Political dumbness blog.

[Danioover9000]

   Hello all, @Leo Gura had posted a blog about politics a few days ago, and it's not available in my country. If anyone knows the name or ULR of the video, please share as I would like to view it. If not, then could you give me a summery of what the video is about? Thanks!

[Oeaohoo]

I had the same problem. You should be able to see it here: https://mobile.twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1540125156705714177 (I think this is the same thing!)

[Oeaohoo]

A summary if you still can’t see it: It’s a guy interviewing some senile and misguided Trump supporting Americans about the January 6 Insurrection hearing. Most of them are ignorant of it (two typical modern bimbos don’t even know it happened!) or deny it altogether.

It reminds me of that joke:

Why wasn’t Jesus born in America?

Because they couldn’t find a single wise man!

[DnoReally]

That's some Tier 2 spiral dynamics content.

Very funny! haha

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo Could you give a quick breakdown on the difference between Nietzschean and Leonian philosophy?

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality I assume Leonian means Leo’s philosophy?

The thing I have always valued most highly in Nietzsche is his radical disdain for all of the mundane ways in which people divide up their lives: work and play, for example. Even in the preface to his first book on Greek tragedy he had criticised those ‘who will find it distasteful to see an aesthetic problem taken so seriously, if they can see art as no more than an entertaining irrelevance, an easily dispensable tinkle of bells next to the “seriousness of life”: as if no one was aware what this contrast with the “seriousness of life” amounted to. Let these serious people know that I am convinced that art is the supreme task and the truly metaphysical activity of this life”. Leo on the other hand loves to distinguish between different areas of life: you can work on your relationships, your career, your business and so on, “ad infinitum”!

Nietzsche largely rejected progressivism - “progress is merely a modern idea, that is to say a false idea” - and even evolutionism whereas Leo strongly believes in progress. The Last Man, the most despicable man, that Zarathustra prophetically describes is very much in conformity with the eschatology of other religions whereas Spiral Dynamics denies this in favour of a seemingly infinite evolution. There is an overblown hyper-masculinity in Nietzsche (the “blond beast” and so on) whereas I would say that Leo’s teachings and even more so the Actualized community are more feminised.

Their style of presentation is probably the most noticeable difference. As part of the project of active non-duality that I have already mentioned, Nietzsche sought to abolish the distinction between style and substance: ‘The more abstract a truth which one wishes to teach, the more one must first entice the senses.’ Leo, on the other hand, speaks in a mostly neutral, if a little preachy, tone and only occasionally slips into an emotional outburst. In MBTI terms, I would say that Nietzsche is much stronger with Te and Leo with Ti: Nietzsche is probably an INTJ (like us, I believe) while Leo is an INTP.

On the other hand, they have a lot in common. Nietzsche had a very clear vision regarding the limitations of positivism, materialistic atomism, the false idol of scientism and all of that sort of thing which Leo is also very strong on. The perspectivism and radical deconstruction of late Nietzsche is similar to some of Leo’s teachings, and whatever remains in Nietzsche of Schopenhauer’s metaphysical idealism would also be in accordance with this.

There are many hints towards even a metaphysical non-dualism in Nietzsche’s later works, but - in my opinion these works represent a study in the Left-Hand path - it is a sort of inverted non-duality where, like in Heraclitus and in certain strands of Buddhism, everything is reduced to mere flux and becoming: “Now just as people distinguish between lightning and its flash, and interpret the latter as the action which is performed by a subject which is called lightning, so also does popular morality distinguish strength from the expression of strength, as though behind the strong man there existed some indifferent neutral substratum which enjoyed the freedom to express strength or not. But there is no such substratum, there is no “being” behind the action, the effect, the becoming; “the agent” is a mere accessory to the action. The action is everything. In point of fact, people duplicate the action, when they make the lightning flash, it is the action of an action; they make the same phenomenon first a cause, and then, secondly, the effect of that cause. The scientists fail to improve matters when they say, “Force moves, force causes”, and so on. Our science is still, in spite of being cool and calculating, a dupe of the tricks of language, and has never rid itself of that superstitious channelling “the subject”…’ It is a variation on the teaching of anatman, with a peculiar emphasis on immanence and a certain kind of naturalism that are motivated by his anti-Christian prejudices. This makes his philosophy quite dangerous because he refuses the necessary self-annihilation and opening up of oneself to transcendence, which in my opinion is why he went insane.

