I have to ask myself PT2

We were at the question of the human mind and whether it was distinctly human?

To solve this puzzle, I realise that I have to find the reason for this "Exceptionalism" of the Human mind. I need to find out why we evolved as such. Was it a coincidental miracle or was it all because of conditional factors? Are we truly exceptional?

But before I head down the anthropological path. I should better define the distinctive qualities of the Human mind.

Ultimately, it is our exceptional quality to conceptualize on the abstract plain that has allowed us the ability to think beyond the corporeal. This has perhaps enabled us to conceptualise a God.

This ability also aided our development of language which allowed for knowledge to persist and for discourse to stretch beyond physical constraints.

But we had to have the aid of other exceptional mental faculties. Please take note that the effects of these faculties often are blurred. Below, I am just trying to categorize it neatly.

Other exceptional faculties of our Human mind which perhaps aided in the creation of God are as follows:

The recognition of ourselves as individuals, this led to the conceptualization of our "will" and in turn allowed for "willed and calculated actions" which meant that we possessed rationality.

Our sense of memory also allowed us to gain appreciation of Time and to act to our calculated actions and identify cause and effect.

We were also able to overcome the "pleasure principle" and with this, it gave greater prominence to our rationality and calculated actions.

I have to ask myself

So here I am, a realist-moralist. And I need to know/think about my ideas about God.

First of all, I need to stop thinking of God as masculine. Well, of course it is because of the patriarchal and semantic lineage that has bombarded me since young.

So I should begin understanding that God is not of one gender. This is because by right, God should be the unity of all since he is the creator of all. But hold on, am I going too fast? Before I even begin, I have to ask myself what I understand by God?

Who/what is God?

I understand the concept of and feel close to God when I am experiencing "anxiety". When I sit before the vast expanse and come to realize the vast incomprehensible and the limits of myself. My mind wanders in its yearning to attempt to grasp the incomprehensible. My mind can explore this realm whereas my body is what limits me. So thus from this, I understand that my God exists beyond the corporeal.

Why do I believe in God? The vast incomprehensible does exist but we are cutting down on our lack of knowledge through science right? Phenomenon that we used to attribute to God's actions can and now is explained through the workings of nature.

Of course, this can be easily explained away by God's actions through nature itself and that in turn explains the brilliant workings of nature. This beauty and brilliance is something that I have appreciated since a child but it could also be purely evolution at work.

Evolution. This then brings us to the next problem. Are we proof of God? Or did we give birth to God through the evolution of our minds?

Our Minds. This would be our tool to create a God. So the question is are our minds that different from animals? Our minds seem to be advanced, distinct from animals. It is what makes us human. Our minds serve fundamental functional similarities with animals.

What then is it about our minds which makes us distinctly human? Some would say the ability of us to recognize ourselves as an individual, to conceptualize and to rationalize based on other considerations other than instinctual.

Why then are we special in this respect? Why is it that we "happen" to have this faculty and this is coupled with our evolved opposable thumb which allows for written language and also our windpipe formation which allows for speech?

These three "coincidental" traits are what has allowed us to develop as a intellectual species. Maybe to the point that we had to conceptualize a God.
This then would fit in with what Nietzsche sees as "seeking comfort" in the unknown.

I will be back to write more on this.

Something New: Judaism

Picked up an encyclopedia-like book on the subject and started ploughing away.

Since I know close to nuts about Judaism, but now I know more. This is what I know now. :)

Judaism’s trinity of Ethnos, ethos and logos

Distinctive holy people or nation

Effort to bring order into the world

History from Beginning to period of First Temple

Special covenant with Abraham

Exodus from Egypt

Relevation at Sinai

David first monarch to successfully unite the nation (12 tribes) and establish a secure ruling dynasty

Jerusalem as his political and religious capital

David’s son, Solomon

Temple as sacred center of Israelite state as well as universe

Sacred and social laws

Lucrative trade routes through the land of Israel

Babylonian overran Israel destroyed temple of Solomon, 586 bce

Assyrian invasions prompted major rethinking of the Israelite religion, represented punishment

Prophets Hosea, Amos, Isaiah critiqued ancient Israelite or Judean society and religion

Judaism and Christianity

Jesus’ movement emerged within early Judaism as an anticipation of the kingdom of God

Christianity understood itself within the terms of reference of Israel

Theological revolution then marked emergence of Christianity as a religion distinct from Judaism (When priests started to exalt Jesus?)

