The Great Daoist Disharmony

Credit: Iijima Masaya et.al.

An oversized gavialid crocodilian, which may have feasted on fresh human flesh, was hunted to extinction by said humans, and even ritualistically beheaded. Or so new research suggests. 

And yes, it all happened in China. You know, the harmonious Yin-Yang civilization of Daoism and Buddhism...not!  

At least we now know where Chinese dragon legends come from. May you live in interesting times...

Off with their heads!

Croc with his head!

Hanysuchus

Putin´s predicament

Credit: Solen Feyissa

An interesting but somewhat difficult article from 2018, arguing that Putin´s Russia lags behind the West and China (and even the former USSR) when it comes to science and technology. It "only" deals with the civilian sector, but it´s difficult to believe that the backwardness, corruption and cheating in the non-military sector doesn´t affect the military-industrial complex, too. 

My very tentative conclusion: if Ukraine (which is even more underdeveloped than Russia, according to the author) is provided with heavy doses of Western aid, it probably can defeat Russia. 

Less tentative conclusion: the real enemy is China. Russia is just a proxy for Beijing, producing whatever raw materials they need to fuel the New Chinese Century... 

Russia´s Technological Backwardness

Paranoid as folk

 

Thomas Sheridan is his old paranoid self here. Demonic possession due to "the needlecraft", an analysis of the horror flick "Hereditary" (which I haven´t seen) and speculations concerning various Mideast gods such as Baal all point to the same conclusion: Choronzon or The Babbler in the Abyss is back, feeding on unsuspecting victims through the Internet. 

Well, *that* part, at least, isn´t so hard to believe! 

Choronzon is apparently a "super-demon" mostly associated with the workings of Aleister Crowley, but he is also mentioned in Chaos Magick. Sheridan regards the creature as wholly negative. The really good guy is Paimon (depicted as evil in "Hereditary").

There are also scary discussions about "the steam people" and "wormfolk".  

RT doesn´t imply endorsement. 

"We are a salamander"

 

This is probably how you sound after eating too much magical mushrooms. Terence McKenna was apparently a California hippie 20 years too late. Nothing he says here makes any kind of sense whatsoever. "We are a salamander". Sure, brother...

Or this one: "The story of Eden in the Bible is the story of world history´s first drug bust". 

LOL.

You are the universe

 

Fascinating in a way, but the soundbite "You are the universe" probably isn´t very clever when trying to convince narcissistic Californians about the need for ecological consciousness (or anything really). 

But Toynbee was right

 

Mimesis in action?

First posted on this blog in August 2018. Not sure if all conclusions still hold water, but who cares? ;-)

“A Study of History” is Arnold J Toynbee's impossibly large 10-volume work about the rise and fall of human civilizations. Most people have neither the time nor the inclination to read the entire opus. A two-volume abridgment has therefore been published, with an appreciative preface by the author. It's safe to assume that most people haven't read the entire abridgment either – it's still a monumental work. I admit that I belong to the majority, having read a few chapters and skimmed a few more in the first volume only. My review is therefore an educated layman's first impression of Toynbee's labor of love. But, as they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression!

Toynbee argues that civilizations arise due to a pattern he calls “challenge and response”, carried out by “creative minorities” who inspire the inert mass to imitate their innovations, a process Toynbee calls “mimesis”. Conversely, a civilization breaks down when the creative minority stops being a trail-blazer, instead settling down as a coercive “dominant minority”. This eventually creates a schism in the body social, with the dominant minority being threatened by both an “internal proletariat” and an “external proletariat”. After a “time of troubles”, the dominant minority seemingly solves the problems of civilizational decline by creating a “universal state”. In reality, the universal state is an Indian summer and finally collapses under the dual strains of internal and external “proletarian” challenges. The internal proletariat creates a “universal church”, often based on ideas imported from another, perhaps older, civilization. The external proletariat simply creates barbarian war-bands. After a period Toynbee calls “Völkerwanderung”, a new civilization arises under the inspiration of the universal church, and the cycle begins anew.

