I acknowledged my initial response to praxis was unnecessarily snotty. That's why I followed up with the other one. I wonder, what would constitute necessary snottiness? On the other hand, I think the primary tools in understanding people and their ideas are empathy and compassion. Intellectual empathy is indispensable for philosophy. — T Clark

Share the feeling of other peoples concepts and ideas?

Anyway, I wanted to say that I've felt a little disturbed by your response yesterday and that I regret offending you. That was not my intention at all and had I even suspected that it might offend I would have said it differently, or not at all. To be honest I still do not understand your reaction. Is it actually rude to describe your list as superfluous details? In hindsight, I can appreciate that you may have put some degree of mental/emotional investment in the list.

I found your list and the point you were attempting to make with it interesting, which is why I read the entire thing. It's just that I found little that spoke of your values and goals. But then I suspect that you deliberately avoided those kinds of details, in attempting to support your point, I suppose.

I think that just shows a lack of imagination, vision, on your part. Seeing people as they are is a skill not everyone has. — T Clark

Getting back to your reaction, it appears emotional to me because it doesn't quite make sense. The use of imagination and seeing something as it is are very different things, right? A more cogent critique may have been to suggest a lack of good inductive reasoning on my part and failing to put all the pieces together to form an accurate or true picture of you.

This feels true to life to me (at least true to life, sometimes). But I'm not making the connection between this and intimacy [qua dissolver (maybe) of metanarratives] — csalisbury

Yeah, I ended up deleting some of what I originally wrote. Nietzsche wrote somewhere about women making all the seriousness of men look like folly. I've recently become friends with an impressive women. She's smart, wise, open, real. She never got sucked into the genre that includes Nietzsche, Marx, etc. But I don't feel superior to her in some general way, as much as I generally derive a sense of status from questioning every sacred cow. The value of that game shrinks in her presence. I think it matters that I find her physically attractive. She awakens the life force, let's say, and the life force is only impressed with demystification as the prelude to a new mystery. So it's as if a homoerotic/narcissistic game dissolves in a field of heterosexual tension. But the same thing does not occur with the woman I actually possess. And it's pretty rare generally. Yet I have a sense that actual possession would break the spell.

I am interested in understanding these questions through Western philosophy among other things. And sure, Kant is olde worlde, but his insights into the nature of knowledge are still highly relevant.

You see, the prevailing meta-narrative for a lot of people is that one, we're the outcome of chance, and two, we're animals. And that has philosophical consequences. There's a lot of nihilism in the atmosphere - it might not be dramatic or highly visible, but it's in the air we breathe. — Wayfarer

Sure. I love the Western philosophical tradition. I love it for being a snarling, arrogant, questioning tradition. And I even love Kant. He smashed the idea of direct access. He made bias or structuring-by-the-subject fundamental. Kant was post-truth before post-truth was cool. (I'm playing fast and loose here, but there was a reason he was found threatening by the thinkers of his day. He may be tame compared to Nietzsche, but that kind of thinking leads toward Nietzsche, no matter it's temporary place-saving for religion. (Actually this is a rich issue. Have you looked at After Finitude? Meillasoux thinks he is an anti-theologian, but he writes like a theologian, and insists that the dead may be resurrected while railing against anti-scientific superstition. He is a fascinating personality. I don't find him convincing as a whole, but reading him was like reading good science-fiction, and I was convinced here and there at the level of detail. I enjoy Schopenhauer in the same way.

Also, yes, I agree that that's a prevailing narrative. It's also painfully plausible. Is this prevailing narrative not a result of a Western philosophical tradition that de-divinized the world? That's the dark comedy of the situation. The same freedom of mind that helps make great engineering possible also opens up the question of what all of this hustle and bustle means. And treating man as one more animal is great for developing medicine but again threatens us with a vision of being pointless monkeys. I think educated liberals do their best to navigate this threat by leaning on a religion of Progress. Heaven exists down here but not yet. And then the beatniks and other individualistic 'mystics' look for Heaven in the mortal moment. And we all find it in the moment now in then, lost in what the critical philosopher might call an illusion or projection.

