Philosophy & Poetry

[MooCow]

Can you explain with 2 sentences why you spam this thread with walls of text? What is this about?

Some things are too important to say in just two sentences.

No, I cannot.
I'm sorry.

Amen.

[noindyfikator]

Albert Einstein:
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

essa

[sMartins]

Regarding truth, it is not enough to say what it is. It is not enough to 'say'.

"Tell me what you mean when you say truth", because even if you said it, it would not be enough.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life".

John 18:38
"What is truth?" retorted Pilate.

To this question Jesus opposed an eloquent silence.
He said nothing.

Jesus did not answer because truth is not a saying.
Because to separate truth in its totality and reduce it to a saying is to cause it to die.
Because truth, says Jesus of Nazareth, is together with the way and the life.

Let us stop nurturing the superstition of meaning.

Reducing philosophical practice to a series of semantic and syntactic meanings or doctrines is a superstition from which, I heartily say, we must free ourselves.

[noindyfikator]

Regarding truth, it is not enough to say what it is. It is not enough to 'say'.

"Tell me what you mean when you say truth", because even if you said it, it would not be enough.

John 14:6
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life".

John 18:38
"What is truth?" retorted Pilate.

To this question Jesus opposed an eloquent silence.
He said nothing.

Jesus did not answer because truth is not a saying.
Because to separate truth in its totality and reduce it to a saying is to cause it to die.
Because truth, says Jesus of Nazareth, is together with the way and the life.

Let us stop nurturing the superstition of meaning.

Reducing philosophical practice to a series of semantic and syntactic meanings or doctrines is a superstition from which, I heartily say, we must free ourselves.

I used ChatGPT to summarize, result:

The concept of truth goes beyond mere verbal expression; it cannot be fully conveyed through words, as exemplified in the biblical passages and the idea that reducing truth to mere language diminishes its essence and connection to life's path.

I think it would be better if you post 2 versions for this wall of text.
First one - wall of text in spoiler
Second one - Ask ChatGPT to summarize the wall of text with 1 sentence.

[sMartins]

The prophet who fled from God


If I were asked what happiness consists of in my opinion, I would have no hesitation. I would say that happiness consists essentially in acting on the world by expressing one's own nature. As does the tree that gives its fruit; the star that radiates its own light and heat; the prism into which a ray enters, which it refracts and transforms into an iris according to its own geometry. That is why no condition seems to me further from happiness than that of the biblical prophets. But let us go in order.

The Hebrew word translated as 'prophet' is nabhì. And it comes from a root meaning the act of proclaiming. The point is this. What does nabhì proclaim? Someone else's words. He, in fact, is a spokesman for God, his megaphone. He has the role of shouting out loud messages that do not come from his heart, sentences he may not share, sentences he may not even understand. So he must bear fruit that is not his own, radiate the light and warmth of something else, do violence to himself by deforming his own geometry. It must do so publicly, in front of an entire city. It must often announce doom or thunder curses while facing, blameless and partly unaware, the horror, anger, derision of the people it addresses. It is a harassment perpetrated by God against a man. A harassment that often takes the form of physical and sexual humiliation. Some examples.

The prophet Isaiah is forced to engage in quite embarrassing behaviour. He has to walk the streets naked and barefoot for three years, as a symbol of the shame of Egypt, whose inhabitants will be deported as prisoners: "naked and barefoot and with bare buttocks, shame on Egypt".

It still goes better for him than for the prophet Hosea. He has to marry a prostitute. This too is a symbol, 'for the country does nothing but prostitute itself'. Not only that. The prostitute from time to time becomes pregnant by her clients, and Hosea has to take these children into his home as his own children, giving each one the name that God imposes on him. Thus a poor child is called Lo Ruchàma. Now, Ruchàma has the same root as rèchem, which means "womb", "uterus". Lo Ruchàma literally means Unreceived or Unforgiven (some translations even state Unloved): "For I will no longer forgive the house of Israel, nor will I have compassion on it". The next son is called Lo Ammì, Not My People: "For you are not My people and I do not exist for you".

The prophets often recount their experience in words of anguish and pain. In this sense, by far the most daring words are those of the prophet Jeremiah. In his book, chapter 20, verse 7, we read:

You seduced me Lord, and I allowed myself to be seduced;
you made me strong and you prevailed.
I have become an object of ridicule every day;
Everyone mocks me.

