If you are already everything, everywhere, always, there is nowhere to go and nothing to be. Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man. No limitation, no story. No story, no Being. That idea has helped me deal with the terrible fragility of Being. It helped my client, too. I don’t want to overstate the significance of this. I don’t want to claim that this somehow makes it all OK. She still faced the cancer afflicting her husband, just as I still faced my daughter’s terrible illness. But there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked.Peterson proceeds to talk about Superman, who got boring when the plotline was that he had powers that worked on anything that could happen. His story was revived by giving him limitations:
A superhero who can do anything turns out to be no hero at all. He’s nothing specific, so he’s nothing. He has nothing to strive against, so he can’t be admirableAND: I feel a pop-song cue to the Talking Heads' "Heaven." That link goes to Lyrics Genius, where you can play the song, read the lyrics, and see line-by-line commentary on the lyrics. On the line, "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens," someone has added:
This refrain at first seems nonsensical, or perhaps tongue-in-cheek: Why would the most perfect place in all of creation be so…well…boring? However, consider: Once a state of perfection is reached, anything deviating from that is then imperfect. And if Heaven is imperfect, what’s the point? How’s it any different from Earth? This at first frustratingly rational take on spirituality also serves as a reminder of how boring life would be if things really were perfect: In the immortal words of Dolly Parton, “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”If those Dolly Parton words really are immortal — omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent? — why did I keep finding them only in quotes (like that one) and not in song lyrics? Because it's a paraphrase, I think. People haven't remembered the words, only the idea. I think I found the song, a song for children, "I Am a Rainbow." The line is, "To make a rainbow you must have rain/Must have sunshine, joy, and pain."
This is my favorite rendition of a song about rainbows — it's never boring...
Posts
230 comments:
1 – 200 of 230 Newer› Newest»Superman had Kryptonite.
Jesus had to die. And then rise.
Althouse has her commenters.
Superman has also died and risen.
He dogmatizes where French philosophers leave things mutually variable.
When you're omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, they let you do it. You can do anything. Don’t even wait. You can do anything.
God privilege.
Both Lucifer and Obama were light-bearers.
Ann, thank you for your great work of this blog which is a commitment of your life. It is pretty amazing for the commentary that it creates due to your immense talent and effort. That it is something you love makes it nonetheless valuable to the many who follow it and participate in it, including myself.
Superman is Jewish? Who knew? WAS** Jewish?
Peterson an atheist? Who knew? Well, the misnamed "Rational Wiki" claims they knew, and that Peterson seems to think that the peasantry needs religion, like how "Bob" doesn't follow his own advice because he's better than the people he's advising (And imaginary).
But "rational wiki" is extremely dishonest.
** "Got a match?"
There is a reason Dante's Inferno is much better known, and dare I say beloved, than his Paradiso.
rhhardin,
Don't forget Prometheus. I think Obama would say, "Prometheus, I like that. I'm more Promethean than Prometheus."
Heaven is only perfect with compared to other heavens with the same volume.
@David Begley Yes, I was thinking about the resurrection when I wrote this post. It does explain why Jesus had to be crucified. There's entropy into boredom if there's no story line (and no explanation for pain).
As for Kryptonite, Peterson writes that DC first overcame the problem of the boringness of an all-powerful superhero with the kryptonite idea, back in the 1940s, and there were a lot of variations, e.g., "Red caused him to behave strangely." But by the 1980s, "Superman was suffering from terminal deus ex machina." The series almost ended, by "Artist-writer John Byrne successfully rebooted it, rewriting Superman, retaining his biography, but depriving him of many of his new powers. He could no longer lift planets, or shrug off an H-bomb. He also became dependent on the sun for his power, like a reverse vampire. He gained some reasonable limitations."
But there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked.
Whoa! Who knew?!?
L. O. fucking L. at this shyster's excuse for revelations.
If you're telling a story about the structure of stories, there's a loop.
French philosophers notice that, Peterson doesn't.
For the French, everything is in play at that point. All the words are moveable parts.
Peterson disparages Derrida as a trickster. That takes care of it, for him.
"Superman has also died and risen."
Yes, I remember the "Death of Superman" issue that got so much attention in 1992. This was part of the revival that began with John Byrne:
"... DC Comics... relaunched the Superman character with the miniseries The Man of Steel, written by John Byrne. However, due to disputes with DC, Byrne left the Superman books and was replaced by Roger Stern. While the stories continued from Byrne's revamp, sales slowly dropped. In an effort to attract female readers, the Lois Lane/Clark Kent/Superman love triangle, in place since 1938, was changed. In a development based on events in Byrne's revamp, Lois was already falling in love with Clark Kent, rather than with Superman...."
Kind of like the way we can love Jesus more than God.
In my late teens, during a troubling and turbulent time, I had an epiphany of sorts: what would happy be without sad, what would sunshiny days be without rainy ones. At the time this comforted me through the difficult period I was in, gave me the motivation to deal with my problems, and the strength to persevere.
Perfect is boring and once achieved of no consequence, I like that.
-sw
Thanks, etbass. And thanks to all who read without writing and write without reading and who read and write.
From Wiki on Comic Book Death:
"The phenomenon of comic book death is particularly common for superhero characters. Writer Danny Fingeroth suggests that the nature of superheroes requires that they be both ageless and immortal..."
"Because death in comics is so often temporary, readers rarely take the death of a character seriously—when a character dies, the reader feels very little sense of loss, and simply left wondering how long it will be before they return to life...."
"The obituary writer of the in-universe newspaper the Daily Bugle once bemoaned to reporter Ben Urich about how many retractions he has had to write after each resurrection of a superhero or supervillain..."
The superhero dying is a trope of the medium: what else is there to do when the character is basically immortal?
How many cliffhangers can you do when the issue ends with the superhero in peril, only to come out victorious (and still alive) in the next issue?
Thus, for the jaded reader the superhero's adventures are one long tease for the inevitable death issue.
After which is the issue, sometimes months later, where the superhero returns to life, as expected (see 1992's 'Death of Superman'.
These death issues generally switch in mood from rambunctious action for boys to something resembling a Tearjerker.
In The Death of Superman a crying Lois Lane cradles the dying Superman, saying:
"Please hang on! The paramedics will be here any second!...Please!...You stopped him, you saved us all! Now relax until..."
While Jimmy Olsen is in the background with his camera. The pathos. Almost like Julia Roberts dying in 'Steel Magnolias'.
Now the movie theatre has been swallowed by the Superhero Genre.
Where the superheroes haven't started dying yet. That will take the box office returns to dwindle before that rabbit comes out of the hat.
But the movie Superheroes rarely fight a person anymore: they fight CGI. CGI monsters, CGI robots, destroying CGI cities.
The reality of the Movie Superhero is in fighting Pixels that are omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. The only limits are the computer operator's skills and the writer and director's Imagination.
The limits of Imagination: like trying to understand God. Or Hell. Or the lack of Hell.
But there will be the inevitable Superhero Tearjerker Death: we'll watch Robert Downey Jr in his Iron Man suit, helmet off, cradled by Star Actress, as he slips away from life. With a bittersweet quip.
It might even win an Oscar.
