Terry.........lol......for someone who takes such pride in being a logical person, I have to say that you've made some pretty sweeping, generalized comments........I don't understand how or where you come up with the information or the beliefs you do about "mystics".
TESTING the results of two different ways of thinking
by Terry 172 Replies latest jw friends
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BrendaCloutier
Interestingly I see Terry and LittleToe as opposite ends of this debate spectrum, yet so very similar in so many ways!
I find rational thought and mysticism to not be mutually exclusively. Unfortunately, I cannot embue you or anyone else with my experiences to prove the outcome.
Although I am agnostic - a placeholder for a non-diety "god". I still believe the "laws" of the universe are the purest laws around and of this non-diety "god". Some appear to be in conflict with others, and even within themselves, yet they cannot be broken, only altered for our use (airtravel for one). The same with Mysticism vs. Rational Thought IMHO.
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LittleToe
Brenda:Ironically I'm taking that position for the sake of discussion. I'm somewhere inbetween...
Mysticism doesn't subvert the rational, it augments it.
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tetrapod.sapien
nice thread terry.
just because humans have a predisposition for mysticism, does not mean that it should automatically have a place in our society.
it's played it's roll in our cultural evolution already. now it's time to begone with it!!
people rarely like to talk about it because it makes them uncomfortable. but mystical thinking plays a subconscious role in so many things that really it should have no part in. really, it's major contributor to the widespread phenomenon of mental discontinuity in our species. the problems of our species would not be gone with the death of mysticism, but their context and clarity would be wholly different.
TS
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LittleToe
Maybe you should define the thing you are attempting to kill. What are you calling "mysticism"?
Frankly it sounds like neither of you have a clue (Terry / Tetra)...
Laters - I'm off out...
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talesin
Either/Or ?
That's too black-and-white for me. I exclude religion personally, but disagree with your scorn of the 'mystical' (using your term here, but it could be ethereal, spiritual, non-corporeal, or whatever term one chooses to utilize).
The question of whether we have a soul, or whether there are 'mystical' forces at play in the universe, has been argued by better scholars and philosophers than either of us, and as yet, remains unresolved.
My personal thoughts are that we are both rational and irrational, we can determine some things by fact and logic, and others by the seat of our pants.
Should rational thinking always be given weight? I think so. Is it always correct? I think not.
Have you ever gotten that crawling feeling at the back of your neck, telling you 'something is not right'? That is what I call 'intuition'. Sometimes there is a rational reason (perhaps a barely-detected noise in the bushes, or something the person has said in the past that makes me wary), and other times there is not.
I don't have the definitive answer, but it seems to me that the ideal is a combination of the 'mystical' and rational -- it's what/who we are. (not that I expect you to agree! :D)
tal
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talesin
(for editing, try going to the top of your post when you are done, and deleting the returns that get inserted when you edit ,,, works for me!)
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Narkissos
Terry,
As you know I deeply disagree with your conclusions, presentation of data, reasoning and methodology (to put it backwards).
You arbitrarily pick up two ideal categories which you define arbitrarily and then try to fit the whole history of human thought into those two boxes. This simply doesn't work.
To you, for instance, the keywords of mysticism are (1) appeal to authority and (2) belief in another world and future reward. To me this is a completely false premise. Mysticism is widely known as the least authoritarian (appealing to individual experience here and now vs. doctrine and hierarchy) and the most monist-oriented (it was always suspect of pantheism to the theist) side of religion. Read about Meister Eckhart for a start.
Otoh, you describe a sort of pure rationalism (which borders on empirism and pragmatism). But nowhere did rationalism thrive without being mixed with some kind of mystical ideal and epistemological faith. Read Descartes.
You then distribute your historical likes and dislikes according to your agenda even though it flatly contradicts history. You conveniently put the Renaissance in the Aristotelian box whereas Renaissance was heavily Neo-Platonist (see for instance http://www.hermetic.com/texts/neoplatonism.html). You link marxism (which is admittedly not devoid of idealism) with Platonism and disregard its obvious monistic materialism which breaks away from both Plato and Aristotle (btw, if you really read the latter he would strike you as pretty "mystical" according to your own definition). Enough said.
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zen nudist
A bit of honesty seems lacking in any camp which pretends to KNOW what reality is, whether they call themselves rationalists, logical or mystical, the problem is that we have ONLY experiences and beliefs about them, neither of which are directly linked to reality by necessity. while the rationalist non-mystics argue that reality must be related to the world we experience they have nothing but experiences and belief to go on any more than those who experience other apparent planes of existance or alternate levels of reality....who are just as convinced of the reality of those experienced realms....
when either of them represent their belief and faiths as facts they are lying... it does not matter that the non-mystic can point to his evidence and say it must be so.... just because he is either ignorant of other possibilities or cannot believe he can be wrong.
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Blueblades
Terry can you use "THE BALONEY KIT" in this testing.
Blueblades