It is worth putting the passage under the microscope. "You have seduced me" (patitàni), is a voice of the verb patàh: exactly the one that recurs in Exodus, chapter 22, verse 15: "When a man seduces a virgin not yet engaged and sins with her, he shall pay her marriage dowry and she shall become his wife". So the term is the same as that used to speak of seduction in the literal sense, sexual seduction. Let us move on. The Italian Bishops' Conference translation says: "Thou hast made me strong". In Hebrew, it is chadsaqtàni, from the verb chadsàq, which has among its meanings "to be strong", "to be violent", "to do force", "to do violence", but also means "to abuse", "to rape". For example, in Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verse 25: "But if a man finds a maiden engaged in the field, and in doing violence to her he sins with her, then only the man who has sinned with her shall die".

In biblical passages one often finds paired phrases: the concept is reiterated using two phrases with similar meanings. We saw an example of this a moment ago: "I will no longer forgive the house of Israel, nor will I have compassion on it". Here we speak of violence, in the previous sentence of seduction. What is the type of violence that belongs to the same domain as seduction? Jeremiah is talking about carnal violence.

So when God calls Jonah to be a prophet, Jonah does the only thing that, in light of the above, seems sensible to do: he runs away as fast as he can. God has ordered him to cry out to Nineveh, in Mesopotamia, that is, to the east. He wants to reach Tarshish, in present-day Spain, i.e. in the west. In a town called Iafo he finds a ship heading there. He pays the fare and embarks.

But one cannot escape from God. So God hurls a frightful storm into the sea, which raises colossal waves. The waters are shaken so much that the seabed appears. The ship's crew is seized with terror, they give themselves up, each prays to his god. Some consult an oracle. And the oracle says that one man alone is to blame for all this: Jonah. So they all gather around him, corner him. They ask him, "Who are you? What have you done?" He replies that he is a Jew and that he has disobeyed his god. He had ordered him to go east: he, instead, is going west, with them. "And what are we to do, lest we all perish for the fault of one?" they press him.

And Jonah here has a moment of heroic lucidity. He explains that God is looking for him. If he leaves the ship, God will disregard it. So the sailors pick him up, lift him up and throw him to the waves. As soon as Jonah's body is out of the hull, all at once the fury of the waves, the howl of the wind, is silenced. For the crew, the worst is over. For Jonah it is not.

He sinks into the waves, seemingly doomed to death by water. But God sends him a huge fish and the fish swallows Jonah. Jonah stays in the fish's stomach three days and three nights, without seeing the light again, without hope of touching land again, of staying alive. Then at the bottom of the abyss, at the height of despair, he suddenly reacts, gathers his strength, gathers every ounce of energy and recites a prayer. A desperate prayer, dark and sallow: 'The waters have flooded me to my throat, the abyss has enveloped me, the seaweed has clung to my head, I have descended to the roots of the mountains, the earth has closed its bars behind me forever'. God listens to him and then says something to the fish. We don't know what, but certainly something very unpleasant. For the fish gets a great weight off its stomach and vomits Jonah onto the beach. For him the worst is over. Not for Jonah.

He really doesn't stand a chance, he must be a prophet. He gets up from the ground and sets off towards Nineveh, staggering. He is safe, but distraught, terrified, sleepless, filthy with fear, covered in fish vomit. He arrives, one way or another, at the gates of Nineveh, an immense city. Three days of walking - the text says. I imagine the swarming of the people, the rumble of voices that intoxicate him. He catches his breath. He gathers his courage once more. He walks through the door and begins to preach.

He shouts: "'Od arebba'ìm iom ve Ninvè neheppachèt!", "Forty more days and Nineveh will be destroyed". This is the sentence that God has entrusted to him. For forty days he cries it out.

And the inhabitants of Nineveh believe him. They believe the stranger frayed and ragged. They begin to do penance, to fast, to dress in sackcloth, to sprinkle their heads with ashes. Even the king. He too takes off his cloak, descends from his throne. He dusts his head with ashes, he fasts. In fact, he sends criers around the city: let all the inhabitants of Nineveh fast, do penance. God sees the conversion of their hearts and then, the Bible says, 'he was sorry for the evil he had said to do and did not do it'. The destruction is undone. For Nineveh the worst is over. For Jonah it is not.

He thinks that all his suffering was in vain. He shouted for forty days at a city announcing its destruction. But the city remained unharmed. Not only was he forced to shout words that were not his own to the point of exhaustion. Those words turned out to be false.

"Therefore I hastened to flee to Tarshìsh; for I know that you are a merciful and forgiving god, slow to anger, of great love, and that you take pity on the threatened evil." Jonah's unhappiness is such that he asks God to die. "Take my breath away from me, for it is better my death than my life."

