I said a prayer for the King after I read this. Shame that William has not adopted the piety of his father and grandmother. He is deeply mistaken if he thinks a secular monarch will be more respected.
Nice. I feel that I have learnt a lot from Taleb (including Lindy) over the last 20 years or so. But the last few years he seems to have lost it a bit on twitter, I often can't figure out what he's getting so worked up about.
It reads to me as being unwilling to decide between incommensurable sets of values. Possibly not a bad attribute for someone in his position, but not something shared by most of his subjects, who you know, generally take a view one way or the other.
I'm awfully sorry (not !) to be pernickity, but isn't Mr Parker Bowles still alive ?
Which means that if one is so appallingly bigoted as to believe in Christianity, the King and the Queen-Consort have been living together in an adulterous relationship - publicly and scandalously - for many years now.
I appreciate the information about Charles' connection with Orthodoxy. It's a great pity historically that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I did not look East for solutions to the religious conundrums of their day, Henry could have had his annulment (the Eastern Church has accepted marital dissolutions since the heyday of Byzantium) and the Church of England could have become a royal-guided national church--which, No, not an ideal thing (see the ugly reality of the current Russian church, supine before Vladimir Putin) but maybe would have given it more ballast to withstand withering modernity, and also to link it with its First Millennium history before the rise of the Imperial Papacy in the West.
I was just thinking about Charles' and most other peoples' attraction to some form of mysticism. I think it speaks to the feeling that something in the modern world isn't right; is out of kilter. Then I think about the H.G. Wells short story about 'the Door in the Wall', behind which everything IS right and to the schoolboy protagonist it feels like he has finally found home, finally found where he belongs. Compared to time spent in the beautifu garden behind the door in the wall, his actual life seems dreary and emotionless.
Yet the way I read the story (it ends in tragedy) is that this is just an illusion, similar to those dreams men have where the woman at your side is your perfect soul mate, so intimate that you don't even need to speak to her - though you can't even remember what she looks like once you wake up.
I find it very suspicious that the only way to access such pleasant states is either in dreams, or by shutting yourself away in a monastery for decades, booking into a Zen retreat for 10 weeks, sitting cross-legged on a tatami mat until you finally persuade yourself that you don't actually exist, or some other form of sensory deprivation that allows you to slip your anchor - for a while. Of course, these lovely mental states immediately dissolve on contact with the actual world.
In short, I view our mystic yearning as just part of the human condition. There is no concomitant 'glove' that fits the hand we reach with, no lovely garden where an equally lovely girl waits for us behind the door in the wall. Yes, life really is this shite.
Many, many people have mystical experiences, notably in adolescence, before adult cynicism and selfishness have laid our souls low.
Nothing can be finally proved - but arbitrarily choosing the pessimistic conclusion, means that one will likely die in the same despair as HG Wells experienced in his last years, as detailed in his final book "Mind at the end of its Tether."
Besides, the existence of God is proved by the fact that the universe exists - nothing in nature is self-created or conceivably can be.
You're right, many, many people do claim to have had mystical experiences. But you have to also bear in mind that many, many people are unhinged, under the influence of some substance, dreaming, temporarily feverish, self-deceiving, attention-seeking weirdos and charlatans.
Yeah, adoloscents aren't the least bit selfish. I certainly wasn't.
What you call an arbitrary choice between the pessismistic and optimistic options looks to me more like a choice between the realistic world we are all already familiar with and the imagined world of wishful thinking. Put in those terms the choice looks less arbitrary.
Call me an old skeptic but the existence of something rather than nothing doesn't suggest to my mind that God, and more specifically your version of the Christian god (as opposed to the thousands of other gods), created it. Whenever I look at a banana I don't think, 'Bananas aren't self-creating so therefore God must have made them'. I guess that's just how my grey, unimaginative mind works.
Under a microscope, the world of reality is quite different from the world we're familiar with.
Wishful thinking ? There's much more of that on the Atheist side of the debate.
You talk about thousands of other gods. But outside Hinduism, only One God is worshipped nowadays. And as you aren't a Hindu believer, it's clear you're just dragging these gods across the argument as a red herring.
I didn't say anything about God creating bananas - nature created them. But it's self-evident to any honest person that God created nature.