Another thing I have always valued in creators of any kind is the sense of witnessing the unfolding of a character, which I think you can see very clearly in Nietzsche and Leo’s work.

There is probably much more that could be said but this is all that comes to mind right now. The best commentary I have come across on Nietzsche is this little essay: https://www.anthologiablog.com/amp/cosmopolitan-view-of-nietzsche-by-ananda-coomaraswamy

[Danioover9000]

@AtheisticNonduality

17 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

@Oeaohoo Could you give a quick breakdown on the difference between Nietzschean and Leonian philosophy?

   Nah, it's gotta be Leoism instead. Leonian sounds like some kind of designation for some job title.

Edited June 26, 2022 by Danioover9000

[Danioover9000]

@Oeaohoo Thank you for giving me a video that works. Jesus, if 40% of Americans are like this I can see why change is difficult.

22 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

I had the same problem. You should be able to see it here: https://mobile.twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1540125156705714177 (I think this is the same thing!)

 

22 hours ago, Oeaohoo said:

A summary if you still can’t see it: It’s a guy interviewing some senile and misguided Trump supporting Americans about the January 6 Insurrection hearing. Most of them are ignorant of it (two typical modern bimbos don’t even know it happened!) or deny it altogether.

It reminds me of that joke:

Why wasn’t Jesus born in America?

Because they couldn’t find a single wise man!

 

[Oeaohoo]

@AtheisticNonduality Condensing what I have said above, I would say that Nietzsche was a prophet and a magician (in the sense of one who seeks to unite contemplation with action) whereas Leo is more of a contemplative and an intellectual (in the higher sense). In Nietzsche’s own terminology, he is more Dionysian whereas Leo is more Apollonian.

1 hour ago, Danioover9000 said:

Thank you for giving me a video that works. Jesus, if 40% of Americans are like this I can see why change is difficult.

What makes you say that 40% of Americans are like this? Is this from a poll or was it how many people voted for Trump in the last election?

[AtheisticNonduality]

12 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

@AtheisticNonduality Condensing what I have said above, I would say that Nietzsche was a prophet and a magician (in the sense of one who seeks to unite contemplation with action) whereas Leo is more of a contemplative and an intellectual (in the higher sense). In Nietzsche’s own terminology, he is more Dionysian whereas Leo is more Apollonian.

Now, Oeaohoo is Dionysian or Apollonian? Leans Nietzschean or Leoist?

[Oeaohoo]

11 minutes ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Now, Oeaohoo is Dionysian or Apollonian? Leans Nietzschean or Leoist?

I have more of a Dionysian temperament. Leo’s deepest teachings are more profound but Nietzsche has been more important to me personally. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody was the first book that I read religiously, in the sense of returning to it again and again and always discovering a deeper level of meaning. What about yourself?

Incidentally, the name Oeaohoo is from a Theosophical text which my favourite composer Scriabin used to great effect in the choral part of his symphony Prometheus: The Poem of Fire. This is very Dionysian music. It means Logos or the Absolute:

Quote

OEAOHOO is rendered “Father-Mother of the Gods” in the Commentaries, or the SIX IN ONE, or the septenary root from which all proceeds.

In one sense, Oeaohoo is the “Rootless Root of All”; hence, one with Parabrahmam; in another sense it is a name for the manifested ONE LIFE, the Eternal living Unity.

- https://theosophy.wiki/en/Oeaohoo

[AtheisticNonduality]

41 minutes ago, Oeaohoo said:

I have more of a Dionysian temperament. Leo’s deepest teachings are more profound but Nietzsche has been more important to me personally. Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody was the first book that I read religiously, in the sense of returning to it again and again and always discovering a deeper level of meaning. What about yourself?

I don't know completely. The passage about involuntary bliss in that book is very interesting. And the individuality of the character makes perfect sense to me. He is very funny; I love the tightrope walk where the clown murders the acrobat. But there's something sad about it all because Nietzsche must have been a very miserable person, being so alone philosophically "profoundly" in the time and place he was at, likely nobody understanding his ideas as clearly as himself and him suffering from severe health issues. He said in that book Jesus was immature and would have needed more time alive to reach proper clarity, so it makes me wonder what Nietzsche would have ended up as if he survived.

