No Robots

Actually, here's something from the part of Our Christ that I have posted online:

Wherever a man wishes to do something, he always has ulterior motives; ultimately he is always out for himself. Even Paul would not have been the Paul in whom Christ alone lived if he had been one of his actual disciples. Christ appeared to Paul; thus he was free to let Christ alone live in him; if, however, he had come into contact with Christ during his earthly life, his personality would have been both exalted and humiliated, and this might well have caused Paul to sicken and to indulge in the folly of self-exaltation as he tried to demonstrate that he had both the freedom and the power to be a Christ on his own account! In the long run egoism cannot keep silence in the presence of the living; pride must assert itself, along with the overestimation of one's own strength. The very fact that the genius's disciples think themselves able to be creative (this is how it is with those who imagine they are with child, yet never give birth), makes them unclean, unfit to be in the service of his work.

Elijah

Sorry for the delay.
Spinoza’s quote sounds like a wisdom teacher with “wisdom” understood commonly and earthly not spiritually like the Tao or Logos (if Brunner’s take on Spinoza is correct and my take on Brunner is close). Brunner’s quote seems more about bringing Spinoza up to Christ’s level than demonstrating an understanding of what Christ was doing on the Cross or why he is considered the Messiah.

I’m not saying that either one is technically incorrect just that they are only demonstrating a partial understanding of Christ and his sacrifice.
Freedom is being able to do what you choose and as you wish. Awareness or knowledge of the universe doesn’t prevent or solve people from having to work in order to survive. We aren’t slaves because of a certain perspective of the universe, we are slaves because we have to work for other men in order to survive.
So there is no spiritual aspect to the universe, it is completely matter/substance in motion?
Everyone has a family, sure. But the tendency is to either put your interests first or your friends and family first. If you put your interests first you develop abilities around those interests and if you put your family and friends first you develop socially. They aren’t mutually exclusive but we are creatures of habit and tend to drift one way or the other. (But that can change in a person’s life rapidly on which direction they are heading.) The duality in people (for me) is between those with ability and those with sociability. Jews vs Gentiles, Nerds vs the Jocks Introverts vs extroverts and Asperger’s vs Normal Type. That’s the duality causing problems in our society. Not between people who see the universe composed of things vs a unified universe.
I think it’s completely irrelevant to today’s discussion along with pretty much all metaphysical discussion, (not that I don’t like to talk about it) but the reality is that people are starving and warring and slaving their lives away. I just don’t see any philosophical principal about the universe doing anything for the people to ease that situation. The people who wish to rule over other people must be addressed.
But they don’t believe in any spiritual/constant aspect to the universe?
You are correct that we only experience things in motion but that doesn’t mean that things in motion is the limit of the universe, just that what’s in motion is the limit of our physical senses.
But the problem here is the “things” not the material/substance in motion right?
IMO that should explain spirit (mental activity) but the soul (observer of activity) should be more constant.
You can see the chatter in your head as an extension or part of the constant flux (material universe) but once you do then who you are changes a little bit from what you are observing to an unobservable watcher. The whole “when the student is ready the teacher will appear” deal where you learn that the voice in your head isn’t actually you but a guide/demon/spirit manifesting from the world through you.
I say we just leave this off the table until it becomes necessary because I’m sure not seeing it.
That sounds good. How is it unmoving and where does Brunner talk about it? (Yes, I know I need to finish reading what you’ve already gave me… I will I will.)
And it’s constantly moving and no part of it is constant right?
It sounds like the goal here is to explain our thoughts materialistically.
Maybe you should change the goal from changing how people view the problems, to the number of people working on the problems. If you worked on freeing the people from the building of their ruler’s kingdoms then you would have more people to pursue the more intellectual problems which would inevitably lead to more solutions.
That means I really have to finish it then. What’s your native language?
I got side tracked on some Plato stuff. Plato is doing the exact same conversation I think we are having in Parmenides to Theaetetus and then in the Sophist.
“Entirely new” is relative to the sample compared and the detail considered. The universe constantly creating a new moment makes everything we create new. Creativity to me is all formula mixed with experience and directed with intent or perspective; what makes it new is the constant uniqueness of the universe.

