From: jchristian@desire.wright.edu
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: won't you be my neighbor?
Date: 7 Jan 93 21:02:52 EST
Organization:  Wright State University 

In article <1993Jan7.162042.10370@sei.cmu.edu>, psc@sei.cmu.edu (Peter Capell) writes:
> 
> ...so you want to push hands do you?  
> 
> 			(okay okay :-)
> 
> Steve, (you ignorant slut)
> 
> 07-Jan schan@birch.srg.af.mil Nothing to do with MA (was Re: guts and spirits)
> 
>>	Jeez Peter, don't those Hindu spiritual leader types ever warn about
>>going to extremes?
> 
> And can't you see that I completely agree with myself!
> 
>>	Plato and Nietzsche both lived, and thought a lot about what it was all
>>about. Discounting them out of hand is just as numb-skulled as slavishly
>>believing them.
>  
> Well, actually I mostly discounted Nietzche, Plato was sort of eastern
> sounding.  I like his cave analogy.  Nice guy, okay he passes.
> 
> Mr. N, on the other hand, is a boring megalomaniac.  Great bathroom reading.
> I keep him next to Reader's Digest.

Mr. N talks about the same things Plato does.  I'm really surprised you don't
like him.  He's as anti-establishment as you are.
 
> This is your conjecture.  The way a yogi might study the Vedas for example, is
> to take a single line and meditate on it for hours, maybe days, maybe years.
> Sound familiar?  

Yep.  Bible scholarship.
 
>> is that book learning is VERY
>>important - but that everything you learn must be examined, and made real
>>with practice. Ultimately, book learning must be discarded, but you have to
>>learn it before you can discard it.
> 
> ...you made this up didn't you?
> 
>>	Lots of people seem to adopt an extreme anti-intellectual position
>>which (as I understand it) is just as erroneous as extreme "book learning".
>>The spontaneous but IGNORANT person is no better than an animal and can never
>>rise above their environmentally conditioned reactions.
> 
> I don't know how "anti-intellectual" I am.  I like to think I hate everyone
> equally.  What I am against is talk (and writing) against which there is no
> standard for comparison.  As far as I am concerned, Nietzche is as much myth
> as the Bible--until I see God, there is only belief.  Belief without proof is
> only discussion.

But that's the problem.  What constitutes real proof?

> I didn't claim proof.

But you must have proof, to relegate Western intellectualism as being only
discussions, while your own beliefs are more than that.

> I claimed that yogis have a defined "practice" and that
> the results of these practices can be measured.  That is, at the very most
> basic level, if you follow yogic practice, including diet, you will at the
> very least reduce blood pressure, and be able to reduce breathing and heart
> rate at will.  These side effects are measurable, irrespective of perceptions
> one may have.  

Does that mean you rely only upon empirical evidence as proof?
 
> See above.  I can also tell you that you can sit in a church from now until
> doomsday and you will never have the consistency of perceptions or the
> residual calm effected by consistent yogic meditation.  

A ridiculous claim.  Study the history of the Church, and you will find amidst
the crime and politics real people whose faith in God brought them peace and a
consistent perception.  You're terribly selective in your examples.
  
>>	Well, who does he have to be in order to have an opinion? Many people
>>seem to think that his analysis of reason, morality and power are insightful.
> 
> The point is that he is not treated in a useful framework such that his
> "knowledge" might actually serve a purpose.  People cite him in the same way
> they do scripture, as though it had inherent, obvious value. 

People cite him in the same way they cite any philosopher.  Your own prejudices
against him have skewed your perceptions.  It is because he attacks many of the
old cherished philosophical tenets that Nietzsche is widely read.  His main
opponent was Plato, the Father of Western Philosophy.  He also recognized his
own position, and his megalomanic titles attacked his own position as an
authority.
 
>>	You're going off the rhetorical deep-end on this one, Peter. I refer
>>you to folks like Theresa of Avila, Kant, Spinoza, and Aquinas. They
>>all lived deeply spiritual lives - it wasn't all just talk for them - they
>>claimed to experience their philosophies.
> 
> Anh, yer probably right.  But anyway, each of the philosophers you mention are
> mostly unknown to most people.  And they are in no way represented in the make
> up of our culture.

Your ignorance of Western philosophy is appalling.  If you don't think that
current thinking hasn't been influenced by Kant, Spinoza, Aquinas, Descartes,
Pascal, and Nietzsche, then you really need to take a second look.  Western
philosophic tradition is mostly a building process, with thinkers taking
earlier ideas and either expanding on them or attacking them.  It has been said
that all of Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato, which is pretty
accurate.  Also accurate is that the big names in philosophy have, in their own
way, influenced later thinkers and also the way we think.
 
> ...these are just my opinions after all.  I don't really care who believes
> them.

Good thing.  Your overwhelming prejudice against the West makes you sound like
a raving intellectual bigot: ignorant, close-minded, with a lack of
compassion for what others think or feel.  Congratulations.  Sounds like you're
well on your way on that path of enlightenment.

Jeff  
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts