Very important, I say. Even, more important than anything other discipline!

No intent to plug my (sorta) profession, here, just to point out that underpinning almost every conflict going on in the world today, there is a philosophical or theological issue of some kind at stake which, if adjusted somewhat, could make life better for those who are locking horns. This is especially true of all the conflicts involving various Moslem groups, and there is relevance here for the globalization issue as well.

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A few quotes from a biography of Aldous Huxley by Dana Sawyer, which Mr. Sawyer has asked me to review for ad-copy (purchase your book through the sp bookstore, please! ). I will say that Huxley is one of my all-time favorites, his search epitomizing the journey that our age is undergoing, and his book "The Perrennial Philosophy" is a must for anyone with a serious interest in mystical theology.

- from Dana Sawyer -

(Huxley believed) . . . that, in the final analysis, the advantages of a good explanation outweighed the dangers (of philosophy/theology/conceptualization). Huxley understood that human beings, consciously or unconsciously, embrace various viewpoints, cultural and personal, and on the basis of those viewpoints they find and dispense meaning--thereby constructing philosophy. Because their culturally predisposed values feel so inherent and natural they many not realize that they are embracing a philosophy; nevertheless, Huxley recognized that they were. (Or to put it another way: They may believe themselves not to have a philosophy, not realizing it only, looks that way from inside *their* philosophy).

- from Huxley -

"To the 'practical man' they [philosophical questions] may seem irrelevant. But in fact they are not. It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and wrong; and it is in the light of our conceptions of right and wrong that we frame our conduct, not only in the relations of private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. So far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the final determining factor in all our actions." (A. Huxley, "Ends and Means") (emphasis mine)

- Back to Dana Sawyer, for a brilliant pgh -

Huxley still held that ultimate truth is experiential in nature and, contrary to most Western philosophical traditions, cannot be known through a collection of rational facts. However, to say that ultimate truth is experiential does not mean that it can't be made sense of or rationally explained. Huxley believed that it could and should be. For though the intellectual analogue would be inferior to the truth (differing from it as a cake recipe differes from a cake), a philosophical description could have value if it led the intellect to accept the need to transcend itself--to go beyond the ideas to the experiential truth itself. (my emphasis)

Catholic mystical theology in a nutshell!

In later life, Huxley came to a deep appreciation of the great mystical teachers of Catholicism, and other world religions as well, of course.

Because their culturally predisposed values feel so inherent and natural they many not realize that they are embracing a philosophy;

Oh, that�s a good line.

(Or to put it another way: They may believe themselves not to have a philosophy, not realizing it only, looks that way from inside *their* philosophy).

That explains Peter Jennings and the rest of the media who swear up and down that they have absolutely no political bias.

So far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the final determining factor in all our actions.

Yeah, that is a biggie. So�we might find some of our answers to the Globalization thread (and to radical Islam, Islam, Iraq and other problems) if we recognize that we can only refine our personal philosophies if we are free to discuss them openly and question those of others. Freedom of speech is about a bit more than being a means for allowing Bob Guccione to publish.

Phil said: Catholic mystical theology in a nutshell!

And Rush Limbaugh in a nutshell! Seriously�there are existential, religious and political implications to all this.

Boy, Phil. You sure served up a platter of real beef here. As far as mystical theology, yes, one thinks of Ignatius' emphasis on taste and see the goodness of the Lord. One thinks of all we have been taught regarding moving from knowledge about to knowledge of . One thinks of what they say is the longest journey of all, that eighteen inches from the head to the heart .

Let me run something by you all. Maritain speaks of drawing distinctions toward the end of unifying. Let me draw some distinctions. The human being is a fully integrated entity with its faculties of understanding, memory and will properly ordered through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, in relationship to truth, beauty and goodness, in body and mind and soul and spirit, etc etc etc We are called to love our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.

quote:

Luke 10:27: He answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Cf Deuteronomy 6:5

As we consider the Divine Attributes, we might acknowledge that our tripartite being has a threefold journey back to God, the noetical to Truth, the aesthetical to Beauty and the ethical to Goodness. Or we might consider the manner in which God already dwells within us as we perhaps experience our own longing for truth, beauty and goodness as His own desiring within us. There is something about Love, which captures this all and represents the full integration of a human being, holistically realizing its purpose in relationship to God and others.

