Gross Generality vs. Gentle Gnosis

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Naga_Fireball
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Gross Generality vs. Gentle Gnosis

Post by Naga_Fireball »

Here's one that I struggle with a lot, and I see others also struggling. Perhaps some of it is age related (healthy?) cynicism.

Image

Gross generality.
Like dropping a nuclear bomb, sometimes a gross generality is the most socially violent and dismissive thing we can do to another human being.

The bomb itself being the ultimate write off, we can sort of look at what makes such things so finally & wholly damaging, and identify the areas of life in which we are overriding our powers of superior reason and habitually pushing that handy dandy Nuke Button.

What *IS* a gross generality?

I'll give some examples:

Ex
Americans are fat.
Children are annoying.
Food is expensive.
War is wrong.
All is fair in love and war.

^ These are gross generalities.

I'll try to doctor them up by adding context, but they'll still sound very negative & closed minded.

Ex
Americans tend to be overweight because they work long hours, spend too much time sitting behind the wheel, and have been raised to watch television rather than relax and connect via meaningful activity.

Children tend to have short attention spans and often lack an adult's perception of appropriate noise and behavior in public.

Food does cost a lot if one doesn't garden, save leftovers, or is an uncreative shopper, etc, partly thanks to our consumer culture and the way we are encouraged to discard the old without planning for it.

War tends to be disruptive; there is little in life more disruptive than war. Lives are needlessly lost due to the violent and chaotic nature of the battlefield and war probably isn't the most efficient means of humanity's self betterment.

Regarding love and war, both things about which humans do tend to feel passionately, people are less likely perhaps to demonstrate the gracious characteristics of patience, generosity, and understanding, but rather cave in to the powerful and primitive emotions such as jealousy and anger.

...

^ Even though I've provided good reason and some context, my statements above are still not original and do very little to educate or inform anyone -- because dress it up as much as you like, gross generalities are ugly, and like barbed wire, they prevent humans from traveling between social groups and sharing anything peacefully.

Carried within most gross generalities is a presumption of error, inferiority, stupidity, self- entitlement.

Although "keeping it simple, Stupid" is a functioning system, the Stupid says it all.

When we systematize and justify our strangely accusative generalities, when we practice a repertoire of beliefs and try pounding it into others' skulls, we are enlightening no one.

Life requires the time and freedom it takes to arrive at a sensible, informed, contextually sound conclusion, not necessarily based on the impression of years spent suffering at the hands of others or hating the government.

When we justify independence merely by being free of the assumed stupidity of others, that's not freedom, it's misanthropic.

How to spot a misanthrope in 60 seconds?
Listen to what he says, and if there's nothing good about humanity being said, there's probably very little hope for the friendship and no sense wasting your time on a person who trains him or herself to be constantly miserable.

Learning to love life in spite of ourselves requires letting go of judgment long enough to absorb meaningful details.

I'll say it again. If you're too busy counting timber to appreciate the individual tree for what it is, a sacred life form with its own sacred life path and mission on this planet, you're probably on the wrong planet.

Gross generalities strike at the very diversity of life. They clip off the branches and nip the buds of potential.

Try your hand at gentle gnosis before the snake of gross generality can strike!
Matthew 18:2-4 New International Version (NIV)

2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
"I can know everything
Only when I know nothing."

"Innocence is purity."
The Lord gives wisdom (sophia), from his face come knowledge (gnosis) and understanding (sunesis)"

— Proverbs 2.6
Brotherhood falls asunder at the touch of fire!
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
~William Cowper
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How the System Turns Young Against Old

Post by Naga_Fireball »

It can seem quite defeating, to realize that our opportunistic and predatory economy in America does not adequately value the positive characteristics of age.

It seems almost as if I am breaking an American taboo by pointing out the extreme & particular value of elderly people.

Imagine that life is a decanter. We take our experiences and wisdom and put them in the decanter, and like magic, the work done by time turns the solution into something unique and precious, a concoction worth far more than its simple ingredients.

Time is a positive value, not necessarily just a factor of entropy or a byproduct of nature protesting thermodynamics. It's not just a local phenomenon or the field in which we happen to be sitting. Time gives perspective. It is a tool, a vista to see by, a thing of measurement and context. Time gives the human mind a framework by which to preserve itself.

Potential is the blood pumping through the butterfly, but time is the magic that spreads its wings.

..........

Now I'd like to talk about the specific factors or fulcra by which our "masters" on high pit old against young.


Fear,
Anger.
Innocence,
Knowledge.

I'll make some charts:

Fear <----------------------> Anger
Innocence <-------------> knowledge

Young people start out on the left and as we age we progress toward the right. We travel from a place of fear and submission to a place of indignation, anger, and self-entitlement. This is a natural process and there's very little we can do about it except try to remember to be joyful.

The most conscious thing a human being can do, in my opinion, the hardest thing in the world maybe, is to find a reason to be happy when it seems like there is very little there. To just BE happiness. To make a joyful noise to the Lord no matter how a deep a pit we've fallen into or how tall the prison tower.