He is blaspheming. He is blaspheming because, in the Jewish conception, life is the supreme value. It is the great gift that God has given to man. A gift that cannot be refused. Thus, while for other cultures, while for a Cathar heretic, a Hindu ascetic, a Roman citizen, a Japanese samurai, suicide may be a contemplable (even honourable, sometimes) option, for the Jewish mentality (as well as for the Christian one) it is a mortal sin. For such a conception to ask God to kill you, to 'take your breath away' is blasphemy.

And God? How does he react to this insubordination? How does he punish it? What does he do? Does he electrocute him? No (also because it would satisfy him). He attempts to speak to him. He asks him: "Is it good to be inflamed with anger?". It is a rhetorical question, of course. "Is it good to be inflamed with wrath?", as if to say, "Come on, man".

But Jonah does not answer this question. And he goes away. Without saying anything. Just like angry people sometimes do, when someone speaks to them, trying to calm them down, and instead they get even more irritated.

Now Jonah stands on a promontory. He watches Nineveh from afar. Alone. Lying on the ground. Under the sun.

God would like to speak to him. But his muteness must be unhinged. The lock would have to be unlocked. Asking questions is not enough.

So he makes a castor bean, a plant, grow near Jonah. And the plant shadows Jonah's head, gives him relief. And he, then, is taken with great joy. Because sometimes, when we are really broken, the slightest favourable event, an insignificant piece of good fortune, can induce in us an illogical, disproportionate joy. But, immediately after Jonah rejoices, God sends a dry wind, which causes the tree to wither, and a worm, which causes it to rot. The plant dies. So Jonah suddenly plunges back into even deeper despair. Again he cries out against heaven: 'Take my breath away from me, for my death is better than my life'. Again the same blasphemy. Still better than nothing.

At least the silence is broken. The lock is blown off. And God speaks again. Again that identical question: "Is it good to be inflamed with anger?".

A rhetorical question, it was said. The answer is implied: "No, it is not doing right". Instead Jonah replies: "Yes, it is good to be on fire to the point of death!

Then God asks him another question. "Thou hast been moved for the castor plant, that thou didst not labour for him and make him great: that in one night he was born and in one night he died. And should I not be moved for Nineveh, the great city: that there are in her more than twelve myriads of men who do not distinguish between their right hand and their left (that is, of children)?"

Meaning God says to Jonah: "You complain because I gave up destroying Nineveh. But you make such a fuss about a tree (by the way, you did not even take the trouble to cultivate it) and I should have no qualms before destroying an entire city and exterminating its citizens (twelve myriads of children included)?" Another rhetorical question. The answer is implied: 'Yes, indeed, you were right to have qualms. I can understand you.

But we do not know the answer. The text ends like this, with God's question.

The words that Jonah was forced to shout for forty days have not come true. Therefore he recognises them as false and feels all the effort he has put in and the fear he has felt in the name of them as useless. This frustration is a blade that enters his heart. His pain blinds him. He sees nothing else.

He does not see that the words that came out of his mouth had a greater destiny than truth: to save the whole of Nineveh - and twelve myriad children.

God's purpose was to wipe out the evil of Nineveh. And this effect was achieved: with the repentance of the inhabitants instead of their physical elimination. So even if he, at this moment, cannot understand it, the words Jonah spoke are far from being in vain. Even if they have not come true. Indeed, precisely because they have not come true. And only such words, words capable of taking us beyond their meaning, perhaps, really make sense. Only they save us humans.

[sMartins]

And that is it for this book, I think it is more than enough and I hope you enjoyed it.

I have not translated all the chapters, these are the missing ones:

• The aliens of Sodom
• The blessed trickster
• The teaching of the prostitute
• The women who won the war
• The thief who became a judge
• The victors who asked for mercy from the vanquished
• The cowherd who became king

If anyone is interested I could translate more, just ask.

Thank you for reading.

[SpacePig]

truth is the ideal, perfect, absolute form of something.
happiness is a hormonal euphoria that our nervous system rewards us with in cases where, in its opinion, we have committed an important and useful act.
questions ?

[dafels]

Hi sMartins,

Are your posts AI generated?

Kind regards

[sMartins]

The fundamental point, I believe, is the progressive discovery of one's own limits, in other words, the fact that, in the course of life, in different ways, one realises that what one thought one knew before was little.
This broadening of consciousness, I would say, does not gain us any specific advantage, the advantage is in the fact that we feel good about ourselves, which, I assure you, is also useful for others.
When one feels good about oneself, one is hardly troublesome to others.