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Post by petrushka on May 13, 2016 23:32:29 GMT -5
Creelunion and I were having an exchange about how churches can have effects on relationships and attitudes.
I put in a comment about my 'prude' American SiL.
We were blasted to get out of the thread and go to off topic.
To me, that was not off topic, to my mind that was entirely pertinent. Some people would be gobsmacked if they
got to observe how people in Scandinavia walk around in the nude in public and nobody thinks twice about it -
or in Nigeria for that matter. Thinking about how your culture has affected your perception is not anti-anything.
In order to understand who I am, who you are, I need to transcend culture, religion, upbringing, social environment.
I need to understand who I am, who you are in order to grow, and in order to appropriately relate to you. Transcend
means to rise above, to understand, it does not mean to leave it behind - nobody can really do that. But in order to
understand where an Indian, a Frenchman, a Dane are coming from, I need some knowledge. Some of the ways they
think are based on their culture, their environment, their religion also.
I can transcend my upbringing, I can see that my parents were social misfits, and both very damaged. That helps me see,
once put into a different context of a therapy group & social skills training that was organized for pastors and social workers
by our church, that there are other ways to relate, that there are healthier ways of interacting with other people. That I was,
effectively, crippled.
It does not mean I left my family upbringing behind, although in all honesty I cannot say that I like it in any way. But
understanding it, 'getting' the dynamics at work, has allowed me to grow beyond.
The same goes for my culture, my religion, my vocation and my profession.
If I don't transcend these, I cannot grow beyond. I am stuck at the bottom of a hole and I can only see a small disk of sky,
and that is my event horizon.
Socrates said: The more I learn, the more I understand that I know nothing. My aim in life is to not dig a deeper hole
for myself, but to widen my horizons, to grow. As some other famous thinker said: the moment you stop growing, you begin
to die.
I'd like to hear any pertinent (or off-topic) contributions or experiences. I would welcome them.
***
During the last 30 years that I've run this ranch (farm) I've hosted countless young people from all over the world. Volunteers,
guests. They learned something from me (and a few got back to me to say that the way I showed them to live has changed their
worldview forever) and I learned a lot from them, about their thinking, about their philosophy, about their cultures.
I had amongst all those one young woman ... from America. She told me that she was going to go to Malaysia and become
a missionary. I asked if she knew anything about their culture, I suggested she needed a lot of transcendence to survive in
an environment like that. She dismissed it out of hand. Nope, she was on a mission from God.
She obviously had no idea that apostate muslims are stoned to death. She had no clue that SHE herself was in deadly peril.
But she didn't want to know, didn't want to listen.
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Post by bballgirl on May 14, 2016 8:52:48 GMT -5
Wow!! What a great post!
I teach foreign language so this was so right up my ally because this is what I do for a living. Culture is huge in knowing, understanding and figuring out if we are compatible with others. As well as understanding other cultures, learning from them, applying those concepts to our own lives to see if we can grow as an individual.
On EP I had once met a man, a Marine who had travelled to every continent and spent a lot of time fighting and protecting in the Middle East. He said the fact that he didn't speak their language was not the big issue. What was most important for survival for him was to understand their culture. That knowledge was his biggest protection abd his rifle of course. He is such a good man I pray he is safe and happy. He also is in a sexless marriage.
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Post by obobfla on May 14, 2016 9:23:50 GMT -5
Having had a brother-in-law live in Kuala Lampor, I can say that most Malaysians are tolerant people who would never stone anyone. However, they would not appreciate an ignorant American girl preaching Christianity.
But transcendence, that is so important! I call it getting out of yourself, which has been the key for my staying off alcohol for 21 years and maintaining my sanity with my wife. I love challenging myself to listen to new music or watch foreign films. Many of my tweets on my Twitter page are in languages I don't understand yet, but I still love getting them.
I was listening on Spotify to some "torch and twang" playlist when I heard this song.
Loved it so much, thought I would check the artist out. Found out that Baptiste W. Hamon is a Frenchman who sings American country. But most of his songs are in French. I spent the rest of the day listening to French country music. Mon Dieu!
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Post by unmatched on May 14, 2016 19:14:08 GMT -5
For me transcendence is the whole point of religion, and it so often becomes the opposite. Most religions I can think of (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism to start with) arose because one person had an intensely real and profound experience of God or something infinite and were able to surrender to it. And it changed them in a way that was obvious and irrevocable and they were able to communicate that to others and to help them experience the same thing. All of them talk about it using words like infinite, ineffable, unknowable, indescribable, etc. And one of the main features of surrendering to that experience is that it helps you to transcend your existing view of the world and to embrace what you don't know and even what you can't know.
