the somniloquism of theology

after 4 decades...
theologians discussing "God" are like people asleep unaware they are in a dream

the theologies of children

the simple believer may naively assume a "loving, fatherly 'God'", while modern theologians naively -- and all-too-seriously -- assume that their words of and about "God" are more than speculating about they know not what

mirror mirror on the all

Otto's ideas of the numinous experience, speculative as it is, is another example of man's self-reflection of himself. self-mirroring.

the physical sublime in "Into the Mind"

Dramatic, almost impossible filming of extreme skiing in steep mountains...

more aptly named "Into the Emotions"...
by and for those for whom "gnarly and "awesome" are adequate articulations of peak experiences among peaks -- once described as "sublime", pictureque.
the  desire, the need for intense experience -- "extreme" -- not contemplation of the sublime, but the need now to experience it at the edge of death, thrill, danger...

Unconvincingly collaged around a loosely-construed idea of 13-stage initiation a la Tibet.

Don't expect to need use your mind in "Into the Mind". But see incredible risk-taking...

the science of religion...

was a dead end street which some are still trying to map

Isaiah 6:3 Holy, Holy, Holy...?

rather, I say, uhhh...
'Silly, silly, silly, is the Lord of Earth, the whole world is full of his story.'

abandon hope all ye who enter

Kant

two apples

would be interesting to muse on the origins, histories and currencies of human "default (un)consciousnesses", from Eve's to Job's...

sacred Red Square?

a Duma deputy has it seems described Red Square as sacred ground...

...it is pretty $afe to $ay that -- a$ide from the ground$ and propertie$ of the rich and powerful of Ru$$ia -- that little can be agreed to a$ $acred in Mo$cow the$e day$.

anti-multiculturalism as an English lesson in Moscow

overheard a lesson in a Starbucks by an American who likely didn't suspect it was a native-speaker sitting within good hearing range.

an English lesson lambasting the USA, including admitting "freely" (to his cute Russia student) that he is an anti-multiculturalist and a racist...and how "20,000,000 Mexicans" are ruining America... "which doesn't really exist as a country anyway now"... and blacks have five kids with five different fathers for benefits... about how he and his indifferent (East) Indian neighbor in the USA don't speak, having nothing in common... something against the Chinese...

an odd English lesson in Moscow on a Saturday afternoon

religion and politics

"Dispensing advice that dated back at least to the seventeenth century, etiquette writers stressed that relgious controversy was to be shunned and the very topic of religious doctrine avoided. Politics came under a similar prohibition. In social gatherings, civility supplated substance."

-- Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth-Century Urban America, John F. Kasson, p. 158.
   

the Ninth is not enough

Beethoven's 9th...
by the Vienna Philharmonic in Moscow...
bought an expensive seat

but it is still not enough...not deep enough for our psyches.

20th century opiate of the people

consumerism as the replacement "opiate of the people"
and much better than crusades and jihads.

The Divine Right of Masses?

the Divine Right of Kings might not have been so bad had they truly been the servants of the Divine.
in the mean time, we are in the time of the earthly rights of the masses.

a broken conversation in Beijing's Bookworm, 2012

need to finish the conversation with Cathy, from the Netherlands, lawyer on sabbatical 2012, polyglot...who spoke with in Beijing's Bookworm July 2012
 

unquestionably so

there may be no Answers
but the questions are real

avoiding the skull

a popular, ongoing, unconscious assumption that life is judged by life, not by death as a mere void
ie, the meaning of life is not sought in death

middle-classed Weltanschauung

the middle-classification of the world, life, experience...

the ultimate raison d'etre

the raison d'etre seeking the Reason in Being

in the era of equality

as is evident on a walk on any street anywhere anytime...
continuum hierarchies physical, psychic, mental and 'spiritual'

branding

herds of cattle are painfully branded for identification; most humans seem to enjoy doing it to themselves

all nations are created exceptional

as an Austrian diplomat said in a TV interview a couple of days ago regarding American exceptionalism...
'It is a 19th century concept. All nations are exceptional...or all are equal'.

an exposing politeness

the Starbucks was full...
an intelligent looking Russian couple waiting for their orders saw a table they had espied coming free grabbed by one of the many teen girls typical in them

knowing I was to leave, I caught the woman's searching eye, indicating that my table would be free.

gathering my books and coat, she approached speaking English to me -- which virtually never happens due to my "Russian appearance".

"Why did you speak to me in English?"
"I didn't know if you spoke Russian."
"But how did you know I was a foreigner and not Russian?"
"I don't know...I guess it was the politeness."
 

top brand consumer cathedrals of Moscow

as Moscow increasingly successfully duplicates the "cathedrals" of globalizing consumer religion, it will of course be applauded as civilized and successful
 

decades of truly bad facts

the names Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, NSA spying scandal...ruin a reputation.
but would be less of a shock to those who study the deeper aspects of American foreign policy and action vis-a-vis the CIA, et al, since eg WWII.

self-revelation

each is an apocalypse
for most a revelation occurring out about them, but including them.
rarer are those whose lives were an apocalypse of their selves...
some of these are still known and famous; others were apparently simply mad

elements of a higher "sociology"

Manicheanism

     internal
     external
in from intellectuals to oafs

genes' jeans

blue jeans show off the lower tendency to herd

the ahistoria of 'the sixties' (and 'New Age')

if those in "the sixties" had not naively mis-imagined that they lived at the beginning, apex and end (in two senses) of history, then it would not have been "the sixties"

(the "New Age" was and is similarly well-informed)
 

Steppenwolves amid societies' sheep

how to think and feel when daily seeing so many who have the inner independence of sheep?
 

endarkening

the Enlightenment was also an Endarkenment

naturally

the belief that natural is good, derives in part from the disbelieved God's "and he saw that it was good"