How the Jewish understandings of the scriptures were faulty

Jesus’ transcendent coordinate

John the Baptist: God could raise up children for Abraham from stones in order to replace those of Israel who refused to repent

Paul understands the role of Abraham as the patriarch of Judaism, but he argues that Abraham’s faith, not his obedience to the law, made him righteous in the sight of God

Jesus’ announcement of salvation held superior to Moses, Joshua, the angels and their messages

The son was “perfect once and for all, when he offered himself up.” Moses’s prescriptions for the sanctuary were a pale imitation of the heavenly sanctuary that Jesus has actually entered.


Prominence over and oustripping of Judaism

Christianity gained a boost through its connection to Rome (Constantine) and accessibility to all, away from Judaism’s trinity of Ethnos (not accessible to all), ethos and logos

Divine rule

Judaism and Islam

Allowed to practice and retain lifestyle and religion at cost of Jizya

Arabs bought their love and respect of Arabic language as God’s perfect language spurred Jews to study Hebrew to prove otherwise; healthy artistic/ linguistic rivalry

100years after Muslim conquest, majority of the Jews in the Islamic world had adopted Arabic as their native language, gave them access to evolving philosophical thinking of the Arabs who were reviving Greek antiquity


Ethics of Judaism

Morals- concrete norms of right and wrong in a given situation

Ethics- abstract higher level, why it is right/ wrong? What is right/wrong?

Divine reward and punishment alone would not suffice (a mere 40 days after Mt Sinai, the very people started worshipping a golden calf)

Thus inherent wisdom and morality of promise keeping and the duties of the covenant were included in the Torah

Empowers Jews to wrestle with Jewish tradition, encourages-even demands- that they learn more about their tradition in order to carry out this task

The body belongs to God- it is loaned to us

Affront God when we insult another person; must treat people with respect, recognizing each’s uniqueness and divine worth

Body is seen as inferior part, which we share with animals

Mind is distinctly human

Body and mind morally neutral and potentially good

Body’s pleasures are to be enjoyed, but only when experienced within the framework of holiness delineated by Jewish law and theology

To attain holiness is thus not to endure pan but to use all our God-given faculties to perform God’s commandments

Ideal in Judaism is marriage

Sex for procreation and joy and companionship

Education life-long activity

Contrary to enlightenment, does not see us as isolated individuals with rights: it sees us as members of a community with duties to each other and to God

We humans are to help God in ongoing repair of the world through social action

5. The Antichrist: My old teacher is a Gnostic like me?

well, not so much in practice, I am sure. But in agreement, I think we both fall along the same line.

Now that I reread and reconsider my old teacher, I realize that Organised religion, is to him, the antichrist.

This is what my old teacher speaks of Jesus, "not to "redeem" mankind but to demonstrate how one ought to live...evangelic equal right of everyone to be a child of God which Jesus had taught...what came to end with the death on the Cross: a new, an absolutely primary beginning to a Buddhistic peace movement, to an actual and not merely promised happiness on earth."

Thus my old teacher is Gnostic, like me at our core. His words speak of Jesus as a "Free Agent". He, like me, wants man to be able to reach his full potential (though of course, we are in disagreement over what the above mentioned "full potential" entails).

Then he says of organized religion.

Because born out of the need to keep their followers and maintain power over them, organised religion has need of the tools of "Morbid barbarism" which teach/ condition man to feel quilt and inward (instead of outward through the exercise of his rationality). Such man then need the

The priestly class also exalted "Jesus in an extravagant fashion, in severing him from themselves....the one God and one son of God." and left themselves as the crucial bridge upon which the rest must then depend on.

This is in line with the semantic power that the priestly class sought to maintain in Latin, the "holy language". Foucault and Said would agree on this point of power distancing and monopolisation of the tools of knowledge and representation.

And then my old teacher carries on with strength and strikes out at "proof by potency."

"Belief makes blessed; therefore it is true...but with that we have already reached the end of the argument...the experience of all severe, all profound intellects teaches the reverse. Truth has to be fought for every step of the way, almost everything else dear to our hearts...greatness of the soul is needed for it; the service of truth is the hardest service...one despises 'fine feelings', that one makes every Yes and No a question of conscience!"

