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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (11196)	4/13/2001 10:49:44 AM
From: epicure	Respond to of 82486

What else can we conclude? I was asked to find a metaphor for myself in one of my night classes. I said I felt like an extraterrestrial visitor. Because I really don't understand what I observe. I can certainly feel compassion for humans that are not like me, but they seem to be suffering a great deal, and making things needlessly complicated. I was born like this, it just took me a while to figure it out (that not everyone was like me, in fact almost no one was like me), but I knew as a child that humans were, for the most part, very strange.

To: Lane3 who wrote (11196)	4/13/2001 4:18:42 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I think you are a very smart, very nice person. But let me ask you something. Before you decided to dump the Church, did you spend any time reading Augustine or Aquinas or John Henry Newman or GK Chesterton? Did you seek out the counsel of a spiritual advisor, to see what he or she might offer? Did you ask yourself if some other religion might suit you better, and, say, read DT Suzuki or Alan Watts on Zen Buddhism? Have you ever read the Bhagavad Gita? The Quran? Have you read William James's book "The Varieties of Religious Experience"? Any Jung? Any Buber? Can you name a couple of significant differences between Roman Catholics and Lutherans? This is the kind of curiosity I am talking about, the kind that actively seeks information that might aid in understanding or making up one's mind on crucial matters. If you have done any considerable portion of the above, you are exceptional, and I am impressed......

To: Lane3 who wrote (11196)	4/13/2001 5:21:40 PM
From: Neocon	Respond to of 82486

A little more on curiosity: The presumption is that if one is curious, one will do something about it, proportional to the urge, and commensurate with the means. Of course, lack of time or money may be inhibiting, but assuming some affluence, and some free time, the things about which one is most curious should eventually leave their mark. Thus, if one has an interest in art, one should go to museums pretty regularly, and perhaps read art books, and therefore one should know a bit about artists and movements and periods. If one has an interest in "the big questions", it would make sense to study some philosophy, and to have read, say, The Republic, The Nicomachean Ethics, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, or perhaps A Discourse on Method, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and Beyond Good and Evil....in any case, something. If one has an interest in politics, one would presume, for example, a basic understanding of the difference between social conservatives and libertarians, or a knowledge of what the Democratic Leadership Council stands for, or other such tidbits of contemporary political life. Suppose one lives in the Washington area. Historical curiosity: a trip to Mount Vernon. Political curiosity: a tour of the Capitol. Scientific curiosity: a trip to the Smithsonian. One can gauge interest, both in character and intensity, by observing one's peregrinations. Generally, then, I measure curiosity by what one actively pursues, and what one picks up along the way.....