Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (126766)	2/13/2001 12:09:46 PM
From: cAPSLOCK	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

At a time (the 14th century) when comparatively little could be done to alleviate suffering, it makes some sense to focus on how to bear it. Personally I think Kempis is really writing about something that few understand, and even fewer have the grace to experience. And that it is a little more profound that even your above notion. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven. The point here is that only by submission do we find true peace. Only by releasing to our inward struggle can we ever transcend it. This idea sounds like snake-oil to those who cannot yet see it. <- Even that statement will. The distorted notion in our culture to end suffering (the wrong way) is evidenced by our recent love affair with drugs like prozac (I think 'E' mentioned 'soma'). This is the true snake oil. There is a fine line between embracing ones suffering and letting suffering on a broader scale go on. I do not think Kempis means this at all! As a matter of fact, if you look at the lives of people who have mastered this principle (truly) then you will see DYNAMOS in the struggle to END the suffering of man. Mother Teresa Ghandi Martin Luther King Christ. regards, cAPSLOCK mp3.com

To: Neocon who wrote (126766)	2/13/2001 2:44:02 PM
From: E	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Had I realized we were discussion the Kempis piece as an item of religio-historical interest, my reaction would have been different. I would have felt it to be quite captivating, even up to and including the final paragraph, since I would see it solely as offering a kindly comfort to the necessarily lost. I don't eschew words of comfort, espistemologically dubious or not, if that is all that can be offer to assuage suffering. But the Kempis meditation was posted to me not in the 14th century; that happened on February 10, 2001, and I perhaps mistakenly took the implication that the words of this prayer, including the last paragraph, were being offered as counsel for today. Today the agonies of overpopulation are an example of suffering that we are not so, to borrow your words, "medically helpless" to alleviate as were the compassionate when witnessing the agonies of the Black Plague. I wonder what Thomas a Kempis's reaction would be today about Bush's first act in office, given his compassion for the poor and suffering (and the tolerant attitude toward abortion before "quickening" that prevailed in the church at the time he lived.) Message 15333405 WWKD? The answer to that question tells me whether the man was a religious humanitarian hampered by the realities of his time, or simply an intellectual metaphysician. I have little patience for the latter category. It's too late. There are too many starving orphans, too many seven year old prostitutes, too many Christians coming on all Darwinian about dying Africans.