What’s a receptive genius? Are they noticeable or like black holes of information?
Not sure about the intent of this quote. What do you think Jesus’ motives were? I agree with the assessment that Paul meeting a living Christ would have been a conflict but that a dead messiah was something a truly elect individual like himself could accept serving. I don’t know about Paul trying to make himself out as a Christ. I think he represents when one of the initial other geniuses out there received the faith in Jesus as the Christ and just had a different understanding than the uneducated common folk that had witnessed his sacrifice that were called apostles.

Paul is convinced by the conviction in the followers he persecuted until death with Stephen. True conviction is rare and contagious when recognized as Paul did in the apostles and as the apostles did of Jesus in his willingness to die for them.

No Robots

No worries. The pace is about right for me.

Ah, well, you won't find that. Brunner spends a lot of time discussing how Christ was without a political dimension. This is one of the things that makes him unique among the prophets.

Spinoza can be tough to read correctly. But Brunner certainly would not agree that Spinoza meant anything other than spiritual truth when speaking here of Christ's wisdom.


He does place them more or less at the same level, yes. For more on Brunner's take on the crucifixion and on the question of Messiah, you'll really have to read the whole book.

The basic position on this side is that there is a war between those who are pro-spirit and those who are anti-spirit. Christ is the great warrior hero and martyr of the cause.

The goal is to create a community of the free spirit which will emancipate its members from enslavement to the demands of pure materialism.

Not at all. It is just that we think of the universe as matter. What is primary is thought. Thought/spirit is the truth, and matter is our human representation of this truth.

We may not be far apart here. What you call ability I would call orientation toward reflection, toward thought. The key for these people is to find comfort and repose in thought, in the knowledge of the infinity and eternity of thought.

The people of thought/spirit have to get their act together in order to do anything at all about the practical problems faced by man as a whole. We are what we think. We have to free ourselves of bloody war thought before we can free others.

You are not seeing the spiritual/constant in all this because you miss the distinction between practical understanding and spiritual thought. Practical understanding is the universe understood as things in motion. Spiritual thought is the universe understood as infinite and eternal enthinkment.

Quite. We surpass the physical senses only in thought, only as enthinkment.

No. It is not enough to say that the universe is a continuum of matter. It must be said that the universe is a continuum of indeterminate substance that we humans construe in thought as matter. Each genus of thing thinks substance in its own way.

Yes, soul is changeless. But that doesn't mean that it is inert. We constantly experience it within our thought as generative power.

When you identify your own consciousness as a finite instance of the One consciousness, you see yourself as the absolute observing itself from a particular vantage point.

He talks about this everywhere. Here is one quotation:

The Cogitant is the One and the All and each component of the Many, of the thingly reality of this world of motion, of the ideatum. For everything ideated is what is ideated by the Cogitant; it is the relative of the Absolute, the Absolute in the form of relativity. Happy or unhappy, all of us in the world of motion live the Many, ideated by the Cogitant. But the Cogitant, the essence, is One, and we are blessed in the Cogitant, in the essence, which is in us, not like the being of things, ideated things, things in motion, but which is truly in us, without having been drawn into motion; we become aware of it, secretly, at the point where motion ceases.

No, it is just that all we perceive via our senses is motion. It is only in the depth of thought that we can experience absolute and eternal constancy.

Yes, but all the while bearing in mind that this is but an exercise in practicality, that it ultimately resides on the premise that all that we construe as matter is thought.

People have to learn to free themselves by modifying how they think.

I am a native English speaker. But I can't say that I've given Materialism and Idealism a close reading. To my knowledge, I am the only English speaker to fully embrace Brunner's work. I've done what I can to learn some German. I know French quite well. I've had to choose my area of concentration, because Brunner's work covers so much ground. I thought that the Christology would have the greatest potential for popularization. Your questioning has forced me to look closely at some areas that I had only skipped over. I really feel now that I have a good grasp of the power of his doctrine of the attributes, and for that I am grateful to you.

It is quite common for Brunner's readers to turn toward Plato.

