How Could Anyone Deserve an 'ETERNITY' of Suffering?

Thank you for giving these prompt responses. THe human experience does indeed show itself trusting in this day and age,

 

You will find me seriously difficult to surprise and I would have to flatly disagree. I think this statement reflects a familial prejudice born of the very cultural indices i was just speaking. You are looking at mono culture as opposed to the mixing of cultural standards. Like I said such cultural standards work well in smaller more isolated groups. If indigenous peoples are more in tune with who they are and you suggest that their cultural adaptions are superior in any sense then why this statement?,

Specialness in this sense is an ego device that makes common cause seem obscure saying we are better than they, or they are more sinister than us. Reality emerges diversely and diversification is the assurance of continuation and this suspicion is fundamentally unwarranted. I do not fault what is old but as we grow we retain some of what is old but some of what is old is replaced or realigned by some of what is new.

Knowledge is material and as such takes up space in the mind. Knowledge flows freely then into an open mind. You will perhaps notice that in our depictions of historical relationships that the fundamental problems persist.
On this basis it is reasonable to suspect our previous learning as being insufficient.
Perpetual finger pointing is exactly that and doesn't speak to any essential progress in understanding energetic exchange.

Or in a most common lexicon, The Way,or the more or most essential way by comparison?

Only easily determined if you are looking with determination even though undeniable when recognized. These representations remain symbolic and as such subject to misinterpretation or simple disinterest as is the most common phenomena in relation to the deeper looking. Consider why is healing necessary in any environment. Harm has no face.

 

I am not saying that they have a superior culture, though I know that many of my posts on this site may seem that way----but I also understand the Noble Savage prejudice. They have their own problems, controversies, and rivalries. I would not be able to live easily as they do if I was suddenly forced to give up all the amenities of the modern age (I find living with them for short periods of time very refreshing, but---how do I plug in my I-Pad, or where's the 3-D Imax???) We have our own things that make our life great. But I have spent time with various indigenous people in Asia. You can't really use modern Native American Culture as an example because we have largely destroyed that. And there is plenty of dysfunctional problems there--all linked to the dominant culture trying to change them (for example, all the tribes had strong family values---until several generations of boarding schools removed most of the tribal children out of their homes during the early formative years when they should have been learning family values, but instead found themselves in a military bible-based reformatory where they were beat if they spoke their own language. Traditional Native family values are unfortunately not passed on as much as they once were). On the other hand I have experience the strong bonding experience of being in ceremony with North American tribes.

We humans are naturally connected to ourselves. The modern world, in fact, the civilized world, which in all civilized cultures, represents varying degrees of alienation from, and/or repression of, various subconscious elements of the human psyche. It took anthropologists many decades to accept that indigenous tribal people, left alone, are far more happier. They worked off of the prejudice that we are more advanced and superior. Numerous psychologists have studied tribal peoples and were the first ones to acknowledge their emotional stability. Finally anthropologists agreed. In the end it is not a question of superiority----it is a question of difference.

I would disagree that what I am saying here would be different in a smaller civilized mono culture. For example, a small planter culture in Indonesia that has already gone well into developing institutions as well as absorbing neighboring institutions (--there is always cultural sharing even in mono cultures), you'll find the same kind of repressions and alienations developing. Such problems may not be as obvious because you don't have the challenges to cultural values. On top of that, a mono culture will usually have a metaverse or unifying myth (or as I say, a unifying truth, because it is after all a truth to that culture) in place which provides a vibrancy to the culture. But the problem is that as they become more alienated from their own subconscious they give in to control by others. Good examples of this would be cult groups which create their own mono cultures, but also examples such as Amish communities, and the like. Therefore it is not uncommon to see strong oppressive control in such communities.

When you talk about a mixture of cultures, you inevitably are dealing with a dynamic of a dominant culture oppressing a defeated one. This is different from cultural sharing, which involves two neighboring cultures that do not mix. Because their is this dynamic of control, cultures do not mix well----that is the point of my posts. As long as the culture of the modern world embraces a dualistic zeitgeist, we will only have an oppressive and destructive interaction with other cultures. (In this case by our culture, and modern culture, I am referring to global or civilized culture---or we could even specify it in terms of Toffler's 2nd Wave cultures. (For example the problems between the Arab and Western world is still a prime example of a struggle between opposing cultures).

I think I answered this in the last response----again I don't mean to say one culture is superior to another. Each culture is different. One culture has superior aspects to it, another culture has its own superior aspects. But what is superior to one, may also not be suitable to the other. Though I believe that with ourselves is the biggest problem within the Post-Modern crisis. This is what we have to deal with.

Each culture and time finds its own answers--this was the meaning behind Hegel's term, the Zeitgeist---spirit of the age. But as some problems are resolved, other problems are created. The problem with missionaries is they take away an indigenous culture's own way of dealing with its reality, and replace it with an alien way of doing that---then thrust it into a dominant and non-accepting culture.

Having said that however, I would say that our culture is broken. Just as the Greek culture, and later the Roman culture was broken towards their downfall. We have no Unifying Truth, and culturally we handle our problems through alcoholism, drug abuse, insanity, violence... the list goes on. We are facing the Post-Modern crisis. You can argue that every age has these problems, but all we can't use other cultures to compare with today--because modern culture is now global culture. I am also not saying that, for example, crime has gone up significantly in the last few decades. Nor am I falling for the crime panic that the media creates in regards to modern times. But yeah, we are in a crisis that has been more than a century in coming.