After which Iron Man will come back with a new, younger actor. Or actress. Who has diversity. And gets a smaller paycheck.
Meanwhile, we all die.
Our Kryptonite is our Fear of Death.
The Germans have a word for this.
(Arrgh. Sorry for the blank space! I'm not sure what is worse: leaving the blank space, or having a 'comment removed by author' thing there)
"When you're omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, they let you do it. You can do anything. Don’t even wait. You can do anything.
God privilege."
And they'll say they love it, whatever it is, and give me more of whatever it is you want to do, and don't send me to Hell where I'll be punished above all by my separation from you, because I love everything about you, not excluding all this pain, which is just one more thing I love about about you.
Trump isn't that bad. And he's got term limits. God's doing whatever he's got a mind to do goes on even after you've slipped the limits of earth.
The funniest thing about rhhardin is his Francophilia.
You don't usually get that from wingers.
There's an old science fiction short story I read. A mathematician inadvertently summons a demon who is omniscient and omnipotent. Not sure if omnipresence is needed. The demon challenges the mathematician to name one thing he can't do. They debate for a while and finally the mathematician says, "Get lost."
"Jesus had to die. And then rise."
It seems God chose His own constraint, a necessity within a story He set in motion.
But I do like the quasi-Petersonian idea that humanity is God's way of avoiding boredom.
"In my late teens, during a troubling and turbulent time, I had an epiphany of sorts: what would happy be without sad, what would sunshiny days be without rainy ones. At the time this comforted me through the difficult period I was in, gave me the motivation to deal with my problems, and the strength to persevere."
And this is what's good about living somewhere like Wisconsin — it gets really cold in the winter and genuinely hot in the summer and spring and fall emerge in a subtle way and peak beautifully. There's too much darkness in winter and too much daylight in summer, but it's so extreme, you notice when you're in the environs of the solstice and the run-up to the equinox and away from it is surprising, year after year. If every day were just very pleasant — maybe like Los Angeles — there'd be no narrative, just a bland unrolling of sameness.
How can anybody dislike the French.
A French waiter, if a Canadian speaks to him in French, will bring an English menu.
"You stopped him, you saved us all! Now relax until..."
"Relax" seems like such a dumb thing to say.
I've never read Superman comics and the only "Superman" movie I've seen is the first one with Christopher Reeve and I did watch the 1950s TV show, so can anyone tell me why anyone is interested in Lois Lane? Talk about boring? Is there any there there?
"(Arrgh. Sorry for the blank space! I'm not sure what is worse: leaving the blank space, or having a 'comment removed by author' thing there)"
I was genuinely annoyed, but the "comment removed by author" thing is better. I do take those out and am only minimally irritated. The extra lines thing just sits there, requiring all readers to scroll past it. It's part of the permanent formatting.
I mean, don't go back now and take it out, but try to avoid it and go ahead and delete and repost when needed to get rid of that problem, which I know is usually a mistake.
When it's intentional, I just delete the whole thing.
Inside the museums, infinity goes up on trial
Voices echo this is what salvation must be like after a while
I'd like to hear why Derrida is a trickster, in Peterson's view.
Peterson works with words but doesn't want any of those moveable words. Peterson's words are fixed and eternal. It's just a matter of feeling really, really certain.
Words that don't move aren't capable of serving as origins, is one problem. They can't start a causal chain. They require a cause, unless they can move under the influence of what they cause, to prevent it.
In origins, there is always a loop.
Immortal will not always be a negation. - Lautreamont
Somewhere I read a review of the recent Superman movies and the criticism of them was that they had abandoned Superman's great weakness as a superhero. Not his vulnerability to Kryptonite. No, what they abandoned was the fact that Superman was good. If Superman is having a fight, he will always protect the innocent ahead of beating his opponent.
"How can anybody dislike the French."
If anything could bring back The Crack Emcee, it's that.
It's like the bat signal for Crack.
Thanks, Amexpat. You would fit in here at Meadhouse.
"can anyone tell me why anyone is interested in Lois Lane?"
They're not interested in anything she has to say. They just keep hoping that on the next page she takes her top off.
How many cliffhangers can you do when the issue ends with the superhero in peril, only to come out victorious (and still alive) in the next issue?
At one point Arthur Conan Doyle grew bored with Sherlock Holmes and killed him in a struggle with Professor Moriartity at Reichenbach Falls.
The location is a tourist attraction to this day.
Of course, the readers demanded Sherlock return and he did so in "The Adventure of the Empty House," where Watson was astonished to find him alive. The "Return" continued as a whole series of stories.
During the period after the "death " of Holmes, there were demonstrations and 20,000 subscriptions to the Strand Magazine were cancelled.
The stories after the "Return:" were some of Conan Doyle's best.
Malevolence and denigration are the two chief characteristics of the French mind.
- Philippe Sollers _Women_ p.307
"They're not interested in anything she has to say. They just keep hoping that on the next page she takes her top off."
In the old "Superman" TV show, Lois Lane was completely unsexy. She dressed in a professional suit and wore a ladylike hat and wasn't lascivious at all.
But she's what Superman gets for a girlfriend. Why??? Why does her femininity go with his masculinity? Talk about boring? Your answer is she's just there to be the generic woman. In other words, you're telling me she's completely boring, but somehow people have been following her story, on and on and on, for nearly a century.
The hardest thing in being an omniscient God is doing nothing at all. If you started the whole thing up you designed the systems to self correct or else it’s just Sim City running to destruct. Or else you are the aliens in Arrval who act to confirm their knowledge of the future.
Maybe we are just a science project by angelic children who are allowed to poke sticks at the natives.
Okay, now I would like to see a movie in the style of "My Dinner with Andre" or "Frost/Nixon" made up of conversations between rhhardin and The Crack Emcee.
Can somebody make that happen?
Is “Christ was risen” more perfect than “Christ is risen”?
Is there going to be a quiz on this?
'Cause I didn't study. Like at all.
The Rhinemann Exchange, and The Osterman Weekend, are two DVDs I just bailed out of early, for violent action that was too non-violent. Nobody can watch wimpy off-camera single stabs ending the fight for long.
The latter was full of tits for some reason. I can't say if that continued.
Everything that could be already is, and everything that could happen already has. And it is for this reason, so the story goes, that God created man.
Thus the "I-Thou" relationship mentioned by Benedict XVI in yesterday's Hell thread. Buber was not there first...
Ironclad.
You're assuming time rolls along at the same pace for the infinite as it does for us.Perhaps our omniscient god is always in the state of creation.
Louis Lane is the female that shows the gentleman in Superman.
Gentle and strong go together.
I'm just waiting for someone to make the obvious Dirty Harry reference.
I'd watch your movie first though, Althouse.
"doesn't want any of those moveable words. Peterson's words are fixed"
I haven't read much of Peterson beyond snippets, but I think you got it right there. It's not so much that Derrida's words are "movable," but that they are unstable, hence disquieting. If you are looking for intellectual quiet, that will bother you.
Nobody wants an out-of-control superhero.
God privilege.
Wait for the organized Left and Media Matters & Co. to "guilt" God about that.
"But she's what Superman gets for a girlfriend. Why???"
