Judith

That's why I started this thread. Rich, if you could put down some of the links you've found to be helpful, I'd find that very useful. Also, if someone could provide a link for downloading that Club of Rome document for free that doesn't require one to register or anything, that would also be very useful. Judith

So it was a colorful meetaphor. Metaphors aren't perfect; otherwise they wouldn't be metaphors. Let's say that the herd of sheep in that metaphor are kept by a vegetarian who wants to make wool for her lovely crafts. :-) Judith

Agreed. Judith

It sounds like you worship evolution as some sort of god. If you're talking about growth and development of humanity, imagine how much a single human could learn if the lifespan were extended greatly. What a waste to learn a limited amount and then to die! Did you know that the human brain has the capacity to store the memories for 1,000 years of life before it has to start kicking out memories to make room for more? (Source: Frank Tipler, "The Physics of Immortality".) We're vastly underusing ourselves with our puny current lifespans. Judith

Sounds like question begging to me, Brant. You're assuming that mysticism is irrational or invalid without making any arguments for your position. And no one ever said that mysticism was useful for flying airplanes, driving cars, buying food, etc., any more than microscopes are useful for determining the correctness of a syllogism, or linguistic analysis is useful for measuring a waistline. Judith

Doesn't satisfy me, either. I'm an individualist to the core; I'll ALWAYS value the individual over the species. My answer to "Why do we have to die?" is that we DON'T have to; we just haven't yet solved the problem of immortality. I think it's solvable, and that the answer is damned close, but that you and I, Michael, will probably not live to see it, and that idiots in governments will probably screw things up badly if it ever is developed. And I don't know what kinds of nightmares would develop with reproductive rights after its development, because while I am staunchly libertarian, I can't imagine what would happen if people insisted on reproducing after humans became immortal; some sort of regulation might become necessary out of self-defense. Judith

Actually, the book is "The SOCIOPATH Next Door", by MARTHA Stout. Judith

One link with a video that provides some food for thought: http://hubpages.com/hub/Astonishing_Interv...ick_Rockefeller Judith

Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. (1966). (Second revised and enlarged edition 1974), University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0813908728 This one Judith? Adam That's one of them, yes. I don't remember which one has the accounts of the North American children, but I found that one particularly interesting because North American children aren't brought up in a culture redolent of reincarnation the way Indian children are. The one with the photographs was one of the later books, as I recall. Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect (1997), Praeger Publishers, ISBN 0-275-95282-7 and Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Quest of Reincarnation (2001), McFarland & Company, ISBN 0-7864-0913-4 might be better books with which to start. Judith

How did I miss this topic when you brought it up last month? Bad, bad me.... Judith

If anyone is interested in reading serious research on this subject and not just nutcases rambling on, take a look at Ian Stevenson's books. He died recently (February 2007) and was until near the end of his life the head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Medical School. He traveled widely, documenting cases of children who remembered past lives, for example in India, among the Druse in Lebanon, and in North America. The books describe the kind of documentation he did and contain case reports. In some cases there are photographs of bizarre physical similarities as well. Judith

Xray, You better not bet me. I have heard oodles speak of such and worse. I had to go through both AA and NA to clean up my life from alcohol and drugs. You don't find either of these organizations housed in the homes of Objectivists or like-minded people, but instead you find them in churches. I didn't go anywhere else, because at that time, there was no where else for me to go to get better. These meetings are sometimes called beauty parlors because of the dramatic transformations that occur right before people's eyes within a few short weeks. A total bum gradually starts wearing clean clothes, starts grooming, starts using proper language and so on. Once I started going to these meetings, I also started paying attention to certain pockets of religions where they also take totally lost souls and help them clean up so they can live decently within society. Outside of religious organizations and specific abuse-support groups, I know of no places where this regularly happens. Every person I ever met who got clean in these manners has spoken freely about his or her phase of "latrine cleaning in Pompeii," when not speaking of the times spent wallowing in the latrines of Pompeii. This is my life experience. I didn't have to get this second-hand from anyone. Michael Michael, I suspect Xray may have been speaking more literally about people talking about reincarnation and claiming to have lived past grandiose lives. In that event, for what it's worth, in my extremely eclectic reading experiences I HAVE come across accounts of people who have claimed to remember past lives as ordinary people in ancient Egypt, Boston in the 1800s, or whatever. Judith

I'm not sure I'd define religion so narrowly. And I'm also not so sure that I'd define mysticism to be about knowledge whose judgments are ABOVE the authority of sensory observation and reason. I've discussed Ken Wilber's work on OL before (and Nathaniel has discussed it and disagreed with it in at least one of his books). I can't dig up the thread offhand, but I don't want to rewrite in exhaustive detail what I've written before; it was sometime around August of 2006, discussing his book "Eye to Eye: the Quest for a New Paradigm". I would listen with respect to anyone claiming to be a mystic who also said that what their mystical experiences told them was consistent with what was ascertainable by sensory experience and consistent with reason. Judith