People who have been through this and are able to live with that degree of 'not knowing' tend to be very humble, very open to new beliefs and experiences and very compassionate towards other people. And there are shining exemplars of that all over the world - religious people who are deeply involved with their communities and very inspiring to be around. But it is rarely a comfortable place to be, and the temptation is very strong to replace that not knowing with some kind of belief system which allows you to reframe the experience and feel more secure. Unfortunately those belief systems very often involve rigid prescriptions about how you should relate to others, how you should live your life and for some bizarre reason very often want to dictate how you should feel about sex and what your sex life should look like. And so it is highly relevant to this forum. I think a fair proportion of all the fucked up views about sexuality that seem to abound in this world have originated with one religion or other, and part of the process we are all going through is to try and separate out what we really feel from the baggage we have picked up along the way.
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 19:11:33 GMT -5
I had amongst all those one young woman ... from America. She told me that she was going to go to Malaysia and become a missionary. I asked if she knew anything about their culture, I suggested she needed a lot of transcendence to survive in an environment like that. She dismissed it out of hand. Nope, she was on a mission from God. She obviously had no idea that apostate muslims are stoned to death. She had no clue that SHE herself was in deadly peril. But she didn't want to know, didn't want to listen. Do you know what happened to her? I assume she couldn't do something like that on her own. So anyone funding her would understand the perils associated with that plan. |
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Post by petrushka on May 16, 2016 19:36:13 GMT -5
No idea what became of her. She'll be a matron by now. It was some 20-25 years ago. Last I heard was when she sent me a cookie receipe from Australia, her next stop on her trip.
It was some kind of bizarre. She was using my computer, my email. I was a vocal critic of microsoft (still am) and her father sent her a message she should format my c: drive, that would show me. <eye roll> Some people .... <grins> yeah, right, I would never see that in my in-box. I didn't keep in contact.
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 20:52:48 GMT -5
petrushka , I know you're comment is intended to suggest that we recognize that elements of our perception are dictated by our cultural (and many other) predispositions. You sated that very eloquently. I'm sure you've all heard the parable of the "Blind Men and the Elephant". If not, you can look it up. Short and concise. The story is probably a Hindu or Buddhist parable about transcendence, "Many Truths", or fallacies based on cultural myopia. My problem with it is that the narrator has to be a truly transcendent being to make the determination of "Truth" or draw any meaning out of the myopic descriptions of the blind men feeling around on the elephant. When that parable has been quoted to me, I always ask what makes the person quoting it to me so transcendent as to see truths others cannot see. This is particularly confounding when the sage that sees clearly beyond the myopia of other folks concludes there is "No Truth". Transcendence has taken him beyond reason. I think a better illustration of transcendence is the mathematical one. Two dimensions transcends one. The two dimensional being has access to all of the one dimensional points without being confined to (or even necessarily on) the line. From a mathematical perspective, none of us can conceive of (really understand or "Feel") anything but three spacial dimensions and one in time. So, we have to just rely on the math and follow it where it goes. I don't think people can even really fully understand two spacial dimensions. They can imagine looking at two dimensions from the perspective of three, but that's a little different. Maybe Socrates's point is that if you think you've transcended, you might think again.