We have both inner and outer experience of the creative power of the universe. We experience it inwardly as the constant upswelling of thought, and we experience it outwardly as the constant influx of sense data. It is only the former that applies to spiritual creativity: art, philosophy and mysticism. It takes a special individual to take the inner experience of thought and transform it into an external work.

A receptive genius is someone who internalizes creative work, transforming his own thought as much as possible into a reproduction of that which inspires him. Francis of Assisi, for example, is a reproductive genius, reproducing Christ in himself, as much as possible.

To lead people to spiritual truth: Hear, Israel! Beingness is our god, Beingness is One!

Elijah

I would say that is a miss on Brunner’s part in regards to Christ’s actions and that is what I’m trying to get you to tack onto your understanding of Christ. Brunner may have been unaware of the political aspects because he was focusing/countering other aspects but a Jewish Messiah claimant that is unaware of the political aspects of what he is doing is no Jewish Messiah claimant nor a genius of any kind. This is especially true of a messiah claimant that is trying to initiate a new kind of authority for man which serves the people instead of rules over them. IMO it is absurd to think the man didn’t consider the impact his idea would have politically on the world.
Yea but it makes the who mystic talk confusing when there isn’t an actual spiritual element that the person is connecting with, but a spiritual perspective, poetically speaking.
Oh boy, it’s like 400 something pages right? Ok, but you should work on the creative side of articulating it for consumption by the masses then.
Martyr of the Cause but not the messiah. That’s the problem I have is that the Brunner stuff is ignoring the Messiah aspect to make him a spokesperson for a particular philosophical outlook. Now I know I’m the hypocrite here trying to use him for a political outlook but its not particular, it’s just the general direction man would head if serving a dead spiritual king instead of the living kings.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable. Aldous Huxley

Will they still have to work to survive, is this freedom strictly mental?
But thought is just the absolute responding to itself which is just substance in motion. The problem with materialism is that it is considered to have parts not just one substance in motion correct?
I guess you could say it’s orientation towards thought but I think there should be a more accurate way to describe the divide between people in the regard to ability vs sociability.
I think the people of ability that want to help the people have to stand up to the people of ability that want to ruler over people. The sons of man vs the rulers of man. The Moses, Elijah and Jesus types vs the Pharaoh, King and Emperor types until the rulers of man realize this world has no place for them. For me that is the calling for people of ability to help protect the masses from people like ourselves who have turned against the people. The same phenomenon that leads to ability can lead to a distrust fear and hate of the masses.

We don’t need a new understanding of the universe to fix the problems we face, we need courage to confront those who oppress us.
Well if enthinkment is just a substance responding to itself it’s just materialism and there’s nothing spiritual about it. I don’t have a problem seeing the visible world as how you are describing it; it’s the constant aspect of the universe I’m having a hard time pinning down.
Isn’t thought just the physical activity of the brain responding to stimulation by the world?

The point I was trying to make is that our senses show us the half of the universe that moves but that doesn’t mean it’s the limit of the universe. We could be enveloped and filled with a spiritual constant and would never be aware of it.
Yea but it’s still a substance theory right you just don’t prefer the label of matter because of the standard perception of matter to come in parts, or is there something more?
Could you elaborate on this some? I thought that the universe was one and at motion now there is a constant observer? Which I’m for but wondering how it fits.
Like the Prophet Hicks said? Longer better version.
Do you think he is talking about an actual point in the universe where the motion ceases or trying to view the world from that perspective in order to see that the entire universe is in motion?
Thought is in motion how is it going to help you experience eternal constancy?
Are you trying to side step into some immaterialism like Berkeley’s?
The rulers of this planet would love nothing more than people to mentally free themselves as long as they are still physically slaves. Sure go ahead think what you want but as long as you keep working on these pyramids and teach your children to do the same so they can replace you once you’re dead.

It’s that eastern thinking that you can believe you’re free then you are free or you can reunderstand your suffering so you don’t suffer. It’s all crap that doesn't address the actual problems which is the point IMO of Jesus cursing the fig tree like which Buddha gained his insight under.
Plato is the pimp. I got into him when I was obsessed with the nag hammadi and was trying to understand the Gnostics.

Out of Plato," says Ralph Waldo Emerson, "come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought.