Leo's issues with health also would correlate with Nietzsche's, though Nietzsche's was worse, it seems. And Leo hasn't gone insane and institutionalized yet! Or rather, he's just a freely roaming insane person in Las Vegas!

Aurobindo is my favorite philosopher.

[Oeaohoo]

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

He is very funny; I love the tightrope walk where the clown murders the acrobat. But there's something sad about it all because Nietzsche must have been a very miserable person, being so alone philosophically "profoundly" in the time and place he was at

There is definitely a tragic element underlying the whole thing; ironically, it is like the tragic pathos which underlies the Christian message. To me the jester leaping over the tightrope-walker is a dream-like metaphor for the fundamental problem with Nietzsche’s life and philosophy: he (as the tightrope-walker) had awakened a transcendent force within himself (which he perceived as a jester, because transcendence makes a mockery of all partial and limited identifications) which insistently drove him on towards the destruction of all limitations (“philosophising with a hammer”). However, without the appropriate context and training he was not able to master this transcendent force and so it overcame him, driving him down into the abyss. That being said, I find passages in The Antichrist particularly and the fourth part of Zarathustra to be raucously funny!

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

He said in that book Jesus was immature and would have needed more time alive to reach proper clarity, so it makes me wonder what Nietzsche would have ended up as if he survived.

Well, he specifically says that Jesus still had the overwrought passion of early life and so his teaching was contaminated by a one-sided escapism and a contempt for mundane things, almost like a rebellious teenager. I would say that Zarathustra suffers from the opposite problem, in that he esteems the earth and the body over spirituality. There is a very weak passage in which Zarathustra basically denies all metaphysics:

Quote

God is a thought that makes all that is straight crooked and all that stands twist and turn. What? Time should be gone and all impermanence a mere lie?

To think this is a whirlwind and dizziness for human bones, and a vomiting for the stomach too.

Evil I call it and hostile to the human: all this teaching about the One and Plenum and Unmoved and Complete and Permanent!

However, towards the end of Zarathustra, particularly with the motif of the Eternal Return, he increasingly transcends this one-sided emphasis on impermanence: ‘That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of Becoming to one of Being’; ‘Every moment begins existence, around every “Here” rolls the ball “There”; The middle is everywhere’. The final song, The Seven Seals (or: the Yea- and Amen- Song) is very beautiful and a true spiritual revival!

Quote

4:

If ever I drank full draughts from that foaming spice and mixing jug in which all things are well mixed:

If ever my hand poured the farthest to the nearest and fire to spirit and joy to pain and the wickedest to the kindest:

If I myself am a grain of that redemptive salt which ensures that all things in the mixing jug are well-mixed:—

—for there is a salt that binds good to evil; and even the worst evil is good for spicing and for the ultimate foaming-over:—

Oh how should I not lust after Eternity and after the nuptial ring of all rings — the ring of recurrence?

Never yet have I found the woman from whom I wanted children, except for this woman whom I love: for I love you, O Eternity!

For I love you, O Eternity!

It is very striking how Nietzsche seems to have rediscovered the teaching of the subtle body. His description of the Seven Seals maps perfectly onto the system of Chakras of Tantra, and consider the opening to his description of the Last Man: “What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star? Thus ask the Last Men and they blink. For the earth has now become small, and upon it hops the Last Man who makes everything small.” Love is the Heart Chakra; Creation is the Throat Chakra; Longing is the Third Eye; and a Star is The Thousand Petalled Lotus of pure transcendence; thus, the Last Man only has access to the lower, material and animal centres of the body.

I see Thus Spoke Zarathustra as Nietzsche breaking away from all of the rotten assumptions of a profane and atheistic world and so making a profound rediscovery of transcendent wisdom. The greatest mistake I see in people who discuss it is that they take specific teachings of Zarathustra (particularly the prologue and the Superman) without regard for their context within the book as a whole. It has to be understood more like a symphony, an unfolding narrative who’s culminating crescendo is the Great Midday in which all oppositions are reconciled and everything is once more harmonious.

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

And Leo hasn't gone insane and institutionalized yet! Or rather, he's just a freely roaming insane person in Las Vegas!

Hahaha, it is probably so! 

2 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Aurobindo is my favorite philosopher.