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 22:09:09 GMT -5
For me transcendence is the whole point of religion, and it so often becomes the opposite. Most religions I can think of (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism to start with) arose because one person had an intensely real and profound experience of God or something infinite and were able to surrender to it. Unmatched, One of these started with one person. Maybe you can stretch that to two, but the adherents may argue with you some on that. People who have been through this and are able to live with that degree of 'not knowing' tend to be very humble, very open to new beliefs and experiences and very compassionate towards other people. And there are shining exemplars of that all over the world - religious people who are deeply involved with their communities and very inspiring to be around. But it is rarely a comfortable place to be, and the temptation is very strong to replace that not knowing with some kind of belief system which allows you to reframe the experience and feel more secure. Unfortunately those belief systems very often involve rigid prescriptions about how you should relate to others, how you should live your life and for some bizarre reason very often want to dictate how you should feel about sex and what your sex life should look like. And so it is highly relevant to this forum. I think a fair proportion of all the fucked up views about sexuality that seem to abound in this world have originated with one religion or other, and part of the process we are all going through is to try and separate out what we really feel from the baggage we have picked up along the way. I'm curious about the point here. Yes, definitely religion tends to dictate how we'll feel about sex. Maybe religion dictates how we feel about everything, including quality, love, money, grass, sea turtles, and carbon? By what standard are these views fucked up? Who or what is the arbiter of fucked up views? Here's my point: The opening of this discussion (thank you petrushka BTW) was that we can or should transcend human experience to achieve a higher understanding. It appears there are some views that are more valid than others. How do we figure out which views are higher and which are fucked up? The example was given that Scandinavians don't mind walking around naked. I assume this is considered a virtue? Japanese (all Asians that I've been around) prefer not being naked around others in public. Is this a vice of the closed Asian culture? Indians (from India) practice a caste system and other cultural peculiarities that I've seen put a liberal northern European into a depressed culture shock. Is this virtue or vice? Or neither, just the natural consequence of 17.8 billion years of matter and energy in motion? What should I learn from this to culturally elevate myself to a more transcendent state? |
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Post by unmatched on May 16, 2016 22:48:31 GMT -5
@creelunion I guess my view is that any belief system which closes your mind to other possibilities is fucked up, particularly if it lets you feel superior and judgemental and take a position that other people who believe differently are wrong or evil. I don't mind if you like to be naked or like to be covered up. What I do mind is if you judge other people as bad for doing the opposite. Similarly I have no issue with a caste system that works as a social structure, but I have a big issue with a caste system which allows some people to feel superior to others.
Sex is the same. Some cultures practice monogamy, some have all kinds of different variations of polygamy. Some people like vanilla sex, others like more variety. But if your beliefs tell me I am evil because I want to fuck another man, get involved in kink, have multiples parters or whatever then that is fucked up (by my definition).
So I don't think you can say one cultural norm is necessarily better than another, but I do think the point of religion is to evolve ourselves to the point where we are able to transcend those norms and be open to other people.
(Also you could argue that all religions have predecessors, but I would think of Christianity as starting with Jesus, Islam with Mohammed, Buddhism with Buddha and Taoism with Lao Tse. Hinduism not so much I agree, although there are a lot of groups and sects within Hinduism that probably do fit the above description.)
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 22:52:01 GMT -5
Full Disclosure: (I'm hoping this thread is unhijackable, so I won't get censored) I participate in several on-line forums. In reverse order of frequency -- and NOT under the moniker of CreelUnion: ArborSite.com: This one is about trees and tree care. When I wonder when to prune, where to get a manual for a chainsaw, or how to best climb in a certain situation, I go here. This one is not very emotional or religious, although most arborists are at least somewhat "Religious" about trees and forests. The only feelings that are expressed are related to folks blocking machinery entrances to logging sites or the occasional falling out of a tree (pain). BadCaps.net: This is about electronics. There is no room for any feelings here. It works or it doesn't. The site was founded on the premise that some unscrupulous Chinese and Turkish companies mass produced bad capacitors around the turn of the century (2000 AD), and devices have been failing badly ever since. I guess Quality is the religious theme of this site. If you want to fix your broken TV, this is the place to go. There is some brilliant fellow there that will walk you through it. I'm shitting you not. Thumpertalk.com: No, this is primarily a dirt biking forum. Thumper refers to the 4-stroke dirt bikes that became "Normal" in the mid-2000s. This is a very "Feely" forum, and the religion is dirt biking. Heretics don't use Rotella T or change their oil after every ride, Austrians are ruining dirt biking, and Nirvana is ripping through virgin singletrack on a Husaberg (made in Sweeden where folks like being naked). This forum has men and women from different cultural backgrounds discussing an inextricably "Feely" and religious subject. It's unique. And the folks here are sharp adults. Back on EP, the ILIASM forum was the only one with a core of rational, thinking, human beings. Sure there were trolls, but if any of you attempted to play on any of the other "Experiences" it was ALL mindless trolls. Thanks again petrushka for opening this thread. You're a bold man. |
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 23:17:50 GMT -5