So intimacy requires what lord jim is reluctant to do. But no one cares that much, except for jim. In fact they wish hed stay around and own it. They've been displaying their flaws all along, and can sympathize with someone who has flaws too. But the guy who has no flaws or history - he's harder to relate to. The tragedy is that on the one hand Jim thinks they'll be apalled, while on the other hand, just at the moment they're least-apalled, and most sympathetic - that's when Jim leaves. — csalisbury

I haven't read Lord Jim, but I take it that you're talking about our tendency to flee [those who know] our pasts in order to reinvent ourselves for a new audience. Yeah, I can relate to that. I have stuck with some lovers and friends through series of transformations, so I also know the opposite. For me this ties into the forgiveness of sin, which is what I see as the profound core of Christianity. 'Personality is an illusion.' This is something I used to say without being able to specify what it meant to me. Of course I agree that pure authenticity is a myth, and it assumes that there is some true individual core, when maybe the core is just what we all have in common. The mask is a contingent adaptation. The mask is religion, while the blood is beneath religion as its soil. And I don't mean (of course) blood as religion, though there's always the threat of a cult in any recognition of the hollowness of the explicit. I just mean that we are warm-blooded community-craving creatures.

But people can be nasty indeed. That's why true friendship is so beautiful. All the energy usually spent on projecting the ability to retaliate is channeled into a willingness to bend and forgive. For me the best Christian thinkers have wisely avoided any kind of system building or orthodoxy (Blake). The forgiveness of sin is everything. Of course asserting even this in the wrong tone would be an imperial, unforgiving move. And it's one thing to decide that forgiveness is the essence of Christianity and another thing to decide that this core Christianity is all or especially what is needed. I can imagine too much forgiveness and understanding (Zelig.)

Is this prevailing narrative not a result of a Western philosophical tradition that de-divinized the world? — syntax

Pretty much. The Great Disenchantment.

In order to survive, one must be schooled in reality. Of course. Those who mean well call it growing up, and there is a grain of truth to that. But that is not all. Always a bit unsettled and irritable, collaborating consciousness looks around for its lost naivete, to which there is no way back, because consciousness-raising is irreversible.
...
Arguing behind the back and through the head of the opponent has become common practice in modern critique. The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, illusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions—since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and persistent counterpositions through ideology critique. In this point, as one can easily see, official Marxism has the greatest ambition, since the major part of its theoretical energy is dedicated to outdoing all non-Marxist theories and exposing them as "bourgeois ideologies." Only by continually outdoing the others, can ideologists succeed in "living" with the plurality of ideologies. De facto, the critique of ideology implies the attempt to construct a hierarchy between unmasking and unmasked theory. In the war of consciousness, getting on top, that is, achieving a synthesis of claims to power and better insights, is crucial.
...
The right of ideology critique to use ad hominem arguments was indirectly acknowledged
even by the strictest absolutist of reason, J. G. Fichte, whom Heine aptly compared to Napoleon when he said that the kind of philosophy one chooses depends on the kind of person one is. This critique intrudes into the conditions under which human beings form opinions with either compassionate serenity or cruel seriousness. It seizes error from behind and tears at its roots in practical life. This procedure is not exactly modest, but its immodesty is excused with a reference to the principle of the unity of truth. What is brought to light by the vivisecting approach is the everlasting embarrassment of ideas confronted by the interests underlying them: human, all too human; egoisms, class privileges, resentments, steadfastness of hegemonic powers. Under such illumination, the opposing subject appears not only psychologically but also sociologically and politically undermined. Accordingly, its standpoint can be understood only if one adds to its self-portrayals what is, in fact, hidden behind and below them. In this way, ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an "author" better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape my attention—and conversely. — Sloterdijk

One ideology tries to pull another ideology's pants down in public, usually in terms of some virtue that their intended audience takes for granted. I'm interested in what happens when a thinker begins to see this desire to humiliate and stand over as the kernel of the game --abandons the pretense of doing so for something higher than a nice place to look down from. Rorty examines something like this memorably in C, I, & S. He sees the dark side of his 'ironist' (whom he mischievously describes as a her.)