What kind of girlfriend would you give Superman?
"conversations between rhhardin and The Crack Emcee"
All depends on what the meaning of "converse" is.
Production should be pretty cheap, since I don't think they'll need much dinner to get going.
If someone wrote the dialog between rhhardin and The Crack Emcee, I would voice them and post it. Hardin will sound like a Frenchman and Crack will sound like Geoffrey Holder.
And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said:
I'm lonely -
I'll make me a world.
"The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone; therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew in quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored en famille. After that, the population of the world increased and the nations were bored en masse. To amuse themselves, they hit upon the notion of building a tower so high that it would reach the sky. This notion is just as boring as the tower was high and is a terrible demonstration of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then they were dispersed around the world, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored. And what consequences this boredom had: humankind stood tall and fell far, first through Eve, then from the Babylonian tower." - Kierkegaard.
Then there are some who are wedded to self-created limitations and refuse to rise above them.
Perfection is not a static condition. There is a LOT of diversity within perfection. It is not all uni-color or a single sound and tone. Perfection is a whole symphony of experience, a great mosaic of colors. But not as a bunch of clanging noise, but the beauty of unity in diversity.
As for this implicit idea that perfection, by which one might also mean "good," is boring and that we need a little imperfection, i.e. evil, to really live an exciting life, well, I covered that yesterday with Pope Benedict's homily on the question.
Fern:
Whoa! Who knew?!?
L. O. fucking L. at this shyster's excuse for revelations.
L. O. fucking L. at Fern dinging somebody else for saying the obvious and predictable.
"Imagine a Being who is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. What does such a Being lack?"
"The answer? Limitation"
This too was covered yesterday. And to repeat --
God is not without limitation. That's right, even God is limited.
How? He is limited in the sense that He is limited to being God. God cannot be Not-God. Being the fullness of Truth, God cannot contradict own nature. Being Truth, He cannot be false. Being Love, God cannot be unloving.
To be sure, many people in their own limitations try to get you to believe that an all-powerful God can act against His own nature and being. After all, human beings act against what we are made to be all the time -- and being made in the image of God, the image of Love and Truth, we are made to be loving and truthful -- but God does not. Were God to cease being God, were He to be Not-God, then the structure of the universe which is sustained by His Being, would itself disintegrate into chaos and the abyss.
Superman limitations reminds me of this funny YouTube channel skit
https://youtu.be/yMf3dvNzXbU
As for Superman, there is more than enough Nietzsche and eugenic racial superiority thinking in the idea. A step backward for humanity.
And they'll say they love it, whatever it is, and give me more of whatever it is you want to do, and don't send me to Hell where I'll be punished above all by my separation from you, because I love everything about you, not excluding all this pain, which is just one more thing I love about about you.
Can't you even try to engage in this discussion you raised in good faith? Can't you even try to let go of all your repeated strawman notions that continually hold you back? Maybe even give billions of people some credit, and set aside the snide mockery for a while?
If you let go of all the misconceptions and started instead with a good faith open mind, you might find life a little less angry and antagonistic.
Like the D-hack press?
Dear Parkland Activists: You Admit to Bullying the Shooter, But Have the Gall to Blame Guns and the NRA?
Dear Parkland Bullies,
We interrupt your national, media-sponsored cryfest for a brief and simple lecture. No notes needed, I’ll provide.
Over the weekend, one of your comrades, Emma Gonzalez, admitted to “ostracizing” the Parkland shooter. As early as middle school. In an event where you, her, and all your other weepy, whining cohorts marched against the Second Amendment rights of Americans who had nothing to do with the events in Parkland. Not only did Emma admit to ostracizing the shooter, she wasn’t sorry for it. An interesting development considering how the young man “turned out.”
Meanwhile, all of you students-turned-activists are blaming the NRA, legal gun-owners, and in some cases Marco Rubio for what happened in Parkland.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
Lemme break it down for you:
Jordan Peterson has not made much impact on me but Douthat feels the need to respond so I guess he and his kind are a threat to the Church in some manner.
A maximally perfect being isn't everything. It has all perfections that such a being can have.But it has limits. It's omniscient, but it's incapable of photosynthesis, winning the Masters, or smelling bad (or good). Those are limitations of perfection, as philosophers are wont to say, not imperfections.
Recall that Superman grew up in Smallville, Kansas. Nebraska gets snubbed again!
Turns out Superman IS Jewish since his parents were Jewish.
The cover of their high-school publication.
Human limitations or concepts - boredom or loneliness or logic or time or finite or infinite.
These don't apply to God. What things do apply are beyond us.
God is limited in that he does not exist.
AA: There's too much darkness in winter and too much daylight in summer, but it's so extreme, you notice when you're in the environs of the solstice and the run-up to the equinox and away from it is surprising, year after year. If every day were just very pleasant — maybe like Los Angeles — there'd be no narrative, just a bland unrolling of sameness.
There's a degree of latitude where the extended darkness would start to drag me down, but if I had to choose, I'd prefer it to life in the tropics. It's not just the sameness in the length of the days there, but the sameness in the quality of the light - through the year, and through the day. The light is beautiful, and the skies are beautiful, but the lack of variation in the quality of the light disturbs me at a very deep level. (All this aside from the constant miserable heat, of course.)
I say this as one who grew up in the sub-tropics, where I was very much alive to the real, if far more subtle, diurnal and annual variation. Now I live at a higher latitude, and the cycles of change in the quality of light delight me, not just aesthetically, but at the same deep level that the lack of change in the tropics disturbs me.
Derrida's philosophy can be summed up in six words: The word "meaning" has no meaning.
Agree with you about Willie. Never Boring!
I love the Rainbow Connection Song. First heard it in the 1st Muppets movie.
I have it on a CD where Willie sings a bung of old standards (Scarlet Ribbons, Moonlight in Vermont, Georgia on my mind) My favorite Willie Nelson CD.
I'd not seen this version before but love it. Thanks Ann.
John Henry
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
L. O. fucking L. at Fern dinging somebody else for saying the obvious and predictable.
Oh, but it's not obvious and predictable to, say, Althouse, who apparently bought his book and republishes its trivia, or to the other people who are paying Peterson $50K to $80K a month, AFAIK to hear him rambling on about the obvious.
For this Easter morning, some gospel-inflected jazz.
Douthat links to this buzzing critique of Peterson.
From the Robinson article:
"In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train.
But we do not live in a reasonable world."
This is particularly damning:
"David Brooks thinks Peterson might be “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.” "
A similar comparison would be the first version of The Matrix. Agent Smith explains to Morpheus that it was too perfect and hence the human mind rebelled.
We interrupt your national, media-sponsored cryfest for a brief and simple lecture. No notes needed, I’ll provide.
I've secretly thought that much of the passion is due to secret guilt over the way these students treated Cruz while he was at their school. That and the fact that most of them are drama nerds getting dramatic.
The critique of Peterson is misguided. Peterson is anti-PC, with enough common sense to make it work.
His idea of his grounding is dogmatic, though, which makes it simple but not ultimately right. You could deconstruct him but it's not clear that anti-PC is enough to make it work interestingly. Anti-PC ought to stand on its own without any help, without the MSM promoting it anyway.
