Comment: I pondered a bit about how to do this Venn diagram up right. Rather than present something that represents my own belief system - and the beliefs I question - I thought it wiser to come up with something that can represent the beliefs of anyone - something that can be read in multiple directions.
This diagram would do well to be taught and fully internalized for the youth still in grace school, before they make their minds up about everything, so they may go through life constantly never making their minds up about anything. Tragic as that could be be, Socrates would approve… though he could be jailed for merely approving of ambivalence
I look forward to a long, not boring conversation with you on how to define 'reality' etc in a real, honest to god coffee shop that I hope doesn't go away while we talk past each other ...
I was chatting to a fella who was very much an outspoken atheist, insisting on this as a self-defining label. Being more of a woolly headed West Coast mystic-type myself I hesitated to ask him what exactly it was that he meant by the term "atheist". He and I both had a bit of a meeting of minds when we pondered the mystical qualities of great consciousness altering music. And I know that the Toronto based priest and educator Tom Harper would often quip about agnostics being nothing other than polite atheists. I would say that the real problems that we have in communicating stem from the fact that we can't even successfully define our basic terms. We all look at the world through a unique prism of consciousness and ......gosh I'm a crushing bore. Good job you didn't find me in a coffee shop to regale you with all of this; whatever this all was. Good article Geoff. Food for thought.
Nice riff on an emerging Thing. To whit: maybe we NEVER HAVE understood the vaporous ideological foundations of the vaunted civilized-industrial world. And maybe social media (boo!) has proven (yay!) that there as many versions of reality as there are people on the planet.
This diagram would do well to be taught and fully internalized for the youth still in grace school, before they make their minds up about everything, so they may go through life constantly never making their minds up about anything. Tragic as that could be be, Socrates would approve… though he could be jailed for merely approving of ambivalence
I look forward to a long, not boring conversation with you on how to define 'reality' etc in a real, honest to god coffee shop that I hope doesn't go away while we talk past each other ...
I was chatting to a fella who was very much an outspoken atheist, insisting on this as a self-defining label. Being more of a woolly headed West Coast mystic-type myself I hesitated to ask him what exactly it was that he meant by the term "atheist". He and I both had a bit of a meeting of minds when we pondered the mystical qualities of great consciousness altering music. And I know that the Toronto based priest and educator Tom Harper would often quip about agnostics being nothing other than polite atheists. I would say that the real problems that we have in communicating stem from the fact that we can't even successfully define our basic terms. We all look at the world through a unique prism of consciousness and ......gosh I'm a crushing bore. Good job you didn't find me in a coffee shop to regale you with all of this; whatever this all was. Good article Geoff. Food for thought.
Nice riff on an emerging Thing. To whit: maybe we NEVER HAVE understood the vaporous ideological foundations of the vaunted civilized-industrial world. And maybe social media (boo!) has proven (yay!) that there as many versions of reality as there are people on the planet.