putperest’s Reviews > Politics > Status Update

Yup

Thomas wrote: "Yup"

your review is so on point, even though on a purely opinion basis, i agree with aristotle more.

I strongly believe Aristotle was the smartest person to live. He was incredibly dry though

I knew you were going to align more with Aristotle, you earthling ;)

More fun to soar towards the transcendent with Plato!

You may enjoy Neoplatonism. Strongly recommend you read Plotinus after (Enneads), about ‘the One’ (God, monotheism proper). If you’re in a proper state of mind and if you can follow the argument into the highest domains of abstraction, you may just have a religious experience and the idea of God may crystallise (click). Good luck, onwards and upwards!

Thomas wrote: "I knew you were going to align more with Aristotle, you earthling ;)

More fun to soar towards the transcendent with Plato!"

haha, when it comes to politics, one must be the earthling. the spell of utopianism is the greatest fault of plato. but other than that, i was more aligned plato's views on aristocracy and democracy compared to aristotle.

it's really intersting to see this ideological separation appear in all places and all times. one side believes the human nature can be engineered out of its vices, the other knows this to be a fool's errand and instead engineers the social structure around human nature. aristotle is clearly on this camp, so am i.

but other than that, i was underwhelmed by him, i expected someone more reactionary towards athenian democracy. he sounds just like a constitutional republic guy. in this aspect, i align more with plato / socrates' aristocracy.

Thomas wrote: "You may enjoy Neoplatonism. Strongly recommend you read Plotinus after (Enneads), about ‘the One’ (God, monotheism proper). If you’re in a proper state of mind and if you can follow the argument in..."

sounds great, will see.
i do have somewhat of a low tolerance towards the anthropomorphic, monotheism proper god - but last months has been quite a reconciliation of my metaphysics back towards god. so who knows?

Thomas wrote: "You may enjoy Neoplatonism. Strongly recommend you read Plotinus after (Enneads), about ‘the One’ (God, monotheism proper). If you’re in a proper state of mind and if you can follow the argument in..."

okay a quick read of neoplatonism sold me over already. it is wonderful to see the same divine truth appear in many forms. sophia perennis indeed.

Agree, Plato's politics is his weakest link. Politics is probably the domain of philosophy where there has been the clearest sense of progress throughout history. As far as the application of Politics one has to be a pragmatist, but surely one has to operate from a level of idealism - from principles - and how these ought to be materialized in the earthly domain.

Nothing anthropomorphic about neither Neoplatonism nor monotheism!

"one side believes the human nature can be engineered out of its vices, the other knows this to be a fool's errand and instead engineers the social structure around human nature."

I like that

Thomas wrote: "Agree, Plato's politics is his weakest link. Politics is probably the domain of philosophy where there has been the clearest sense of progress throughout history. As far as the application of Polit..."

my bad then! the monotheistic god i was thought was pretty anthropomorphic.

i agree, politics is the most pragmatic and earthly branch of philosophy. the progress in politics is supposed to stem from our collective learning, so more examples from history the better we can judge. but it's definitely not a linear progress, as modern politics demonstrates. we seem to be in an era where we are arrogant enough to declare that we've reached the end of history, and any politic wisdom of ages past is seen either as outdated and / or dangerously bigoted.

That's why I encourage such things as Plotinus. Neither the Jews, Christians nor Muslims of the higher echelons never thought of God as something anthropomorphic. But understanding the concept of One God is a lot harder than it first seems. And it is a lot more sophisticated than it first seems. And a lot more beautiful. And once grasped, it will fundamentally alter you perception of world history and most likely everything else, and bowing to The One (and nothing else) will seem very natural, fitting and imbued with holiness. I would even go so far as to say: the main task of reading philosophy is to understand what is meant by God, The One, It - etc - and why is only, absolutely undoubtedly, can only be Singular. Then, once there, it is no longer a question of whether God exists, just a continuous revelation of what God is.

Thomas wrote: ""one side believes the human nature can be engineered out of its vices, the other knows this to be a fool's errand and instead engineers the social structure around human nature."

I like that"

i think this separation is the most important aspect of the political spectrum, and it highly correlates with the mental models at-large that make up the left and right.
it largely goes:

understanding the world - theorizing new worlds
obsessed with history - obsessed with fiction (once you see how left-leaning individuals understand the world through fiction, you cannot unsee it. "conservatives are literally the sith lords!!")
realistic - utopian
what it is - what it could be
conservative - progressive

some recommendations that speaks to this distinction:
frederic bastiat - the law
thomas sowell - A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
mencius moldbug - open letter (antinomian vs pronomian metaphor)

If you need proof you can look at the writings of Augustine, Aquinas etc. Ofc Islam is the least anthropomorphic one in its expressions. But Christianity proper is not really anthropomorphic either, until you land at the catastrophic idea of the Trinity and the deification of Jesus.. But the top thinkers never actually believed any of that.

