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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man.
Yes. Now brotherhood in most of the myths I know of is confined to a bounded community. In bounded communities, aggression is projected outward. For example, the ten commandments say, “Thou shalt not kill.” Then the next chapter says, “Go into Canaan and kill everybody in it.” That is a bounded field. The myths of participation and love pertain only to the in-group, and the out-group is totally other. This is the sense of the word “gentile”—the person is not of the same order.
He must not have gotten to the New Testament…
Now, the biblical tradition is a socially oriented mythology. Nature is condemned.
Well…
These men did not believe in a Fall. They did not think the mind of man was cut off from God.
Not sure about this claim…I’ve heard convincing arguments that the limits of suffrage were the result of the founders’ FIRM BELIEF in the fallibility of man
The mind of man, cleansed of secondary and merely temporal concerns, beholds with the radiance of a cleansed mirror a reflection of the rational mind of God.
How does he propose we cleanse it? How does he think the founders believed it found cleansing?
the political temptation. Jesus is taken to the top of a mountain and shown the nations of the world, and the Devil says to him, “You can control all these if you’ll bow down to me,” which is a lesson, not well enough made known today, of what it takes to be a successful politician.
They’re already here, in the religions. All religions have been true for their time. If you can recognize the enduring aspect of their truth and separate it from the temporal applications, you’ve got it.
Be true to yourself. Follow your heart. Do what you love. Find truth wherever you encounter it. Trust your feelings. Nothing is bigger than you because you are everything. You are good. You are.
One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that.
And we can trust our own selves to know what the right thing is. Of course.
Like all heroes, the Buddha doesn’t show you the truth itself, he shows you the way to truth.
This goes directly against what Jesus said about himself
She had been raised a believing Christian and so thought this had been God’s punishment of her for something she had done or not done at that time.
if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.
when the Virgin acquiesces in being the vessel of the incarnation, she has herself already affected the redemption. It has become more and more apparent that the Virgin is equivalent in her suffering to the suffering of her son. In the Catholic Church now I think she is called the “co-savior.”
the idea of God as the Absolute Other is a ridiculous idea. There could be no relationship to the Absolute Other.
Unless we were made in his image and in love…
That this wonderful experience should be condemned as a sin is the thing the troubadour just says no to. Love is the meaning of life—it is the high point of life.
The point of life is the fulfillment of my desires, regardless of the impact on others, society, or even myself.
included a recognition of and respect for the individual as a living entity. The function of the society is to cultivate the individual. It is not the function of the individual to support society.
And, ultimately, how does that work? Aren’t we ALL individuals? This breaks down
Well, you’ve got to use your head. They say, you know, a narrow path is a very dangerous path—the razor’s edge.
But how do I know which should be leading at any given time? Ultimately “following my bliss” won’t LET me worry very much about “society” except as it impacts me. If I’m really self-controlled I might think about how it WILL impact me down the road. MAYBE I’ll consider the impact on MY offspring, but…it’s gotta be bigger than that…
The vandalism involved in the destruction of the pagan temples of antiquity is hardly matched in world history. MOYERS: Destroyed by the organized Church? CAMPBELL: By the organized Church. And why couldn’t Christians live with another religion? What was the matter with them? MOYERS: What do you think? CAMPBELL: It’s power, it’s power. I think the power impulse is the fundamental impulse in European history. And it got into our religious traditions.
There’s a lot to agree with here
What I meant was that you must live not in terms of your own ego system, your own desires, but in terms of what you might call the sense of mankind—the Christ—in you.
This doesn’t seem to go with what he said the last couple of chapters…
