++> Frank Masingill wrote to D. Martorana
 ++> on "Clever Flies"
 
 FM> If people who are determined upon the gnostic path KNOW that there are
 FM> alternative directions, yet still cling stubbornly to gnosticism
 FM> (embracing of doctrine) it is certainly fair to search for a reason.
 
  My take on "gnostic" is that it includes SCIENCE which in our age
  is essentially an inclusion of REAL knowledge; and therefore I see
  a "gnostic" search-approach (God & Science) as valid as any (though not
  my own view). As with YOUR use of "ideology" which I accepted as extra-
  definitive, I would also accept your definitions of "gnostic".
  Eventually I would be robbed of an entire vocabulary as word usage
  becomes more and more incompatible with ol' fashioned Webster.  But!
  that's ok, I'm easy to get along with.
    As SCIENCE (one leg of "GNOSTIC" duality) represents the muscle
  of human knowing, and all else is ever pale in question, I find your
  philosophical positioning cryptic in your skirts with at least
  assumed bit-knowables of reality. Though you "sort of" accept "MYTH"
  as temporary "FILL" for the BIG unknowables, you don't really
  pull it all together (not that you are shy of words). I assume
  your consolidated position of dilemma is not distant from my own,
  though it would not seem so from our projected styles of thinking
  and word selections.
 
 FM> One answer (actually Voegelin's somewhat tentative answer, is that
 FM> there is an immense psychological gain.  In one great leap the
 FM> mystery (which, of course, has not been dispelled at all in reality)
 FM> appears to have been swept away.
 
     .....if it works for some people ...yes it's ok
 
 FM> ..............................Just as the ancient gnostics found
 FM> secrets of systems of movement through the various levels of the
 FM> heavens to find the "one true God" beyond all being or the other
 FM> gods and thus find a "true identification" so the location through
 FM> such a search of some "second reality" yields freedom from the
 FM> perplexing situation of the first reality to be lived with nothing more
 FM> than the uncertainty of trust and faith.  Certainly we are all lured
 FM> in that direction as a part of our experience.  Some of these paths can
 FM> even lead to premature death which can in extreme circumstances be
 FM> viewed as a release.  The lasting and passing that constitutes reality,
 FM> however, is not ended thereby, is it?
 
    Your psychological reverse cascading of a second reality to paint
 a first; and then suggesting a "premature death" tangent, passed over
 my head! If assuming a "God system" can cover the "unknowable of
 realities", you would only be addressing a hope, and an awkward percentage
 of the population to measure, at that.
 
 DM>> The gods do live in the pleasures of the private mind that so wish
 DM>> them welcome, while we are busy at our unknowable ......or useless
 DM>> missions............
 
 FM> If our "missions" are truly unknowable then we can't logically pronounce
 FM> them to be "useless" can we?
 
     Considering all the species that have come and gone, and we being
     just another, my gift of prescience  would indicate that when
     the game is over (assuming an imaginary list remains), we would be
     somewhere in the middle of some millions or billions, some genetic
     nonsense along the way.
        Though I CAN speculate with the best (ala SciFi fun pie,
     religioners), my comments only reflect what little we seem to
     "SERIOUSLY" know ......NOW!!! To say we know more, whomever be
     quoted, is silly, however it sound erudite.........!
 
 FM> Remember Plato's warning that those "pleasures of the private
 FM> mind" can, in the night of retirement from awareness become the
 FM> "beast on the rampage" quite visible in the daylight of acted out
 FM> behavior. Plato along with countless others down through the centuries
 FM> have been quite well aware that the restraints of conscience are
 FM> by no means guaranteed and the satisfying to the fullest of the
 FM> craze for personal desires with no regard for social consequences
 FM> can seem doubly attractive if all we truly have is the MYTH of
 FM> judgement in some far off summing up which may or may not be
 FM> true in the final analysis.  Civilized behavior does, indeed,
 FM> hang by a thin, almost invisible (at times) thread.  We surely
 FM> know THAT quite well.  The thread can snap and an entire order
 FM> fall into inhumanity.  I just, this morning, read George Will's
 FM> column on the Rape of Nanking which, in the intervening occurrence
 FM> of the European holocaust tends to be forgotten.  The twentieth
 FM> century may well be remembered historically more for these terrible
 FM> lapses than for any islands of order and stability we can achieve
 FM> in any epoch if we are blessed.
 
     You, and many, are some few notches beyond me to measure meanings;
     and as I grow older I seem falling further behind. You are fortunate
     in your own philosophically derived supports, I, more and more
     imitate an islandish model. That outpouring of Plato so far read
     (and his other wordy cousins) and religions and ideologies and
     the total historical mind-legacy,  provide me little if any non
     shallow insights.  Science seems MOST real though not my primal
     pleasure to learn from.................
 
     "HEDONISM"
                - - - The only near naturally honest path of man-
 
                                          ////
                                          @ @ ...  Dave
                                           ^
   NOTE: Nanking - In their war with China the Japanese killed
   19 million, with 300,000 Chinese civilians killed in just six
   weeks in one city (rape of Nanking).
   Such actions of happenstance are ever near, and all attempts to
   find reasoning end up ethnic or apologetic. It is unlikely that
   Plato having lived, has made such of life's turning, any better
   or worse.......
--- Maximus/2 3.01
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