And that would indeed seem to suggest a balance between scientific capitalism and a philosophy that emphasises the ‘fruits of contemplation’. — Wayfarer

Right, and my point would be that this disenchantment is perhaps the primary fruit of contemplation. And that's why I find college-brochures so sickly-sweet and the cheery 'critical thinking' propaganda posted in many classrooms at my university embarrassing and absurd. The institution needs to be taken seriously (uncritically) in the first place in order to able to pontificate about the values of critical thought. Those who scoff at the sentimental veneer of the brochures and treat the university as a magic certificate dispenser are perhaps those who really practice what those posters preach. Similarly, the relativistic/nihilistic sophomore resented by the trained philosophy professor may be getting the essence of Western philosophy right, no matter his lack of polish and knowledge of detail.

But maybe you don't mean critical thinking but rather simply the resuscitation of pre-critical traditions. Well, I definitely have mixed feelings about the shape of things myself. I just don't see how we can go back to a place that probably only looks good in retrospect. I think our best bet is the triumph of a global humanism. It would probably be good to get off this planet and open a new frontier. Then those who hate one another can just get away from one another.

Share the feeling of other peoples concepts and ideas? — praxis

I deal a lot with environmental regulations. There are a lot of different ones out there. Often, each state has it's own and I work in a number of states. When I'm reading a regulation, especially one I haven't dealt with before, I find myself looking at what they say from the regulators' viewpoint, trying to understand their ideas. That helps me put together my understanding of what the intentions are and how to meet the requirements. I feel something similar when I come across other ideas I am unfamiliar with.

Anyway, I wanted to say that I've felt a little disturbed by your response yesterday and that I regret offending you. That was not my intention at all and had I even suspected that it might offend I would have said it differently, or not at all. — praxis

You didn't do anything wrong or say anything wrong. As I said, my response was condescending, which I regret. That's why I re-responded right away.

I found your list and the point you were attempting to make with it interesting, which is why I read the entire thing. It's just that I found little that spoke of your values and goals. But then I suspect that you deliberately avoided those kinds of details, in attempting to support your point, I suppose. — praxis

It comes back to differences between your and my understanding. I wouldn't exactly call my list poetry, but it said what it said in a kind of impressionistic, poetic way. At least it was intended to. To me, that's the only way to understand someone - paint a picture. Show, don't tell.

The use of imagination and seeing something as it is are very different things, right? A more cogent critique may have been to suggest a lack of good inductive reasoning on my part and failing to put all the pieces together to form an accurate or true picture of you. — praxis

I was using the word "seeing" in a non-standard way. I should have been clearer. What I mean by seeing is to perceive them without interpretation or concepts, just as they are. That certainly takes imagination. To me, empathy is 80% imagination. I don't think you can know someone, see them, using inductive reasoning.

I'm interested in what happens when a thinker begins to see this desire to humiliate and stand over as the kernel of the game --abandons the pretense of doing so for something higher than a nice place to look down from. — syntax

Sounds like an icon complex or fear of enthusiasm. Or more raw, as the guy in the movie about Turing said: it feels good to be mean.

Zizek's essays on violence are relevant here. Discussing the Paris riots (2005 - or thereabouts), and recent terrorist attacks, he argues that what the protagonists lack is a positive narrative. Even those who claim one, such as Islam, are in fact fighting from a position within, and naturally at the bottom of, a western/capitalist world view.

The message underlying the violence and destruction is purely and simply self expression, with no higher meaning or purpose.

This leads to two, hopefully relevant, questions: can we choose our metanarratives; and is it necessary to accept the wider social/cultural environment in order to function, as a "social animal" at all?

The tragedy is that on the one hand Jim thinks they'll be apalled, while on the other hand, just at the moment they're least-apalled, and most sympathetic - that's when Jim leaves. — csalisbury

"Heart of Darkness" is my favorite book, and Marlow is my favorite character in literature, but I've never read "Lord Jim." I've been thinking it's probably time I should.

