments for or against WHY?

am i irrational? i am passionate yes but i can present ideas ...new one...Not old political mantra...or statistical giiberish to win a point ... Do you recognize you..

No argument then appeal to others to attack me..

Great man you are indeed...

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First listen to the video of the "seventh seal" film by Ingmar Bergman..i posted the adress few posts above...

This film which is one of the greatest work of art in cinema adress all your post interrogations.. i had and i have the same interrogations myself which are amongst the great interogations of mankind interogations through time...

 

 

This idea of personal god so hilarious.

 

 

Second i will give to you my clue about that ...

Think about WHO we are..

We are at the same time an IMPERSONAL SPIRIT CONSCIOUSNESS deep in us, and at the surface a biased historical manifested EGO...

Now think about what is GOD... Do you think God is LESS than what we  are...

 Do you think he is an abstraction without personality of any sort...Or a Tyrannical EGO who do nothing while children are kiiled in suffering?

 

Mysteries are not rational or irrational, they are heart beating POTENTIAL  revelation...listen to the "seven seals" ...This work of art is itself a revelation..

The 17 minutes video i posted above is a perfect resume of this film and you will pick the essential...

thanks sns for your interesting posts...

By the way i dont recognize myself with zealots of any kind, religious one or materialist one....

 

This new type of Christianity I see practiced today is certainly used as shield and sword of righteousness. This idea of personal god so hilarious. The one that always gets me is when one of these natural disasters hits, the survivor states god was with them, their prayers saved them. Unfortunately, we don't get to hear from the dead, they can't tell us how they're prayers weren't answered. Do people actually realize what they're saying when they use this logic! What they're really saying is god liked them more than neighbor, talk about hubris! No spirit here, unless your're talking mean spiritied.

 

I have long suffering Christian relatives, they are never wrong, they speak to their personal god each and every day, and in regard to every single political issue of the day. Every single idea or thought they ever had is absolute truth, and most amazing, they've never been wrong!  I've confronted them with prior incorrect statements over the years, they refuse to acknowledge a thing to my face. Goes into that empty part of brain where ignorance and denial reside.

 

And while I subscribe to Buddhist philosophy, don't get me started on the harms done by Buddhists down thru time immemorial. No, religion is separate from spirit. Religion man made, spirit comes from unknown source within all of us, I presume?

@nonoise - Loved that gif! That's the only way I listen to music (or watch sports or telly or movies)!!!   

🤣🤣🤣

For covid i had sound argument points... I clearly stated my position : vaccination of at risk population of ALL the world, second, no mass mandated forced vacccinations for children , and cheap proven multi drugs free for the others...

It is not WISE and simple to understand? THIS IS PURE SCIENCE....not poltical agenda...

Biden and Trump are idiots i dont choose between idiots..Pick the one you love...

For climate change you lied about me...

I clearly state that there is 2 factors thats all : Sun activity and men activity...

Discussing climate changes is impossible in audio thread, and it is what i said because it is TOO politically charged like covid and too complex more than covid science...Then save for UNDERLINING these 2 important related factors , the sun activity and mankind activity, i never pronounce myself MORE...

Try to be HONEST...not a sophist...Read my post in their context...

You constantly demonstrated in all threead for years your political agenda, i constantly demonstrated that i can change my mind and THINK out of any political ideology..

You are an hypocrit like some of the rightwingers you had attacked all times ...The difference is you are a leftwinger...

I am an adult not a puppet...

Try to contradict me NOW ABOUT any of my philosophical or historical points in this thread if you own a brain...

You cry out that I’m being political in debates on Covid and climate change when I’m not. You do so because you cite crazy stuff to support you claims that are easily disputed.

 

For some people it always ends up with god, not just any god, but their GOD.  God seems to be an answer, but maybe it's just an endless series of questions...

I think therefore I think I think.

Dont distort my words, in any discussion EVERYDOBY, me included, must answer intelligently and not post stupid gift or political attack...

The rules of discussion exist for millenia...

English is not my language and i have the bad habit to arrange my thought in order...

And if you read my answer s to my post they always listing arguments WITHOUT GRUDGE against anyone save those who serve me lesson like "filibuster" accusation...

Quit now your job is done and anyway you are unable to think about deep matter save fanatical politic....You serve lesson but try to answer about any of my post line of thought here... Try, it will reveal your mastering of thought instead of attacking me WITHOUT any sound argument ...

When you serve others the better of yourself and you receive spit like gift, if you are not Christ you react... These 2 posts are my reaction ....

I do, in fact, read your threads and find them tiresome because you prattle on endlessly when you could do it succinctly.

But you are right with the OP i am not succinct... So what? my posts are original in all article, books videos , and ideas recommendations and ARTICULATED so what?

YOU SHUT ME OFF BY THE WORDS COUNT? not by my content?

Look in your face....

IT SEEMS TO ME THAT SOME OTHERS PEOPLE ENJOYED READING MY REFLECTIONS... but you did not why? the words count annoy you?

is this a valid argument at the end?

you are ridiculous and anyone reading all the thread will decide by himself...

 

you must MATURELY argue against or for my point or stay silent...

So now you're setting the terms of an open conversation?
Who died and put you in charge?

You cry out that I'm being political in debates on Covid and climate change when I'm not. You do so because you cite crazy stuff to support you claims that are easily disputed. So you now carry a grudge. What would your philosophical mentors think of you now? 