Thomas wrote: "That's why I encourage such things as Plotinus. Neither the Jews, Christians nor Muslims of the higher echelons never thought of God as something anthropomorphic. But understanding the concept of O..."

if that's the case, why seek god in philosophy and the gnostic / spiritual traditions of abrahamic religions, instead of going to a more direct path? (less religious spiritual traditions of sophia perrenis) - is it just cultural proximity that makes it easier for you to find god in those philosophies?

I don't understand your question

Thomas wrote: "I don't understand your question"

i see the same "divine truth" in other traditions besides western philosophy and the core spirituality of abrahamic religions. the most direct one being the non-dual teachings of the east. i remember you being sort of dismissive about these and seeing them as a misguided search for god, where to me it leads to the same source. i'm curious why you prefer the heavily religious path towards sophia perrenis, which to me includes so many parochial residues - instead of more direct paths towards it. your conversion to islam is one big puzzle for me in this regard. (if it's too personal, please ignore)

I suppose the simply answer is that I don't see he same divine truth in those traditions. I see them as in various ways flawed. They contain wisdom, but the Abrahamic religions has a certain aliveness (even a divine point of contact as in the case of the prophets), that you don't find in the East. They miss the spot as far as Monotheism goes.

Non-duality is conceived as this almost unreachable notion, or state of being, and for westerners (who unconsciously of course is driven by the Abrahamic conceptualizations of God and the Divine), it becomes a false idea of self-apotheosis - deification. I can reach God, I am of the same substance as God - I am like Jesus Christ, who knew himself to be God - I also know this of myself - and many variants on the same theme. I don't think I need to explicate further what an immense arrogance this is. "Jesus was the only westerner who realized that we are all God and he got killed for it, look how brave I am for also realizing that I am part of Oneness". These thoughts seem deep but they are vulgar, shallow and self-destructive. Furthermore, non-duality isn't very complicated, nor is it an end-state. To feel one with being, opposed to alienated from it, is a very elementary level recognition. It just appeals to westerners today, who as so thoroughly stuck in materialism (which as we have agreed, is a 2500 year old metaphysic), relative to that ofc, Buddhism and non-duality is seen as progress, but compared to monotheism it is archaic, pagan, idolatrous.

The methodologies of the eastern traditions were created to heal problems that were particularly eastern, once we try to apply them to western notions we get a very dangerous set of ideas.

Anyway, all of that is just intellectualizations. The real test is ofc applied. Apply the spiritual ideas of the east. To me they are world-rejecting, not embracing. It is a giving-up, a stuck-within. You act it out and its dead. It stagnates, it doesn't generate and renew.

Islam is the only tradition, to me, that hits the "spot". It is universal (Hinduism is not - caste system), it is monotheistic (Buddhism is not, it is some variant of atheism maybe, hard to categorize - it is not really a religion as such, more a set of relatively useful practices / methodologies / philosophies). Christianity has the trinity and Jesus issue, Judaism is bundled up with ethnic / biological supremacy (non-universal), etc etc.

Look at my reading list, especially my all-time-fav, I don't reject or deny any religion, tradition or philosophy, all of them is pointing somewhere. but they are "more or less accurate", and the above-explained axiomatic flaws cascade thru the whole tradition. Islam gets it right, a priori, although ofc it is bundled with the heritage of arabia - which strictly speaking isn't Islam. The history of it is still unfolding, and it happened to occur in Arabia, so it is colored by that, but the Islamic morality goes against many of the traditional beliefs of Arabia.

Furthermore, Islam is cumulative, it adds upon and expands, it integrated hsitorically.

I suppose the eastern method is better thought of as a psychological medicine, and as such it is useful. But it might just be a category mistake to compare Buddhism to Abrahamic religions. Buddhism exists and grew out from the hindu / vedic cosmology.

You see? Islam IS the 'sophia perrenis' you are talking about. It is integrated.

Thomas wrote: "I suppose the simply answer is that I don't see he same divine truth in those traditions. I see them as in various ways flawed. They contain wisdom, but the Abrahamic religions has a certain aliven..."

thanks, i see it more clearly now. though i disagree with your view on the eastern tradition and the way it's integrated in the west (loud mouth bad apples should not stain our whole view of a tradition) - it's pointless to try to reconcile them with abrahamic wisdom, because you clearly look for something more than solely the metaphysical framework of truth, (aliveness, moral framework, virtue etc) so i'll leave it at that.
it is a bit of a shame that buddhism takes the cake when it comes to eastern traditions viewed from the west, as it's actually the most earthly one, and as you said, less of a metaphysical framework and resembles a psychological self-help program.

out of curitosity, what's your take on someone like bernardo kastrup's idealism?