'Under a microscope, the world of reality is quite different from the world we're familiar with.'
Therefore it's highly likely that the Creator of the Universe's son was born in a manger in Bethlehem? Is that it?
'You talk about thousands of other gods. But outside Hinduism, only One God is worshipped nowadays.'
Psychology Today puts the number of gods worshipped throughout history at about 33,000. Quite how they calculate that number is a mystery to me but, whatever. In saying that there is basically only one god worshipped today, you don't think you're being a bit Abraham-centric, do you? What about all the tribes you've never even heard of? And isn't lumping Yahweh in with Allah a bit of a stretch?
'And as you aren't a Hindu believer, it's clear you're just dragging these gods across the argument as a red herring.'
I'm not a christian believer either but we were talking not about what god I believe in but what gods PEOPLE believe in, remember?
'I didn't say anything about God creating bananas - nature created them.'
I know you didn't say God created bananas. I said it. Fine, so nature created bananas. And who created nature?
'But it's self-evident to any honest person that God created nature.'
Actually no. It's self-evident to religious people. Honesty doesn't enter into it, at least not in the way you mean.
The gods people believe in ? - "believed" in is more accurate.
Polytheism can be ignored, since the likelihood of the universe having been created, let alone run, by a committee is zero.
So yes - we are back to Abraham. And as Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in the God of Abraham, any debate about God is going to be Abraham-centric.
Diversity doesn't operate in this matter and you're Lost in Pixieland if you think it does.
There is certainly no solution in objects of mechanical thought (the projections in Plato's cave) which would include our self image. But I understand from the merest glimpses and more from people I think to be reliable there may be something beyond mechanical thought. BTW I read that HG Wells was a mad shagger with seriously outsized equipment
Poor Herbert George was the son of a cricketer whose career was ended (retired hurt) when he had to leap from a window to escape being caught in flagrante by the lady's husband.
One of HG's lovers explained his sexual pull by saying that he "smelt of honey."
Charles is far less aware of his limits than was his mother and that is a dangerous thing. Take this - an essential message, uniting most religions, is something like: thought is illusion, including the sense of sense created by thought and liberation from this smallness exists only beyond thought, but Charles, somewhat like society, has taken this message too literally, and converted it into another creature of thought. Quote from a famous Sufi mystic.
Ah that's actually Coleman Barks! Here's a more literal translation from the Persian:
"Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a 'desert plain.' For us, there is a 'passion' in the midst of that expanse. The knower [of God] who reaches there will prostrate [in prayer],/ (For) there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' (in) that place."
I'll take Charles III's interest in Greek Orthodoxy as a complimentary acknowledgement that the ancient Church has more substance than the trend-seeking modern non-denominational churches.
Nothing wrong with feeling spiritual and marvelling at the mysteries of the universe. For me, Christianity has many good things running through it, but the stuff about Charles’s loin cloth being dipped in holy oil from the Mount of Olives and blessed by a mystic is mumbo-jumbo on stilts!
I said a prayer for the King after I read this. Shame that William has not adopted the piety of his father and grandmother. He is deeply mistaken if he thinks a secular monarch will be more respected.
Yeah it's like the European monarchs showing their parsimony by riding on bicycles. It's a short ride from majesty to MAMIL.
After one of his visits to Mount Athos, a monk was quoted in one newspaper saying Charles was ‘Orthodox in his heart’.
Sure he didn't say 'unorthodox'?
Apparently, His Majesty is a perennialist as well:
https://unherd.com/2022/09/charles-will-be-our-perennialist-king/
Nicholas Taleb on His Majesty:
https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1568664913844862983?lang=en
Nice. I feel that I have learnt a lot from Taleb (including Lindy) over the last 20 years or so. But the last few years he seems to have lost it a bit on twitter, I often can't figure out what he's getting so worked up about.
I think everyone has lost it a bit on Twitter!
The question therefore is whether Twitter is Lindy!
It reads to me as being unwilling to decide between incommensurable sets of values. Possibly not a bad attribute for someone in his position, but not something shared by most of his subjects, who you know, generally take a view one way or the other.
Any mention of Abdal Hakim Murad always reminds me that his brother is chief football writer for The Times.
Which brother is the more prophetic voice ?
I'm awfully sorry (not !) to be pernickity, but isn't Mr Parker Bowles still alive ?
Which means that if one is so appallingly bigoted as to believe in Christianity, the King and the Queen-Consort have been living together in an adulterous relationship - publicly and scandalously - for many years now.
I appreciate the information about Charles' connection with Orthodoxy. It's a great pity historically that Henry VIII and Elizabeth I did not look East for solutions to the religious conundrums of their day, Henry could have had his annulment (the Eastern Church has accepted marital dissolutions since the heyday of Byzantium) and the Church of England could have become a royal-guided national church--which, No, not an ideal thing (see the ugly reality of the current Russian church, supine before Vladimir Putin) but maybe would have given it more ballast to withstand withering modernity, and also to link it with its First Millennium history before the rise of the Imperial Papacy in the West.
"Oh, we all want to be a bit Byzantine,
We all want to be beside the sea"
Umm, neither did the population of Tudor England.
I was just thinking about Charles' and most other peoples' attraction to some form of mysticism. I think it speaks to the feeling that something in the modern world isn't right; is out of kilter. Then I think about the H.G. Wells short story about 'the Door in the Wall', behind which everything IS right and to the schoolboy protagonist it feels like he has finally found home, finally found where he belongs. Compared to time spent in the beautifu garden behind the door in the wall, his actual life seems dreary and emotionless.
Yet the way I read the story (it ends in tragedy) is that this is just an illusion, similar to those dreams men have where the woman at your side is your perfect soul mate, so intimate that you don't even need to speak to her - though you can't even remember what she looks like once you wake up.
I find it very suspicious that the only way to access such pleasant states is either in dreams, or by shutting yourself away in a monastery for decades, booking into a Zen retreat for 10 weeks, sitting cross-legged on a tatami mat until you finally persuade yourself that you don't actually exist, or some other form of sensory deprivation that allows you to slip your anchor - for a while. Of course, these lovely mental states immediately dissolve on contact with the actual world.
In short, I view our mystic yearning as just part of the human condition. There is no concomitant 'glove' that fits the hand we reach with, no lovely garden where an equally lovely girl waits for us behind the door in the wall. Yes, life really is this shite.
Many, many people have mystical experiences, notably in adolescence, before adult cynicism and selfishness have laid our souls low.
Nothing can be finally proved - but arbitrarily choosing the pessimistic conclusion, means that one will likely die in the same despair as HG Wells experienced in his last years, as detailed in his final book "Mind at the end of its Tether."
Besides, the existence of God is proved by the fact that the universe exists - nothing in nature is self-created or conceivably can be.
You're right, many, many people do claim to have had mystical experiences. But you have to also bear in mind that many, many people are unhinged, under the influence of some substance, dreaming, temporarily feverish, self-deceiving, attention-seeking weirdos and charlatans.
Yeah, adoloscents aren't the least bit selfish. I certainly wasn't.
What you call an arbitrary choice between the pessismistic and optimistic options looks to me more like a choice between the realistic world we are all already familiar with and the imagined world of wishful thinking. Put in those terms the choice looks less arbitrary.
Call me an old skeptic but the existence of something rather than nothing doesn't suggest to my mind that God, and more specifically your version of the Christian god (as opposed to the thousands of other gods), created it. Whenever I look at a banana I don't think, 'Bananas aren't self-creating so therefore God must have made them'. I guess that's just how my grey, unimaginative mind works.
Under a microscope, the world of reality is quite different from the world we're familiar with.
Wishful thinking ? There's much more of that on the Atheist side of the debate.
You talk about thousands of other gods. But outside Hinduism, only One God is worshipped nowadays. And as you aren't a Hindu believer, it's clear you're just dragging these gods across the argument as a red herring.
I didn't say anything about God creating bananas - nature created them. But it's self-evident to any honest person that God created nature.
Only crooks and ostriches can be atheists.
'Under a microscope, the world of reality is quite different from the world we're familiar with.'
Therefore it's highly likely that the Creator of the Universe's son was born in a manger in Bethlehem? Is that it?