I don't try to compare things that seem obviously connected, such as the arch of the Indonesiam Kalamakara and the Pawnee symbol of the Great Spirit. But there are specific universal motifs that I do compare and use language to back it up. One of my books is about some basic linguistic roots that are universal---they are found in every language family and just about every language. They tie into some very basic fundamental cultural and spiritual contexts---such as the World Tree or Tree of Life.

 

whoops - wrong discussion

 

I think some people really deserve an eternity of suffering. At least at this moment I think that way, and I am not Nor Anyone is in the authoritative position to decide.

But the question of eternity is an accumulative one, and it's existence I think is shown at overdrawing on finite time. For suffering only seems at times to be eternal.

 

You say it is agreed they are happier. Happiness seems to me a peak human expression and as qualitative assessments go would seem a superior mark even though I understand you don't mean to suggest such a thing

This is a statement claiming special access. I will see your but with the rebuttal that energetic processes are the same everywhere. Anthropomorphic misunderstandings vary in intensity but there is no essential difference between a slight misunderstanding and a large one. In the same turn a bornean tribesman would be in error to think an airplane pilot a god and it would be an error for the airplane pilot to think bornean tribesmen less than technological.

I spent my childhood and early adolescence in the american mid west. An area at that time of homogeneous sense of community. Far from coastal commerce and cross cultural influences it prospered in relative isolation. Think Huck Finn. I should say here that what I mean by monoculture is this homogeneous aspect that also includes some degree of suspicion toward the strange.

I was supplanted first to the west coast and then to international living and the culture shock to my system was significant to the point of nervous breakdown. The bigger world was fundamentally and legitimately of different proportions than I had been taught to believe.
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Reality does not unravel, but for certain our expectations of it are frequently disappointed. It is not traditional values that shape the success of homo sapiens but adaptability.

The claim of victimization is an excuse for the perpetuation of hardness of heart. A wolf clothed in bloody lambs wool..

Yes, including religion, nationalism, and being in ceremony, family intervention, drug therapies, counseling, faith healing et all.

I think this is an important point and on it I would say new wine skins for new wine. For global culture, a new paradigm, universal citizenry and the fruition of the growing seed of empathy which is profoundly different from traditional observance. The post-modern crisis is simply childhoods end. The end of the age of monsters. It seems uncomfortable because we are quite attached to our horror stories.

My point on this was simply that what you say is academic but few are academically inclined. Most are inclined toward comfort.

I am very much enjoying our discussion. I don't know if you remember but we discussed briefly before the embodied sensation of language and the existence of common recognizable tones.

 

ever hear an oldtime hellfire preacher ? all within a half-hour sermon
he'll send you down to hell then lift you up to heaven , then send ya
down to hell and lift you up to heaven , and send you down to hell
and lift you up to heaven ... and whew! , leave you there . the people
walk out happy . well , i guess i didn't, and i did note the preacher's voice
had been delivered in theatre surround sound . this put's him right in the
middle of a sinner's head and like where your supposed to hear the god
voice . yep .

there's a newer version of this that's all the rage . describe in awful
bloody detail an abortion , and chant baby killer baby killer with a
sinister tone ... and then , oh anything cheery , like a joke about
cookies or something , and have a nice day .

what's little kids supposed to think when they hear this stuff ? i
remember as a kid paying no mind to the sermon and be mostly
staring up and away at the stained-glass dome . so quit yo
bitchin .

 

I don't have such gloomy memories of the sermons when I was a kid myself. I did was happy I sat in a medieval church though so I also could just stare at the ceiling, other decorations and architecture. An hour at a church bench was simply very boring for me as a kid.

 

ditto. It wasn't so bad. there are worse things.

 

Hail hitler

 

Curious weather phenomenon?

 

I was forced to attend a Baptist church with a fire and brimstone preacher at the helm. I was maybe six or seven years old. My parents wouldn't go. The preacher's wife picked us up and delivered us to that cold, brick building called church. It was filled with the scent of lots of different perfumes coming from the ladies who apparently thought they needed to cover up their stink. It's quite possible they didn't stink. It was probably all in their mind. But thanks to the perfume, no one will ever know--not even them.

We weren't confirmed, saved members, and so when communion time rolled around, they passed over me and I didn't get a piece of bread and a shot-glass of grape juice like everyone else. I had always felt that I was not as good as others, and that certainly confirmed it! I was also pretty sure that that was their way of telling me that I was going to Hell.

I remember one of the songs we sang in Sunday school. It was called "One Two Three." And it went a little something like this:

One two three, the devil's after me.
Four five six, he's always throwing sticks.
Seven eight nine, he misses every time.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm free.

Nine eight seven, I'm on my way to Heaven.
Six five four, my cup is running o'er.
Three two one, the devil's on the run.
Hallelujah! Hallellujah! I'm free.

Of course, after several years of having to sing that song, my two brothers and I changed the words just a little to make it more fun. And it went a little something like this:

One two three, a whore is after me.
Four five six, she's always sucking dicks.
Seven eight nine, well she ain't gettin' mine.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I'm free.

Nine eight seven, she said it'd feel like Heaven.
Six five four, that sounds just like a whore.
Three two one, the whore is on the run.
Hallelujah! Halellujah! I'm free.

So, I guess my time spent in church wasn't a total waste. Sure it offered me another thing to fear, but it also brought out the creativity in me. Praise God!