It comes back to differences between your and my understanding. I wouldn't exactly call my list poetry, but it said what it said in a kind of impressionistic, poetic way. At least it was intended to. To me, that's the only way to understand someone - paint a picture. Show, don't tell. — T Clark

As I mentioned, I liked your list. I can easily appreciate it aesthetically. In fact it wasn't explicitly clear why I liked it until now. This doesn't change the fact that it conveys little important information about you in fact or feeling to me. I suppose this could be because it simply doesn't resonate, despite my being able to appreciate the portrait aesthetically. We are very different people.

An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks.

What do you believe the fundamental difference is between showing and telling?

What I mean by seeing is to perceive them without interpretation or concepts, just as they are. That certainly takes imagination. To me, empathy is 80% imagination. — T Clark

I believe the current theory is that empathy is based on mirror neurons. When witnessing someone getting injured, for instance, the same sensation is simulated in our mind, though the actual pain is suppressed, as when we imagine or visualize a painful experience. This is involuntary, though I think empathy may be clouded for various reasons.

I think it's misleading to say 'perceive without interpretation or concepts' when what you mean is attempting to see from someone else's perspective. That is imagining, of course.

Sounds like an icon complex or fear of enthusiasm. Or more raw, as the guy in the movie about Turing said: it feels good to be mean. — frank

The thrill in meanness definitely rings true. I've seen extremely well-read and intelligent posters on forums like these throw off the mask in the middle of high-minded conversations and call their conversational partner an idiot. Just to clarify my own view, I do think that in fact philosophers really are fascinated by the grand ideas they debate. The status-game is a powerful force in the background which becomes visible in the eruptions mentioned above. (I understand myself to want to see all of this accurately rather than to accuse or defend it.)

'Fear of enthusiasm' is good, too. I think this is also fear of being a fool. This seems like an important part of the self-consciously scientific or critical personality. The mind is creative and naturally projects patterns. The 'negative' power defers the enjoyment of these patterns as truths and instead takes a pleasure in deferment itself as a dynamic 'truthing-falsing.'

The message underlying the violence and destruction is purely and simply self expression, with no higher meaning or purpose. — Shatter

Right. Yes, this seems to be in the mix. In Blood Meridian this would be 'the taste for mindless violence.'

And this may connect to what may make a global humanism impossible. We tend to need a despicable out-group. Within the tribe all is warm and cozy, but perhaps only because this brutal, mindless self-assertion is channeled outward. The monkey rips its charity-event tuxedo off and throws excrement.

As I mentioned, I liked your list. I can easily appreciate it aesthetically. In fact it wasn't explicitly clear why I liked it until now. This doesn't change the fact that it conveys little important information about you in fact or feeling to me. I suppose this could be because it simply doesn't resonate, despite my being able to appreciate the portrait aesthetically. We are very different people. — praxis

I think you've expressed it exactly - sometimes what I write resonates with others, sometimes it doesn't. Just to be clear, this is not an intellectual thing for me, it's visceral. If I had to write an autometanarrative, I wouldn't know how to do it other than the way I have. Maybe not exactly the same way, but the same general approach. I've tried before and I can't make it work. It feels false. It feels not me.

An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks. — praxis

I don't buy that, but thanks for giving me a chance to bring out one of my favorite quotes from Emerson. I seem to use it in some post every week or so

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

When he says "genius" he doesn't mean like Einstein genius. It's more like essence, true nature. I have to believe that what I write means something.

I believe the current theory is that empathy is based on mirror neurons. When witnessing someone getting injured, for instance, the same sensation is simulated in our mind, though the actual pain is suppressed, as when we imagine or visualize a painful experience. This is involuntary, though I think empathy may be clouded for various reasons. — praxis

Not sure how this relates to what I wrote. Imagination and empathy are experiences. Mirror neurons are anatomical structures. The mind isn't the brain. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.

An artwork may or may not say anything of importance. A Thomas Kinkade painting may appeal to norms of beauty and generally be perceived as pretty but it may not really show much. The subject matter of a Kinkade painting, the little cottage in the woods or whatever, may have special meaning to the artist, and he may therefore feel that the subject matter says volumes about him. He is privy to a narrative that the audience lacks.
— praxis

I don't buy that, — T Clark

What exactly don't you buy? I'm afraid the Emerson quote doesn't help me understand your frugality. I would like to understand.