But not everybody is a philosopher. Even a lot of philosophers aren't.
"In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train.
But we do not live in a reasonable world."
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Peterson, like Trump, has all the right enemies.
ARM like religious jazz, he says.
How about this ?
The logician Willard Quine was angry with Derrida for being nonsensical.
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/varia/Derrida_Letter.htm
Derrida covered the letter in one of his books with amusement. What is it with people, he wondered. Can't they read?
Kind of like the way we can love Jesus more than God.
Actually I like God more. The problem is the 60s. Jesus looks like a hippie and the hippies were quick to claim Him. Ruins it for me. I guess I think now of the counterculture as essentially shallow.
With God, all things are possible, that are possible. But it is impossible even for god to cause other independent beings to develop into or be things which they themselves do not desire to embody or be. Hence Christ sat on the mount of olives and mourned, “How oft I would have gathered you...and ye would not.” God loves us, and he wants us to grow and become like him and come home. But he will not force us. He will not force us.
I have come to recognize God’s use of, or at least allowance of, irony, as a particular and potent teaching tool in the school that is our life.
Irony has so many facets from which we can gain understanding. It points out our lazy sense of expectation and entitlement. If recognized, pondered, and objected to, irony either leads us to seek answers to and consolation from the irony through a direct conversation with God himself, or it leads us to becom highly jaded and a cynical doubter of the character of God or of his existence. The difference in paths is entirely our own choice - it is born of our own independent desire and projection of what we hope life is about. (Job wanted the conversation. His friends kept saying “why bother trying to understand the jagged edge of irony - it is either you or God and we’re here to tell you it isn’t God.” But Job would not be dissuaded to seek the conversation to understand.)
Irony is also the precursor to God showing His power, and through his example and tutelage, far more importantly showing us our own independent power to face directly into the painful, destructive, disorganizing, separating, and death creating darkness and overcome it by the force of our character and will, eventually turning it into light, in the end.
The irony of the creator and daily sustainor of the earth and of life and of all the beauties in the earth - the irony of that creator being unjustly judged as subversive and traitorous of society, and of being physically extinguished by the most powerful social organization of that day - should not be lost on us. He faced directly into it and allowed it to happen, and rose again, and overcame it all, to enable us to have a pattern example, and to enable us to believe in him and his ability to teach us (through our own process of trial and error and try again) how to be like him.
The power is within us, as we stay connected to him. That is to me what Easter has come to mean, st this time in my life.
Mark to AA: "And they'll say they love it, whatever it is, and give me more of whatever it is you want to do, and don't send me to Hell where I'll be punished above all by my separation from you, because I love everything about you, not excluding all this pain, which is just one more thing I love about about you."
Can't you even try to engage in this discussion you raised in good faith? Can't you even try to let go of all your repeated strawman notions that continually hold you back? Maybe even give billions of people some credit, and set aside the snide mockery for a while?
If you let go of the notion that what Althouse *is* saying here is of any interest, things are more interesting. Yes, what she has to say on the subject is a confused mass of straw-men, question-begging, and stubborn adherence to what looks like an idea (prejudice, if you like) of "what those people think, what those people are motivated by", that was acquired at a formative age, and therefore unlikely to be consciously evalutated, even in intelligent people who are capable of critically examining their assumptions about later-acquired, less emotionally-weighted ideas.
The bit you quote, above, *is* remarkably dumb, both in content and in tone, which is very much "pissed-off, know-it-all teen, chafing at perceived authority". Why does someone who is not dumb and not a teenager swing into just that mode on select subjects?
Now, that's interesting, if you're in the mood for nosy psychologizing. But since that's also what she's implicitly engaging in herself here, I'd say it's fair game.
Also interesting, if self-examination is more your thing - "Are there topics on which *I* do that?"
We can't have people stepping off the progressive thought-island.
" Anti-PC ought to stand on its own without any help, without the MSM promoting it anyway."
Well, yeah, it should, just like common sense statements should be obvious to everyone. Look around you. Are they?
We have teenagers dictating what our gun policy should be and supposed adults championing the Children's Crusade. We have people who think the way to combat racism is with more racism - but it's directed at the "right people" now, so it's OK.
The MSM spends an awful lot of time promoting PC thought. It's nice to see anti-PC thought given a bit of attention for a change. You don't have to agree with everything Peterson says.
To be fair to David Brooks he is a superior entertainer, I rarely miss his and E.J. Dionne's discussion on Friday evenings on NPR. It regularly reminds me of this particular competition.
Ann Althouse said...
I mean, don't go back now and take it out, but try to avoid it and go ahead and delete and repost when needed to get rid of that problem, which I know is usually a mistake.
When it's intentional, I just delete the whole thing.
Go and sin no more.
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...
From the Robinson article:
"Jordan Peterson’s popularity is the sign of a deeply impoverished political and intellectual landscape… "
I'd heard he'd been peddling his stuff for years without much interest until he hit the news after he said he wouldn't obey a (potential?) Canadian law requiring people to use LGBQWERTY "chosen pronouns", like "xe" - which is probably the about same thing any non-crazy person would say.
the niche he has found—he never seems to say “know” where he could instead say “cognizant of”—is that Jordan Peterson is the stupid man’s smart person.
I'm just jealous, er, I'm cognizant of the fact that I'm jealous, cuz I wish I were making $80K/month for saying stuff like "there’s something to be said for recognizing that eating food and continuing to live are inextricably linked."
Without limits, life is boring. Without the ability to create new outcomes, life has no point.
God's limitlessness gives man the hope to reach beyond his grasp, becoming more godlike with every success. Without the ability to press forward, man becomes despondent, hopeless, and defeated. Without hope and the belief in oneself to change their circumstances, mankind has no reason to exist.
Derrida on prayer (minutes 7-28)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyOWAcpIaB8&t=1505s
Part of the view is a childish one, he says, god as a mother who believes in your innocence and a severe father who's just but fair.
The other part is scepticism and negative theology, leading to only atheists can pray.
(the rest of the recording is theologicians competing with each other for status)
Carol wrote: "The problem is the 60s. Jesus looks like a hippie and the hippies were quick to claim Him."
The hippies simply ignored the Jesus they didn't like; the one who said He had come not to bring peace but a sword. Christ does not fit comfortably into any ideology. To make Him into just another long-haired peace 'n love hippie is to diminish Him. He wasn't about doing your own thing.
I know...it's just a prejudice on my part. And heresy.
Once a state of perfection is reached, anything deviating from that is then imperfect.
This makes the assumption that perfection is a state, a stasis, but that could be wrong. Perhaps perfection is a process, a method. Perhaps perfection includes motion, striving, hoping, and curiosity. Perhaps perfection is a capacity rather than an incapacity.
We have teenagers [who bullied a person to the breaking-point] dictating what our gun policy should be and supposed adults championing the Children's Crusade.
Indeed.
Your answer is she's just there to be the generic woman. In other words, you're telling me she's completely boring, but somehow people have been following her story, on and on and on, for nearly a century.
Several times in the past Lois Lane has had her own comic books.
Local "News", preaching in unison, "This is extremely dangerous to our democracy."
