Hi
About time i should tell u what i think of your thoughts on psalm 31 (particularly after our conversation last friday), i can see now very well what u meant when u said that u don't look for proofs for your beliefs in the psalms, but u rather look for how they should mean according to what u believe in now, i'm not going to go through it in a word by word analysis, not at all, the general idea does agree well with it, but i can't help but feel that some of the points are rather contrived, like 17 for ex, u explain the silence of the wicked in their graves that they didn't overcome their shame and cry out for god's help, but this can be easily taken as a metaphor for their state of death, in all cases, the psalms are full of passages in which the author wishes his enemies dead, this seems to be just one of them, and even in the context of the new ideas, the interpretations can differ, for example in 9-13 u say these passages include a reference of jesus pain, but i think they are the author's elaboration on his state of shame and its effect, nothing to do with jesus here.
but what i really liked about it is not your thoughts on the psalm itself, but your notes on the similarity of these ideas and "what dreams may come" which were really amazing, i can only applaud u for putting them this way.
so what is it exactly that i'm trying to say? that words can be easily manipulated to mean anything, and what really matters is what u believe in, for only in its light would these words mean something for u? but that's taken for granted i suppose, when i returned to work on sunday, i tried some of those ideas (some small pieces of course, i don't want to alienate them) on some of my close colleagues, for example i received "because god is perfect, that's why he can't break his own laws" when i asked "are rules ruling over god that he has to abide by them?", and "but u ignored god's words, this is offensive for him" when i asked "why couldn't god just forgive us", and so on, so what is it that i want?
u know, in the tv show "the x files" (in my very humble opinion, one of the best tv shows ever) there was this poster hanging in agent mulder's office, it carried the image of a UFO with the words "i want to believe" underneath it, and for a long time, whenever i saw it i always thought it either (like everything in x files) means a million things, or it doesn't really mean anything than just its face value, but i always wondered why mulder (the character shown to be the avid believer in the supernatural in the show) is the one putting this poster? i mean, doesn't he already believe in them? and what does it mean anyhow? this is just a photo how can i know if that thing in the photo is real not fake? if u can see a ufo with your own eyes, wouldn't you believe in them? and even if i am a believer, doesn't the fact that so many "ufo" photos exist is an indication that there's something fishy about it? but that doesn't (shouldn't) matter, i want to believe, first and foremost, why? because that's how i feel about it, and no matter how things may come up and say, no its fake, i 'd still want to believe,is that a good thing? or is it just that people see what they want to see? shouldn't this poster belong to his partner agent scully who, at the beginning of the show ,was shown as the "skeptic" kind of character, she was the one that always laughed off her partner's over-enthusiastic belief in that stuff, and yet, one of best subplots in the show was her amazing character development, that she has changed from a skeptic to exactly the "i want to believe" kind of person, she doesn't want to, but she has seen, and she has no choice but to reach for something that would close the gap between what she has seen and the ground on which she stands (i know that the metaphor is embarrassingly obvious, if i'm really talking about ufo's, then it doesn't make any sense!)So is that what i want? do i want to believe in these ideas? do i prefer a god who has already forgiven us our sins and still wants us to take the rest of the way to clean ourselves? surely that's a more appealing premise than that of a tyrant who insists on seeing blood and cannot just let things go, and it even implies that maybe i don't have to think long about the dilemma of "why was i brought from nothing into one of 2 paths, heaven or fire?" here the choice seems more logical, its either "do u want to be with me or not?" , if i choose the second path its not because i'm too weak to take the right way, but because i'm too proud, and if i choose the other one, its not because i'm just afraid of the big lake of fire, but because i really really now understand him and want to be with him, this makes far more sense, it makes me even believe those who say that god himself is a believer, and he believes in humanity, unlike the old way which made me feel that we were rather... expandable, this gives me a better way to understand myself when i do something wrong, and, u know, adam and eve hid away from god, because they were ashamed, not because they were afraid of punishment, not to say that the other system obliges that we avoid sin out of fear only, but here shame is the central idea, it's not that i feel that i have insulted god, but its that i have turned my face away from him and took another way,and its still my responsibility, a responsibility that stems from my reliance on god for faith, which i couldn't obtain all alone, and this (as much as i understand) goes very well with what dostoevsky was talking about, and doesn't contradict it as you think!!
no, i know i'm getting really boring, but i'm not done yet!!
