by Narkissos 34 Replies latest jw friends
Spirits remain exclusively in the imaginative mind of our sub-consciousness, where they can flourish and develop themselves or on the other hand
they can completely disappear all together.
Psychologically speaking this is what makes us so indifferent from one and another.
This assumes there is an underlying reality to which descriptions and conceptions can be more or less accurately fixed.
Just enough for you and I to trust your life on it several times a day. E.g. instructions for use, a guide to a dangerous place or a descriptive list of toxic mushrooms. Were it not for its partial but practically sufficient ability to represent some "reality" I doubt language would have developed at all.
But I agree with you (although nvr seems to blame me for that) that it is impossible to assess one system of representations over another globally. We can only compare local or partial differences, zones of "light" and "obscurity," relative gains and losses, nothing more.
Partiality (with its arbitrary separations, obscurities and exclusions) is essential to language. A perfect description of anything would be the thing itself (as in the Buddha's silent "sermon of the rose"), and it wouldn't be a description at all. And since no "thing" can be separated from "another" except by the arbitrariness of language, it would ultimately be the universe itself (like the Borgesian map) -- minus the artificial word and notion of "universe".
My immediate "agenda" is that I've got to write something on the topic of "exorcism" and I feel like airing a few thoughts and questions (lol). More generally, I do obscurely believe in the value of reflection on language and "reality" as a potentially liberating tool (if only for the next kind of servitude). My underlying question being (and it is indeed "political" in the broadest sense), to what has a society which considers itself "free" from "alienating" influences (such as represented by traditional "spirits") actually got itself enslaved thereby? (Syntax uncertain, sorry )
dear Narkissos...
"My underlying question being (and it is indeed "political" in the broadest sense), to what has a society which considers itself "free" from "alienating" influences (such as represented by traditional "spirits") actually got itself enslaved thereby? (Syntax uncertain, sorry )"...
even at this stage in the game it would be down right embarrassing for the scientific community to advance the notion that aliens or time travelers are anything other than benign...and they don't have any evidence yet
love michelle
One additional remark (which I should have made in my opening post): in the ancient world "spirits" are not a systematic, general, or consensual explanation of ordinary phenomena. "Illnesses" and "spirit manifestations," physicians and exorcists both coexist and overlap. This is apparent in the Gospels and Acts, where sometimes a "sick" person is "healed" and sometimes a "spirit" is "expelled".
I'm starting to read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's History of Spiritualism, which I find fascinating so far. The resurgence of "spirits" in the very times and places of the industrial revolution (and among the greatest minds), which I tend to construe as the "nightly" counterweight of "daily" materialism and mechanism, gives much matter for thought. The literary and artistic use of spiritualism in 20th-century surrealism is another interesting connection I'd like to dig.
Another thing that puzzles me is the Jewish and NT conspicuous (yet not exactly diametrical) opposition of unclean spirits (plural, cf. "Legion" and the "seven spirits" of Mary Magdalene, or in the parable of the empty and clean house) and Holy Spirit (singular), in that uncleanness is on the side of the multiple and holiness on the side of the one. Although it is noteworthy that the "one Spirit" generates a multiplicity of its (or His?) own (cf. especially 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians),
It sounds like the opposition of two visions of diversity, as chaos vs. harmony (which of course would have been quite appealing to the Graeco-Roman mind under the influence of widely popularised Stoic and Middle-Platonic philosophy). Btw it is noteworthy that the Christian emphasis on the Holy Spirit (sometimes identified to the resurrected Jesus, especially in Paul) practically reinforces the idea of divine unity, when compared to the proliferation of angelology and demonology in apocalyptic Judaism. In a way, the one Holy Spirit makes not only the "evil" spirits but also the many "good" angels recede into the background.
Thoughts?