I don’t think it takes a special individual at all to turn thought into external work. I think that’s how most work gets done.
Creative genius creates outward and the receptive genius creates/changes himself? Or is it about where the influence is coming from?
Ok say he isn’t meant to be understood as a messiah but as a teacher of a universal principal, was his sacrifice intentional to help spread the message by creating a meme of self-sacrifice or circumstantial due to the hostility of the masses towards that particular message?


P.S.

They are like the bird on the telegraph wire, to which we have already referred: just as the bird sits on the telegraph wire without having the least notion of telegraphy, so our learned scholars sit on a great many things. And what do they do? The same thing as the bird on the wire.

I wonder if Mr. Canada himself “Leonard Cohen” was a fan.

No Robots

Brunner has a long passage on Christ's lack of a political dimension. This does not mean that Christianity is apolitical. Brunner declares that "religionless Christian Democracy is coming." This religionless Christian Democracy is the practical application of Christ's mysticism.

I think I see the difficulty here. Again, you have to keep in mind the distinction between practical understanding and spiritual thought. In describing reality, Spinoza distinguishes between natura naturata and natura naturans. The former is the external sensory world of multiplicity, whereas the latter is the inner principle of unitary spirit/thought. Christ is completely integrated with natura naturans.

I don't think it needs to be read linearly. It may be best to pick and choose in it. The index, which I have posted, is comprehensive.

Yeah, I know. You have to start where the masses are, and right now they are at the point of questioning Christ's existence. Brunner saw this was happening, and wrote his book from that starting point. He wants to draw those who are disenchanted with both mythicism and Christian religion.

Christ modifies the concept of Messiah, so that it utterly subsumes and consumes the entire realm of the political, making it disappear. You'll find a lot on this in the book.

The intent is to create conditions which minimize material work and maximize spiritual work. This is in keeping with Buckminster Fuller's principle of ephemeralization.

The problem with materialism is that it rejects the idea that substance is ultimately only thinkable as thought, not matter. In practical terms, we must think of substance as matter, but in the depth of thought, there is only Thought.

Well, if you come up with something, let me know.

Well said. That is why it is crucial to understand the difference between the masses and the leadership of the masses. The attack must be against the latter, and trust must be put in the former. This is Christ's strategy. Brunner's strategy is a modernization of this.

Our oppression and our problems come from misunderstanding the universe.

Well, I hope that further reading will help clarify this for you.

This is the practical, scientific, materialist way of looking at thought. From a spiritual/intellectual perspective, however, thought is the one and all.

Precisely. The goal of spiritual awakening is to become aware of the spiritual constant. But this is not separate from the material universe, but rather it is what the material universe actually is, as opposed to how we usually understand it.

We don't know what substance is other than to say that we understand it as matter; but when we think it, it is thought itself.

The universe is one, and we experience this as motion. But when we truly think about the universe, as an idea, we see it as motionless, eternal, infinite. Furthermore, we realize that we are in essence one with this motionless, eternal and infinite Beingness. We also realize that every thing that we perceive is also one with this Beingness. We also realize that every thing has its own inner experience of Beingness, its own way of conceiving the motionles, eternal and infinite. There are as many ways of experiencing Beingness as their are genera of things, an infinite number. We can imagine what other genera experience of Being, but we can only know our own, namely, matter in motion. We can imagine the inner experience of other genera by analogy with our own. What we have then is an infinity of infinities, infinite forms without limit. I imagine it as an infinite number of infinite fractals.

Neem Karoli Baba totally pwned Baba Ram Dass on the whole acid/spirituality thing.

He's trying to show that our practical perception of the universe as being in motion is belied by our spiritual apperception of it as motionless unity.

We, transient things that we are, cannot experience eternal constancy. All we can do is approach it. We do this by spiritual exercise, by reflecting on the infinity of infinities by which the eternal manifests itself to us.

Brunner does go into a detailed critique of Berkeley, which I have quoted. He also calls Spinoza a radical immaterialist. If you keep reading Materialism and Idealism this should become more clear.

Working for material freedom is indeed the highest priority, but the reason is that this will allow more people to pursue spiritual freedom. The spiritually free are more or less able to accommodate themselves to various levels of material servitude. This is particularly the case of those who are spiritually receptive. This is a useful quality until such time as there arises complete emancipation through the community of the free spirit.

