Greta Thunberg - Civic or Artist?

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2019, 02:24 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-13-2019, 08:01 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: Key phrase there PBR..."Would pick".  Have you had your plethora of tests and observations done yet or are you still relying on the word of a social worker you had a five minute conversation with?

Honestly I don't know who is worse, you who reads an abstract on WebMD and decides he has X condition or my mother who is utterly convinced I didn't need to go to the oral surgeon to have a rotted tooth extracted; that it could be healed with crystals.  Good thing I went to culinary and not medical school.  Otherwise I'd be dealing with hypochondriac boomers when I wasn't dealing moronic new ager boomers who are convinced that their charlatan of the week is superior to my education and science.

As for misery, there are various causes for misery not all of them economic, sociological or pathological.  I'd venture to say being a loser in general is pretty miserable.  Fortunately I'll not have to experience that as I'm not a loser--I went out and got mines.  I dare say that you should have done the same, perhaps then you'd be far less miserable now.  Mind you I don't have the White  and Straight Privileges you have.

I would rather have Asperger's than pathological narcissism, which I consider second-worst. Pathological narcissists might be more successful in economic results for themselves, but think of the harm that they do to others! Narcissism well fits an oppressor or exploiter no matter what his ideology.

Nobody chooses to have Asperger's... but recognize that I have some imagination, and that at my age (63) I have seen a lot or have heard a lot. But nobody chooses low intelligence, schizophrenia, bipolar syndrome, paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sado-masochism, addiction, borderline personality, sexual perversion, or sociopathy, either.

I may not fully understand what it is like to be black, but you can trust that I know what white people say when they think themselves safe to express racist ideas. I have been around people proud only of being white. Then listen to their conversations on other aspects of life -- and those aspects of life do not include the music of Bela Bartok. White privilege, so far as I discern, means only that one can get away with more bad behavior. Example: white people use more drugs and worse drugs in part because they are less likely to be busted.  

DMS-IV does not include homosexuality -- and that is a good thing.  Considering what genetic messes people with Asperger's are, it would be better for the world if we did not procreate. It does not include blackness, either. If I had to choose between being black and having Asperger's I would choose being black. The Talented Tenth seems to live well enough.

By the way -- I am no mystic. Anyone who thinks that crystals have any powers of healing is a fool. There are crystals that I would avoid, such as realgar (arsenic) and cinnabar (mercury). I find astrophysics far easier to understand than astrology.

Astrophysics is pretty complicated. I understand the theories when explained to me, but doing the actual math requires a strong background in knowing what the symbols mean.

Astrology is a lot easier, but also requires knowing some symbols. It requires questioning the scientism dogmas that have been imposed upon us. Watching the Sheldrake and Watts videos or reading these articles, posted here under scientism, would help you see the point of view beyond scientism. 

Sheldrake points out that these dogmas are not the results of scientific investigation. They descend in large part from Christian myths. There is no more reason to hold on to a mythical mechanistic conception of life and Nature than to hold on to the myth of the Big Daddy Boss in the sky who creates everything. The scientism believers can't even get rid of the original miracle of the big bang. Much of modern physics, on the other hand, goes beyond the simple cause and effect mechanistic view, and even opens up the realm of astrology and esoteric realities. Quantum entanglement is a big new idea.

The idea of mechanical cause and effect is useful for creating machines, but that doesn't mean that because we can create machines, that the world is a machine. Conceiving the world as a machine reduces life to what can be pushed around. Dealing with our moral and psychological problems requires taking possession of yourself rather than being forced. That was the original insight of the greatest and first psychologist, the Buddha.

I know crystals can focus some degree of magnetic life power, as can be demonstrated, but it is a fairly weak energy compared to other means of heightening one's spiritual or healing energy. Crystals are pretty, and they make a good sales gimmick, and saying that they have some healing powers if you wear them is an attractive pitch for buying crystal jewelry. Women especially like to buy jewelry. Us guys have less use for it.

But even on a tech level, it's easy to see that crystals have power. Without them we would not have invented radio.

Seeing healing power in crystal jewelry is possible when you ditch the dogma that life and consciousness is a fluke of Nature. But our own conscious life could not have developed from a stupid mechanical universe. There are roots of consciousness below our own, which has emerged through the life process of evolution. Greater complexity of organisms means also greater consciousness and freedom within those organisms. That's the basic premise of Teilhard de Chardin's magnificent portrait of evolution. Darwinist ideas are not enough to explain what is happening.

It's a matter of being curious about life, and realizing that conventional mythology does not explain it. There are great frontiers of knowledge about spiritual realities to explore as well as frontiers of physical knowledge, and ultimately spirit and matter are terms that represent interdependent realities. This is not word salad; it is rock-solid basic roots awareness available to anyone. 

This curiosity and openness to life is needed if we are to look upon the universe and ourselves in a way that engenders respect and not manipulation. We are subjects, not just objects. Scientism is, then, a moral issue.

None of this means throwing away our rational faculties and thinking for yourself rather than accepting some miraculous claim. On the contrary, being curious and open to experience and evidence convinces me even more that mere believing things is not the way to go about things. A healthy skepticism will cure us of conspiracy theory, or of not using traditional western medicine when it is a proven healing method that's better than hoping the weak energy of crystals can cure a powerful disease. I am happy to use medicine that is proven to work, whatever kind that it is. I am grateful for the operation I had that turned back my prostate cancer. I am also happy for the powerful touch healing I received from a new age minister that cured me of a bad malfunction in my brain caused by drugs that the doctor just told me to see a psychiatrist about.