Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 14:56:30 -0400
Subject: Re: Tantalizing times - arguing for atheism....


Glen,

Let's spare our colleagues on the List by chopping the prelude.

By now, you as well as they, know I'm averse to loaded words,
like "Other", "binary logic,", residue", "social", "essential relativism",
"relative essentialism", which apparently have important, meanings for those
who have studied and interpreted the many authors and many  books you
mention.

Your own views, in plain language, must include valuable information they
gave you.  And plain language helps avoid misunderstandings.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>I think of terror as a feeling that
death
>> is inevitable, something that differs from being affected by beautiful
>>objects or performances**

>But death is inevitable.

>Like Different in what way?

Like the terror of death IMMEDIATELY.

As opposed to the expectation that  beauty and sublime experience will
enrich a probable future.

>>Our sensibilities being those parts of ideology which we >>relate to,
which we invest ourselves in.

Interesting - are there sensibilities unaffected by ideology and/
or people's ideas?

>>Or do we fashion experience out of the void of the world and say "this is
sublime"?

Perhaps the world/universe/cosmos fashions each human being
from the multiplicity of what "is", i.e.fields, forces, photons, quarks,
molecules, genes, proteins, etc., in such a manner that homo-sapiens, of all
species, is the only one conscious of a present, hopeful of a future, and
presumably the only species that can experience an inexpressible feeling of
sublimity.

Someone does like music you like whatever it may be.  Search on the Web for
"Dust", a television opera by Robert Ashley which has been produced in
Tokyo, and New York, and is scheduled for Paris in July and Lisbon in
September. I heard a
short selection on radio, but have not seen it. Opera without images is
fine, but opera with images is better.

Regards,
Hugh