"We have nothing with the outcast"
-
@Jim Eshelman said
"I might mention that "caste" comes from the same root as "castration." It means to cut off.
We shouldn't be inherently cut off from anything. Although everyone has their own differentiation to develop and enjoy, our method of teaching is to balance all aspects of being so that people have equal access to all things - and then, from that place, can freely move in their own way."
well put.
"Achieve thou every possibility!" - The Heart of the Master
-
To me, the 'outcast and the unfit' refer to associating with people who interfere with you doing your True Will. "Psychic vampires" or other folks who suck up your time and energy. The 'outcast and unfit' could also be seen as people who are so enslaved to society's standards that they label others as 'outcast and unfit'.
To Aum418:
I don't think that all magicians have to be socially skilled. Personally speaking, I'll never 'fit in' socially because I have a certain disability.My spiritual path includes accepting - after struggling to fit in - that this is part of my True Will. Many other people have other conditions that preclude even having a job. The law is for ALL, including people with disabilities.
Just my $0.02
-
"Hear me, ye people of sighing!
The sorrows of pain and regret
Are left to the dead and the dying,
The folk that not know me as yet."For me, the key is here. Who are the outcast and the unfit? Who are those who "sorroweth"? Who "feels not"? Who is the "wretched & the weak"?
They are "the folk that not know me as yet."
Another master also referred to them as "the dead."
"Matthew 8:21-22
Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
" -
Ideally once the system as a whole is set up, those within the order would not be outcast because each would be from an early age assessed and cultivated into the appropriet caste where their TRUE WILL is supported, directed, cultivated, the supplies they need economically provided for etc.
At this point the outcast would only be those who as yet are not members of the order, or those who directly and openly defy the order in some way, but even then it is the task of the higher initiates to find a way to prevent ANYONE so ever from being dissatisfied with their place in the order, these revolts would be indicators of DIS-EASE which would be immediately taken care of to prevent such mis-fits from arising in the future and the collected data on the one who fell through the cracks used in reform the system as a whole to include a means to bring such a stray sheep back to the flock.
(To be outcast means to be without a Caste, the Caste meaning a social role and a life purpose to fulfill as part of a collective society. If the society outcast's you, that means you are stripped of all social role, rank, rights and identity, to wander the wilderness alone as a no body, treated like a stay beast, no one trusts you, supports you or even acknowledges you as a fellow human, let alone friend, citizen or sibling in an order. This is admitingly extreme outcasting, but this is what happened in say the old west when one was tied to a horse and sent into the dessert, or in the middle ages when the King totally refused to support a criminal, and decreed against it, or when God turned his face against someone. etc)
But yes ideally all those born into the brotherhood of the order will be accepted and designed as well as cultivated into a particular caste or social role, and the only few will be outcast, the unfit being those of the "troglodytes" outside the order whom by disadvantage of not having been raised in Thelema may not be fit at this point in their lives for it. The point is to not waste time with them, and concentrate on the Fit, the youth and those whose personal development suits them to Thelema, From this healthy stock to breed the foundations of the Order. Which over time is to grow in influence and replace the social institutions outside the order, and thus fit all within its ever growing bounds, to their own natural WILL that is to provide a supportive caste system for all the types of people we may happen to arise. Thus developing the everyone with their true WILL rather than against it,
-
The whole caste system idea sounds like another form of platonic idealism. It sounds like someone longing for an absolute order in the chaotic universe. I think idealism itself is a great vice. I'm pretty sure that in practice it would lead to something that most people would ultimately not like even though the theory might sound good.
I agree that by the outcast and unfit, he clearly meant psychic vampires.
-
look people are material 100% physical and like all other physical things no two are exactly in every instance identical, yet we can discern general categories of things. We know than not all tigers are exactly the same and not all rabbits are exactly the same, yet if you are going to approach an animal it is wise to know tigers from rabbits. If you are a zoo keeper you need to know what your animal is, what its habits are and it's nutritional needs. Thus you feed grass to rabbits and you feed raw meat to tigers. You provide open grass lands for rabbits and include thickets and trees for tigers, you discern what diseases and medicines affect each animal differently.
There is no reason we should not do the same for humans, as we are not all the same. Biological race does have an effect on diet, proneness to disease, and what medicines work, as well as psychological temperament, and the sociological roles and condition than satisfy the nature of the person. Race is very general, as even with in a race their is variation, the social class and the family traditions, the way the child was raised, the religious beliefs etc, from most general down to events than effect only the one specific individual, which is to say the specific way in which that one individual was treated in a specific case.