If every day were just very pleasant — maybe like Los Angeles — there'd be no narrative, just a bland unrolling of sameness.
Trust me ..not every day is pleasant.....and definitely not sameness. We can have three seasons in a week.....
Within a two hour drive I have access to skiable snow, surfable ocean, and nearly every outdoor activity you can imagine. Make it four and I can hit Las Vegas or Lake Havasu.
God seems to be a reflection of human consciousness, a projection of it into the universe, without the limitation that is most essential to humans, our mortality. He has been enlisted to lend meaning and legitimacy to so much of Western civilization. We still swear people in His name in our justice system, using the threat of Hell to extract truthful testimony. The very idea of Law and a predictable physical Universe which acts in accordance with such seemed totally bound up with a Creator until recent generations.
Now, He has become questionable. His existence, His power, His gender. Maybe the original Jewish understanding of the Second Commandment, forbidding any utterance of His name precisely to deny the human tendency to leverage gods to social ends was wisest.
Peterson's is common-sense of the sort your wise grandma would dish out. The reason for his popularity is it makes such a contrast with modern fashions. And that PC is irrationality weaponized with political power.
Its the madness of the times that makes a sane man a celebrity.
BCARM:
From the Robinson article:
"In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot that one hopes not to get seated next to on a train.
But we do not live in a reasonable world."
This is particularly damning:
"David Brooks thinks Peterson might be “the most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now.” "
Thanks, ARM. This is very funny - in the "meta" sense, not in the sense that the linked author is funny or perspicacious himself. Robinson is operating in the same space, and at the same level, as the public/popular "intellectual" he's bemoaning, and he doesn't know it.
Middle-brow "public intellectualism", if it ever really existed, was replaced a long time ago by the preachy, low-level fluff produced by the likes of Brooks and Robinson. Who reads their stuff and says, "Damn! Now there's an educated man!". (Nobody here, I hope.)
Gahrie wrote: “Within a two hour drive I have access to skiable snow, surfable ocean, and nearly every outdoor activity you can imagine. Make it four and I can hit Las Vegas or Lake Havasu.”
Those drive times would be significantly less without traffic. People love the boring sameness out here.
A lot of California is what would pass for an earthly paradise, or at least nature has done all it can. Even the light is wonderful.
My only complaint is the cold water off Northern California beaches.
People however have not played their part.
Gahrie said...
Within a two hour drive
you can also get to work, on a good day.
I lived in San Diego and found the almost unchanging weather both boring and somewhat disturbing. When I expressed this view to a colleague who plans to retire to San Diego he found my preference for actual weather inexplicable. I think people like this have lost touch with the natural rhythms that shaped us. We are cold climate people, we like some physical hardship each year. It is a annual limitation that forces us to adjust and be more flexible.
God gave the rainbow sign to let Noah et alia that salvation was hand (appropriate, n'est pas, for Easter Day?). And God further promised that life on earth, but for the Noah remnant, would not be destroyed ever again by flood. Gen. 9,11.
The leftwing-is-god-machine exists in a constant state of fear that someone will come along and point out that it's really only a sad empty cult, in a sad empty suit.
Peterson must be silenced.
What is the worst thing Willie Nelson can say to a woman after she gives him a blow job?
I'm not Willie Nelson.
We are cold climate people
Well the entirety of man's existence has occurred during an ice age.
Whatever happened to Crack? Last I remember is Shouting was trying to counsel him. But then he sorta disappeared and I haven't seen him since.
Fern: Oh, but it's not obvious and predictable to, say, Althouse, who apparently bought his book and republishes its trivia, or to the other people who are paying Peterson $50K to $80K a month, AFAIK to hear him rambling on about the obvious.
Non sequitur. I was remarking the obviousness and predictability of your comments, and neither stated or implied anything about Peterson's writing, or his readers' reaction to it.
But your non sequitur response was predictable.
etbass said...
Last I remember is Shouting was trying to counsel him. But then he sorta disappeared and I haven't seen him since.
These two statements contain a universe.
The "Current Affairs" article reminded me of "High V, Low M" (high verbal ability, low math/logic ability), which is about how the general public thought S.J. Gould was a great biologist, but great biologists thought he was a great science popularizer, but a not much of a biologist.
I don't think there is much worry about what it will be like in Heaven with a perfect God. Our whole frame of reference and our earthly limitations will be different and who knows what would bore us or not bore us. We can trust that God will take care of all that and we won't even look back. Those that make it, that is...
tcrosse said... "The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings. Adam was bored because he was alone; therefore Eve was created. Since that moment, boredom entered the world and grew in quantity in exact proportion to the growth of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored en famille. After that, the population of the world increased and the nations were bored en masse. To amuse themselves, they hit upon the notion of building a tower so high that it would reach the sky. This notion is just as boring as the tower was high and is a terrible demonstration of how boredom had gained the upper hand. Then they were dispersed around the world, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored. And what consequences this boredom had: humankind stood tall and fell far, first through Eve, then from the Babylonian tower." - Kierkegaard.
Thanks for quoting that. I was thinking of it when I wrote some of my comments here and was going to look it up.
Blogger Bob Boyd said...
What is the worst thing Willie Nelson can say to a woman after she gives him a blow job?
I'm not Willie Nelson.
In one of his movies he says, "I'm going to find a woman who can suck the chrome off a 2 inch trailer hitch and settle down."
A lot of California is what would pass for an earthly paradise, or at least nature has done all it can. Even the light is wonderful.
My only complaint is the cold water off Northern California beaches.
That California Current is what makes the climate so pleasant. If it were warm, you would have Florida.
"If you let go of all the misconceptions and started instead with a good faith open mind, you might find life a little less angry and antagonistic."
Maybe if you started with a good faith open mind you would realize that I'm not angry and antagonistic. With a little more imagination, you might see that it's possible that God would prefer to be talked about like this and not kowtowed to by people who profess to love him while convinced they're stuck in a hopeless bind that God made, something akin to battered wife syndrome.
Consider the possibility that of a God but who does not want to be believed in. If you're so into open minds, why haven't you thought of that yet?
Dickin' @ 10:50,
That was awesome.
"For this Easter morning, some gospel-inflected jazz."
I would never refer to something as "inflected." I checked my archive -- not in 50,000+ posts have I ever used the word "inflected" or "inflect." It's just not in my vocabulary. I'm interested in the fact that I suspected as much and could check it out and find it to be true.
It's a normal-enough word. But I'd never say here's some X-inflected Y.
"Inflect" means to bend inwards.
1875 C. Darwin Insectivorous Plants ii. 22 All the tentacles were soon energetically inflected.
I would love to live in San Diego. I hate being cold. But has their enviable climate made Californians happier or unhappier than those of us in less salubrious environments? I think I'd be pretty unhappy in, say, Finland, particularly in December ( that would also be due to the lack of light) but I wonder how many people have moved to California over the years as a geographical cure and been disappointed. Like they say, no matter where you go, there you are. I know people who I think would be happy in Helsinki or Fargo or in New Orleans in August.
I'd probably say "influence."
Maybe I picture abstractions as more liquid than solid.
"... but I wonder how many people have moved to California over the years as a geographical cure and been disappointed..."