I feel we are poised for growth in truth, beauty and goodness, in love, for all Eternity. We begin this growth now.

A question: Now, why is it that there is always so much emphasis on moving from the head to the heart? Is this just a normal developmental progression? Are we emphasizing one virtue over another following: 1 Corinthians 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Assuredly, faith and hope will no longer be needed and love will last in the Beatific Vision, but Truth and Beauty will remain, along with Goodness, all integral components of Love. I lean toward the answer that all of our faculties and all of these Divine Attributes are forever intertwined but that there is a normal developmental progression making the journey from head to heart somewhat problematical. However, I don't think this should detract from the importance of our ongoing journeying toward Truth and toward Beauty and toward Goodness. It seems to me that some misinterpret all of this and thereby denigrate the journey of the head vis a vis the journey of the heart, elevating faith over reason when in fact they cannot be opposed. As humans with our faculties, we are integral beings, are whole, are on one journey. Do y'all see some distinctions being made that fail to unify sometimes?

pax,
jb

(. . bowing to Mr. Limbaugh and his wisdom . . .)

JB, I think love is emphasized because it's what gives all the faculties their proper orientation. IOW, love is not simply a heart matter, but one which engages our whole being.

Here's a sneak preiew of Thursday's Daily Spiritual Seed message, from Angela of Foligno, who was as much a heart-mystic as any ever was.

That this is true is plainly proved. For if the love which the soul beareth unto God be not armed with great wisdom and discretion, but moveth with undue fervour, then doth it either presently cease, or it is deceived, or it tendeth unto some unseemly end. "The Divine Consolation"

In my own book, "The Logic of Happiness," I wrote the following, which was once strongly impressed on me:

In summary:
Awareness "sees" the activities
of the will and intellect,
and is, in turn,
freed by their loving direction.

(Incidentally, when you format something like that, you can score more pages with less writing! Also, it makes a plain, declaritive sentence seem to be poetry. ).

I think the head-to-heart journey is often so emphasized because so many *are* "in-their-heads" and just plain-old out-of-touch with their feelings, and the important information we derive from them (present company included, of course, but getting better at this). But head-people can love just as surely as heart-people can: sometimes much more effectively as there's a little more detachment in the head-person. Still, the ideal is to love with all one's "heart and soul and mind and strength." (I'd like to take credit for that one, but the Lord beat me to it! ).

All well said, Maestro, especially Thursday's Seed.

The reason I raised the issue is because I see, too often, what Bertrand Russell described as people believing merely that which they imbibed at Mother's knee . IOW, I think I see rampant fideism in all traditions. The reason we can run longish threads on globalization and the verge of war is because there are so many people who need to make the opposite journey, that is to say from their hearts to their heads . This is no less true in fundamentalistic Christianity or fundamentalistic Catholicism, for that matter.

It has become almost a cottage industry to go around the country giving retreats that focus on reformulations of people's faulty notions of God. IOW, whatever one learned in Catechism or from Sister about --- well, you know -- I won't inventory all of these horrible images of God here --- some priest comes along and says it wasn't entirely true and he loosens some bondage. Then, the retreatants are just positively ecstatic to have been dispossesed of the faulty notions the very same Church put there in the first place. Now, truly, this is the first part of the Spiritual Exercises: to have a proper notion of God that one can have a proper notion of self and thus moved to contemplate such love we go forth and respond in kind (so this cottage industry has been around a long time).