'You talk about thousands of other gods. But outside Hinduism, only One God is worshipped nowadays.'
Psychology Today puts the number of gods worshipped throughout history at about 33,000. Quite how they calculate that number is a mystery to me but, whatever. In saying that there is basically only one god worshipped today, you don't think you're being a bit Abraham-centric, do you? What about all the tribes you've never even heard of? And isn't lumping Yahweh in with Allah a bit of a stretch?
'And as you aren't a Hindu believer, it's clear you're just dragging these gods across the argument as a red herring.'
I'm not a christian believer either but we were talking not about what god I believe in but what gods PEOPLE believe in, remember?
'I didn't say anything about God creating bananas - nature created them.'
I know you didn't say God created bananas. I said it. Fine, so nature created bananas. And who created nature?
'But it's self-evident to any honest person that God created nature.'
Actually no. It's self-evident to religious people. Honesty doesn't enter into it, at least not in the way you mean.
Two separate issues.
The existence of God is a fact.
What you believe about God is a matter of faith.
The gods people believe in ? - "believed" in is more accurate.
Polytheism can be ignored, since the likelihood of the universe having been created, let alone run, by a committee is zero.
So yes - we are back to Abraham. And as Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in the God of Abraham, any debate about God is going to be Abraham-centric.
Diversity doesn't operate in this matter and you're Lost in Pixieland if you think it does.
There is certainly no solution in objects of mechanical thought (the projections in Plato's cave) which would include our self image. But I understand from the merest glimpses and more from people I think to be reliable there may be something beyond mechanical thought. BTW I read that HG Wells was a mad shagger with seriously outsized equipment
have never heard that, about the equipment
Poor Herbert George was the son of a cricketer whose career was ended (retired hurt) when he had to leap from a window to escape being caught in flagrante by the lady's husband.
One of HG's lovers explained his sexual pull by saying that he "smelt of honey."
So who jumped out of the window, Herbert George or his cricketing father?
Yes, I'd read about his philandering though the 'outsized equipment' bit was new to me. Probably a rumour put around by H.G. himself.
HGW's overcoat was preserved for many years at the offices of the New Statesman as a marvel and supposed aid to seduction.
I remember Mervyn Stockwood as possibly the only person ever to make Michael Palin lose his rag.
Charles is far less aware of his limits than was his mother and that is a dangerous thing. Take this - an essential message, uniting most religions, is something like: thought is illusion, including the sense of sense created by thought and liberation from this smallness exists only beyond thought, but Charles, somewhat like society, has taken this message too literally, and converted it into another creature of thought. Quote from a famous Sufi mystic.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”
― Rumi
Ah that's actually Coleman Barks! Here's a more literal translation from the Persian:
"Beyond Islam and unbelief there is a 'desert plain.' For us, there is a 'passion' in the midst of that expanse. The knower [of God] who reaches there will prostrate [in prayer],/ (For) there is neither Islam nor unbelief, nor any 'where' (in) that place."
Source:
https://www.dar-al-masnavi.org/corrections_popular.html
Thank you. I too much trusted my cursory search of the internet. But the concept is the same.
And it is a message that is constant in literature too. I noticed it in Burns the other day- which kids reading for school
But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!
Which is why Christian writers insist that we should live "in the present moment" forgetting past and future.
It is hoped that Charles will become as Orthodox in his reign as he was as Prince of Wales.
"Jesus said: I am the way, the truth and the life. No one can come to the Father but by me" (John 14:6)
Does the "most Christian king" agree with these words of Christ ?
I'll take Charles III's interest in Greek Orthodoxy as a complimentary acknowledgement that the ancient Church has more substance than the trend-seeking modern non-denominational churches.
Supernatural mumbo jumbo
No, Atheism is the irrational, mumbo jumbo belief system with its ludicrous belief in a self-created, self-assembled universe.
That belief is mere magic and superstition .
btw Was Jesus's agonising death on the Cross mumbo jumbo too ?
Nothing wrong with feeling spiritual and marvelling at the mysteries of the universe. For me, Christianity has many good things running through it, but the stuff about Charles’s loin cloth being dipped in holy oil from the Mount of Olives and blessed by a mystic is mumbo-jumbo on stilts!