These are the people who think Heaven will be great and don't worry about the potential for boredom because it's paradise so any problem has been overcome by grander forces than they can even imagine. Dreams really do come true!
"Is “Christ was risen” more perfect than “Christ is risen”?"
The soufflé was risen, but it collapsed. Sorry! How about something else for dessert? And this is why we have candy for Easter!
gspencer, don't tell the Global Warming believers that...
If life was perfect your children wouldn’t need you, effectively making you not a parent in any meaningful way. You can have the responsibility and obligation of free will or you can be a useless sack and let the village manage your meaningless life.
Re the California Current - true of course. No outdoor airconditioning without it! But thats nature - it giveth and with the same hand taketh away. Everything has a price.
As for Californians being particularly happy, I can't say for sure, there is no survey on the subject, and this would be of questionable value if there were. On the whole probably not, given the nature of settlement here, there are few actual communities as opposed to just collections of people, and the turnover does not permit any to form, or persist. And the same for families.
'"Kind of like the way we can love Jesus more than God." Actually I like God more...."
Like!
Interesting. I wrote in a notebook long ago: People say they love God, but do they like God?
"For God so loved the word that he gave his only begotten Son..." Loved the world... but did he like it?
For God so liked the world that... what?
For God so liked the world that he wanted to be a man and have the experience of living in the world, but then what would he do in it? Maybe he would walk the face of the world that he liked repeatedly, as different men, women, children, and animals, repeatedly, not delivering any messages or drawing attention to himself at all or perhaps writing enigmatic blog comments.
When I first came to San Francisco, I climbed up to Bernal Heights, and on that hill shouted to the heavens, "As God is my witness, I'll never sweat again" !
Attended Easter Vigil last night, profoundly moving. Today: going into the field to train with my border collies, herding sheep. Happy and grateful to be alive. Taking a break on all discussions of religion and theology, I'm spent. If I had the energy I'd give rhhardin pushback on the subject of that fraud Derrida, but I don't have the energy. Happy Easter everyone. Go Blue.
Peterson is anti-PC …
Peterson’s worst sin: Defying the PC gods.
In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot …
“Reasonable world,” is much like “reasonable gun control.” The PC-pushers want to control the language and do away with anything contrary to PC-sanctioned opinion just like the gun-grabbers want to outlaw guns.
Its the madness of the times that makes a sane man a celebrity.
My vote for best comment …
Predictions: Dr. Peterson will be fired from his teaching position, which is a shame because he obviously enjoys teaching and his students obviously enjoy being taught by him. His license to practice clinical psychology will be pulled.
He will not need the income. Any book he writes will be a best seller, as is the case with his latest book. Some of his fans will subscribe to his Patreon account. He’ll continue to be in demand as a speaker.
By simply existing Peterson represents a direct threat to the closed and strictly policed academia hierarchies of the West – which is overwhelmingly Marxist, neo-Marxist and Post-Modernist in viewpoint and instruction. They must destroy him.
The comments about Heaven bring to mind the last stanza of "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens:
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
Now I understand why Smokey Robinson's group was called "The Miracles." They were talking about God:
I don't like you
But I love you
Seems that I'm always
Thinking of you
Oh, oh, oh,
You treat me badly
I love you madly
You've really got a hold on me
You've really got a hold on me
You've really got a hold on me
You've really got a hold on me, baby
From the Collins Dictionary
-inflected
2. combining form in adjective
-inflected is used to form adjectives describing the style of a piece of music or a performance.
God isn't likeable. Hence Jesus and Mary to take the edge off.
"In a reasonable world, Peterson would be seen as the kind of tedious crackpot … "
Like the prophets. In a crazy world, we listen to the prophets, by their books, subscribe to them on YouTube.
"Predictions: Dr. Peterson will be fired from his teaching position, which is a shame because he obviously enjoys teaching and his students obviously enjoy being taught by him. His license to practice clinical psychology will be pulled. He will not need the income. Any book he writes will be a best seller, as is the case with his latest book. Some of his fans will subscribe to his Patreon account. He’ll continue to be in demand as a speaker."
He is completely liberated now to say whatever he feels he needs to say. He's extremely motivated to speak the truth as he understands it and to say it in a clear forthright way and to accept the consequences. His enemies cannot hurt him. He's the alpha lobster now with whatever those chemicals are, energizing him.
"By simply existing Peterson represents a direct threat to the closed and strictly policed academia hierarchies of the West – which is overwhelmingly Marxist, neo-Marxist and Post-Modernist in viewpoint and instruction. They must destroy him."
They can't, so it might be amusing to see how they try.
Its the madness of the times that makes a sane man a celebrity.
Exactly so, buwaya!
"2. combining form in adjective
-inflected is used to form adjectives describing the style of a piece of music or a performance."
Well, yeah, that says how the word "is used" to describe, but you have to look to the preceding meaning to understand what it is being used to say. It means to be bent towards. What concrete image do you have in you head when you say it or is it such dead metaphor for you that you see nothing?
The above actually ties in with a comment above.
Really.
The Germans have a word for this.
Come along and follow me
To the bottom of the sea
We'll join in the jamboree
At the codfish ball
Lobsters dancing in a row
Shuffle off to Buffalo
Jellyfish sway to and fro
At the codfish ball..
I have been been pleasantly surprised through the years at how well Willie Nelson performs both older and newer, non-country, classic. Most artists can't cross over into other genres that well.
Is “Christ had risen” more perfect than “Christ has risen”?
Althouse wrote: “These are the people who think Heaven will be great and don't worry about the potential for boredom because it's paradise so any problem has been overcome by grander forces than they can even imagine. Dreams really do come true!”
You mean people like Bob Dylan?
Blogger The Germans Have A Word For That. said...
“The above actually ties in with a comment above.
Really.”
Well, it was a lovely bit of nostalgia for the veteran Althouse commentariat.
The Germans Have A Word presents an on target and subtle parody of the thinking of Rhhardin and Crack. Very funny and very well done. There's not much of a mass market for such stuff, but, as a regular reader here, , I'm appreciative and wish to express my thanks. Ditto to Althouse for giving a forum to rhhardin and Laslo and all of us who would otherwise wander lonely on the moors.
Eternity doesn’t really last forever.
It's an illusion created using harp music.
Ann Althouse said...
Come along and follow me
Talking about exploiting children.
“Inflect, inflection,” etc., are perfectly good terms to use when discussing grammar and syntax in languages. Otherwise, it sounds pretentious.
It's the simple shit that is the most profound. I've made a decent living in applied science and engineering by doing the no-brainer simple things while the smart guys complexify the world bamboozling themselves and their customers. Also, by teaching my kids to always focus on the simple dumb things, they have managed to ascend to the top of their respective STEM fields. This is my patented "Moron Theory of Life". We are all of us, even the most intelligent, mere morons. Once you live the moron path, life becomes simple and fulfilling. The motto is (in your best Carl Sling Blade voice) "There ain't no gas in it"
They can't [destroy Peterson], so it might be amusing to see how they try.