I haven’t read much Aurobindo. Would you recommend a particular book of his? If you are interested, the works of René Guénon have been very valuable to me, particularly his books Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, The Multiple States of the Being and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

[AtheisticNonduality]

@Oeaohoo A few years ago, the first copy I had of Zarathustra was really bad---like the cover was almost as thin and crinkly as the pages. And the translation had archaisms, so it would say, "Thou great star! What would be thy happiness if thou hadst not those for whom thou shinest!", instead of "Great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine!" The latter is the Hollingdale, which is reputable.

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

Hahaha, it is probably so! 

I'm actually waiting for him to go genuinely beyond the limits of sanity.

1 hour ago, Oeaohoo said:

I haven’t read much Aurobindo. Would you recommend a particular book of his? If you are interested, the works of René Guénon have been very valuable to me, particularly his books Man and His Becoming According to the Vedanta, The Multiple States of the Being and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times.

The Life Divine is the most comprehensive and really impressive, though it's not a short read. I'll probably examine Guénon some time in the future.

[Oeaohoo]

16 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The Life Divine is the most comprehensive and really impressive, though it's not a short read. I'll probably examine Guénon some time in the future.

I have just been rereading a collection of reviews which Guénon wrote in Studies on Hinduism on Aurobindo’s books. I thought you might find it interesting so I have copied some highlights out below (you might be able to see where some of my anti-progressive views come from!):

‘Sri Aurobindo […] is a man who, although he perhaps sometimes presents the doctrine under a rather too “modernised” form, has no less incontestably a high spiritual value. For him, it is a question “not only of rising from ordinary ignorant mundane consciousness to the Divine consciousness, but also of bringing down the supra-mental power of this Divine consciousness into the ignorance of the mind, of life, and of the body, and of transforming them, of manifesting the Divine even here below, and of creating a Divine life in matter.” This amounts to saying that the total realisation of the being includes not only the “Supreme”, but also the “Non-Supreme”, both the unmanifested and the manifested aspects finally uniting as it were indissolubly as they are united in the Divine. Perhaps the author’s insistence on showing a difference with “the other Yogas” risks an incorrect interpretation; there is in fact nothing “new” here, for the teaching has always been that of the Hindu tradition as well as of the other traditions (the Islamic tasawwuf in particular is very explicit in this regard). If the first point of view seems more in evidence generally than the second in expositions of Yoga, there are several reasons, but let it suffice to point out, first, that the “ascent” must necessarily precede the “redescent”; and then that the being that has truly realised the “Supreme Identity” can therefore, and for that very reason, “move at will” in all the worlds (this excludes, of course, that in the “redescent” he must once again find himself enclosed in individual limitations). It is therefore a mere question of “modality” and not of a real difference as to the goal, which would be strictly inconceivable; but it is worthwhile to stress it, since too many people tend to see innovations where there is only a perfectly correct expression or legitimate adaptation of traditional doctrines and to attribute to individuals a role and an importance which they could never have.

Responding to a rather “sentimental” question regarding the reasons for suffering and evil in this world, Aurobindo rightly answers that all possibilities must be fulfilled, and that it is division and separation that give birth to evil insofar as these possibilities are considered in isolation from each other and from their principle. In sum, what we consider as evil, that is to say as a negation, is such only in consequence of our ignorance and our limited horizon. What is more contestable is that he seems to admit not only a spiritual evolution for each being but also evolution in the sense of a “progression” of the world in its totality. This is an idea which appears very modern to us, and we do also do not see how it can agree with the very conditions of the development of all manifestation. After all, how can such affirmations be reconciled with the least understanding of the traditional doctrine of cycles, and more particularly with the fact that we are presently in the darkest period of the Kali-Yuga? On the other hand, if we sufficiently understand what is not expressed very explicitly, he appears to think that “ascending realisation” is insufficient in itself and that it requires completion by “descending realisation”; at least, some of his expressions allow this interpretation of his thought. But why then oppose liberation as he understands it to what he calls an “escape from the world”? As long as the being remains in the Cosmos (and by that we mean not only this world but the totality of manifestation), however elevated the states he can reach, they are always only conditioned states which have no common measure with true liberation. Liberation can only be attained by leaving the Cosmos, and it is only thereafter that the being can “redescend”, in appearance at least, without any longer being affected by the conditions of the manifested world. In other words, “descending realisation”, very far from being opposed to “ascending realisation”, on the contrary necessarily presupposes it; it would have been useful to clarify this so as to leave no room for equivocation, but we want to believe that this is what Aurobindo means when he speaks of “an ascension from which one no longer falls back, but whence one can take flight in a winged descent of light, strength and Ānanda.”’