Definitely. The goal is to transform the world, not to leave it. But there must be leaven in the bread, ie. a community that embodies spirit in spite of the world.

Our Christ has quite a bit of fascinating insight into the Gnostics.

And, as Brunner says, Spinoza sits in the chair of philosophy that had been vacant since Plato.

Most work is practical imitation. Some work is spiritual reproduction. And then there is spiritual production. The first pages of Our Christ goes into this in detail.

The creative genius produces purely from within himself. He hears the music, knows the truth and experiences the love not from the outside, but from the inside. The reproductive genius hears, knows and experiences from the outside, from the work of the productive genius; and then the reproductive genius sets about responding to that work, changing his thought through metanoia.

The spokesmen of spirit are always a threat to the established order. Christ's genius led him to make use of his own destruction to further his cause.

Heh. I'm glad you caught that. I often think of Cohen and Brunner together. Cohen is a Brunnerian manqué. It's really too bad. He could have saved himself a lot of trouble over women, fame and money, not to mention Buddhism. He would have done well to have read something from Rose Auslander, a poet who was part of the community of Brunnerians who came from Czernowitz.

No Robots

A very nice blog entry on Ausländer.

Elijah

I think I see where you’re going maybe. Jesus wasn’t involved in politics because that wasn’t the example he was setting for the people in order to get rid of the political power? Apolitical, political revolution.
It’s just awareness or functioning as if there are no things and we are part of a unified substance/One with the intent of others imitating that behavior.
It’s just a small minority that question his existence in an attempt to get rid of religion, because they believe that will bring peace, like you believe if people didn’t see the world as containing things there would somehow be peace.
By disappear does he means fulfill the need?
You’re trying to build a commune that has robots/machines do all the work? I’m down for that but I don’t think it’ll catch on in the main society because people are working because that is a way to keep them occupied and controlled not because there is so much work that needs to be done that we can’t automate it. If the authorities don’t keep the people busy then they are going to rise up on them and make demands and cause all kinds of trouble. They need everybody working and too tired to even think of revolution.
Substance is synonymous with matter to me. Whether it’s unified as one or divided into infinite parts makes no difference, if it moves we are talking about the same thing. Thought is the response of substance to itself.
Ability/sociability is ok. Introvert/extrovert. The key is to not be insulting to the other side and focus on the faults of your own kind. And by no means do I think its right to say that the majority needs to be more like the minority and the world will be ok. You have to focus on adapting to them and hopefully they will imitate and try to adapt to the spiritual community. If you say, “you guys need to be more spiritual” or whatever they are just going to say, “no, you need to be more worldly” or whatever but if you say ,“I need to be more like them” then hopefully they will say, “no, I need to be more like you.”
How does Brunner plan on attacking them? Is your spiritual community meant to be a trap for when the authority comes to try and stop you?
Uhhh no way Hosay. We imitate the behavior of our parents who were/are slaves, who imitated the behavior from their parents, as you will pass the behavior on to your kids if you have any. The only thing that breaks that trend is awareness of that trend.
I’m pretty sure I was right. It’s just materialist monism/substance monism. There is nothing spiritual about Brunner’s world view other than it’s all one unified substance.
Yea it’s just labeling the All which is a substance “thought” because the substance extends into our thoughts.
There is not a spiritual constant. The only constant is motion that means there is no spiritual aspect to his universe.
Just labeling of the substance still right? It’s the thingness aspect of materialism he had a problem with.
You observe the universe from a constant perspective but there is no constant observer/soul in the universe/All/One?
There is not constancy to experience but all is motion and that we can experience. He reinterprets Plato like the Sophists he was arguing against in the texts I mentioned earlier so there is no constant side to the universe/intellectual sphere… no divides no dualisms, no God’s, no things. I was wondering about his dark world stuff on page 146, if he was going to try to make it constant or if he was reifying the void but he didn’t seem to go that way with it. (Not that he was clear to me.)
So radical he goes back to being a materialist.
I think the selling point is more time with their families for the masses. That’s how you sell it to the majority of people who don’t obsess over philosophy or their particular art all day.
An informal community within a larger community not a separate one is key IMO. A small spiritual group can reform a major city and if that works then the spiritual people in other major cities will form and follow the pattern set down by the initial group.
The point I was making was simply that no matter how mundane the work, eventually creativity shows up from all people in the same way. Experience multiplied by the current circumstance.
Was that “use” establishing a meme of self sacrifice to help spread his message?
Now I know you’ve been brainwashed when you start putting Brunner over Cohen. Crazy crazy crazy. “There is a war.”