There is one very un-amusing and definite way they can destroy Peterson and I worry about it. He is constantly involved with various crowds of people and is hated by many on the Left. There is the very real danger of assassination. Presto! No more Peterson to upset the hallowed halls of academia.
Blogger Fernandistien said...
But there’s something to be said for recognizing that existence and limitation are inextricably linked.
Whoa! Who knew?!?
JBP is Very open about the fact that he is not saying anything new and that in fact, as people listen to him, they recognize what they have known all along. The reason he’s teaching it now is that the younger generations have not heard these things. The younger generation is very hungry for this truth. Also, if you want to know the full scope of his teaching on Derrida, you have to listen to a lot more than just what is in the book.
“Derrida” reminds me of an inflected past particle of “to deride.” Perhaps in Esperanto.
AA: With a little more imagination, you might see that it's possible that God would prefer to be talked about like this and not kowtowed to by people who profess to love him while convinced they're stuck in a hopeless bind that God made, something akin to battered wife syndrome.
Jesus, Althouse. The amount of obdurate, blinkered question-begging and projection you're engaging in in your responses on this topic are absolutely fucking jaw-dropping. Nutty, even.
AA: Maybe if you started with a good faith open mind you would realize that I'm not angry and antagonistic...
"...about the fact that you continue to have a difference of opinion with me about What God Wants, and stubbornly persist in your obvious errors."
Well, anger *can* be the explanation for the kind of perplexing, dogged, irrational fundie pulpit-thumping that you're displaying here - "if you're still disagreeing with me you obviously have a closed mind and haven't even considered my views, which by the way are what God really thinks". So Mark's assumption about its source is not unreasonable. Still, it could surely have some other wellspring.
@TGHAWFT: You remind me of the old Betamax 2000.
grackle said...
Peterson is anti-PC …
Peterson’s worst sin: Defying the PC gods.
That's the only thing I like about him.
As for the rest - Happy April Fools' day.
"reason to believe in eternal punishment" Once you've made certain assumptions, you can construct such reason. But, from an anthropological point of view, it remains puzzling why people would freely make assumptions, on faith alone, that entail such reasons.
Great man say: man gots to know his limitation.
Here's an interesting fact about Knox. He had first hand experience of slavery. Before being ransomed, he was condemned to servitude as a galley slave. Even in a slave's pecking order, they were the lowest of the low. Perhaps he got a window seat, but he was still a galley slave and knew something about the atrocities man inflicts upon man........I'm not that familiar with Knox's teaching. Does he preach against slavery? He doesn't have the reputation of an abolitionist. It's an interesting and uncomfortable fact how so many great religious thinkers were unable to see the horrors of slavery. Usury, adultery, blasphemy all attract more negative attention than slavery. Indeed, it was not even preached against as a sin until the Quakers introduced the concept.
"The amount of obdurate, blinkered question-begging and projection you're engaging in"
You're not trying to get Althouse to confess to error and the sin of pride, are you? God forbid!
chickelit ... sounds pretentious.
If using the second meaning of a word from the Collins English Dictionary starts to sound pretentious then we are completely fucked. It's not the fifteenth meaning of a word from the OED, it the fucking Collins Dictionary. They even use it in a sentence: "...his attacking, gospel-inflected vocal style."
For chrissakes (also to be found in the Collins English Dictionary, with a helpful quote from Clive Barker).
Thanks, Cracker Emcee Classic and William.
I was responding to Althouse's comment:
"Okay, now I would like to see a movie in the style of "My Dinner with Andre" or "Frost/Nixon" made up of conversations between rhhardin and The Crack Emcee."
I meant it with great affection, but then was concerned it might be taken otherwise, so I deleted it. I have much love for rhhardin and Crack.
Omniscient, omnipotent, in a frame of reference. According to our ancestors (i.e. myth) and fossil evidence (e.g. books, artifacts), God the head of household, God the father of the human race, is an extrauniversal entity; but, we lack perception and skill to determine God's scope in that larger frame of reference. Men and women are the "child" spirits of God. Minor Gods in our own right, who through the process of ensoulment are limited by the underlying rules set forth for our plane of existence.
So, God decided to settle down and raise a family, and Earth and life were conceived and birthed as a proving ground, a boarding school, for His minor spirits. And, one day, if we are good boys and girls, God the father, God the head of household, will welcome us into His home in the fourth logical domain: faith, which can only contemplated with our limited perception, cannot be accessed with our limited skill, and will only be reached through a measure of trust (i.e. faith) and performance (i.e. religion/morality).
In the late 50s, there was a frequency-shift morse code station just below 21 MHz (21 MC back then).
Frequency-shift keying differs from regular morse in having a key-up tone and a different key-down tone, instead of just a key-down tone.
It sent, over and over, VVV VVV VVV DE OLU OLU OLU VVV VVV ...
If you listened to only the key up tone, it had the greatest rap rhythm ever.
The key-up tone differs from regular morse in its possibilities in having three different tone lengths, not two.
I'm not the go to guy regarding questions about God and our purpose in the universe. I can, however, offer valuable insights about Lois Lane and her purpose in the DC universe. She is not there to supply the love interest but the love disinterest. She cannot see beyond Clark Kent's mild mannered exterior to the vast reserves of strength and moral grandeur that are hidden behind the eyeglasses and the bulky suit. The experience Clark undergoes with Lois in some ways mirrors the experience a sub adolescent consumer of comics experiences with the women in his life. If Lois was more perceptive and appreciative of Clark, we would not need to live in a world where it is necessary to consume comic books to attain gratification from the world..
The Germans Have A Word For That. said...
I meant it with great affection, but then was concerned it might be taken otherwise, so I deleted it.
No need for self-censorship, it was funny and not the least bit inappropriate.
There is one very un-amusing and definite way they can destroy Peterson and I worry about it. He is constantly involved with various crowds of people and is hated by many on the Left. There is the very real danger of assassination. Presto! No more Peterson to upset the hallowed halls of academia.
How hard would it be for the power of Facebook to identify one or more conveniently-located psychos and send them posts that convince them that Jordan Peterson is the architect of all their pain?
The problem with thinking about Heaven is that it's utterly unknowable. Mark Twain thought about it in "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven". Other, less talented writers - notably Dante - have considered it. The old traditional view simply does not work: harps, singing &c. (Neither does the old traditional view of Hell.)
"... if Heaven is imperfect, what’s the point? How’s it any different from Earth? " A small example: Haiti compared to a Bermuda island - one you own.
Even the notion of "eternal" is beyond our understanding - because we are trapped in this flow of Time. An eternity of anything (understood by that notion of Time) would be either utterly boring or something we couldn't stand any more.
They can destroy Peterson, or at least drive him out of Canada, with a political prosecution.
And moreover they can ban his books.
And then there is YouTube and Google its owner, who can likewise remove his platforms.
I am certain all of this is in the works, for all those who are politically and culturally inconvenient.
rhhardin: "Peterson disparages Derrida as a trickster. That takes care of it, for him."
Derrida and his like are fools, having fallen down the philosophy-hole.
BCARM: If using the second meaning of a word from the Collins English Dictionary starts to sound pretentious then we are completely fucked.
You talk like a fag and your shit's all retarded.
