Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
Trees and stones with powers to throw?
Log In to post a reply

204 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
BuckyE
468 posts

Re: Trees and stones with powers to throw? Dowsing
May 24, 2012, 15:20
Resonox wrote:
BuckyE wrote:
No, sorry, most brains do NOT have an innate drive to reach out beyond their inherited/taught/learned/imbibed/etc. limits. Present company excluded, of course.

They might have the capacity in some theoretical sense, but without that capacity being carefully nurtured, MOST brains never exercize it.

SOME brains seem to come with this "reaching out/creating/dicking with accepted norms" built in from the beginning, but those are few and very, very far between.


All brains do have the capacity...whether or not they use it is another matter for another discussion...we can and do all dream, wish and aspire...it is part of the brain's psyche...but as you say not everyone exercises(acts on?) this. Again I'll say...religion is the main holding back element for this....whether this is a guru/priest/shaman/pope telling us not to do this because it is his/her power granted by the deity/spirit/energy du choix and only he/she can guide us to enlightenment...You'll find many people on here have been following their own paths....I choose not to follow their directions, my prerogative, but because I don't agree with them doesn't mean I am saying they are wrong, in fact in their own way they are more correct than me as it could be argued...at least they have a path......in the meantime, I'll carry on dreaming because I can! :0)



Well, to a certain degree we may be cross-talking. In my mind, to "dream, wish and aspire" is not the same thing as being creative, or striking out in some new direction, etc. I fully agree many if not most people do, for example, hope their children are better off than they have been. That's an aspiration, of course. But it usually takes place within a given-by-the-society-into-which-we're-born framework (Durkheim and later Berger's "nomos").

I think of my work colleague and friend of long ago who said to me, "I'm not trying to understand the world, Buck. I'm just trying to live in it." So at that rate, which my experience in this ol' world tells me is much more common/normal than, say, Vincent van Gogh starving for his weirdo despised art, organized/institutional religions are the outcome of normal human thinking. And NOT an imposition on a bunch of downtrodden huddled masses yearning to dream free, so to speak. People want to internalize the nomos, otherwise they live in anomy!

Of course, if you believe all religious thought is bunk, then internalizing a religion-based nomos is going to lead to Marxian alienation, sure. Isn't this basically what the Buddha was saying? (Littlestone, help me out here!) But the Buddha took it even further, telling us the entire function of Mind was to create Maya/Illusion, an Uber-alienation from Truth.

Note though that if something like that were true, then we'd be back in my boat: people don't want to be free to REALLY dream/set their psyches free, in the sense of cook up (Hah! The Raw and the Cooked) truly new wild stuff. We just want more of what we're told is better stuff. Interesting.
Topic Outline:

The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index