Now, I have a theory about all of this. Perhaps those early notions of God as stern Father and Judge are developmentally appropriate, morally and faithwise, for the masses. Those who go no further to study the faith and to deepen it through such spiritual exercises as retreats and spiritual directions NEED to be left with an image of God that best serves the common good and their developmental levels. They thus live an externalized faith life with the exoteric teaching. Those who go deeper, who seek to grow in prayer and understanding, who avail themselves of the spiritual exercises of all types, will learn that God is much more, is Mother, is Lover, thus living a more internalized faith life with the benefit of the more esoteric teachings, all quite developmentally appropriate. We thus surrender overly simplistic notions of God along with our faulty theodicies and prosperity myths.

And there you have it, my overly simplistic version of faith development. My main point is that I am afraid that this journey from head to heart teaching is good but that we need to preach the journey from heart to head with equal emphasis -- to fideistic believers everywhere. After all, such is the cause of most major geopolitical conflict!

pax,
jb

JB said: The reason we can run longish threads on globalization and the verge of war is because there are so many people who need to make the opposite journey, that is to say from their hearts to their heads .
I think the interestesting thing, perhaps the contradictory thing, about forums (and I'm not sure if SP is an exception or not) is that they tend to facilitate head discussions. I mean, we can't really hug each other online, eh? It would be a real challenge to try, at least for me, to speak more from the heart (assuming this conservative has one) without it turning into cornsville where you all vomit and beg me to get back to telling you all 'bout them nasty liberals.
I'm also left wondering if one reason that the ladies don't take part in more of these dicussions is because we are all "head" cases. Not that the ladies ain't smart, but I wouldn't think it too sexist to suggest that they are better at the heart stuff than men.
I'm also left wondering how one can tell the difference between the heart and the head. I have the feeling I'm more head than heart but I don't really know for sure. How would one know if they were out of balance or if their own makeup did not warrant a slight imbalance.
It also occurs to me that since we all seem to be so good at words if we are not all head cases and our search for more and better words and analysis ad nauseam is just skirting the issue of needing more heart. Or have I just broken some male online taboo?
I will say that I find many of your topic-starters to be heartfelt, JB, even if they do use words like fideism.
(Edit: I'm trying out Opera 6 for the Mac and it bolluxed a few line endings.)

quote:

As a theoretical astrophysicist, I live in a world of abstract ideas, mathematical argument, and objective data from repeatable experiences - head knowledge. As a lover of Jungian psychology and mysticism, I live in a world of particular experiences and feelings rather than abstract ideas - heart knowledge. Meaningful stories, not mathematical analysis, move my inner world. Unlike scientific experiments, such stories are unique descriptions of unrepeatable events, the bane of science. ~ Victor Mansfield .

I think of E.O. Wilson's characterization of art as beauty without reductionism and of science as beauty with reductionism. I like the further distinctions between the world of unrepeatable events and the world of repeatable events, between the world of ideas and argument and the world of feeling and experience.

We might become more aware of when we are dealing with the world of 1) the reductionistic 2) the repeatable 3) ideas and 4) argumentation versus a) the nonreductionistic b) the unrepeatable c) feelings and d) experience, while acknowledging the Beauty and Truth and Goodness of it all. One is communicated with analysis and the other with storytelling.

Go back over the exchanges of the past few days and I think you'll find a good mix of all of the above, nonetheless, clearly slanted toward analysis. Maybe every Monday we ought to post only stories and poems? or MP3's of our favorite television shows?

pax,
jb

Maybe every Monday we ought to post only stories and poems?

You initially put a wink on the end of that but I think it's a good idea.

Phil: I was trying to put an avatar on here so you could all look at my ugly mug but then I remembered you said that only worked for admins? Is that still true?

Edit: Oh wait...it just showed up!

OK, great.

w.c. --- now, we need your mug, then, we can redo the entire Bonanza Coloring Book!

Hey Brad! You're looking good!

Avatars are enabled for everyone; I just wanted the Moderators to have them to help communicate a more personal presence.

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Just got through watching ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, but could only take 15 minutes. The news was the usual, which I'll summarize as follows: George W. Bush--the big stupid idiot!--is still pushing for his dumb war with Iraq, despite what all the sensible Europeans and people in the U.N. and we, your faithful guides to all things political, are saying. See now: his approval ratings are slipping! Aha! The numbskull doesn't even give a damn about anything but that war, and helping the rich get richer. He hates the poor, the elderly, and educators. Keep watching us every night and we'll have you primed and ready for a Democratic candidate for President in 2004. . .

Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw are saying essentially the same things, as are CNN, MSNBC, and PBS. Fox alone seems to emphasize a more pro-Bush position, citing their polls and interviewing their experts who approve of the President's approach.

All of which attempts to contribute in myriad ways to the formulation of a paradigm, the shape and content of which must be critiqued. I'm going to side-step the head vs. heart subtopic to stick to the main point Huxley and so many others have made, namely that human consciousness is shaped by paradigms of some kind, and we don't have these paradigms: they have us. And yet to examine this can be frightening, for to change it to any significant degree will have consequences to one's self-concept and possibly a whole system of relationships as well. Hence, when our paradigm is threatened somehow, our territory is threatened, and the old fight-or-flight response kicks in. We become defensive, which is not a bad thing if one is interested in learning something about one's paradigm and the degree of attachment one has to it. Whatever makes one defensive can tell one something about the paradigm one is in fact operating out of (as opposed to what one *thinks* they hold).

There are also implications here for inner child work, which has come up in other threads. Ultimately, what holds the inner child in bondage is not so much the repressed feelings, but the Critical Parent conditioning which keeps one beating oneself up over the stupidest things. Critical Parent dictates the paradigm, and it must be critiqued by the rational Ego. Only CP doesn't want this and has all kinds of rules and taboos about doing so. It takes courage and sometimes support from others to do this work, but we must all do it nonetheless. For we all suffer from an inner Critical Parent of some kind because of conditioning we've been stuck with in this world of non-love.

"When I was a child, I used to talk like a child, and think like a child, and argue like a child, but now I am a man, all childish ways are put behind me." (1 Cor. 13: 11).

This is the challenge for individuals and even for communities of all sorts.

One has to believe that some political agenda are precisely about making one feel good about oneself, along Kris Kristoferson's line: "Everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on, someone doing something dirty decent folks can frown on!"

Sometimes, it's all about cheap grace.

It's easy to be anti-war and feel good about oneself.
It's easy to be for the environment and feel good about oneself.
It's easy to be anti- death penalty and feel good about oneself.
It's easy to be anti-abortion and feel good about oneself.

It's NOT that these cannot be principle-centered positions but some of these protestors and demonstrators betray their ignorance of such principles when interviewed, apparently unable to get past the intellectual level of catchy slogans in their discourse. What you thus have is demagoguery and politicization of issues, a playing on people's prejudices and ignorance, for either power or the maintenance of a sick identity structure or the need to belong to a tribe.

It is NOT as easy to delve into the issues and to inform one's conscience and to tease out the nuances and implications of these very difficult issues, balancing competing values, understanding one's opponent's views better, sometimes, than even they do (a principle of debate), presenting a coherent position.

Discipleship implies schooling and learning. When one doesn't see logical consistency and internal coherency in certain positions, one might wonder whether others have truly paid the cost of discipleship or whether they have superficially jumped on a loud bandwagon to make themselves feel good about themselves by invoking moral superiority over others? Yes, this is a malady of both left and right and center (those who claim superiority over the extremists on either side).

pax,
jb

Agreed, JB.

Here are a couple of other quotes from the Huxley biography which give indications of what he thought were essential features of a philosophy. Once again, I find myself nodding affirmatively.

