Eric, I definitely agree with you.
I don't like to talk with "mystics" any more than I like to talk to "scientists." Nor do I consider myself to be either one—despite "education" and "experience" in both. My 'mysticism', like my hallucinogenic experience, is nothing more than a source of what I consider to be "real" data and a supply of fascinating questions—never answers. davew On Thu, Jun 26, 2025, at 4:38 PM, Santafe wrote: > > >> On Jun 27, 2025, at 0:10, Prof David West <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> This make me curious as to why there is so little interest in pursuing the >> "mystical" / "non-scientific." > > This is a question that I spend a fair amount of ruminating-time trying to > compose a good-faith articulation of an answer to. Why would I? Because the > moral interests that you express I largely agree with. And because the > prospect of having a fuller and clearer picture of the world is always > appealing to imagine. Both these things are always promised on that channel. > > > So why am I not optimistic about it? I can try to make a list: > > 1. In a volley of posts maybe a year or two ago, with Glen and SteveS > providing the main material, the word “othering” had a good connotation built > up around it that I want to invoke in using the “othering” reason here. I > can think of maybe one partisan of mysticism (of some variety; he would > probably use the word “contemplative traditions” to avoid the negative > connotations of “mysticism”, but the intent would be the same as the positive > uses of “mysticism” in this general line of threads) for whom the level of > “othering” is muted enough that it’s not completely annoying, seemingly > unproductive, and thus off-putting. > > 2. The secret in the closed hand: the partisan advocates endlessly that this > is The Best Thing Ever, and he’s not going to show it to you. But whatever > you have is clearly not as good, and he knows, because you haven’t Seen the > thing that he couldn’t show to you. > > 3. Closely adjacent to 2 is a form of obscurantism that I know is active in > the world, and that the mystic would vehemently assert that he doesn’t > practice, but that to me is not distinguishable. Obscurantism seems very > close, in my read of how people are, to a taste for magical thinking. That > the ordinary world where things are out in the light and can be seen is > somehow disappointing, but in the occult, the hidden-in-shadow, etc., there > is a magical world that won’t be disappointing the way the world that is out > here in the light disappoints them. (I have _so_ many records in which just > these kinds of words are used, so I don’t have to put words into somebody > else’s mouth.) It’s not just that I find this unpleasant at a personal > level, it seems to me like a mistake of orientation or premise. This is what > I didn’t like about the Christians, or the Platonists separately, and then > about their confluence in the neoPlatonists: it seems like a rejection of the > world that gives an opportunity to be seen in the light (always more than we > have), in favor of one’s own imaginings that are a reflection of one’s own > small self. The mirror preferred to any window. > > 4. Of course, in all this, any words I use, the mystic will say I have upside > down, and so he will invert. He will claim that what I call occult or > obscure is actually the purest of light, and that what I call light is a > condition of being lost in illusion and something worse than shadow. That > what comes across to me as incomprehensible or confused is in fact the only > thing that is _not_ confusion, and that what to me seems like sense and some > coherence is (unbeknownst to me) the height of confusion. Etc. One can go > on and on. Since language admits this kind of constructs, anyone can use > them to defeat any conversation about anything, so there isn’t really any > answering it. But then it also defeats the purpose of entering any other > conversation, to which this will be the reply from inside the temple. > > 5. The impulse to condescension toward anyone other than fellow partisans. > By and large, the mystics to whom I have some relation in ordinary life (as, > to me, other ordinary people) aren’t too given to contempt. (In that, they > are easier to deal with than some branches of scientists for whom contempt is > the cultural water.) But they can’t fight off the impulse to condescension. > I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of them fail to respond with it, though some > are clearly worse than others. > > 6. Something that to me, responding to these people as I would to any other > people, comes across as a kind of megalomania. This is connected, I think, > to the place of nouminousness in human experience. If I had to characterize > the main break-point between those who are comfortable with the term > “religious” and those who want the term “spiritual” and recoil from being > identified with religiosity, I would say that for the religious, the > important tea that is more general than the cup that carries it is certainty. > The insistence on having it, and the belief that this is the vehicle that > delivers it, is common in them and in the metaphysicians, and is what the > Empiricists argued is an error. In contrast, for the “spiritual” ones, they > aren’t so concerned with certainty, but instead the sense of overwhelming > significance about something, which is the core of its being “nouminous”, > seems to be what they are after, and the tea that is more general than the > cup that carries it. I look at nouminousness as something one would > experience, and say “gosh, how weird it is to be a person, who has these > kinds of affects”. The fact that I could just deliver it with a dose of DMT > makes even clearer the smallness and arbitrariness of the fact that I could > experience it. But the spiritual seem to want to experience it and conflate > it with Reality (needs to be said in an awed and portentious voice, not mere > “reality” like “I narrowed the error bars on our estimate for the mass of the > electron by a factor of 2"). In that, they seem to me to insist that some > arbitrary small artifact of happening to exist as a person is not that, but > rather some bigger-than-the-biggest-thing-there-is-to-refer-to totality, with > which _they identify_. That triggers my objection to people’s (seeming to me > to be) puffing themselves up to an importance that I don’t think they have, > and that I wish they didn’t want or assert. > > > To write about this is different from writing about why one does or doesn’t > get along with any particular person. To the extent that “the mystics” would > assert that they can recognize each other and are “of a kind”, they inherit > responses from the rest of us (the “others”) that sort of tar with a broad > brush that draws on many experiences with many people. > > Eric > > > > > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >
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