Re: Rure Reason




On 7/26/08 5:56 AM, in article vuadncAxZOe-vRbVRVn_vwA@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
"Engineer" <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:




Timothy Travis wrote:

I realized a long time ago that Engineer was sent to me by
God--to provide a situation in which the Light would show
me something very important about me that had to change.
It was not apparent to me right away, but it became so
over time, and the struggle to change has not been easy,
and it is certainly not over. Boy, is it not over.

Please note that it is my opinion (often stated and often
ignored) that you have misidentified what God wants you
to change.

People do often mistake what they they think would alleviate pain they feel
with what God wants done in (or for) them or what reason tells them is the
way to proceed. That's because what God wants done in them, or reason would
show them should be done, is one of those long-run more difficult solutions
from which people flee in favor of the short run, expedient "solution."


In this case I think that it is at least as likely that you want me to think
God wants me to never say anything that makes you uncomfortable because me
not saying it is easier for you than your facing up to why what I say is
uncomfortable for you to hear.


You think that it is OK to post the most nasty
of insults in only you do so without sarcasm, etc.

And you think it's OK to post nasty insults about people *with* sarcasm,
because that's what you do--and you justify it because you say someone
initiated *force* against you so you can retaliate with force. Do unto
others...hate your enemies.

You point out people's faults all the time, Engineer, with a sneer,
magnifying and conflating them, attributing things to them that you are
doing to them, all to make a joke of them so that your inability to
reasonable refute what they say gets lost in nastiness you stir up. You go
far beyond pointing out people's faults. You insult people for sport and as
a means of winning...all the time winning...arguments.

And when you don't "win" you just wait six months (or four and a half years)
and claim you did.

Insulting? Perhaps. True? Yes.

Don't want to feel that pain? Stop doing it to people. It's karma.

So, as I say, your behavior indicates that you think it's not only ok to
post nasty insults about people but it's also ok to add sarcasm and scorn
to them as well. You are telling me to stop posting "nasty insults" even in
gentle language but that it's ok for you to not only do that but to add
sarcasm to them.

You really are not making much sense, Engineer.

You have left "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" behind for
"do unto others as they do to you."o

If you want to be critical of me without the nasty language it's fine with
me. Even with the nasty language, anymore, it's fine with me. You are
hurting your own condition, not mine. Bemused? Sure, that's why you leave
it alone. You're bemused and yet you display your hurt like a bloody shirt.

Why, again, is it that you want to be associated with the Religious Society
of Friends? With Christianity? With any of the world's major spiritual
traditions? Do unto others as they do unto you? Yes, that's the apostate
church, all right. So what?

Yes, Libertarianism, with the "core value" that retaliation is ok in the
face of someone "initiating" force, is outside those traditions.

I do think it is ok to say things that are true even if people who hear them
don't like how it applies to them or the implications on their behavior, so
long as it is done in non-violent (both in act and word) way.

It think it's fine to tell slave owners of the harm they do to themselves
and those they enslave--and that one has no obligation to stop just because
the slave owner feels offended. Same with a school yard or news group
bully.

The fact that you consider my calling you thin-skinned, for example, as an
"insult" doesn't change the fact that you are and that it's an impediment to
your functioning in the world in the way that both my religion and your
reason tells you is best for getting along with people.


You clings to the fiction that it is you how say it that
has to change, not what you say, refusing to even discuss
the possibility of changing the actual content rather
than the sytyle.

We have discussed that many times, Engineer. You have yet to give an answer
re the relationship between you thin skin and the retaliation you make
against people and the way people have, in past, hunted you down in this
newsgroup and flamed you for what you did to them in other news groups.
(why did you suddenly want to stop using your real name and go with
"Engineer?" That became apparent fairly soon after you did).

If I am wrong about something I say that "insults" someone (such as my
saying that people who say degrading things about groups of people
contributes to the atmosphere that gives others permission to hurt those
people, which you claim insults you) then I'll change my mind. So far I
haven't heard anything from you that makes sense except what you have said
about my un-Quakerly/Christian manner of expressing myself.

You have also never refuted my saying that those who bad mouth "bureaucrats"
and call them all the things you have called them need to think about
whether they didn't contribute to an atmosphere that the bombing in Oklahoma
City seem reasonable, as people who thought that anti-semetic jokes were
harmless and that there is no connection between such "humor" and the
holocaust or swastikas on synagogues, or that racist jokes don't lead to
lynching or dragging people to death behind cars, anti-gay jokes and slurs
don't lead to tying people to fence posts and whipping them to death and
that sexist humor doesn't lead to domestic violence, rape and murder. You
got all "offended" by that but you never gave a reasoned answer as to why
what I said was wrong.