So why am i bringing up dostoevsky? not just to correct mistakes, but because he had some ideas that (only now) strike me as amazingly analogous to what we've been discussing
U were saying (during that rather fateful friday night) that his ideas that we were helpless in committing sins doesn't make sense, because then not just that we don't deserve to be punished, but also because it doesn't make sense that god would create us that weak, but that's taking things out of context and u know that, u know that what he meant was that we're all the same in that regard, and none of us has the right to blame the other, that's quite obvious, his example was the character of (what was his name? marmeladov?) in crime and punishment, the man who had that little habit of heavy drinking which made him lose his job, and consequently, it drove his daughter to prostitution to provide for the family, but there's one particular scene in which the novel's protagonist (was it...raskolnikov?) accompanies the man home and watches his wife beating him and pulling his hair and calling him all sorts of names, before that particular the scene, the man was telling raskolnikov that though he is utterly worthy of all contempt and hatred in the world, yet (and that part was written in a rather vague manner) "not on earth, but up yonder...they grieve over men, they weep, but they don't blame them, they don't blame them, but it hurts more, it hurts more when they don't blame......, should i be pitied? why? i ought to be crucified, not pitied... do u suppose that this pint of drink has been sweet for me? it was tribulation that i sought at the bottom of it, and i have found and tasted it, but he will pity us who has had pity on all men, and understood all things, he will come in that day and ask "where is the daughter who gave herself up for her mother and children of another, come to me, i have already forgiven thee, And he will judge and will forgive all the good and the evil, the wise and the meek...and when he's done with them, he will summon us "you too come forth, ye drunkards, ye children of shame, and we shall come forth without shame and shall stand before him, ye are swine...but come ye also, and the wise ones will say o lord, why dost thou receive these men? and he will say, this is why i receive them, o ye wise, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this"
and in a later paragraph, talking about his wife "but blows i am not afraid of...know, sir, that such blows are not pain to me, but enjoyment, in fact i can't get on without it"
now, that's shame for u!, the shame that i now understand breeds loneliness, and (in master yoda's style!) loneliness brings sadness, sadness brings hatred, and hatred takes u to the dark side!, the dark side is where u believe that old story about the king and his councilor, one day the king asks him, councilor, i want to know the history of the world, write it for me, the councilor disappears for 10 years and returns with a caravan of camels carrying huge volumes containing the history of the world, the king is angry "i'm busy, don't u see? when will i have the time to read all this? the councilor disappears for 5 years and returns with his history shortened to 5 volumes, but the king is still angry, its too big make it smaller, years later the councilor returns with a single volume, and its still too big, until the day he returns with a single page, but alas, the king is on his deathbed, and tells the councilor, i'm sorry i made u go through all this, but i'm dying now, can u tell me the history of the world in a single sentence? and the councilor (who is himself now an old and broken man) answers "my king, people are born, they live, they suffer and they die" (i think the king might have been satisfied!) or, in the modern way, as system of a down say it "welcome to the soldier side, there's no one here but me, people all grow up to die, there's no one here but me".
(1999).jpg)
But how far can shame obstruct the way to redemption? have u ever watched the tv show "angel"?, now unlike x files, this (along with its companion piece, buffy) is one of the worst, i only saw a couple of episodes, but one scene i liked, was the one in which mr. angel was talking to another vampire seeking redemption, now angel, he was a vampire but his soul was restored by gypsies or something like that, and now he has to live with the shame of what he had done, and the other vampire tells him that now he's doing good to redeem his past, but angel refuses this logic, and says it doesn't matter, no matter what he does, he's still going to hell after all, he's just trying to be useful as long has he's alive, now i think that what he was trying to say, but of course political correctness had to remove any reference to any religious ideas, that what exactly should he do? convert to religion? go to a priest and confess? he's trying to say how exactly is going to a priest and saying "i regret what i did" is supposed to correct what i've done? the people i've hurt will still be hurt, the people i've killed will still lie dead, how is that supposed to reverse time?
and that brings me back to dostoevsky.
in "the karamazov brothers", there was ivan, one of the brothers, who, in a conversation with his brother alyosha, a monk, describes (in a very very VERY long speech) his view of the world, he'd say that in mathematics, they say that 2 parallel lines can never meet, if u keep following them hoping they will intersect somewhere, but they WILL meet at infinity!, and the problem is, how am i supposed to understand that? what does that mean for me? mathematicians might be satisfied with it, but for my humble mind, created to understand only what i can feel or touch, how can i understand that? he compares this to the idea of someone dying in the place of someone else, but he doesn't jump to jesus directly, he starts by wondering, why do little children sometimes die in the most horrible of ways? now he accept what may befall the grown ups because each of them has he eaten his own apple and to hell with him, but what about the children, how can i find a reason for their death?, if u tell me that they died because they have inherited their fathers sins, this sounds to me exactly like 2 parallel lines intersecting at infinity, my mind can't understand it, so u c, (that's till ivan talking) i know that suffering exists and there's no one to blame, one thing emerges simply from another, but that's meaningless to my mind, i want retribution, and i want to see it by my eyes, not in infinity, but here on earth...if i'm dead by then let me be resurrected, i want the victim of murder arise and embrace his murderer, but then remains the children, and what am i to do with the children, (i'm taking the next part from an online text)
Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be, when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: ‘Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.’ When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, ‘Thou are just. O Lord!, But what pulls me up here is that I can’t accept that harmony, I hasten to protect myself and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether. It’s not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to ‘dear, kind God’! It’s not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them?do i understand now what is the factor missing in ivan's ideas? ivan goes on to talk in the next part, the grand inquisitor, which is my favorite part in the novel, about the impossibility for man to obtain the faith god requires all by himself, god wants us to believe in him without miracles, without showing himself and without commanding us to do so, this is impossible, and ivan quickly jumps to the conclusion that god is too cruel to create humans like this, but actually its the rest of the novel that answers this part (and it was explained to me by some guy who responded to a post of mine on some dostoevsky fan forum) that yes, dostoevsky says that faith from man alone is impossible, but that means that man should rely on something else to give him this faith, and not give up, and the rest of the novel shows that, and ironically, through the exact event that ivan uses to protest against god, the injustiful death of a child, is what brings most of the characters together and their eventual understanding of their life and faith.