I think that Nathaniel Branden and others use the word "need" to refer to things that lead us to flourish and live at our best, not to things without which we would literally die. Think more along the lines of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I don't necessarily agree with Maslow's hierarchy; for example, he rates sex pretty high in importance, and many nuns and monks seem to choose lives of celibacy quite voluntarily and at the ends of their lives show no regret whatsoever. Judith

I've just been doing some reading on the history of early Christianity, including a number of Bart Ehrman's books. It's amazing how many beliefs have come under the umbrella of "Christianity". A number of diverse beliefs do now in different parts of the world; don't assume that Christianity is limited to Roman Catholicism and Bible Belt fundamentalism. I for one would not limit the definition of "Christianity" so tightly. Judith

Christopher, there's a thread on this topic under "Chewing on Ideas" that may interest you. Judith

And also, of course, a citation for the U.S. Circuit Court decision for the point at issue, which cited these two cases. If we have that case, it will contain the other two citations. Judith

How do you come to that conclusion? Do you advocate we keep military bases in 130 foreign countries? Are you in favor of the kind of foreign intervention such as led to the instillation of the Shah of Iran in 1953? Are you in favor of the kind of trade embargoes which led to deaths of tens of thousands of children in Iraq but didn't hurt Saddam? What is your definition of isolationism? Was George Washington an isolationist? I came to that conclusion from the following statement at C4L's website: I advocate that we keep military bases wherever we need to do so to protect ourselves, but I also advocate that we stop protecting much of the world free of charge, leading many of the European countries to regress to an adolescent mindstate in which we are the "parents" and they are the "kids", and they expect us to do everything for them for free whilst they abuse us at will. Protecting staunch allies is one thing; dumping ungrateful ones who say they don't want us is quite another. I advocate whatever kinds of embargoes work. I don't know that many of them do. I prefer more hawkish approaches. I suppose I would define isolationism as not coming to the defense of one's true allies and ignoring the rest of the world situation even to the extent that it harms one's own country's self-interest. If the rest of the world goes totalitarian, one will be left without allies and no one will be left to trade with or help one when one needs help in defense. America would not have won the Revolution without the help of France. I don't approve of, and am appalled at, our country's current willingness to trade with any number of countries that violate human rights on a horrible scale. China; most of the Arab countries; I could go on and on. Perhaps I'm not purely libertarian in this regard. I do know, however, that in the business world there is no real regard for these things whatsoever, and there needs to be some kind of moral sea change so that we can begin to boycott businesses that trade with and have operations in these countries just as we do those that violate animal rights, etc. On these two points we are in agreement. Bush greatly disappointed me after his hawkish talk at the beginning of the war. As Margaret Thatcher said of his father, he went wobbly on us. And those weapons very likely are in Syria. I am not one of those ganging up on you. I take your posts with utmost seriousness, and I resent it when others make fun of you just because of your ardent support of C4L. I hope nothing I have written has given you reason to believe otherwise; my questions are for the purpose of gaining additional information, but I can see where you might believe otherwise in the somewhat hostile environment you often encounter here. Judith

I read it fairly often. It does publish a mixed bag. It is known to have a Roman Catholic bias, and I have seen articles there in favor of rational atheism. Judith

The C4L website also actively supports an isolationist foreign policy. I must say that that point is the only one of the movement's with which I find myself disagreeing. Judith

(*smile*) I don't know that I'd disagree with her. I'd put middle age between 30 and 70, myself. Judith

Oh, my. Well, that'll show 'em for sure. Nice to see our country making a difference in the world. Ahem. Michael, WE are around that age. Are you calling us old? Judith

It's an interesting point. How do those at C4L think things in general would improve for the better if the Senate were composed of those appointed by State Legislatures? I considered it, but thinking about how power tends to corrupt, I ended up wondering if things eventually wouldn't be much the same as they are. Judith

I thought of your point when I made my point. I'm a bit hypersensitive on this issue precisely because of the laws in places like France making it mandatory to render assistance to others. It can be a very short jump from "morally obligatory" to "legally obligatory", so I wanted to raise the point. Judith

It is precisely because of the difficulty in drawing the line between "the life of someone I loved depended on my immediate presence" and "a dental appointment" that the Anglo-American common law has (wisely, in my opinion) never required one to render assistance to another. Who is to determine what is an unreasonable sacrifice on another's part? I wouldn't want to make that determination on behalf of another. And I would resent greatly another's presuming to make it on my behalf. So we can continue to look down socially on those who refuse to render assistance in extremely obvious situations where most people would have done so, but let's not EVER talk about making assistance mandatory.