Bernard Kastrup manages to somehow be directionally right and a vulgar moron at the same time, interesting feat! He is mouths the wisdom and truth, but strikes me as not having embodied it. He writes about it, not from a state of such a mind. He attempts to integrate but does it in a 115 IQ take type of way. He is a left-brain, no poetry, no aliveness, just mechanistically directionally correct. But at least better than the materialists. You know those youtubers that take mushrooms, maybe even experience some sort of 5D reality, but lack the tools to integrate it? It as if Kastrup took those Ideas and up-scaled them with his philosophical verbiage, without having gone there himself. So he hits interestingly, but also misses interestingly. he is very interestingly and usefully off-point.

Obv easy to critique from the sidelines ;)

obv read between the lines and the jokes, Kastrup is ait, but he is not a heavyweight by any means. Neither am I ofc.

He wrote something like "metaphysical idealism for 12 year olds". Or "how ChatGPT 3.5 would explain Schopenhauer, Jung and how materialism is Balooney!"

"What is Monotheism? SWIPE RIGHT TO FIND OUT! Presented to you by BERNARDO KASTRUP!"

lmaoo i cannot deny that yeah.
though interesting that you see kastrup as directionally right and mouthing truth, but at the same time not warming up to the eastern nonduality traditions - as he is clearly more influenced by something like advaita vedanta or someone like ramana maharshi - than any western religious tradition (islam is more west in this regard in my opinion).
some of his framework is almost like trying to build a left-brain cosmology over the upanishads.

ofc kastrup is kastrup and it doesn't matter where he leans or what his sources are, but i'd expect you to be either less dismissive of the eastern mystics, or more dismissive of kastrup's core ideas. or maybe there is consistency in this and i'm missing something.

I think there's some missing contextual input here that you forget, or that I haven't highlighted enough.

My path in philosophy / religion was as follows:

Interested in physics -> denied all religion -> became a scientific materialist -> existential crisis -> went to Asia, first as a solo traveler, then lived in Vietnam, then was supposed to study and live in China (Confucianism+) but got cancelled due to Covid. Interspersed with psychedelics etc, but mainly reading 'eastern things', meditation etc. I loved Sun Tzu, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Upanishads, The Bhagavad Gita, Rig Veda, Dhammapada, read various Lama's, Thich Nhat Hanh, Herman Hesse, Schopenhauer excited me because he had an eastern influence, Santideva etc. Alan Watts, all the psychedelic literature, zig-zag-zen, Kastrup, deep ecology, Jung, Campbell, Sri Aurobindo, Wilber..

I studied Buddhism in university, on and on.

The point: I don't deny the East out of ignorance, I came to philosophy thru the East. I categorically rejected the western tradition, I only came to that once I got forced by university to read it. I wanted to just study the eastern ideas; IDGAF about moronic west, or so I thought.

Then instead of going to China I ended up in Egypt (after a detour to Ghana), and then I studied Islam, first formally, then anthropologically, then acted it out myself.

I am "dismissive" of eastern ideas only insofar as I feel that I have moved through them. They represented, both spiritually and historically, a step in the path. What was to be kept has been integrated in other traditions, particularly Islam. I don't try to be arrogant about this, only providing context of how I came to be this strange Muslim person. I learned from everything on my path, but watch ken wilber - that is what being only "integral" (perennial?) leads too, imho. Islam is just totally different - in that it is True.

Also - watch out for mysticism, watch out for psychedelics. An analogy would be to consider Theravada Buddhism (enlightenment for Me!) as compared to Mahayana. What is the essential difference? A Boddhisatva is a higher and more virtues state, as it is "the big vehicle" - meaning, enlightenment is pointless unless everyone else is there together - i.e., morality is introduced. Being analytic is ultimately pointless, only virtue, only good deeds, matter.

Spiritual bliss is bait, don't fall for it. Its as dumb as lucid dreaming, it sound cool but its bait. Be good for other people, that is what matter. Mysticism is very often hedonism dressed up in fancy clothes and verbiage. Or spiritual one-upping.

Us arguing here ofc is also totally meaningless, except insofar as it transmutes into virtue and good actions in our lives. Being able to get to a state of bliss, in one's own subjective consciousness, is not a goal, it is escapism, as long as other people suffer, which they always do, hence bliss for the sake of bliss is ultimately bait.

wow, what an interesting path you had! our interests seem to align quite a lot, so maybe i'm still on the path - though i dont like to apply a singular universal path to everyone.
100% agree with you on spiritual bliss, mysticism and good actions. i like what douglas harding says "i'm just space for you to be".

thanks for taking your time to explain these things thomas.

Isn't Kastrup a eliminativist? Reject all materialism hence eg dopamine carries us through action?

im not sure what you meant by eliminativsm but he surely argues against all types of materialism/reductionism, especially biological/physical kind