I do, in fact, read your threads and find them tiresome because you prattle on endlessly when you could do it succinctly. You write like it's a dissertation instead of  a conversation and that can wear on a person. It turns most people off. 

So like the OP, I'm outta here and you can enjoy yourself all you want as you seem be the your own favorite audience, seeming to marvel on all you can say.

All the best,
Nonoise

It is an either/or situation for me...

If you read my post , you must MATURELY argue against or for my point or stay silent...It is called an ADULT philosophical debate...

Calling me a "filibuster" reflect, by this choice of word, your own personal political ideology and mirror your own PAST actions in all thread pertaining to politics OR NOT where suddenly you never moderate yourself ABOUT YOUR POLITICAL OPINION in the first place, creating foes and neglecting all audio matter because it suit you... I dont act like that i moderate myself and i spoke KINDLY to millercarbon or to you for example......And in this tread i relate all my ideas to audio approach and ideas about music and sound, science and spirit experience...

Then take a mirror...Look at your beam not at my straw...

By the way my posts were never monologos but dialogos propositions and my content is not REPETITIVE but various and original even in audio matters and ARE AROUND the OP question of this thread from many perspective.

Then calling me "filibuster" reflect your own immoderate trend in all threads of audiogon about politics and arguing agaist imaginary political enemy : the right...Millercarbon in particular.. Thinking out of politic is without interest for you it seems...Philosophy and audio are related directly by the way... Ideological politic and audio are not...

 

And the OP is supposed to be a philosopher, i am amazed that instead of discussing and reading my posts which are around the question of consumerism/spirit because he even cited me in the first place in his initial remark he shut me off now... He did it for the same reason in the past... it seems i am not an interesting guest...ideas are too much in numbers and arguments too deep or too stupid...Pick your choice...he dont discuss my arguments EVER like any philosopher will do...I supposed he think i am a deluded fool...Or he himself is unable to think out of a book...

I will quit...

i need friends to speak with, not small hypocrital passive observer...

Thanks for your christmast gift...

And nonoise enjoy posting your childish GIF instead of ideas...Dont call that trolling a thread with unrelated unoriginal humor called that "nonoise right" to annoy by self proclaimed right...And go on with your petty political attacks...

@mahgister ,

It’s not an either/or situation.
It’s not like a faucet: fully on or shut completely off.
It’s moderation in everything we do.

All the best,
Nonoise

@mahgister

I have read your postings with interest and I also appreciate your efforts to build a system at minimal cost even if it is a bit unconventional with the crystals and rocks. And based on what I see in your system I have ordered for myself a Schumann generator out of curiosity. You might explain to me how to tell if it is even working.

Fascinating and informative everything you have said in these recent posts. We all have a predilection towards evil. It doesn’t take much influence it seems for people to go to dark places and harm others or even themselves. Ever visit the torture museums scattered around Europe? It can be horrifying the awful things we will do to each other. Evil would have consumed the world long ago if not for the Grace of God. The western world gives Christianity lip service- perhaps not so much these days but espouses materialism. In our material world we believe science has all the answers and deny the spirituality of humankind. Even Karl Jung, who you mentioned delved into spirituality through the occult in an attempt to treat it as a scientific endeavor and find a way to control or apply it in material terms. Ultimately, he committed suicide.

The United States was set up as a secular nation. Our own US Constitution is a materialistic blend of Greek philosophies with the goal of humankind developing a Utopian society apart from our Eternal Creator. (The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) They cleverly peppered the document with the word, "God" to insure all of the colonies would ratify the document. Take for example the premise in our Constitution that all men are created equal. (Set aside the irony for the moment that these words were written by slaveholders). It would seem a plausible Utopian goal but after two and a half centuries of effort, conflict and war can we really say these words are true or achievable in this world? Materialism is a dead end. Do not confuse this with Consumerism. Materialism is the idea that the Universe came to existence on its own and everything evolved from something lessor. Greek philosophy and modern philosophies all lead to dead ends. I say that because so many either deny the spirituality of humankind or misinterpret it as it relates to the Eternal Creator God. All of this leads to absolute evil and the downfall of everyone because in the end everyone in this world dies. But there is Good News! Mahgister, you touched on it briefly at one point. That is that God sent his only son into the world to save it. A simple message but difficult for people to accept. Paul of Tarsus, the greatest missionary and Christian theologian of all times spoke to the great minds in Greece and failed to convey his message to them because The Message is the opposite of Materialism. (A few Greeks that heard his message did become Christians).

I would hope that everyone would read the Holy Bible (Christian Bible) before making conclusions about Christ. It seems so many just form opinions based on ignorance (not a put down but a cry to investigate the Truth on your own) or what the State tells them rather than to read and contemplate on their own. Yes, the Bible is long, some 780,000 words long but few have read it cover to cover and not been affected by it. It’s no wonder the State has worked so hard to keep this book out of our schools away from young people and even ban quotes from this bible from the walls of our public buildings. Why does the state fear this book so much? Perhaps it is words such as this in the bible written by Paul of Tarsus: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage."

The bible is so readily available everywhere these days and is translated into nearly every language on earth. Anyone could pick up a bible and read it as easily as reaching out for a glass of water. It is a terrible tragedy that people deem its worth based on its accessibility.