Pure Reason -- slouching slowly toward "Plonk"
- From: Timothy Travis <qspirit@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:53:03 -0700
Sigh, the old alt.dev.null trick.
We're getting to your grand exit, again, I see.
I have not noticed this duplicitous trick from you for a while. I trusted
you'd given it up, having been outed for using it several times in the past.
Trust, trust, trust.
On 7/26/08 10:50 PM, in article ss2dnQIbMYsxkRHV4p2dnAA@xxxxxxxxxxxx,
"Engineer" <invalid@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Timothy Travis wrote:
Engineer wrote:
I think it's perfectly OK to say such things and the
only sin in doing so is saying it in a hateful way.
Riiiight. People object to being linked with Nazi death
camps and terrorist bombings and to being called idol
worshipers and willing servants of satan because they
"won't face up to why what you say
It's not what I say you're not facing up to, Engineer. I'm not that big,
important or powerful. It's the Light in our heart you're ignoring. What I
say just reminds you of what it's telling you.
is uncomfortable for
them to hear." Suuuuuuure they do...
Once again you are not refuting the statement made, the question asked, you
are just making fun of it. Please stop hiding, Engineer. Please come out
and answer the questions. If I am wrong explain how I am wrong.
Is it or is it not ok to point out the evil one sees in the world so long as
it's done in a loving and not evil way? (that is the faith and practice of
Friends)
Or do you think we cannot point out evil--at least not evil in you--no
matter how we do it--while you are allowed to point out what you consider to
be evil in other people any way you feel like it?
You have called me all this and worse ("vomit" and "prick" and "vulture"
come to mind) and I am not "offended" by or objecting to it. I am asking
you to look at what your behavior is doing to you. You are fixated on what
you imagine my behavior is doing to you, but it's not my behavior that has
you frantic at the moment. It's the effect of your own behavior on your
condition that's hurting you.
If what I say were not true you would show it was not true, or you would
ignore it. (This is especially true if they responded to what I actually
said instead of conflating to the hyperbolic extreme. Your indictment sheet
of me consists of straw man charges) If there were not truth to it you
would not be obsessed with it (four and a half years later!) wouldn't
contort yourself into self destructive anger, fury, sarcasm, making fun of
those (and not just me) who point out these flaws so as to silence them.
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.
You refuse to repent (despite your repeated claims to
have apologized for linking people with Nazi death
camps and terrorist bombings and for calling them idol
worshipers and willing servants of satan, interspersed
with assertions that it's perfectly OK to link them
with Nazi death camps and terrorist bombings and to
call them idol worshipers and willing servants of
satan, because all of those things are true) and,
because you refuse to repent, all I can do is to
shake the dust off my sandals and move on to more
productive conversations with others.
Exiting again with arguments you cannot refute left on the table.
They'll be here when you come back, because you always come back.
You cannot get over the fact that I called you an idol worshipper, even
though I haven't done that in years and repent by not doing it anymore. I
think it's because you do put your faith and trust in ideas that are from
flesh and not spirit. Your core value is a distinction without a
difference: trying to differentiate the two, initiating and retaliating, has
not gotten the human race anywhere since St. Augustine put it on paper and
it hasn't gotten you anywhere in this newsgroup. I should not have couched
pointing that out in the terms of "idols" because it was easier for you to
get all offended and thus avoid the truth you felt (and feel now) in what I
said.
And you cannot get over that I said you follow Satan because you do follow a
spirit that drives you over emotional cliffs, causing you to divide and hurt
people and in the process hurt yourself. Again, I shouldn't have used the
term "Satan," although I haven't done that in years (not doing it any more
means "repenting"), because it allowed you to get outraged and avoid the
truth of what I said--the truth of the cycle you are reliving, right here,
right now--the truth you felt then and feel now impinging on your "self
esteem," your "control" of people in SRQ through your lawless behavior.
So, you have, again, snipped all of the things I have said about topics we
could talk (aside from how bad I am and how much I hurt you)--all the stuff
about the economy, about the inconsistency between your Libertarian
distinction between initiating and retaliating with force and the faith and
practice of Friends, about all that stuff you have so far just laughed off
and not given a reasoned response to. It's a lot of stuff.
If it's productive conversation you want, Engineer, start with what could be
a productive conversation on why it is you aspire to be considered a Quaker
when your most basic "core value" (validation of "retaliatory violence" when
facing violence someone "initiated" against you) is not to be found in the
faith and practice of Friends. I think examining that might be very helpful
to your condition. With plenty of traditions around that welcome people who
follow "just war"principles why are you so set on being part of a tradition
that rejects that? Why is it necessary for the faith and practice of
Friends to go into apostasy just because you want to call yourself a Quaker?
Collectors are prepared to put a high price on a simplicity of design without
wanting to practice the inner life from which it emanates.
>>>Roger Haman
>>>"The Aesthetics of Friends Meeting Houses"
>>>Quaker Studies 11/1 2006
One who encounters the fruit of the Spirit in others will often find that
similar fruit is evoked in themselves. But often it is the opposite that
comes forth, as it is with you. Faced with calm, patient argument you
revert quickly to wrath and scorn. The Bible and Friends literature
explains why this is: people whose hearts have grown hard and thorny by a
life lived by the "logic" of the world ("do unto others as they do unto you"
being the hallmark if not the epitome of such "logic") do not want and
cannot stand to be in the presence of the Light manifest through another.
