This may be the best piece of writing I've encountered on WoC. Gemma Mason's "woven" essay achieves the wholeness the author herself can't locate. That's just irony, a critic might say, but it's irony at the level of theodicy.
Beautiful piece. For me the following sentence points to the limits of the porous/buffered self dichotomy: "Even a buffered self still feels influenced by different forces."
From the perspective of no-self spiritual traditions, the fiction of angels and demons and God flows ultimately from the fiction of the self. But fiction has its uses.
Edited to add: Personally I don't think the no-self notion is very helpful, pragmatically speaking. Even if life is but a dream, it certainly feels real for as long as we are living it. I think a viewpoint that is in some ways similar to that of the porous self, but that does not necessarily require a belief in extra sensory perception, is Martin Buber's relational self: it only makes sense to think of the self in relation to an other.
Yes, I think the absurd could have a logic of its own but your boyfriend should have been asking for levity from the narrow minded God that he believed in who couldn’t help him love you unconditionally.
The concept of a supernatural, all-knowing and benevolent being plus the prospect of an afterlife is both appealing and comforting. Is it rational? Is there any means of discerning its presence? Can a controlled, double-blind study examining the existence of such a reality be conceived, performed and conclusions drawn from the data? Are science and religion compatible or are they mutually exclusive? Can the objective prove the existence of the subjective? Or is the subjective our only source of reality leaving objectivity to the realm of unknowing scientists? Having been on the planet for more decades than I like to reveal, I now have time to read and consider. However, I am unable to draw a conclusion regarding the existence of such a state of being. Given the current state of the world, it difficult to conclude that a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent supernatural being exists. How is this reconciled?
This may be the best piece of writing I've encountered on WoC. Gemma Mason's "woven" essay achieves the wholeness the author herself can't locate. That's just irony, a critic might say, but it's irony at the level of theodicy.
Amen, brother. Beautifully written.
“Woven” is good. “Polyphonic” is also good.
Lovely writing. Tragic, insightful, good! An excellent piece to be thankful to Abraham's God for on this American day of Thanksgiving.
Beautiful piece. For me the following sentence points to the limits of the porous/buffered self dichotomy: "Even a buffered self still feels influenced by different forces."
From the perspective of no-self spiritual traditions, the fiction of angels and demons and God flows ultimately from the fiction of the self. But fiction has its uses.
Edited to add: Personally I don't think the no-self notion is very helpful, pragmatically speaking. Even if life is but a dream, it certainly feels real for as long as we are living it. I think a viewpoint that is in some ways similar to that of the porous self, but that does not necessarily require a belief in extra sensory perception, is Martin Buber's relational self: it only makes sense to think of the self in relation to an other.
Yes, I think the absurd could have a logic of its own but your boyfriend should have been asking for levity from the narrow minded God that he believed in who couldn’t help him love you unconditionally.
Beautifully written
Your faith in the non-existence of God is very strong.
It is sad that they crumbled, were cast into the wind, but you did not see where they went. A metaphor perhaps?
The concept of a supernatural, all-knowing and benevolent being plus the prospect of an afterlife is both appealing and comforting. Is it rational? Is there any means of discerning its presence? Can a controlled, double-blind study examining the existence of such a reality be conceived, performed and conclusions drawn from the data? Are science and religion compatible or are they mutually exclusive? Can the objective prove the existence of the subjective? Or is the subjective our only source of reality leaving objectivity to the realm of unknowing scientists? Having been on the planet for more decades than I like to reveal, I now have time to read and consider. However, I am unable to draw a conclusion regarding the existence of such a state of being. Given the current state of the world, it difficult to conclude that a benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent supernatural being exists. How is this reconciled?
“Repulsed” is a fantastic word to use in that situation.