@creelunion I guess my view is that any belief system which closes your mind to other possibilities is fucked up, particularly if it lets you feel superior and judgemental and take a position that other people who believe differently are wrong or evil. I don't mind if you like to be naked or like to be covered up. What I do mind is if you judge other people as bad for doing the opposite. Similarly I have no issue with a caste system that works as a social structure, but I have a big issue with a caste system which allows some people to feel superior to others. Sex is the same. Some cultures practice monogamy, some have all kinds of different variations of polygamy. Some people like vanilla sex, others like more variety. But if your beliefs tell me I am evil because I want to fuck another man, get involved in kink, have multiples parters or whatever then that is fucked up (by my definition). So I don't think you can say one cultural norm is necessarily better than another, but I do think the point of religion is to evolve ourselves to the point where we are able to transcend those norms and be open to other people. (Also you could argue that all religions have predecessors, but I would think of Christianity as starting with Jesus, Islam with Mohammed, Buddhism with Buddha and Taoism with Lao Tse. Hinduism not so much I agree, although there are a lot of groups and sects within Hinduism that probably do fit the above description.) UnMatched, do you feel superior to homophobes? Is there any sexual behavior that you believe is objectively immoral? Or is it all permissible given a cultural mandate? I'm thinking specifically about NAMBLA, but I'm sure there's one advocating for abolition of age of consent laws for girls. And, most non-western cultures don't sweat these things (at least for the girls) anyway. It's an honest question. My point is that using the "Judgmental" standard is self-refuting. You're either judging others (and superior to them) for having a standard (if you claim to have none), or judging them for a different standard. Simply stating you don't have a standard or basing your standard on nothing does not fix this. You ARE superior to at least the ignorant Homophobe. Deriding other folks' as judgmental seems too easy to me. It always strikes me as, well, Judgmental. |
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Post by unmatched on May 16, 2016 23:21:01 GMT -5
@creelunion I am confused by your post. Nirvana IS ripping through virgin singletrack (even on an Austrian bike  ). Isn't it? |
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Post by unmatched on May 16, 2016 23:33:01 GMT -5
UnMatched, do you feel superior to homophobes? Is there any sexual behavior that you believe is objectively immoral? Or is it all permissible given a cultural mandate? I'm thinking specifically about NAMBLA, but I'm sure there's one advocating for abolition of age of consent laws for girls. And, most non-western cultures don't sweat these things (at least for the girls) anyway. It's an honest question. My point is that using the "Judgmental" standard is self-refuting. You're either judging others (and superior to them) for having a standard (if you claim to have none), or judging them for a different standard. Simply stating you don't have a standard or basing your standard on nothing does not fix this. You ARE superior to at least the ignorant Homophobe. Deriding other folks' as judgmental seems too easy to me. It always strikes me as, well, Judgmental. I think you have to make judgements all the time. You can't live without making judgements. The question is are you making those judgements on the basis of a 'best effort' to try and understand the world around you, or based purely on a closed mindset that you inherited from somewhere else. I am not saying we can go completely beyond our upbringing or conditioning, but I am saying it is important to try. And in the context of the religious argument above, I think if you can make judgements while intensely aware of just how much you don't and can't know and understand about the world, then those judgements are likely to be a lot more open and compassionate and probably closer to the truth than they might be if you are trying to defend your world view. So do I feel superior to homophobes? It is easier to think about specific people, but honestly yes in the sense that I don't hate them and I try to empathise with them and understand where they are coming from before violently disagreeing. I don't think they are offering the same courtesy to gay people. I find sexual issues generally hard to argue from a moral standpoint. Things which our society frowns upon, other societies don't or haven't in the past, and unless you can show that something is actually harming somebody then I would find it hard to say it was immoral. But I also think as a society you need to make laws which protect people. Can I see a situation where a 14 year old might be mature enough to be in a sexual relationship with the right older person? Probably. Can I see lots of situations where 14 year olds might be abused by the wrong person? Definitely. So for me the law should stand. |
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Post by Deleted on May 16, 2016 23:35:35 GMT -5
@creelunion I am confused by your post. Nirvana IS ripping through virgin singletrack (even on an Austrian bike ). Isn't it? Not for the anti-Austrians. You'd be shocked at the "racism" toward Caviga for running Husqvarna into the ground and then selling it to the Austrians to make it into a blue and white KTM. Then some Christ like Swedes built a better Husqvarna, called it Husaberg, and KTM bought that and turned it into a blue and yellow KTM. Then KTM sold 49% of itself to an Indian company. I have to deal with this shit every day. |
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Post by unmatched on May 16, 2016 23:39:15 GMT -5
@creelunion I am confused by your post. Nirvana IS ripping through virgin singletrack (even on an Austrian bike ). Isn't it? Not for the anti-Austrians. You'd be shocked at the "racism" toward Caviga for running Husqvarna into the ground and then selling it to the Austrians to make it into a blue and white KTM. Then some Christ like Swedes built a better Husqvarna, called it Husaberg, and KTM bought that and turned it into a blue and yellow KTM. Then KTM sold 49% of itself to an Indian company. I have to deal with this shit every day. I feel your pain. I have found Thumpertalk quite useful, but I would prefer to focus on the singletrack and not pay so much attention to whether the blur underneath me is orange or blue. |
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