It shows their deeds for what they are, it convicts them.
This post of yours is of course leading up to the grand "plonk"--the kill
filing part of your ritual of approach and avoidance to me (and others).
We've been down this path before. You will kill file me but your subsequent
posts shows that you actually read everything I write because you answer it
in subtle and not so subtle ways in posts to others. You were described,
while in this mode one time, by another, as having stuck your fingers in
your ears while continuing to yell at me.
Fine.
But you can't leave me alone because you know that the way you act is
hurtful to people, harmful to yourself and way out of Quaker faith and
practice and you can't have those true statements hanging out there
convicting you to yourself. You can dismiss it from others, but you cannot
ignore it when it comes through the Light in your heart. Get away, you
must, get away, again, you try to do. And you just might "get away" from it
every time it crops up for the rest of your life. Because it's entirely
possible to stick your fingers in your ears and talk your Libertarian
ideology so as to not hear what the Spirit is saying to you about how you
act and how it's harming you. You might do that. I dunno. Hope not.
But as often as you lock Christ in the tomb of your heart It will arise,
again, in three days time or less--then you're back on the net, stalking
someone else to make hash of to get It crucified once again.
You don't have to acknowledge anything to me, I don't want to hear apologies
from you. It's enough to just change your ways (repent with your actions
rather than justifying and repeating your shortcomings) so you are
respectful of people and so you speak what you believe in reasonable rather
than histrionic and violent tones. (Got to admit, you're a bit cooler here
now that you used to be and apparently still are on alt.dev.null. Of course
it's hard to tell sometime, who is you and who isn't...)
I will be right here if you become ready to defend your ideas (rather than
your ego) with reason, rather than with rhetorical tricks and grand
flourishes like your impending kill filing of me, rather than ridicule and
the victim stance.
Actually I'll be here regardless of what you do.
Feel free to
have the last word; nobody else buys your victim act,
Speaking again for the rest of the world, Engineer, you are. I am confident
that it not does not matter whether this is true or not, it isn't.
Parrotting again, by the way, Engineer, you are. Legal argument would look
just like what you do if only there not judges there to make sure rules of
evidence were followed.
but maybe by playing the victim once again you will
be able to drown out your conscience telling you that
your behavior is wrong.
Projecting, Engineer, you're doing it again. Once again you're saying
things that would be stricken on the mere statement "objection." No
argument would be necessary to have the objection upheld.
And, oh, how many times have you said I was free to have the last word only
to return to berating me and prosecuting me (sometimes moments, sometimes
months, later), actually speaking beyond me to the jury of the newsgroup (do
you really think they care what we are doing here?) showing them the wounds
in your thin skin, to your brittle, brittle self.
So you'll be back, you have left and come back so many times before. Your
grudge will not let you rest--not until you lay it down.
But you are smarting now, again, from the truth you cannot deny about
yourself. The pressure of our inability to do more than be sarcastic in
response to my arguments about the economy and everything else has built so
that once more you will be throwing over the table, stomping dramatically to
the door, your emotional chips rolling around on the floor where your hand
of eights and aces lay scattered. You've come back and picked up those self
same cards a number of times, now. Perhaps this time, when you return,
you'll ask for a new deal instead of trying to play the dead man's hand
again. Perhaps not. Whatever cards you choose to hold next time, Engineer,
you'll be back.
The people you attack and smear and humiliate and dismiss are not the cause
of the pain you hold dear. The real cause you know well is explained in
great detail in the accumulated wisdom of all spiritual traditions. It is
explained, even, by the accumulated wisdom of pure reason.
As Casey Stengel said, "You could look it up."
Good luck.
Timothy Travis
Bridge City Friends Meeting
Portland, Oregon
"You will find men like him in all of the world's religions.
They know that we represent reason and science, and, however
confident they may be in their beliefs, they fear that we will
overthrow their gods. Not necessarily through any deliberate
act, but in a subtler fashion. Science can destroy a religion
by ignoring it as well as by disproving its tenets. No one ever
demonstrated, so far as I am aware, the nonexistence of Zeus or
Thor, but they have few followers now."
-Arthur C. Clarke, _Childhood's End_
"You will find those like them in all who deny anything bigger than
themselves. They see in us a Truth that notwithstanding attacks from the
likes of them through history comes back again and again.
"They fear the effect of people acknowledging and accepting what is written
in their hearts because they fear it will overthrow their cultural gods of
self centered conceit and redemptive violence enlisted in the cause of
controlling other people. This overthrow happens, of course, and will
continue to happen, but not because we use the weapons of this world, which
they, but in a subtler fashion--and not from anything we do.
"Spirituality shows itself more powerful than its scientific servant because
science, while true, doesn't pull people back together, or unite them with
the transcendent reality, with Truth. Rather, if people are not governed by
that transcendent reality, science will used in the useless pursuit of
control over one another in small ways and in large ways and lays waste to
human connection and the unity toward which the universe leans. It will not
win.
"In the end, like the rest of the powers of this world, science serves an
intended purpose but, like us, it is in a fallen condition; a temporary
fallen condition. Like us it, too, will be redeemed--returned to the image
and purpose God gave it at the Creation."
S.P. Rogatgnew
.
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