No Robots

Not sure I’m following here. Please explain.

Sounds about right.


Yeah, I suppose so.



He himself has no need of the political. It is only we who require a practical way of living.

Quite right. It has to be a kind of guerrilla action. Use machines to maximize your freedom from the Machine.

There’s yer problem right there. Think of substance as thought/mind/spirit and see how that changes your perspective on matter/things.

Right, and one way of thinking is in terms of thingly matter in motion. But this is not the only way of thinking. It is, however, the way that humans think. To think spiritually, ie. to think without reference to thingly material motion, is to effectively leave specifically human thought behind.

I don’t think this is right. Certainly we must conform as best we can to the outward appearance of the masses. But we don’t have to think like them, we don’t have to speak like them and, ultimately, we don’t have to act like them.

Brunner’s idea is to broadcast a call through the masses, but addressed to the spiritually inclined. His work provides a more than adequate critique of and defense against the dogmas of the leadership of the masses.

We have to know in what specific way our parents have been wrong.

We are materialists because it is the human way of thinking to see everything as matter; but we are modified materialists, because we recognize that the material conceptualization is simply the relative, human understanding of substance: substance in itself remains beyond the reach of our imagination. We can only approach it through artistic feeling, philosophical speculation, and mystical apperception.

Not at all. Thought is the substance, and our thinking of things is merely the way thought content takes form in us humans.

In science there is no constant; all is motion. But in spiritual apperception, the Absolute is without motion.

Thingliness is the same thing as materialism. Brunner’s problem with materialism is that in common thought it is absolutized rather than relativized.

The universe/All/One is the constant. It observes itself in every one of the infinite number of expressions that it generates. Each genus of thing expresses universal constancy in its own way. In the human, universal constancy is expressed only as abstraction from motion, motion seen as eternal and infinite Beingness. This is the dividing line between science and philosophy.

Plato argued against the Sophists for the idea of ideas, the ultimate abstraction that stands beyond motion. This is what Brunner, too, upholds. But Brunner creates a bridge back from this abstraction so that we can use it for practical purposes, not directly, but by modifying our understanding of all the things that we perceive so that we see them more and more as at one with the idea of ideas.

From the basis of absolute idealism, we reengage with the world as thorough-going yet relative materialists.

Quite so. We want everyone to have more leisure, so that we can use ours to further our own objectives.

Perhaps. I can tell you, though, that group formation is extremely difficult. Maybe it is because of the times we are in. We are talking about maybe a handful of Brunnerians scattered around the world.

I think we need to keep the great models of creativity before us, recognize their superiority, and attempt to make use of their work to improve ourselves and the world around us. Only by doing this can we hope to foster conditions where there will be more great creative geniuses.

The genius’s creative death… is based on the egoism of his work: he dies out of love for the common good.—Our Christ, p. 444.

Look at the index to Our Christ. I have posted a searchable version. See the heading Literature. See the subheading Literature has become weariness of life. It is this to which Cohen has succumbed. Don’t get me wrong. I do see a very close connection between the two. Look at the header of my last blog post. But Cohen needs a source of unending creative power. And he is unlikely to find it through Buddhism. See "Zen Buddhism and the Western Mind" by Brunnerian Walter Bernard.