Whether it insults you or not it's true (and saying "that's ridiculous" is
not a refutation). Maybe the degree of your "offended" reaction is an
indication of the conviction you feel from hearing it said. I dunno.

If you want to show me I am wrong then show me some reason--not just your
"offended" emotion.

I think it's perfectly OK to say such things and the only sin in doing so
is saying it in a hateful way.


I am led to engage with him, however, so that I can
actually engage with myself and those tendencies in
me that need changing.

Those tendencies in you that *you think* need changing.

Thanks for your view of what needs changing in me. I've thought about your
suggestions and this is one I don't think is true.

And it doesn't have anything to do with what I "think" needs changing. You
know what it has to do with. Quakerism 101--the Light.

You are still in denial about the tendencies in you that
*really do* need changing.

Thank you for bringing up denial because your self protecting denial
mechanism is especially strong. It seems to me that all you have to do is
say, one time, that something is true (like, say, that you never claimed
that Hitler built concentration camps by "following the Spirit") and you
believe it. You frequently rewrite history, Engineer, and I think you
believe what you say when you do. I think you might be able to pass a lie
detector, even though I am looking right at things you said that you claim
you didn't say.


I certainly don't expect any encouragement or approval
--or even acknowledgment--from Engineer. I am fairly
certain--although he has surprised me at times--that
he will pick this post apart, quote things I said long
ago (many of which I have apologized for), and argue
that I am deluded or sinister in writing this.

Good.

Has it ever occured to you that maybe you really are deluded?
That perhaps you should change what you write rather than
how you write it?

Actually, yes. I frequently wonder whether I am deluded when you come
across so sincere and certain about things I know didn't happen the way you
said they did.

Example. In a recent post you "noted" that I brought something up we had
agreed to never bring up again. It made me wonder if I was nuts because I
never agreed to that. In that case I, after checking the posts, I had to
conclude that I was not crazy--no one ever asked or consented to never
brining that subject up again and yet there you are writing that we did.

I didn't think so.

I think it would serve you better to wait for someone to answer a question
when you ask it so as to appear that you wondered about something and not
just setting up some "slam" line.

I am trying, when I have a statement to make, to make the statement and not
turn it into a rhetorical question. Seems more plain speaking to me. You
can decide for yourself. However you decide won't change what I do. You
don't control me like that, anymore.

Look, I am tired of this.

You recently "clipped" a "rant" of mine on the free market without making
any refutation of it. I think it's because you can't, what I said was true.
Why not prove me wrong and show me your reasoning ability and refute it,
instead of telling me what God *really* wants me to do--which is what you
want me to do (shut up about how you treat other people).

Or you could explain about how telling me I could move to Cuba is a relevant
refutation of my advocacy for controls to moderate the power of accumulated
wealth to exploit the middle class.

Or you could explain how there is a principled difference in balancing the
government's power to do evil and balancing the ability to accumulated
economic power to do evil: why does government need to kept from exploiting
people and accumulated economic power doesn't.

Or, if you would rather, please post an explanation for how your distinction
between initiating force and retaliating with force was not sufficiently
refuted in past long discussions (here and in many other places) about "just
war" doctrine and how that is manipulated so that in every war everyone
involved is only retaliating to force initiated against them--just ask them.
People "reason" (unartfully, to be sure) their way into thinking they are
retaliating when they are attacking.

Finally, give me a reasoned defense for your "retaliatory" force doctrine
that is consistent with the faith and practice of Friends.

Or, if you don't feel connected to the faith and practice of Friends, why do
you aspire to identify with them? (remember, retaliation is not within the
pale of Quakerism).

A reasoned answer to any of these may be mutually edifying and be far more
constructive to you own condition that accusing me of being deluded or of
not listening go God because I don't recognize that God is really telling me
what you've been telling me, all along.

You have spent quite some time, now, explaining what you think God wants me
to do--God wants me, according to you, to stop saying things that make you
feel uncomfortable with yourself (things you are unable to refute with
reason) about how you behave and what you believe while you are free to do
that to anyone you want.

So, now, dust off the reason and dive right in to any of the questions
above, or other questions that you have left answered, laughed off, or
hidden in the dust of deflection you have kicked in the last couple of
weeks.

Thanks.

And thanks, once again, for giving me an opportunity to encounter you and
not go where you are coming from.

Let's stop talking about one another, Engineer, and start talking about all
the issues you have neglected in favor of continually talking about what's
wrong with me.

Thanks.

Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon


This is the sum or substance of our religion; to wit, to feel and discern
the two seeds: the seed of enmity, the seed of love; the seed of the flesh,
the seed of the Spirit...till it be brought into bondage and death; and the
other raised up in the love and mercy of the Lord to live in us, and our
souls gathered into it, to live to God in it.

Isaac Penington
Sum or Substance of Our Religion
Works, Vol II, p 441




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