--------

". . . for in the individual act of reflection is the unit of a worthwhile society. Each citizen must contribute to the uplifting of society, and so the herd mentality is implicitly wrong. 'In his philosophy of society,' says Grover Smith, the compiler of Huxley's letters, 'he stood with Jefferson. Whatever impinged upon human uniqueness, such as an ideology, political or religious,, that won allegiance at the cost of individual function and experience . . . would provoke his antipathies.' . . . "

"Both Huxley and Heard had increasingly come to believe that the most overlooked cure for social problems is actually the improvement of the individual citizen, and that cultures are only expressions of the collective consciousness of their people. . . Huxley and Heard reasoned that the unit of world peace is individual peace, that a forest is only as green as the individual trees in the forest are green; if the trees aren't green, the forest *can't* be green. Cultivate the individual and you spontaneously affect the foundation of society."

----------

What he was really saying was, "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me . . "

Sing it now, brothers and sisters! (sisters, where are you?)

And now for a blast from the past: this from "Theology and Sanity," by Frank Sheed. I have gained much from this book through the years.

I've scanned a segment I found especially appropriate for this thread. The non-inclusive language is there as I haven't the time to clean it up. Bold emphases are mine.

----------

To many the idea of bringing the intellect fully into action in religion seems almost repellent. The intellect seems so cold and measured and measuring, and the will so warm and glowing. Indeed the joy of the will is always figured in terms of warmth such words as ardor, fervor and the like come from Latin words for a fire burning: there is a fear that intellect can only damp down the fire. Many again who do not find the use of the intellect in religion actually repellent, regard it as at least unnecesry--at any rate for the layman--and possibly dangerous. One can, they say, love God without any very great study of doctrine. Indeed, they say, warming to their theme, some of the holiest people they know are quite ignorant. Plenty of theologians are not as holy as an old Irishman they have seen saying his Rosary. All this is so crammed with fallacy as to be hardly worth refuting. A man may be learned in dogma, and at the same time proud or greedy or cruel: knowledge does not supply for love if love is absent. Similarly, a virtuous man may be ignorant, but ignorance is not a virtue. It would be a strange God Who could be loved better by being known less. Love of God is not the same thing as knowledge of God; love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God; but if a man loves God knowing a little about Him, he should love God more from knowing more about Him: for every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving Him. It is true that some get vast love from lesser knowledge; it is true even that some get vast light from lesser knowledge: for love helps sight. But sight helps love too.

After all, the man who uses his intellect in religion is using it to see what is there. But the alternative to seeing what is there is either not seeing what is there, and this is darkness; or seeing what is not there, and this is error, derangement, a kind of double darkness. And it is unthinkable that darkness whether single or double should be preferred to light.

Indeed light is the joy of the mind as warmth is the joy of the will. But warmth and light are both effects of fire, warmth fire as felt, light fire as seen (and seen by). It seems strange to value the one effect and not the other of that fire by which the Holy Ghost is figured to us. It is an odd delusion that one is warmer in the dark, that one can love God better in the dark or should we say in the half-dark, since a Christian can never be wholly in darkness.

We can be saved and even holy without a great deal of knowledge; for holiness is in the will and we are saved by what we love not by how much we know. But knowledge of the truth matters enormously all the same. It matters for the reason we have already stated, namely that every new thing known about God is a new reason for loving Him. It matters also for a reason that may not at first sight appear: that, in the appallingly difficult struggle to be good, the will is helped immeasurably by the intellect's clear vision of the real Universe. Unless our mind has made that kind of study, then the position is that the Church is living in one world (which happens to be the real world) and we are living in another. One practical consequence is that the laws of right living promulgated by the Church, moral laws generally, are the natural and obvious laws of that real world and would seem so to us if we were mentally living in it; whereas in the twilight world we are living in, they often seem odd and unreasonable, which does not make obedience any easier. Thus the whole burden of right living is cast upon the will--do it because the Church says it--with no aid from die intellect, or rather with active hindrance from the intellect which naturally tends to judge by the half-reality it sees. And this is sheer cruelty.