I have to believe that what I write means something. — T Clark

An aesthetic expression, assuming that's essentially what you're talking about, may cause a range of feelings and have a range of meanings depending on the individual experiencing it, and also depending on the skill and intentions of the writer. It also depends of how well the writer knows their audience and what might resonate with them.

In terms of expressing meaning, narrative is a powerful tool.

What exactly don't you buy? I'm afraid the Emerson quote doesn't help me understand your frugality. I would like to understand. — praxis

An aesthetic expression, assuming that's essentially what you're talking about, may cause a range of feelings and have a range of meanings depending on the individual experiencing it, and also depending on the skill and intentions of the writer. It also depends of how well the writer knows their audience and what might resonate with them. — praxis

Tracing back, this started with a discussion of my way of presenting what may or may not be called my metanarrative. I said I use a "poetic," "impressionistic" approach. You said that approach did not help you understand my values and goals. You pointed out that an artistic approach may be significant in pointing out some issues or themes that are personally important to the artist, but might not provide anything meaningful to people in general. In response to that, I trotted out Emerson.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. — T Clark

Did I get that chain of events right?

In terms of expressing meaning, narrative is a powerful tool. — praxis

I agree. I am a person of words and stories. But I don't think my life has a story or a meaning. That's the point I've been trying to make.

Did I get that chain of events right? — T Clark

Okay, forget it.

I don't think my life has a story or a meaning. — T Clark

We may not know the meaning till it's over.

Okay, forget it. — praxis

Sometimes people just don't get each other.

Rather, for whatever reason some don't try. I don't know what that reason is and it's not important. Sorry to bother you.

Now we’re even. One condescending response each.

You didn't really try, right? That's fine, your choice. I have suspicions but I don't know why that is. I'm actually sorry for bothering you.

The mania for "identity" seems to be the deepest of the unconscious programmings,
so deeply buried that it evades even attentive reflection for a long time. A formal somebody, as bearer of our social identifications, is, so to speak, programmed into us. It guarantees in almost every aspect the priority of what is alien over what is one's own. Where "I" seem to be, others always went before me in order to automatize me through socialization. Our true self-experience in original Nobodiness remains in this world buried under taboo and panic. Basically, however, no life has a name. The self-conscious nobody in us —who acquires names and identities only through its "social birth"-remains the living source of freedom. The living Nobody, in spite of the horror of socialization, remembers the energetic paradises beneath the personalities. Its life soil is the mentally alert body, which we should call not nobody but yesbody and which is able to develop in the course of individuation from an areflexive "narcissism" to a reflected "self-discovery in the world cosmos." In this Nobody, the last enlightenment, as critique of the illusion of privacy and egoism, comes to an end. If mystical advances into such "innermost" zones of preindividual emptiness used to be exclusively a matter for meditative minorities, today there are good reasons for hoping that in our world, torn by struggling identifications, majorities for such enlightenment will finally be found. — Sloterdijk

I personally relate to this 'nobodiness,' which I associate with the sense of wearing one's life as a mask ('personality is an illusion'). The 'problem' is that this 'nobodiness' easily becomes another sophisticated ego-narrative. Has this or that person achieved a sense of personality being an illusion? Something like the 'noble savage' seems to reappear. This kind of thinking is also presented in Love's Body. Is it not that case that any valuable 'spiritual' insight can be used in an ugly 'unspiritual' way? As insights become institutionalized and hardened for general use, do they not tend to lose force?

I have found that, when I do put people into boxes, it's a mistake. I regret it later. It doesn't work. It makes me make bad decisions and act like an asshole. This is not a statement of principle, it's what I've learned from experience or maybe always knew.

You will see that all my discussions end up with a quote from Lao Tzu eventually. This time I'll go with a paraphrase - The person who can be characterized is not the eternal person. — T Clark

I can very much relate. I see the danger of boxing people. But for me a certain amount of boxing is inescapable.

I agree that there is something like an eternal person beneath all the role-play, but then I find myself categorizing anyway between those who have a knowing gleam in their eye and everyone else. Is he or she in on the joke of personality? Is he or she behind/above all these word games we play?