(I don't see anything wrong with your use of "inflected". But I talk like a fag, too, and so do my children. Once one of her peers was perplexed by my kid's use of the arcane adjective "metallic".)
From "Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith" by William Frank Buckley Junior
(First Harvest Edition 1998), page 68:
---Arnold Lunn's summary: (1) I object to God being represented as a torturer. (2) I object to any form of punishment which is eternal. (3) I object to the fact that a man's eternal destiny depends less on "striking a due balance between his virtues and his sins than on the pure accident of what takes place during the last moments of his life."---
Continued on page 69:
---Knox acknowledges that when he was himself received into the Church, the problem of eternal punishment was the single difficulty still on his conscience; i.e., he was uneasy about accepting it as doctrine.
It is natural, Knox observes, that Lunn should worry on the point. But to have submitted to authority, as Knox has done, consolidates his thought, and much then becomes thinkable which wasn't thinkable before.
Knox then argues on the basis of what is and what isn't generally accepted in civilized society. The very idea of eternal punishment is not rejected by the moral instincts of most people. Life imprisonment is human eternity, and is today increasingly popular. Many think eternal punishment is logically implied: the Church is expected to be unforgiving about a violation, unrepented, of its codes of behavior. Knox undertakes to establish that whatever Lunn's own instincts in the matter, eternal punishment is not contrary to reason.
Begin, Knox "suggests" (he is--mostly--courteous in manner), with objective perspectives. For instance, we see in the world around us pain inflicted by nature on human beings that we ourselves would not willingly inflict. This fact alone should serve to remind us that there are different scales at work in our examination of human and divine phenomenology.
We are dealing with a world in which infinites are present, one of them the vast majesty of God. It ought not to surprise us that an offense against that majesty should be infinite in its consequences.
The Bible tells us, Knox reminded Lunn, that "the fires of Hell are not merely a metaphor." Knox is telling us that there is reason to believe in eternal punishment, never mind that it is something that (availing ourselves of the Butler Escape) we ourselves would not have prescribed.---
I messed up an "is" (since corrected here) with an "if" previously. Changed the whole meaning.
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
I was remarking the obviousness and predictability of your comments, and neither stated or implied anything about Peterson's writing, or his readers' reaction to it.
So it was obvious to you that I would recognize and comment on some silliness to which other people seemed oblivious (I'm pretty sure that's a complement), just like you predicted I would ID Superman as Jewish. You are very clever!
Is “Christ was risen” more perfect than “Christ is risen”?
Don't know about "more perfect," but it's not the translation of "resurrexit." Paul used 'was risen' in Corinthians--or that's the way it's translated--and it's the rage in the New American and New Revised editions.
But it's not "resurrexit." Nor is it "resurrexi," the first word of today's Introit and a direct quote of Christ.
Wikipedia on Arnold Lunn:
---In the same year as The Flight from Reason appeared (1930), Lunn proposed to Knox an exchange of letters for subsequent publication in which he would advance all the objections he could conceive of to Roman Catholicism and Knox would reply. Knox accepted, and for more than a year the letters went to and fro. In 1932 they appeared as a book under the title Difficulties.[6] This exchange did much to clarify Lunn's mind, but even so, nearly two years were to elapse before he was received into the Catholic Church. In 1932 Lunn accepted a challenge from the noted philosopher C. E. M. Joad to discuss Christianity in a series of letters; they were published the following year as Is Christianity True? Joad, an agnostic, attacked Christianity on a wide variety of fronts, and Lunn, by now a believing Christian, if uncommitted to any particular denomination, responded. Lunn later wrote: "I can imagine no better training for the Church than to spend, as I did, a year arguing the case against Catholicism with a Catholic, and a second year in defending the Catholic position against an agnostic."[7]
On 13 July 1933, Mgr Knox received Lunn into the Catholic Church. Lunn's story of his conversion is related in Now I See, which was published in November of the same year. Lunn became, in Evelyn Waugh's words, "the most tireless Catholic apologist of his generation,"[6] and won the applause of fellow Catholic authors like Hilaire Belloc.---
Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard said...
perplexed by my kid's use of the arcane adjective "metallic".
I know that one, it's an adjective for things associated with Mettalica.
It's a limited understanding to see Christians as akin to people with "battered wife syndrome."
Bad Lieutenant said...
He is constantly involved with various crowds of people and is hated by many on the Left.
In that regard I first heard of him being protested, etc, here; check Coyne's "tags" of "Authoritarian and Regressive Left", "Authoritarian Left", "Colleges acting badly". (the tags refer to protesters, not Peterson)
"Saint Schrodinger"
buwaya said...
I am certain all of this is in the works
Would you like to provide even a smidgen of evidence for this statement.
“Christ Has Risen, but Goldberg’s prices remain the same.”
Fernandistien said...
Bad Lieutenant said...
He is constantly involved with various crowds of people and is hated by many on the Left.
In that regard I first heard of him being protested, etc, here;
I was quoting grackle.
just like you predicted I would ID Superman as Jewish.
Didn't everybody know that?
Certainly ARM.
They did it to Conrad Black and several times to Mark Steyn, and drove both off their several platforms.
And the same to any number of others. It's interesting to see who are hosted now at Taki and Unz, rich untouchable men.
As for Google and YouTube, surely you are aware of the recent campaign of demonetization of all sorts of conservative channels, and harassment through banning.
I reheard this recently and was deeply surprised. Beware of darkness...The pain that often mingles In your fingertips.
Beware of sadness. It can hit you
It can hurt you Make you sore and what is more, That is not what you are here for.
I like some good comic book talk, but missed this thread until now. I assume it's already been mentioned, but Dr. Manhattan from "The Watchmen" graphic novel is the definitive "What happens to a superhero who gets so super that nothing matters?" character.
None of this has anything to do with Peterson, or much to do with reality. Conrad Black, a felon, currently has a regular commenting spot at National Review.
Conrad Black was like Martha Stewart, a victim of a selective prosecution of a non-crime.
And he is off his MSM platforms such as the National Post and WSJ.
Pay attention to the right and you will see.
Conrad Black was strategically prosecuted in order to take away his control of a large group of MSM properties.
The result, among other things, was a large scale deplatforming of many conservatives like Steyn, Peter Hitchens, Delingpole, etc.
That's just one set of consequences. This all was planned.
Very much in the same way that Maurice Greenberg was prosecuted, in order to clear the way for a gang of pirates to take over AIG.
Black was convicted of fraud in addition to obstruction of justice. Martha Stewart was convicted of insider trader and deserved to go to jail, like Black.
Amazing comments today. The dead man risen has both forms of being included. He was fully alive until he was dead and buried and gone to Hell until he is alive again never to die again eternally.
And that event set off 300 years of Gnostics versus Trinitarians fights. What a man. What a man.
In the end, the whole point is that all life and love come to us in the gift of a person. And that is about it.
I suggest you research the matter of Conrad Black, ARM.
It was fraud in the most trivial possible sense.
The kind of thing you could find as an inadvertent matter of paperwork disclosure if you did a deep dive into the business of any such tycoon.
You could probably put the whole 1% in prison if you did that.
This was a malicious prosecution.
And Stewart was, likewise, maliciously prosecuted.
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