My old teacher is a Gnostic philosopher. :)

4. The Antichrist: After Tea, we talk about "Pity" and "Love"

Though I am not a Christian, I feel obliged to challenge my old teacher's condemnation of it as a "religion of pity". My old teacher argues that Christianity's unjustified 'pity' for the weak goes against nature and preserves 'those ripe for extinction'. Thus my old teacher claims that it multiplies and preserves misery.

I disagree on the point of it being "pity". For me, at the true core of all religion is love. And love is not pity. Love requires more than pity. It requires empathy: a meeting of minds.

Pity is akin to empathy but with a great difference.

The one who pities feels and recognizes the pain that the "pitied" is in but yet he does not want to be like the pitied. He does not want to share the same boat, mentally or physically.

And most importantly, he does not understand the situation that the pitied is in. Thus it is a two-fold "pedestral" that the "pitier" is on: One of his non-suffering condition and another of non-understanding.

The one who empathises, on the other hand, is able to intellectually identify with the "sufferer" and thus shares the suffering, albeit only on a mental level.

Fine, then do we give aid to the suffering, you ask?

To me, the act of giving aid should and can be born out of an empathy. True, the suffering may not want/ need our help but it is a natural response of "free agents" to want to alleviate another man's suffering since he too empathizes with the situation. Of course, if the aid is refused, then should "free agents" still push forth with it? Now that is a tricky question.

Also, the "free agent" aims at helping the suffering to overcome their dispositions through personal struggle. The aim is not purely to alleviate the suffering.

So long as the act of giving aid is not born out of a feeling of superiority and privileged generosity, I think that it is highly acceptable.

That then is love and loving actions born out of empathy. And empathy can be made natural to us through the actions of "free agents" which would yield more "Moral Man", who possess a common understanding of all man being common in that we all experience the same pains ('anxiety' and 'sensory pain') and possess a will.

3. The Antichrist: At tea with my old teacher

As I reread my old teacher's arguments, I laugh, I scratch my head and I nod at times.

My old teacher is brutal towards what he does not deem fit. But we still have some similarities even though I am now what he would call a moralist since I find myself a realist-moralist. So our lines still do cross at times.

"The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it- what it costs us."

I totally agree. Thus my understanding that the realisation that there are root commonalities in man as a species-being and in turn objective truths and morals must be a personal struggle and as Frankl rightfully pointed out, men often achieve this through "fire-walking".

"I saw all their institutions evolve out of the protective measures designed for mutual security against the explosive material within them."

And if we never go beyond this mechanistic operation of civic education and behavioral-conditioning, then we will never overcome the "explosive material". This is why we both are against organised religion.

"A virtue has to be our invention, our most personal defence and necessity: in any other sense it is merely a danger."

This is pretty self-exemplary and goes on to supplement the above two assertions.

2. The Antichrist: The Four Great Errors

My old teacher expresses displeasure at the fact "The most general formula at the basis of every religion and morality is: "Do this and this, refrain from this and this- and you will be happy! Otherwise..." Every morality, every religion is this imperative- I call it the great original sin of reason, immortal unreason."

This I have to agree with based on my understandings, that true action must originate from within man and from his active will and not from what he calls "Immortal Unreason."

My old teacher then goes on to discuss about our "inner facts". The will, the consciousness and the ego (the "subject') are in fact non-existent. Something which we "latch onto" in pursuit of our excited cause-creating drive because we want to have a reason for feeling as we do. He states something quite interesting and which I feel inclined to agree with (at a certain level)- the fact that we only possess 'General Feelings' and are consistently and continuously engaged and involved in the "play and counter-play of our organs". To trace something unknown back to something known is alleviating, soothing and gives moreover a feeling of power.

Even while I sit here typing, focusing on the task at hand, my stomach is warm, I feel comfortable, my legs are tingling due to a lack of blood. This whole jibble-jabble of multiple feelings and sensations constitute our 'general feelings' which in our minds are felt first before termed and hence given meaning.

I realize that they are registered as generally positive or non-positive before my mind analyzes it and gives it reason. For example, true, I am hungry and this is negative but I am doing something of a higher calling (applying myself mentally in place of fulfilling my hunger). So then my hunger becomes more positive than negative.

But my old teacher goes on to posit that the will is but a convenient invention. Men were thought of as "free" so that they could become guilty; consequently, every action had to be thought of as willed, the origin of every action as lying in the consciousness.

This point leaves me a little upset and perplexed and I will be back to write more about this in a bit, I hope.