If I had to write an autometanarrative, I wouldn't know how to do it other than the way I have. Maybe not exactly the same way, but the same general approach. I've tried before and I can't make it work. It feels false. It feels not me. — T Clark

For me, that itself is the narrative. It's one I relate to. Every nice little autobiographical tale feels wrong or false. I see that that is implied in your original impressionistic portrait, but only in retrospect. The abstract statement of your situation is far more revealing for me.

In this Nobody, the last enlightenment, as critique of the illusion of privacy and egoism, comes to an end. If mystical advances into such "innermost" zones of preindividual emptiness used to be exclusively a matter for meditative minorities, today there are good reasons for hoping that in our world, torn by struggling identifications, majorities for such enlightenment will finally be found.
— Sloterdijk — syntax

That’s a pretty interesting quotation. From the viewpoint of anthropology of religion, there’s probably a reason why such pursuits are the prerogative of ‘meditative minorities’ - namely, because the way is narrow, and the path difficult. Divesting oneself of the imagined selves and social selves that comprise one’s sense of self, which is what the mystical path entails, goes against the current of everything deemed socially useful. So I don’t see how it could be of interest to the majority. In fact, in most religious cultures, the special role of the religious is recognised - the original meaning of ‘secular’ was to demarcate the two kinds of lives. Whereas now it’s all secular [or fancies itself to be, although how much of what it thinks of as ‘secular’ is actually sublimated religiosity is another matter.]

A mischievous thought I often have is that the aim of so-called secular or Enightenment philosophy is actually to make the world safe for the ignorant - ‘ignorance’ in the sense of ‘avidya’, spiritually unaware. Whereas, again, in a religious culture, one’s ultimate identity is understood in terms of union with the Divine or liberation from the wheel of life, secular culture by definition has no aim beyond - well, what exactly? More and more pleasurable experiences, better health, greater utility - ultimately space travel, the physical pursuit of heaven.

In order to survive, one must be schooled in reality. Of course. Those who mean well call it growing up, and there is a grain of truth to that. But that is not all. Always a bit unsettled and irritable, collaborating consciousness looks around for its lost naivete, to which there is no way back, because consciousness-raising is irreversible. — Sloterdijk

Notice the reflexive link between ‘reality’ and ‘survival’. This is because evolutionary biology, which has displaced religion in the meta-narrative of secular culture, can only ever envisage ultimate ends in terms of ‘what survives’. Never mind the Sisyphean connotations of surviving for the sake of surviving - I breed, therefore I am - there’s actually nothing else on offer; there’s only only one kind of end available, and it’s physical, as everything must be.

secular culture by definition has no aim beyond - well, what exactly? — Wayfarer

You may not be a Pinker fan, don’t know if I am yet as I only just started this book, but enlightenment values are explored in this work.

From the viewpoint of anthropology of religion, there’s probably a reason why such pursuits are the prerogative of ‘meditative minorities’ - namely, because the way is narrow, and the path difficult. — Wayfarer

I agree.

Divesting oneself of the imagined selves and social selves that comprise one’s sense of self, which is what the mystical path entails, goes against the current of everything deemed socially useful. — Wayfarer

I mosty agree here, too. But there is a space in the market for the mystical path. My girlfriend keeps on eye on what the millenials are doing. There are lots of Youtube personalities earnestly presenting various spiritual traditions and home-made fusions of these traditions. Quality varies, of course. And then they make their money through the advertisements that accompany their videos as well as through books. I don't resent their making a profit, since they wouldn't have the time and energy to do what they do otherwise.

In fact, in most religious cultures, the special role of the religious is recognised - the original meaning of ‘secular’ was to demarcate the two kinds of lives. Whereas now it’s all secular [or fancies itself to be, although how much of what it thinks of as ‘secular’ is actually sublimated religiosity is another matter.] — Wayfarer

The public realm has indeed been neutralized or pseudo-neutralized. For the most part spirituality is privatized, but of course there some basic rules (essentially tolerance and property rights) that manifest a dominant conception of the sacred 'above' individual choice, controlling the 'menu.' This for me is a 'sublimated religiosity.' The enforcement of laws and conventions is, in its way, the practice of a living religion/worldview. The state is a god and a vote is a prayer.