So dostoevsky seems to be looking with the same lens, only that he adds another level, that sin doesn't hurt u alone, but it also hurts others, and in another part of the novel a character says that we're all responsible for each other's sins.
So what was that all about? that i'd like to embrace this new perspective? replace the old lens with this new one and see the world through it (yeah, i know, that's the oldest cliche!) maybe so, i mean, i've already tried to apply it on some things i used to understand in a different way, and the new result was quite great, i felt closer to what they were really talking about, that was very good.
in fact, i have only now discovered that the old system had placed in me a kind of faith i now regard rather suspiciously, i find myself wondering now, did i believe in those ideas just because i had real faith in them, or just because they worked as a mathematical formula?! yes, i'm only realizing it now, that maybe, just maybe, i felt well at ease with the old system because it provided the kind of mental process that would satisfy the mind, but not required by real faith at all, i'd tell myself "yes, it all makes sense, man made a mistake, god should kill him, but he is good, so he lets man play "fel wa2t badal eldaye3" till he came up with a shrewd solution, he'll let a man-god die instead, and pay the debt" and i'd think yes, it all makes sense pretty well, and i'm all right with that, in fact, it has taken me also a step further toward something even worse, that this is a PROOF that we're right and everybody else is wrong, how come the muslims don't believe that? what the hell are the jews waiting for? comeon people, its an equation, how come u can't believe in an equation !(notice the paradox!)
so, i'm not sure about it, but i'm afraid this was how i took it.
so? am i ready to replace this with that? is it really a matter of replacement? like removing your old os and instaling a new one? or should it be some kind of resonance? that what u heard would resonate with what u actually feel , and then u can adapt them to yourself? if the answer would be "obviously its the second one", then i should ask "do i feel that now? does it agree with how i feel towards everything?" this is the kind of questions i should be asking myself now, and i'm not sure how, or when will i have an answer, who knows, perhaps the fact that i'm asking is itself an indication that something is wrong, maybe i should feel it immediately, and if i don't....
What i'm trying to say, obviously, is that i don't want to rush forward to it, (i'm sure u'd agree, and u yourself admitted that it took u along time to convert from "hahaha, what the..." to "could it be anything other than that?" and finally "yes!, it has to be!") and for many reasons, for example, i can't help but smile rather sarcastically that after all that time in which we regarded with indignation, pity and compassion the poor lost souls of those pathetic conspiracy theory buffs, we have finally succumbed to it and became active members in a conspiracy theory ourselves!! yeah, that's the basic idea, we've been living a lie all these years blah blah blah, i think that our only help and support in that regard is that u can't build a conspiracy theory on a debate about faith, c. theories require facts, and despite all the "the fathers of the church said this and that and this contradicts the modern view" , the whole thing is still a matter of faith, OR a matter of "people see what they want to see"
and that's the second reason, would it make sense if i asked "is there a difference between faith, and people's willingness to see what they want?", maybe there is.
"blow up" was a very popular film in the new wave days of the 60's, when andy warhol invented pop as a respectable form of art that basically explores the components of modern life, coca cola, gas stations and mass consumer products, it was directed by the recently deceased michelangelo antonioni, it was about a photographer, who one day, while strolling in a park, takes a photo of a couple sitting nearby, but the woman sees him and insists on having the film, he refused, and later on the woman visists him and repeats her demand, and even attempts to seduce him to get it, but refuses again, and naturally, he starts thinking that maybe his camera caught something suspicious, so he looks at the photos, enlarges them, hangs them on the wall, inspects every inch looking for anything, but to no avail, he decides to go at night to the park, lo and behold! he discovers a man's dead body!, but he hasn't got the camera with him, so he rushes home to get it and returns back only to find that the body is no longer there!
at the end of the film, there's a famous scene of a mimed tennis match the photographer is watching, there's no ball, yet during the match, one of the players throws it out of the court, he points to the photographer, asking him to bring it, the photographer looks at him for a while, and at the supposed location, then he goes to it, picks it up and throws it back to them, and they continue playing, and now, we can even hear the sound of the ball being hit!!, he realizes now, there was no body, there's no ball, its the difference between understanding and being led by. u know all that very well, so just remember it.
I think i'll leave it at that.
