Me eyes...... are ever fixed on You
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Original: 10/5/2007 11:59 AM
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Friday, October 05, 2007

   i have come to believe that the following statements are true
    (but i am open to discussion)

    given too much credence, or insufficient critique, nearly every belief may become an enslavement
    the myth of redemptive violence may be our most serious fault
    human beings are ceaselessly self-deceiving
    pure altruism is fantasy
    there is a God
    true love is a reality
    the sincere pursuit of truth is never unrewarded
    the most fundamental and noble of all the virtues is empathy
    violence, by definition, is un-creative. therefore the opposite of war is not pacifism, but creativity
 
    choice is the only mechanism for creating meaning
 Posted 10/5/2007 11:59 AM - 43 Views - 4 eProps - 4 comments

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I would agree to most of these but just to clarify, I would just like to say that I don't think redemptive violence is probably not our most serious fault, it's most likely pride (i.e. believing we are God). 

Also pure altruism is realistically a fantasy if you take it in the most literal definition.  Otherwise, I can think of several instances where people did not think of themselves but of others (Jesus Christ). 

Actually, the most fundamental of virtues is love (1 Cor. 13) of which empathy is a derivative.  Just to clarify.

I was initially alarmed by the violence statement, but was reconciled when I realized that there is no such thing as a middle ground in a relationship.  It's always either getting better or getting worse.  Kind of like my trombone playing....

Posted 10/9/2007 1:00 PM by john_doe3278 - reply

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see, if he put in love, instead of empathy, it being three letters shorter, the whole thing wouldn't be symmetrical. Other than that I probably agree with John Doe (does that even constitute a disagreement?)
I have been thinking about the story of the second thief on the cross for some time. I think it is significant that Jesus promised such things to him without asking him what his background was, whether he was an Evangelical or an Evolutionist or a Post-modernist or a Catholic or a -- or even asking him what exactly he had heard about him (Jesus). That's what I had to think of when I read the first statement.
Not to distract from the main discussion, when a relationship stops getting worse and starts getting better again, does it have to cover all the ground it just lost over again? Or am I stretching the symbolism further than it was intended?

The symmetry strikes me more each time I read it.
Posted 10/11/2007 4:19 PM by ealthodores - reply

Regarding violence is uncreative point...How far do we extend the definition of violence? Is killing animals for sport violent? Is killing animals for food violent? Is killing plants for food violent? Because it's extremely difficult to create anything without, on some level, doing violence to something else. Suppose I build a house, I will be destroying some trees. Suppose I invent the automobile. I will be destroying the buggy-whip industry.

Also, while I understand the paradigm you have set up with this statement according to which creativity is the antithesis of war, the two very frequently go hand in hand: creativity (admittedly inventiveness would be a more precise word here) is driven by the desire to be able to fight better than the other guy. See for example Jack London's interesting short story The Strength of the Strong. If there were no creativity, there could be no large-scale violence (the one is needed to engineer the other). If, taking "creativity" to mean "the faculty of creating things" rather than "inventiveness," there would still, probably, be no large-scale organized violence without creativity, because a) a population without the material benefits of creativity will attract very few conquerors as there won't be any plunder and b) a population without the material benefits of creativity will not have the surplus energy, materiel, or manpower requisite for launching an assault on others. If we wanted to follow this principle to the point of the absurd, without procreation (creativity) there could be no war because there would be no people...hmm that's actually kind of interesting, because in that light violence appears secondary to creation (creation precedes violence and makes it possible).

Can only God create without doing violence?
Posted 1/11/2008 2:27 PM by johnny bizzle - reply

Actually the precedence creativity takes over violence reminds me of...I think it's in C.S. Lewis somewhere...the "bent things" idea, that everything is good initially (as God creates it) and gets perverted/turned to bad ends later on by humans...by which way of seeing things, violence wouldn't be so much the antithesis of creation as the perversion of creation.
Posted 1/11/2008 2:31 PM by johnny bizzle - reply


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