[Danioover9000]

@Oeaohoo

On 6/26/2022 at 8:02 PM, Oeaohoo said:

@AtheisticNonduality Condensing what I have said above, I would say that Nietzsche was a prophet and a magician (in the sense of one who seeks to unite contemplation with action) whereas Leo is more of a contemplative and an intellectual (in the higher sense). In Nietzsche’s own terminology, he is more Dionysian whereas Leo is more Apollonian.

What makes you say that 40% of Americans are like this? Is this from a poll or was it how many people voted for Trump in the last election?

   I'm being hyperbolic, sorry if I offend, it's difficult with the current political climate of America, what it had gone through with the Trump phase for me to reconcile after knowing a lot about developmental psychology.

[Oeaohoo]

6 minutes ago, Danioover9000 said:

I'm being hyperbolic, sorry if I offend, it's difficult with the current political climate of America, what it had gone through with the Trump phase for me to reconcile after knowing a lot about developmental psychology.

You didn’t offend, I was just wondering where you got the 40% figure from.

[AtheisticNonduality]

On 6/27/2022 at 1:11 PM, Oeaohoo said:

‘Sri Aurobindo […] is a man who, although he perhaps sometimes presents the doctrine under a rather too “modernised” form, has no less incontestably a high spiritual value.

This is a major "red flag."

Quote

For him, it is a question “not only of rising from ordinary ignorant mundane consciousness to the Divine consciousness, but also of bringing down the supra-mental power of this Divine consciousness into the ignorance of the mind, of life, and of the body, and of transforming them, of manifesting the Divine even here below, and of creating a Divine life in matter.” This amounts to saying that the total realisation of the being includes not only the “Supreme”, but also the “Non-Supreme”, both the unmanifested and the manifested aspects finally uniting as it were indissolubly as they are united in the Divine.

This is not just Emptiness = Form or Unmanifest = Manifest. This is an actual structural change or development to formations.

Quote

Perhaps the author’s insistence on showing a difference with “the other Yogas” risks an incorrect interpretation; there is in fact nothing “new” here, for the teaching has always been that of the Hindu tradition as well as of the other traditions (the Islamic tasawwuf in particular is very explicit in this regard).

Enlightenment thousands of years ago is not the same as Enlightenment today.

Quote

If the first point of view seems more in evidence generally than the second in expositions of Yoga, there are several reasons, but let it suffice to point out, first, that the “ascent” must necessarily precede the “redescent”; and then that the being that has truly realised the “Supreme Identity” can therefore, and for that very reason, “move at will” in all the worlds (this excludes, of course, that in the “redescent” he must once again find himself enclosed in individual limitations). It is therefore a mere question of “modality” and not of a real difference as to the goal, which would be strictly inconceivable; but it is worthwhile to stress it, since too many people tend to see innovations where there is only a perfectly correct expression or legitimate adaptation of traditional doctrines and to attribute to individuals a role and an importance which they could never have.

The Nothingness cannot change, but the Everythingness certainly can. Ascent being primary causally, as a catalyst, does not reduce the effectuality of redescent.

[Oeaohoo]

17 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

This is a major "red flag."

Hahaha, of course it would be… Onwards and upwards we go forever and ever!

17 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

Enlightenment thousands of years ago is not the same as Enlightenment today.

Even enlightenment obeys the Sacred Law of Progress?! 

17 hours ago, AtheisticNonduality said:

The Nothingness cannot change, but the Everythingness certainly can. Ascent being primary causally, as a catalyst, does not reduce the effectuality of redescent.

Guénon is making the point that the peak of the ascent is liberation from the cosmos and thus from change itself, the attainment and possession of the eternal. The descent then involves permeating the lower world with this transcendent freedom.

Your response is very predictable because you seem to be very attached to “immanentising” the divine.

[AtheisticNonduality]

On 7/6/2022 at 2:25 PM, Oeaohoo said:

enlightenment obeys the Sacred Law of Progress?! 

An enlightened child is admittedly not as advanced as an enlightened adult, at least not most of the time.