Now their is not a whole lot we can do to predict or deal with extreme cases of individual variation, even in the zoo it happens than a particular animals behavior may be uncharacteristic of its kind. An ape raised in captivity and taught sign language or exposed to psycho-active drugs may behave strangely and not integrate well with other apes, or may reject natural habitats in favor of it's cage in the lab. Which is much like how those raised under Osiris institutions are not equipped to deal well with Thelemic systems, and the thelemic system is not designed to deal with every extreme variation caused by Osiris influences. Over time the system will gain experience and data necessary to understand what influences a wider range of deviation and how to raise children to prevent destructive deviants and also how to incorporate a wider range of behaviors and castes into the social system as a whole.
But by having nothing with the outcast and unfit, it means those too steeped in old aeon ways, may be outside the ability of the Thelemic system to incorporate them, at least while it is still young.
In fact the Thelemic order is best set up for the children, a system that becomes more effective each generation. While now recruits can only be expected to attain partial benefits, not having been raised within, and cultivated into ones caste.For a new recruit the TRUE WILL or casted role will fit tight in places and loose in others, as the WILL is not been perfectly attuned since birth and thus our self image and conditioned behavior are not in perfect harmony with the WILL, society has banged us into the shape it wants. Thelema seeks to help us grow into our natural mold. But once a wheel is beaten out of shape, you can smooth it out, but not back perfectly back into shape, A Bonzai tree will return to its natural form, once the binding are removed, but the damage is already done and the artificial shape will not fully vanish.
Our society wants to make everyone into the same mold, the liberal humanist, Christian slave moral, little consumer/citizen, zombie. It is Thelema that realizes their is more than one kind of human, and than each human must be supported with the right kind of, nutrition, education, social support, work and leisure, and basically have an entire life plan designed around the individual in question, in order to produce the highest possible manifestation of that individuals potential, and create individuals of highest possible potency in express their WILL to POWER in whatever way is natural to them, without restrictions of moral codes and laws, beyond what of immediate pragmatic value to the individual in relation to social order.
-
I am sooooo glad you are not in a position of power. Wow.
-
-
like it or not, man is already controlled by external influences. Some are haphazard; some are arranged by careless or evil men whose goals are selfish instead of humanitarian. The problem, then, is to design a culture that can, theoretically, survive; to decide how men must behave to ensure its survival in reality; and to plan environmental influences that will guarantee the desired behavior. Thus, in the Skinnerian world, man will refrain from polluting, from overpopulating, from rioting, and from making war, not because he knows that the results will be disastrous, but because he has been conditioned to want what serves group interests.
Is such a world really possible? Skinner believes that it is; he is certain that human behavior can be predicted and shaped exactly as if it were a chemical reaction. The way to do it, he thinks, is through "behavioral technology," a developing science of control that aims to change the environment rather than people, that seeks to alter actions rather than feelings, and that shifts the customary psychological emphasis on the world inside men to the world outside them. Central to Skinner's approach is a method of conditioning that has been used with uniform success on laboratory animals: giving rewards to mold the subject to the experimenter's will. According to Skinner and his followers, the same technique can be made to work equally well with human beings.
Underlying the method is the Skinnerian conviction that behavior is determined not from within but from without. "Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person inside," Skinner explains. Mistakenly, we believe that man "initiates, originates and creates, and in doing so he remains, as he was for the Greeks, divine. We say that he is autonomous." But Skinner insists that autonomy is a myth, and that belief in an "inner man" is a superstition that originated, like belief in God, in man's inability to understand his world. With the rise of behavioral science, understanding has grown, and man no longer needs such fictions as "something going on inside the individual, states of mind, feelings, purposes, expectancies and all of that." The fact is, Skinner insists, that actions are determined by the environment; behavior "is shaped and maintained by its consequences." (www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,909994-2,00.html)
This is not totally accurate as biology shows that people do have innate temperaments and inclinations hard-wired into their brain, and that early imprints once set are hard to condition away, also that genetic variation sets up certain individual to be more subject to one imprint over another, also they physical features of the individual like if one is more intelligent or more physical/muscular are genetic and it would be wise to shape a situation where the imprinted and conditioned behaviors match the biology of the individual. Simply put, if the biology and imprinted desires are in harmony the organism experiences fewer failures and less general frustration leading to less stress and less tendency to anxiety, neurotic habits, fetishes, tendency towards antagonism with the social relationships, suicidal attempts, criminal behaviors, guilt, fear, greed, eating disorders.
