forest:
>here's another scenario. stone age diet advocates convince the world that
>compassion for other life forms and spirituality are not worthy of any
>attention and that raw meat eating is the accepted norm. immediately libido,
>competition, and agression are increased to absurdly high levels and there is
>a big jump in population of humans. this increase in population creates tribal
>disputes over hunting ranges. because there is little compassion for any other
>life except perhaps the immediate clan or tribe, these clans begin to fight
>and kill each other. each generation, in an effort to survive develops better
>and better ways of killing food animals and their competing neighbor clans.
>this leads to a male dominant intelligence based on power and greed and
>advanced weaponry and so on, the species is extinct in several generations.

In my scenerio I was associating the reduced sexual drive (whether you want
to glorify that into some sort of tantric withholding orgasm hocus pocus
doesn't change the facts) and lack of robust growth in children to raw
vegan diets. Your scenerio associates meat eating with libido (OK, I'll
grant that relative to raw vegans ;)), competition, aggression,
territorialism, killing, male dominance, power, greed, and advanced
weaponry. If this wasn't all so cliche it might be funny.

>seriously, kirt, try entertaining, just for a moment, the idea that
>instinctual spirituality is evolving and has some place in the human future
>and past, that it is our destiny to refine body, mind, and spirit to explore a
>more harmonious compassionate blissful experience with nature so that as
>humans we do not continue to destroy nature and each other.

I am not destroying nature and each other. I further have no guilt about
the way I live, my genetic heritage (except maybe the German part ;)), or
my sensations, emotion, or ideations (though I find most of the latter
frivilous). Why would I want to convince myself that if I suppress my
sensations and emotions that I might be part of the forefront of human
evolution (as if your individual ideation has ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do
with human evolution--you can think up warm fuzzy codes of conduct until
your sperm count is zero and that simply isn't what evolution is)? Further,
I have loads of harmony, compassion, and bliss in my life (along with the
delightful contrast of some chaos, some revenge, some sadness, ect.)--there
is nothing to refine towards some ideal (which are a dime a dozen even if
we convince ourselves that ours is titanium-plated).

I have no idea what people mean when they talk of spirituality, especially
when you do, since it is always used to tell people how advanced you are,
and with a rightiousness that is denied to boot. I am, at times, rightious
but have no need to deny it. If new agey artsy fartsy is vangaurd I will be
more than happy to enjoy life at the end of the line where there is some
room to play instead of forest's code to live by. Life/experience as given
is a dang delight in need of no moralistic refinement in the guise of
advancing the spiritual.

>perhaps to go
>back to the past to solve the problems of the future and the now may have
>limitations.

_You_ solve the problems (???). I'll be experiencing my carnal existence
and thinking up loads of BS with the left over brain, but damn if I will
take it so seriously that I convince myself that I am solving humanities
past and future problems! Even I ain't _that_ egotistical. My biggest
problem right now is the frickin mongooses who want to eat little chicks
and eggs. My biggest delight is my daughter's new clicking sounds. Who
needs faith?

>i certainly see some value in your investigation of past
>evolutionary stages and have done a lot of the same. in answer to your
>question at end of paragraph above, no one decided what i believe is best for
>the rest, it's just a series of ideas and concepts that seem to me will make
>my life and world a more fun, relaxing, loving  place to be.

Ideas and concepts hold no such power. Face it: like every flavor of
"radical" before you, you want to change other folks so you will feel less
alone, less alienated, more loved. As long as you have the hope of your
codified community of ideas and concepts, you can perhaps stave off the
alienation for a while.

>i am open to the
>refinement of these concepts by the concensus of the family members that may
>find agreement with the general outline. i would never impose ideas on others,
>just share what has work/played for me in my limited experience of life so far
>and hope that together with group consensus we will make wiser decisions than
>by the traditional male dominant competative hierarchical monarchy,
>dictatorship, or majority rule approach.

Nobody cares, forest. Those cliches only stand between you and real
experience, real life in the moment.

>ps. it's possible that the lowering of libido does not diminish our ability to
>enjoy sex and sensuality but actually allows us a chance to have a more
>"whole"istic relaxed compassionate, body, mind, spirit, experience with the
>oppisite sex instead of the (in my mind limited) male dominant traditional
>stone age macho sexual mentallity.

Jeeeezuz, but you do harp. Are you an ex-Marine doing penance or something?
Or was your father an asshole? Mine was more often than not. Get over it.
The world isn't made of male domination cliches.

>it's possible that this lowering of libido
>also reduces male agreesion and competition with other males and enables them
>to evolve from agressive competition to relaxed blissful cooperation and
>increases the chance for individual and world peace.

Yeah, right. This used to be called porno-politics, where every social evil
was blamed on sexual dysfunction. But back then they figured it was
repression of sex that caused the troubles. I see they had it backwards,
eh?

Whether the world is at peace or in blissful competition hardly matters,
does it? But one thing is sure, your libido, reduced or exaggerated, has
NOT ONE DANG THING to do with world peace!!! How can you imagine otherwise?
Its like in the Woody Allen movie "Manhattan". Do people inflate their own
sense of importance by attaching their own pycho-sexual neuroses to
grandious concepts? Or do people avoid dealing with the deep existential
issues by taking their own pycho-sexual neuroses way to seriously? Somehow,
forest, you seem to do both at the same time. I probably do neither (but
then I always was conceited ;)), so I doubt we are going to come to a group
consensus. ;)

>i know it's hard to
>believe this spiritual stuff without faith and experience and experiments. as
>a youth growing up i rejected the old male dominant macho high priest control
>type religions (like the stone age ones that used animal and human sacrifice)

Everyone in my communion class two decades ago thought it was a bunch of
crap. Whether they could harp on male dominance or not. ;) Whoopdedo.

>i explored them and found them very limiting, but my spiritual instincts kept
>urging me on to explore a deeper more evolved compassionate way of interacting
>with nature and fellow people. faith is a weird thing, i know i cannot
>convince anyone of it's paradoxical value, it must be experienced to be
>appreciated.

Hope is a weird thing too. It keeps pain at bay.

To me, you simply have trouble interacting with people so you let them know
right away what the rules are going to be if you are going to have a
relationship with them. Along the way you make it known how terribly
spiritual and evolved you are.

And if you know you can't convince anyone of the value of your faith (or it
is the value of _their_ faith?), why do you try all the time? Perhaps just
to advertise the fact that you are really deep, really gentle, an overall
jesus without the horrifying male dominance?

>my limited experience with spiritual faith has resulted in
>several psychic events in my life and numerous sychronistic phenomena, enough
>for me to have few doubts about it's validity but not enough to prove to you
>that it is real.

Yup. I had a vision myself. It was that our big brain can think up just
about anything, all the while missing the delight of the details.

>i care enough about you and the rest of the human race to
>share it, you may reject it if you like.

Well, you can stop praying for me whenever you want. Please.

>i would never expect anyone to accept
>spirit on blind faith but by trial and error testing and experimenting and
>experiencing on their own.......aloha and peace forest

I _reject_ spirit as an affront to existence. As a gimmick to avoid the
pushes and pulls, the (as Liza might say) the calcium and the oxalic acid
of life. But so what? That's just me. It's not humankind's advancement from
male domination (o praise the erection!!! clitoral and penile!!!) to
gentility (o praise the limp sticky leftovers!!!) so it doesn't count in
karma points. That's fine by me.

Cheers,
Kirt

Secola  /\  Nieft
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