Elijah

If he is trying to set an example to follow then setting a political example will encourage people to involve themselves in politics making the political arena larger instead of taking away its power. Set a more serving apolitical example and people will follow that to serve man that way instead of politically.
Seems like your dodging either calling him the Messiah or not or at least a claimant that should be understood that way.
Machines can ease the task but they aren’t going to be able to take care of the taskmaster… that’s on us. They will just keep finding more and more work to be done.
Not to sound super arrogant but I don’t think I’m having a problem with Brunner’s worldview. Not that he is clear to understand but it seems pretty straight forward. I don’t have a problem understanding thought as substance or the substance as thought but that doesn’t turn it spiritual or ideal.
I think the spiritual aspect is moving past the motion not the thinglyness, obviously since spiritual is consistent with eternal and constant which is the opposite of motion. You are saying that we are all in motion with no discernible things in the universe and we need to look past the things in order to see the true motion but I say our observer is a thing that observes motion and it’s the motion we need to look past to see the spiritual truth.

5. Jesus said, "Know what is in front of your face, and what is hidden from you will be disclosed to you. Gospel of Thomas

I think this comes down to what you think the differences are in the two groups. I can see the source of extroversion as trusting people and introverts as not trusting, either by bad experiences or imitating your parents distrust. Once you see it as, our ability advantage comes from time away from the pack because of distrust, it’s easy to see the need to become more like them in order to bring back to the pack what we have learned but only as one of the pack again.
That really didn’t tell me what you had in mind with the authority or if he was planning on them trying to stop his idea…. I will get to read later for myself but you may still want to take the opportunity to practice framing this point for future conversations.
They were wrong in not knowing the solution to the problem of humanity’s enslavement and just following lockstep with how their family and friends were behaving even if that meant a slow walk to the slaughterhouse that your children would latter follow you to.
I’m not having any problems imagining the substance or it even running through my imagination. Are you trying to say that it is the imagining of it that makes it a thing and therefore isn’t an accurate representation?
Please define how “thought” should be understood differently than “substance” and not that “thought” is “substance”.
What science tests isn’t constant, what some of them are trying to figure out it is constant, that being the laws of the universe.
That’s what makes you guys monist materialists…. Still materialists. Atoms or an atom makes no difference IMO.
So nothing at rest.
Plato’s ultimate abstraction was a spiritual constant and Brunner’s is substance in motion who’s constant was just a mental abstraction of the constant motion. Two completely contradicting philosophies.
Brunner is the Sophist that Plato is arguing against.

"Str. Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and
from the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands
rocks and oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that
the things only which can be touched or handled have being or essence,
because they define being and body as one, and if any one else says
that what is not a body exists they altogether despise him, and will
hear of nothing but body.

Theaet. I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they
are.

Str. And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend
themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending
that true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal
ideas; the bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to
be the very truth, they break up into little bits by their
arguments, and affirm them to be, not essence, but generation and
motion. Between the two armies, Theaetetus, there is always an endless
conflict raging concerning these matters." Sophist

"THEODORUS: No small, war, indeed, for in Ionia the sect makes rapid strides; the disciples of Heracleitus are most energetic upholders of the doctrine.

SOCRATES: Then we are the more bound, my dear Theodorus, to examine the question from the foundation as it is set forth by themselves.

THEODORUS: Certainly we are. About these speculations of Heracleitus, which, as you say, are as old as Homer, or even older still, the Ephesians themselves, who profess to know them, are downright mad, and you cannot talk with them on the subject. For, in accordance with their text-books, they are always in motion; but as for dwelling upon an argument or a question, and quietly asking and answering in turn, they can no more do so than they can fly; or rather, the determination of these fellows not to have a particle of rest in them is more than the utmost powers of negation can express. If you ask any of them a question, he will produce, as from a quiver, sayings brief and dark, and shoot them at you; and if you inquire the reason of what he has said, you will be hit by some other new-fangled word, and will make no way with any of them, nor they with one another; their great care is, not to allow of any settled principle either in their arguments or in their minds, conceiving, as I imagine, that any such principle would be stationary; for they are at war with the stationary, and do what they can to drive it out everywhere." Theaetetus

There is no reason to use the word idealism here; there are no ideals in this worldview, it’s just corporal substance in motion and that is the sum total.
I know about the difficulties, that’s why I usually plan on not having any group to help me… not that I have completely given up on a group forming. I’m still actively trying but there is just so few people who are capable of helping and sooooooooooo many more who need help.
I don’t think we need to encourage mankind idolizing their celebrities (artistic or otherwise) anymore than they already do. The people need to be exposed to the work not the workers of art. People so focused on their art that they develop exceptionally above those around them are going to be littered with other types of defects that they didn’t get time to work on with the masses.
Sounds like a “no” he didn’t use his death to spread a self-sacrifice meme.
Yea I don’t see him finding too much creative power from Zen but that’s what the ladies are for. I think they both failed in preaching/teaching/singing to the masses instead of setting the example we need to follow to our freedom.