Joy is one of the greatest spiritual gifts and necessities of living fully. A life without joy is no life at all! Why, a tomb has 4 walls, a door, and a bed; what keeps it from being a home is the absence of joy, which is to say, the absence of life.

Innocence and knowledge, the 2nd great struggle that enables the first great cycle of Fear and Anger...

What can be said about it, except that for the intelligent child, childhood is the painful period of paradox, where it seems that no one else on earth except children and their handlers understand the extraordinary needs of the mind! For although we gain wisdom by aging, we start the process of dying also! How painful it is, to be a child, to be ruled by the crippled and scarred, the angry survivors, rather than the calm and pensive innocence of the mind who has known no suffering!

...

Our Rulers and employers want to keep the youth separate and disillusioned; stupid, weak, distracted and afraid. They want the youth to fear the stereotypical pedo in the candyvan, the leftist hippie, the paramilitary right winger, the preachers & teachers on leashes of public scrutiny in the cauldron of sex appeal, etc.

Youth isn't the actual resource being sold, it's innocence i.e. unwillingness to step out of line and recognize evil in order to fight it.

Youth have a "everything to lose", "all or nothing" mentality. They self protect out of instinct and fear and the protection is very primitive and limited.

...

Rulers and employers absolutely oppress the older people who rebel against the system, valuing only compliance, loyalty, and skill; longevity is merely a byproduct of time and employers/rulers see it as a significant threat to the power structure.

Because

Older people put more value on the lives of the young when properly educated; the elderly see themselves with the mentality of "I have less to lose", which in and of itself is a painful awakening for the perceptive child,

The awareness of a societal expectation of sacrifice.

The earlier we awaken to that truth, the faster we can stop fighting within and between our age groups and cooperate in order to better use our collective knowledge.
Brotherhood falls asunder at the touch of fire!
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
~William Cowper
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Re: Gross Generality vs. Gentle Gnosis

Post by Naga_Fireball »

The main reason for us to practice gentility when we acquire knowledge, is that in spite of the annoyance posed by our interactive and often confusing world, the way we interact sets the tone for so many future interactions.

One bad apple can ruin the barrel. We should try to avoid bitterness and enjoy beauty wherever it is found.

Anyone can wake up feeling sour. That's why we should question our own intentions, censor ourselves enough to ensure that our questions reflect a state of inner peace and not hungry turmoil.

Trusting people is not easy. It is also easy to assume that people can safely fit into one convenient category, that because of age, gender, race, economic status, that a person is going to be easy to control and predict. I guess it is easy to discount individuality and dignity when one is used to being a messenger.

We are indeed, at times, messengers of a higher power. But we can't exist in that state all of the time or we risk losing our humanity and credibility.

We can't talk down to everyone we encounter face to face then go online and complain about how life treats us.

These conditions are inextricably linked!

We must face each day with great expectation, first of ourselves, so that we accomplish the Lord's work and set a good example for others, and so that we are ready to receive blessings.

If people tell themselves "We are unequivocally fucked each and every day" because XYZ powers /agencies are "keeping us down", or "energy is against us", that there is a goddamn declaration of war. That mentality is acquired only in the war zone.

We don't live in a fucking war zone anymore, and until that happens, we don't need to act as if the whole world is an enemy.

Let's not be reminded of what happens when people disrespect the earth. People are part of the picture, not just the problem, and an inability to connect with real people, to identify with our species, reflects a level of cynicism that to me borders on genocidal tendency.


Perhaps not all life reaches its potential. .. true.
But mocking & shaming people into awareness and compliance, i.e. "you are stupid if you don't buy my misanthropic synopsis of the misery of being human", is not enlightenment.

Might as well pack up the fireplace and go back into the cave if the only valid light source is within.
Brotherhood falls asunder at the touch of fire!
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
~William Cowper
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Re: Gross Generality vs. Gentle Gnosis

Post by Naga_Fireball »

"Damning with faint praise":
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike.
— "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" by Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

When needs he must, yet faintly then he praises,
Somewhat the deed, much more the means he raises:
So marreth what he makes, and praising most, dispraises.
— "The Purple Island" by Phineas Fletcher

Insults, general; see also, Flyting:
Elizabethans took great interest in such analyses, distinguishing out, for example, the 'fleering frump...when we give a mock with a scornful countenance as in some smiling sort looking aside or by drawing the lip awry, or shrinking up the nose'.

Shakespeare himself set up an insult-hierarchy of seven-fold 'degrees. The first, the Retort Courteous; the second, the Quip Modest; the third, the Reply Churlish; the fourth, the Reproof Valiant; the fifth, the Countercheck Quarrelsome; the sixth, the Lie with Circumstance; the seventh, the Lie Direct'. (Wikipedia)
Brotherhood falls asunder at the touch of fire!
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin
Not coloured like his own, and having power
To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
~William Cowper
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