In fact "Do what thou wilt' Basically means match your biology with your desires, and find a means of expressing them which produces the least social friction. And a Thelemic system thus would key in on conditioning and imprinting behaviors that match ones innate elements, genetics biology, natural climate, and also in shaping the social system, its values, institutions and available social roles to fit the behaviors and biology of it's members.
That is all very scientific and ensures the best possible developmental conditions are devised to suit the biology of every individual, or at least strives to do so for most individuals and as a science constantly improves itself to work for a wider range of differences. Probably working to weed out problems that lead to innate dissatisfaction with life, like children born with diabetes, cancers, downs syndrome, and missing limbs. By medical means, or possibly advised breeding. It would be unthelemic to forbid or restrict breeding, but advising a couple on the potential damage their genetic combinations can produce allows them to make informed choices.
It is not forbidden for a chemist to mix any chemical with any other as he may WILL, but it is beneficial to know something about chemistry the nature of the chemicals your mixing and the potential results of mixing them. It is ill advised to mix random chemicals hoping for a good result. And it would be careless of society to allow just any layman to mix up chemicals that may produce nerve toxins or explosions. The dangers in uninformed chemistry can be quite small compared to the unmitigated expression of sexual formula.
-
Wow, the last place I'd have expected to see people pushing Skinnerian social engineering programs is on a Thelemic forum in 2009.
"This is not totally accurate as biology shows that people do have innate temperaments and inclinations hard-wired into their brain..."
"Not totally accurate" is mild. It is, in fact, totally inaccurate. The whole point of Skinnerian behaviorism is that the mind is a black box in which nothing happens worth talking about, except conditioning. You would think it would be obvious to anyone participating in this particular community how hopelessly and profoundly false that is. It is also a scientific model a century old and is about as relevant as geocentrism.
Anyway, people do not have "innate temperaments and inclinations hard-wired into their brain". What they have is a modular computational architecture that consists of thousands of semi-intelligent, semi-autonomous subsystems dedicated to the solution of particular problems in the ancestral paleolithic environment that shaped the evolution of the brain. The idiosyncrasies of human personality arise as a result of a complex feedback loop between this evolved architecture, its developmental trajectory, and the environment in which it is embedded.
Since the computational architecture of the brain originates in the paleolithic, the only way you could possibly "match your biology with your desires" is by regressing human culture to a prehistoric paleolithic hunter-gatherer environment. This is putting the cart before the horse. We want to adapt the tools we've got to the environment; not adapt the environment to our tools. The game is transcendence, not paralysis.
As far as your idea of society telling us what our true will is, this is a stunningly nightmarish idea. The whole point of individuation/attainment/enlightenment is to produce a mind that can move outside the collective reality tunnels and see them from without. Without such minds, the collective has no check on it whatsoever.
-
"The whole point of individuation/attainment/enlightenment is to produce a mind that can move outside the collective reality tunnels and see them from without. Without such minds, the collective has no check on it whatsoever."
Yes.
In L.V.X.,
chrys333 -
you fail to see, their is no divine, no spiritual, no supernatural, no mind other than brain etc.
The TRUE WILL is as much an innate physical process as every thing else, we ascribe to such non-physical notions because the nature of our brain is to hide from our direct awareness the mechanism by which our awareness arises, this includes our every though, emotion, desire and WILL.
We have inborn hardwired genetic brain structure and we have softer more malleable brain structures that are shaped by experiences. Those than are malleable in our youth as we age become harder and more fixed. The brain has the ability to imprint and become fixated on behavior patterns (which include thought, emotions, beliefs, associated imagery, etc) which may be in conflict with each other (that state of manyhood) and may even directly conflict the deeper hard wired biology, like ones religious moral to self sacrifice may conflict with the innate survival instinct. In this case survival instinct is the TRUE WILL where an the over-lay of religious morals is a conflict with the WILL.