A mischievous thought I often have is that the aim of so-called secular or Enightenment philosophy is actually to make the world safe for the ignorant - ‘ignorance’ in the sense of ‘avidya’, spiritually unaware. — Wayfarer

That's one way to look at it. But such philosophy also makes safe a personal search for spiritual awareness. What is the alternative? As far as I can tell, it would be a euphemism for theocracy. Religious freedom is the privatization of spirituality, it seems to me, with all the good and bad that comes with that. An issue that comes to mind is whether power tends to corrupt spiritual institutions. I suspect that, yes, it does.

On the other hands, our spiritually pluralistic democracies/republics may be too chaotic to deal with some pressing issues. I don't see any obvious fixes, though.

Whereas, again, in a religious culture, one’s ultimate identity is understood in terms of union with the Divine or liberation from the wheel of life, secular culture by definition has no aim beyond - well, what exactly? More and more pleasurable experiences, better health, greater utility - ultimately space travel, the physical pursuit of heaven. — Wayfarer

I think you're neglecting an important distinction. I understand secular culture to be a (sort of) neutral background for working out one's own salvation. But you probably mean the global humanism common among atheist/agnostic intellectuals. If so, I can see that there's something shallow in all of it. It is basically a vision of a united world of healthy, amused monkeys who are satisfied with that. I'll be impressed if we can get that far.

Personally, I seek and sometimes find sufficiently profound experiences beyond this kind of thing. I think Rorty is mostly right in his vision of the public/private split. It's safer perhaps to concentrate on these 'animal' basics in the public realm. Again, the danger is that the institution of the holy becomes a 'materialistic' (power-obsessed) tyranny.

Notice the reflexive link between ‘reality’ and ‘survival’. This is because evolutionary biology, which has displaced religion in the meta-narrative of secular culture, can only ever envisage ultimate ends in terms of ‘what survives’. Never mind the Sisyphean connotations of surviving for the sake of surviving - I breed, therefore I am - there’s actually nothing else on offer. There’s only only one kind of end available, and it’s physical. — Wayfarer

I don't think it's like that. Yes, Darwin informs the modern attitude, but Nazis aren't exactly fashionable, and they come to mind when I read your description above. Of course survival is necessary in order to pursue a sort of general enrichment of consciousness. And I think this vague notion of endless enrichment is a more plausible candidate for secular religiosity. This enrichment is cultural, not strictly material. I see, of course, that physical science informs this sense of enrichment, but physical scientists are only the cultural heroes of a tiny segment of the population. Politicians and artists invoke virtues and vices. Be tolerant. Be creative. Be kind. Be productive. Be mindful. Don't be racist, sexist, inauthentic, petty, materialistic, selfish.

And all of this is mostly reasonable. But of course 'tolerance' can be the slogan of the intolerant, and 'open-mindedness' can be the slogan of those who are tired of thinking. But note that we don't hear 'survive at all costs!' Indeed, quality of life arguments for abortion and euthanasia appear among humanists/atheists. I think a certain level of affluence is understood as the precondition for an endless enrichment. That the affluent are afflicted with their own expensive problems is a related issue, which takes us back to the privatization of spirituality. The plan seems to be to give the people with third-world problems a new and improved set of first-world problems. And of course to not sink or nuke our semi-spherical spaceship. And this may be the best realistic plan. But then I am biased. I don't think that suffering can be completely removed from life, or that any spiritual-intellectual tradition can conquer what I'd call a basic ambivalence in the human soul. Life can be bettered but not perfected, in other words.

I would like to like Pinker - his book The Blank Slate was the last gift I received from my dear departed mother, and I like it. And I do recognise the importance of science, technology and progress. I’m poles apart from him philosophically - but I wouldn’t want to detract from your enjoyment of the book.

Darwin informs the modern attitude, but Nazis aren't exactly fashionable, and they come to mind when I read your description above. — syntax

I will reply more at length, but while the thought is with me - have you ever run across Horkheimer’s book The Eclipse of Reason? It’s about the only ‘Frankfurt school’ text I’m familar familiar with and says a lot about this theme.