No Robots

Right! That's what I was hoping you meant.

Yeah, you can get a fair picture of Brunner's take by searching messiah in the index.

Right.

Does it help to consider the German word Geist, which includes thought, mind, spirit, and ideal?

Right, but we really can't separate things and motion. I mean, we can abstractly consider the idea of motion, but, ultimately, it is some thing that has to be doing the moving. Nor can we really imagine an absolutely stationary thing. So, in spiritual thought, we consider both things and their motion as relative perceptions of unchanging substance.

I agree with what you say, and I don't really understand why you think that I don't. I do say that motion is merely a relative perception, that ultimate truth has nothing to do with motion.

I agree, except that we are never really one of the pack again; we are modified, we deal with them differently than we did before. I never suffered so much as when I tried to really BE like them. It just ended up as a grotesque parody.

He felt that there was no stopping it: they will always be birds on the wire, oblivious to the message being passed under their feet.

Right, but how do we break that?

Yup. We can only represent things imaginally, and all imaginal representations are inherently relative. We can approach non-imaginal thought through art, philosophy and mysticism.

Thought and substance are identical. They are synonyms. Spinoza's substance is the same as Plato's idea of ideas. In the practical understanding, though, substance is understood as material things. We need to think this way for practical purposes, but when we absolutize this practical materialist conception, the nature of thought becomes incomprehensible, and we get all kinds of untenable propositions like Descartes' ghost in the machine connected by the pineal gland and the contemporary doctrine of thought as an emergent property of matter.

All physical constants are relative, as contemporary physics affirms. As Spinoza puts it:

I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.

You may have to pick up a copy of Science, spirit, superstition, where you will find the core of Brunner's physical theory. The atom is a constructive fiction that helps us navigate within our conception of reality as the continuum of thingly motion. But it is a fiction, because the real is fundamentally neither thingly nor motional.

Right, no thing at rest, and we as things never encounter rest, except at the point where we stop seeing ourselves as things, and see ourselves as at one with the One.

Plato's enemy is absolute materialism. This is also Brunner's enemy. Plato does not blame Heraclitus, but his followers, who have absolutized what Heraclitus knew to be relative. Heraclitus understood the distinction between the relative perception of thingly motion on the one hand; and the absolute truth of unmoving eternal and infinite substance, which he called Logos (See here), on the other. Every true thinker has a stereoscopic view of reality as absolutely constant thought and as relative material motion. Brunner has a long discussion on the common misreading of Plato on the question of the doctrine of motion, some of which you will find in Science, Spirit, Superstition. Don't forget that Socrates said of Heraclitus' book:

The concepts I understand are great, but I believe that the concepts I can't understand are great too. However, the reader needs to be an excellent swimmer like those from Dilos, so not to be drowned from his book.

Surely you're not arguing for something like the crack suicide squad in "Life of Brian"?

There's a line in Brunner's book to the effect that, "a woman isn't a thing, but a person."

I think you'd have to look at some of the primary documents before you could adequately judge whether Brunner had followed the right strategy. He emphatically did not want to preach to the masses. He wanted only to preach through them, through their media, their wires, directly to the few who would be spiritually receptive to what he had to say. Here is something I like:

My work is of greater use than for what it has been used so far. When I am dead, it should be upheld in the memory of the world. For a hundred years, if it is necessary that long, there should appear every two years in newspapers—in some of the leading ones—as a paid advertisement and an offer, an appropriate reference to my unused output in the libraries. If not during those hundred years, then he will come later by a different route. I do not know the time, but I do know the man—I confide in the future. And I am blessing the man through the dark who will come to rouse me and will make my work take root in mankind; so that others may be able to live what I merely had to write.—Kunst, Philosophie, Mystik, 38-9.