Look at Crowley example were a young man has a WILL deep in his conditioning to join the navy and to be at sea, but his parents wishes a less deep and personally satisfying but economically and emotionally more pressing (at least short term) bend his arm and he settles for an unsatisfactory career for from sea. Now certainly his desire to be at sea must have been shape by past life experience than hardened ao he grew, perhaps he had a sea faring grandfather who told him stories of the sea, or he had many heros of his time than were navy men, or his peers telling of world travels, or he was of a racial tradition say norse or Scandinavian whose customs, myths and ideals of virtue involve the sea. All these kinds of factors work to condition the man to the sea, but the one factor, his parents economic support force the man to submit to his parents support against his WILL. He is by nature (race) and by nurture his natural surroundings and conditioning of the sea faring caste, it is rather cruel then to take a man conditioned to one caste by nature and nurture and impose restriction which force that same man into a caste that is not aligned with him psychologically.
The same is true if we the short man is encouraged and conditioned in youth to be a basket ball player, only to discover at a later age that his youthful conditioning and training was in vain, and his continued life long pining to be in the NBA will interfere with any other career that he may be pushed into. It is wise to train and condition based no their TRUE WILL, which includes at an early age a great deal of genetic and biology, rather than acquired conditioning to which an infant has little to none, and the child should of course be offered a wide variety of choice to discern the natural development, ie what sort of conditioned responses out of a wide range most appeal to the child. Which helps to well round the individual while at the same time prevents that area of specialty from being foisted on the child by the intentions malevolent or well intentioned as they may be of the parents or behavioral scientist. However subtle correction, especially in the form of promoting the child to introspect haw realistic his interests are, and to have an understanding of his own limits and abilities such that a path consistent with them can be best chosen.
anything is accptable morally in Thelema (in general theory) but in the case of a particular example of one specific individual their is only one correct choice at each point in time.
-
@Froclown said
"you fail to see, their is no divine, no spiritual, no supernatural, no mind other than brain etc. "
You're right, that's one piece of bullshit that most people with actual spiritual experience simply aren't going to take seriously.
-
Well atleast I know IAO131 will agree with me, that's atleast one.
If he actual has had any physical experience that qualifies as a "spiritual" experience I have no way of knowing, but I know I have atleast one on my side who accepts Reductive materialism.
Despite my minor disagreement politically on the part of leftist Humanism.
-
@Froclown said
"you fail to see, their is no divine, no spiritual, no supernatural, no mind other than brain etc."
I didn't say anything about anything divine, spiritual or supernatural. I said that the contemporary scientific picture of the mind/brain is not the behaviorist picture, but its exact opposite.
"No mind other than brain" is not a scientific statement but a metaphysical prejudice. In fact, the contemporary picture is that the best metaphor for the mind/brain is a computer, where the mind is construed as software and the brain as hardware.
The idea is that the mind is an abstract structure that is realized by the physical substrate of the brain. Similarly, the operating system running on your computer is an abstract structure that is realized by a particular box made of physical stuff. But the operating system is not identical with the box of physical stuff; that is ridiculous. In fact the very same operating system is simultaneously running on many other boxes, each of which is made from different physical stuff.
You could just as easily make an analogy with music. A song is played on an instrument, but a song is not identical with the instrument. Many different people can play the same exact song on many different instruments. And yet there would be no songs without instruments, and the way the songs sound is related to instruments in a lawful way. Now that's some spooky metaphysics.
Anyway, you do not learn how to play a good tune on a guitar by taking the guitar apart and looking at the pieces under a microscope. Doing that might teach you something about how to make a good guitar, but nothing about how to play good music.
"Look at Crowley example were a young man has a WILL deep in his conditioning to join the navy and to be at sea, but his parents wishes a less deep and personally satisfying but economically and emotionally more pressing (at least short term) bend his arm and he settles for an unsatisfactory career for from sea. Now certainly his desire to be at sea must have been shape by past life experience than hardened ao he grew, perhaps he had a sea faring grandfather who told him stories of the sea, or he had many heros of his time than were navy men, or his peers telling of world travels, or he was of a racial tradition say norse or Scandinavian whose customs, myths and ideals of virtue involve the sea. All these kinds of factors work to condition the man to the sea, but the one factor, his parents economic support force the man to submit to his parents support against his WILL. He is by nature (race) and by nurture his natural surroundings and conditioning of the sea faring caste, it is rather cruel then to take a man conditioned to one caste by nature and nurture and impose restriction which force that same man into a caste that is not aligned with him psychologically."
I don't understand. You've just described the normal, spontaneous process of individuation. A man grows up, lives life, and becomes an idiosyncratic someone. Where does all this stuff about "sea faring castes" come from? At what a point does the man begin to belong to this "sea faring caste"? When he is born? When he learns that he is Scandinavian? When he reads a book about sea monsters? When his grandfather tells him his first story about the sea?
