Author Topic: Schopenhauer, Opera Glasses and the Rabble  (Read 4671 times)

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Nation of One

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Because we are in hell?
« Reply #45 on: February 25, 2021, 12:43:02 am »
Quote from: In 2017, raul
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The Buddha´s followers are atheists.
Can one be a Protestant Christian atheist, that is to say, not to believe in a god taught by the Protestant teachings? Can one be this kind of atheist who rejects the god of his upbringing?

Back in 1984 or so, there was actually a Philosophy course (in high school !) called, "Myths, Dreams, and Cultures" where we were exposed to the idea that myths are real.  That is, myths are the way a given culture explains reality.   Joseph Campbell might even consider our modern day natural sciences as a kind of mythology.   Have we seen electrons ?   Do we know atoms ? 

As a young adult exposed to "treatment for substance=alcohol abuse" I would come to recognize a strange pattern, since there were so many, like myself, with resentments towards all things religious.   Those raised in some Protestant denomination would lean towards agnosticism (like logician Bertrand Russell?), whereas those raised Catholic would make no qualms about their atheistic stance.

My paternal grandmother was raised Lutheran, and she was not the least bit devout; but she seemed 'spiritual' --- in a magic gypsie kind of way.  Well, my mother remembers when this mother of my father told her that she believed our Life/World [on earth] to be Hell.

Was it not Schopenhauer who observed how much more easily Dante was able to describe Hell than describing Paradise?   Hell is all around us and within us, no?  It was not difficult for Dante to describe.  When it came to Paradise, the description is cheesy.

By calling the God of Jews, Muslims, and Christians 'Satan,' the Gnostics flip the script, but they are not atheists.  There is that element of belief in the supernatural.

To believe in NO CREATOR-GOD, that is my understanding of atheism.

Imagine my contempt and disgust when some "old timer" in AA, back in 1989, scolded me for claiming I had discovered a religion without a Creator God.   The arrogant bastard insisted that, for Buddhists, the Buddha is their "God" ... I would become outraged.   It was a prime example of ignorance parading around as authority.

You are, of course, free to reject the god of your upbringing.  I am no authority.  You are also free to embrace myths which allign more with your day to day, moment by moment, psychological experience.   If we understand that these myths are simply explanations of reality - not literal hard core brute facts, but Symbolic Representations, then I don't see any contradiction with atheism.

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If I were God, at the sight of the physical sufferings the universe and especially among animals and men, I would be of such horror that I would instantly annihilate all my creation and myself with her.
  ~ Maurice Maeterlinck, Before God. Belgium, 20th century.

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I'll end up killing myself, it's obvious. It would be better for me to be dead, really. There is no limit to human suffering.
  ~ Katherine Mansfield, Journal. New Zealand, 20th century
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Sad to die, lugubrious is life.
Hell exists, but here, on earth.
Let us suffer, then, brothers,
without hoping for life a single solid joy,
Because we are in hell.

Auguste Strindberg, Inferno. Sweden, nineteenth century.

The Inferno, by August Strindberg

Also from The Inferno:

Since he was also heavily in debt to the restaurant, he had to go about the streets, hungry. Among other things he confessed that he had taken morphia enough to kill two people, but death apparently did not yet want him. After an earnest discussion, we agreed to go to another quarter, and there eat our meals in some obscure cook-shop. I said I would not desert him, and that he should pluck up new courage and begin a new picture for the exhibition of independent artists.

This man becomes now my sole companion, and his misfortunes cause me a double share of suffering, so closely do I identify myself with him. I do so in a spirit of defiance, but presently gain an interesting experience thereby.

He reveals to me his whole past. He is a German by birth, but partly because of family disagreements, partly because of a lampoon for which he had been brought into court, he has spent seven years in America. I discover in him intelligence above the average, a melancholy temperament, and unbridled sensuality. But behind this mask of a cosmopolitan I begin to divine another character which disquiets me, and the full discovery of which I postpone to a favourable opportunity.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2021, 08:37:58 am by Sticks and Stones »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

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