As critics of Toynbee are fond to point out, this scenario is obviously based on the rise and fall of Greco-Roman Antiquity and its subsequent replacement by the civilization of the Middle Ages. The “universal state” is the Roman Empire, the “universal church” is Christianity, the “internal proletariat” consists of everyone in some sense disadvantaged by the growing power of the Roman oligarchy, and the “external proletariat” is identical with the Germanic and Hunnish invaders. The curious technical term “Völkerwanderung” is the German designation for the great migrations of peoples that took place immediately before and after the so-called fall of Rome. It's not overtly clear how this neat scheme can be applied to other civilizations! The cycles of Muslim civilization seem to follow different patterns, not to mention the Phoenix-like Chinese and Egyptian civilizations. Sometimes, Toynbee's reasoning makes little sense even when discussing Greco-Roman antiquity. Why does he date the “breakdown” of the ancient world to the Peloponnesian Wars? The term “breakdown” denotes the point when a civilization stops growing and maturing, and hence isn't necessarily identical to an actual collapse. However, it still doesn't make much sense. Wasn't Greek civilization growing under Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies? Toynbee dates the “breakdown” of Egyptian civilization to the end of the Pyramid Age, claiming that 2000 years of Egyptian history and splendid achievement were really a kind of afterthought to the “universal state” of the Old Kingdom! The breakdown of “Syriac” civilization is said to be the dissolution of king Solomon's kingdom in Biblical times, surely a strange perspective on the matter. Why is the Abbasid Caliphate rather than the Ottoman Empire the “universal state” of the Muslims? The reforms of Peter the Great in Russia and the Meiji Restoration in Japan, which both saved their respective civilization by Western modernization, don't seem to fit Toynbee's neat pattern either. It's almost as if Toynbee attempted to reinterpret all of world history on the Greco-Roman-medieval model, really a Euro-centrist perspective. This is ironic given Toynbee's considerable erudition concerning non-Western civilizations.

More interesting is Toynbee's implicitly spiritual perspective. The great historian was inspired by French philosopher Henri Bergson and explicitly mentions him a number of times. The term “creative minority” is based on Bergson's “creative evolution”. The creative minority consists of charismatic personalities, similar in many ways to religious visionaries or mystics. This is taken from Bergson's book “The Two Sources of Morality and Religion”. Toynbee compares the activity of the creative minorities to Plato's idea that the philosopher, after “ascending”, must then “descend” and offer solutions for the improvement of his polity (Arthur Lovejoy had the same interpretation of Plato. Admirers of Ken Wilber, take note). Charismatic personages also play an important role during periods of decline and fall, when they are seen as “saviors” in the messianic sense rather than as, say, great law-givers. One thing I always wondered about is *why* Toynbee believes that humans create civilizations, or why he believes that many of them eventually fail. He clearly doesn't see material factors as decisive. Technology can progress even in an “arrested civilization” such as the Ottoman Empire, and foreign conquerors are usually successful only because the vanquished have already vanquished themselves by internal processes. The Bergson connection gives the answer: Toynbee believes that history is the working out of the élan vital, presumably on very crooked timber! As far as I understand, Toynbee was Christian and believed in “Original Sin”…

An observation I found interesting is that the “universal church” is based on ideas imported from outside the dominant culture of the “universal state”. Thus, Christianity (originally from “Palestine”) became important in the Roman Empire and post-Roman Europe, while Mahayana Buddhism (from India) became important in China, Korea and Japan. Islam became strong in Asia Minor, Persia, India and Indonesia, outside the Arab World where it first emerged. Note also that Christianity and Buddhism (but not Islam) is almost extinct in the land of its origins! This raises interesting questions concerning the next Western “universal church”. Will it be a counter-culture based on Theosophy and various Hindu- and Buddhist-derived doctrines? Or will it be Christianity, not because it's “traditionally Western” but, on the contrary, because it's seen as virtually “foreign” in the secularized West? Perhaps Christianity will be reintroduced by missionaries from East Asia? Islam is another possibility, but in this case, due to massive immigration of “external” proletarians. Note that Toynbee believed that the universal church is the embryo of the next civilization. If the author is right, our secular Über-religion is in for a rough ride! As a side point, I note that Toynbee admits that his analysis of the universal church tends to break down the strict barriers between civilizations he postulates in his first chapters, since the universal church is connected to massive cultural diffusion between civilizations.

In contrast to Oswald Spengler, Toynbee didn't believe that Western civilization was necessarily doomed to decline and fall. This issue is dealt with at length in the second volume of the abridgment, which I haven't read. Perhaps the famous historian was unduly influenced by the heady optimism of the immediate post-war period? Today, Arnold J Toynbee's study of Greco-Roman history suddenly sounds very prescient…and very scary. Indeed, it's scarier than usual, since the “universal state” (Pax Americana) is already dead, and no “universal church” is visible on the horizon, only a very large amount of hungry “external proletarians”…

These, then, are my first impressions of Arnold Joseph Toynbee's “A Study of History”.

Organic unity

 

Not sure why this is supposed to be a good thing...