The unification of the Self is inherently a spontaneous process. You do not, per the genetic determinists, get to look into someone's brain and see their destiny. Nor do you, per the behaviorists, get to fabricate their destiny out of thin air and then condition them with it. It is discovered on the fly, by the individual, as he navigates life.
I mean, I'm just amazed. We are in this mess in the first place because we've been brainwashed without our consent, and your solution seems to be more intensive brainwashing.
-
The soft ware IS the physical arrangement of states in the physical hardware. A glass of water, at Ice cube and an Ice swan are all different arrangements of different amounts of water, but to say the swan contains an metaphysical essence or spirit of swans in addition to its water content in absurd. It is only an arrangement of water.
Music is an arrangement of air movements created by the vibration of the instrument. The AIR is as physical as the brass in the trumpet and the tungsten of the guitar string, their is no non-physical spirit that moves through the physical air or the instrument, it is the physical matter than moves. The sound is the physical matter moving that physically bump our ears.
The brain is a physical system of matter, cells and living tissues are made of the same elements on the periodic chart as everything else. And the software of the brain IS the physical arrangement of the nerves, the connections between neurons the types of synapses, the electrical potentiality between them based on the number of receptor sites
Skinner never claimed the brain was a black box, not any more than a computer scientist claims than a computer is a mysterious magical box that some how given correct answers, but inside nothing happens. Skinner damn well knows we have thoughts, emotions, beliefs, inclinations, reasonings that process how to respond to the stimulus. But so does a computer, however once you learn how the computers is set up, you can predict how its internal processes will tend to operate and what sort of output it will give to various types of input. (even if not perfectly, since if you know what answer it will give like say, the prime factorization of a huge number, then you would already know and not need the computer).
As for the Caste, those are tasks than society creates so that each type of brain cam find a productive and beneficial expression to the environment and to other people. If we had sea faring men running off to play in boats and forsaking work, they would become thieves and pirates, to fund their bellies and their nautical adventures. Instead scientifically we determine that a certain number of Men will be drawn to the sea faring life, so we help them learn the skills of that life from trained experts who have experience. We set up a seafaring life style and have professional guilds set up. Where men of such nature can instead of being Pirates can be fishermen, cargo transporters, and navy officers. Thus the sea faring Caste works with the natural WILL of the individuals, so they can make an honest living doing what is properly fitted to them by birth, environment, and personal inclination. (personal inclination is the Physical structure of the brain as it has developed from birth via reaction to the environment. Every thought and emotion, is a physical response to the physical environment, no matter how complex the brain is, it stills reacts as a whole, and each is unique hardware from birth, but is determined by genetics and fetal environment, and is shaped by interactions with the envirionment throughout life. Shape the environment, control the consequences, set up particular experiences (rituals/rites of passage) at the rite stage in development, and you imprint to an extent the type of behaviors, thoughts and emotion that organism will produce in the future.
Setting up a sea faring caste for example, the organism not wanting to live as an outcast and fugitive, will be attracted to the positive consequences of cargo ship captain or navy man, and will not become a pirate or turn from his WILL all together to be a lawyer or doctor.
-
"We command that they happily satisfy us in all things by accomplishing each and every one of our petitions, if not by one means, then by another, goodly, virtuously, and perfectly, with an excellent and thorough completeness, according to their virtues and powers, both general and unique, and by your united ministry and office" (enochian opening)
You see here, each spirit has a unique nature that is a specification of more general natures all the way up to God. Thus it is wise to call the right sort of spirit to perform the type of task you have in mind. Yet once than spirit is called upon, rather than specific instructions we allow the spirit to devise its own means to complete and fulfill the desire of the magician, according to its own virtues and powers (skills).
In a caste system you simple discover what each individuals skills and virtues are (not treat everyone as equal and interchangeable) Then you assign the task to the caste or social dept in charge of that general sort of activity, the High caste representative to the King, (arch angel) and then authority is passed down with sub-tasks to complete the Will given to each person with the virtue and ability, but not specific instructions are forced on them, instead it is left in the trusted hands of the individual who has proven superior skill and ability in that field to produce the correct product of action, by his own means.
Thus you have a higher degree of liberty, where one is asked only to perform the unction than suits ones own nature and is given freedom as the the means by which it achieve the end result. Truly then in the product equal measure art (personal expression) as technology and craft.