/lit/ - Literature

>>20154372
This means life will always have to default to a form of semi-random walk to glean information from the enviornment. This walk is also necessitated because, in the language of complexity studies, the environment represents a moving landscape with optimal solutions constantly changing, and because so many natural dynamical systems have limitless potential iterations (see also: "period three implies chaos").

The takeaway here is that life isn't random. It comes into being inexorably due to the laws of nature. Progressive complexity is dictated by these same laws. We don't just see this sort of selection effect in biology, but also in the creation and survival of languages, computer programs, corporations, political ideologies, and nations (see Fukuyama's The End of History for a flawed, but decent application of Hegel to political history).

IV: Boehme, Hegel, and Progression Towards the Absolute

We know there is being (becoming) because we're here, right? But how did God have being before creation, before time? The idea of an anthropomorphic sky father creating the world as an artist paints a picture runs into logical problems.

Behemism says God couldn't have being in that period. Genesis starts with "In the beginning," a begining that coincided with creation for a reason. Because if there is only one thing, God, how can God have any meaning. An infinite string of ones carries no information in the same way an infinite string of zeros lacks information. As Sausser says, "a one word language is impossible," because if one word carries equal reference to all things, it denotes nothing.

In Boehme, this means God's knowledge of God is frustrated. God cannot define God. God must posit another, must create, in order to be defined, hence creation and time.

Hegel builds up a similar story, starting with a thought experiment on human experience. Pure sense certainty has no definiteness. You don't see dogs or sheep or trees. There is only a now, devoid of interpretation. But this pure, undefined sensory stream lacks all meaning, and so is itself pure abstraction, meaningless. This pure being is contradicted by the pure nothing of its content. The contradiction results in being sublating nothing and incorporating it into itself.

>>19764628
This is practical mysticism as theory through and through. Good choice.

>>19764973
I would not recommend Evola or Crowley as introductions to Christian mysticism. They created synchretic systems built from a mashup of esoteric systems that they weren't particularly well informed on. In some cases, it seems borrowing from older traditions was more to cover their teachings in a patina of authority.
It's not that the older traditions are somehow more authentic or "better" necissarily because they are tied to actual religions, but certainly they aren't the same. That's the ironic thing about the wave of early 20th century occultists, it was a modern trend. You might just as well say go read Joseph Campbell to understand Christian Mysticism because he also had an "explains it all system" that used world religion as a grab bag. I started with these guys about 14 years ago and unfortunately had to unlearn what I had learned to take older traditions in their actual context.

>>19769645
This. If you really want something that goes right headlong into describing the insights of mystical experience, pick this up. It's a difficult read though.

For people influenced by Boehme but who were more systemic, you can look at Hegel (even more difficult, but there are good secondary sources) or Whitehead (less directly influenced but still interesting.

>>19769855
It's not turning one thing into anything else, that's what is in Revelations. However, it's certainly not the case that Revelations is explicitly endorsing any sort of modern materialism. A good deal of my favorite theologians and philosophers are idealists. Describing bodies doesn't necessitate existing the existence of some sort of self sufficient noumenal. Likewise, there are plenty of modern thinkers who are physicalists when it comes to philosophy of mind (it is increasingly hard not to be) but idealists or agnostic when it comes to ontology, or there are analytics who reject that key aspects of ontology can have meaningful answers.

It's not a Protestant thing. Pietism produced the best mystic I've read, pic related. Although I will warn his books are a slog. The people he influenced, Whitehead, Hegel, Schelling, etc. are very interesting too, but of course Hegel is a time sink too. Whitehead isn't so bad though.

But religion in churches is aimed at the masses. I've had good Bible studies, but they are rare. I had one at a nominally Baptist church, although it left the Southern Baptists not long after I got there, that had a study for mid-20s to 30s folks. It was near a bunch of colleges and we had a bunch of grad students and it was very open and interesting. And I've had good prayer groups I've been a part of. However, I move a lot so I've been to tons of churches in the last decade and there is a very large trend towards:

>Saved by faith alone
>Everyone is going to Hell
>So the most important or really only important thing is to convert, convert, convert so people have one act of contrition and get saved forever.

The repetition gets old and so does the attempt to read these doctrines into every page of the Bible when they don't exist there. Particularly, I'm a huge fan of Job and it hurts to see it reduced to "Job had faith so good stuff happens, never lose faith," when that really is not what the book is about.

There is also this weird thing about "returning to the early church," but then also Sola Scriptura, despite the early church not having a Bible, and the early Church Father's having highly allegorical understandings of scripture. Not to mention they had Gnostics everywhere.

It's tough. And maybe self defeating. The "lost" brought in are almost always lapsed Christians. I don't think I've met another person raised outside Christianity in ten years. Generally they push aside apologetics, since only God can save anyhow, but also I think because apologetics can make the faithful question their faith and uncovers contradictions in doctrine. There isn't any real admission that people don't come to Christianity because they see the likelihood of it being historically true as no greater than Islam, Judaism, or other faiths. It has to be sin, modern influences tempting them, etc.

So I think churches will continue to decline hard, because less than a third of Millennials are Christian and they seem I'll equiped to reach out to people raised outside the faith. Mostly they cannibalize each other's members, or for many churches, it's become an identity club for Trumpism, which helps boost enthusiasm short term, but is killing them on youth membership, and corrupting the faith.

If you like Hegel, check out this