Whitehead in the temple of Kali

 

Dakshineswar Kali Temple in Calcutta,
where Ramakrishna spent most of his life.
Credit: Knath

“Advaita and Dvaita: Bridging the Gap. The Ramakrishna Tradition’s both/and Approach to the Dvaita/Advaita Debate” is an article by Jeffery D. Long, originally published in “The Journal of Vaishnava Studies”. Long describes it as an essay in the service of cross-traditional philosophical diplomacy. The author is a member of the Ramakrishna Order, a Hindu organization associated with the 19^th century Bengali mystic Ramakrishna, but actually founded by his disciple Swami Vivekananda. A promoter of the monist Advaita Vedanta philosophy (or perhaps a revised “Neo-Vedanta” version of it), Vivekananda was one of the first Hindus to actively proselytize in the Western world. He is probably the main “culprit” behind the Western view of Advaita as “the” Hindu philosophy per excellence. Presumably, he is also chiefly responsible for interpreting Ramakrishna in an Advaitist manner.

I think it´s obvious that Ramakrishna was a very different kind of cat, and while Long tries to harmonize the two gurus, my take is that he tilts in Ramakrishna´s direction. This makes it possible for him to do some intra-Hindu ecumenism, since the actual positions of Ramakrishna were hardly Advaitist. The main target for the cross-traditional diplomacy are the Vaishnavas, that is, the devotees of Vishnu or one of his avatars conceived as the supreme personal god (Ishvara or Bhagavan). Vaishnava bhakti presupposes that there is a distinction between God and humans, which in turn makes the monist Advaita philosophy anathema. To Advaita, the goal is for the human soul to merge with Nirguna Brahman, the impersonal “god” beyond all form or attributes. In some versions of this perspective, devotion to a personal god is incorporated as a lower stage of practice, but as the practitioner progresses on the path, he is supposed to realize that “god with form” is just as illusory as our separate human souls and only has a relative existence. (This seems to have been Vivekananda´s view.) To a Vaishnava, this is of course unacceptable.   

Long believes that what he calls “Ramakrishna Vedanta” is closer to mainstream Vaishnava schools of thought than to Advaita Vedanta. He compares it to Vishishtadvaita, Bhedabheda and Acintya Bhedabheda, which could be seen as intermediary positions between the strict dualism of Dvaita (another Vaishnava school) and the monism of Advaita. A Christian might presumably call these schools “panentheist” in contrast to both pantheism and theism. Long points out that bhakti (devotionalism) played an important part of Ramakrishna´s spiritual practice, making it close to Vaishnavism. Nor did Ramakrishna subordinate bhakti to jnana (here translated “gnosis”) in the Advaita manner. Rather, Ramakrishna believed that both bhakti and jnana were equally valid paths to liberation (not to mention several others!). He incorporated some ideas from Advaita Vedanta, such as the existence of Nirguna Brahman, while affirming that there are many paths to the divine. Indeed, Ramakrishna had intense mystical experiences of both a “dualist” and a “monist” nature, and even saw Jesus at one point!

Long is fascinated by Alfred North Whitehead´s process philosophy and attempts to interpret Ramakrishna Vedanta in this light. In a short article like this one, I don´t think he succeeds very well, but the gist of it is that he identifies the basic metaphysical principle of Whitehead´s system as “Creativity”, which takes many different forms. Says Long: “In mokṣa, one becomes consciously and joyfully what one has actually always been unconsciously (and not so joyfully)–a co-creator, with God, in the ongoing process of the universe, with unlimited creativity. One can submerge oneself in the infinite bliss of Nirguṇa Brahman, enjoy eternity in Heaven with God, or return to help others, like a Bodhisattva. The forms which mokṣa takes vary with the paths that are taken to it. This is apparent from the traditional accounts of Ramakrishna’s sādhanas, in which the type of experience he had at the culmination of his practice varied with the practice itself.” 

I´m not sure why Whitehead is needed at all, since Ramakrishna´s ideas seem to work pretty well all by themselves. Long points out that Ramakrishna is sometimes referred to as a “Shakta universalist”, and this does indeed seem to be the solution to the puzzle. As Long also points out, Whitehead´s Creativity could be seen as another name for Shakti. Shakti (worshipped by Ramakrishna as Kali) is the creative energy or force behind the universe, taking countless of different forms, both personal and impersonal, while also transcending them all. 

Does more really need to be said? 😉

Socialmoderaterna?

Om en intressant trend i det senaste valet...

De rika överger Moderaterna och Kristdemokraterna

Stockholm är nu SD:s svagaste fäste i landet på kommunnivå

GAL-TAN:iseringen av Sverige visualiserad

Max Shachtman did nothing wrong

 

Want more Ukrainian territory? Come and take it, Vlad!