Monday, December 25, 2006

Natural castes exist

Sunday, December 03, 2006 Know Your Caste
posted by Gagdad Bob at 12/03/2006 08:26:00 AM
The great metaphysician RenĂ© Guenon once mentioned that one of the problems with the modern world is that so few people are “in their proper place.” He made the remark in reference to something that we in the West categorically reject, the caste system, so it should not be surprising that people have no idea what caste they belong to.
But natural castes exist, and if you try to eliminate them, they will just return in a perverse form -- just as you can try to eliminate sexual differences but will end up with weird sexual hybrids and a lot general confusion -- confusion that is then institutionalized and taught as “wisdom” in our universities.... but only because there are so many academics who are in the wrong caste and have no business being in academic life! (As a brief aside, you will also notice that when I have a troll problem -- or more accurately, a “problem troll” -- it is always a caste issue, so that there is really little Dupree can say aside from “pipe down and keep pulling the rickshaw!”)
Let’s review our castes, shall we? But before doing so, let us remind ourselves that this is not a matter of equality under the law, much less before the eyes of God. To be honest, it is actually an issue of compassion, for it is difficult to be happy if one spends one’s life on the wrong path. As the Buddhists say, “another man’s dharma is a great bummer,” or something like that. I hope it goes without saying that I am not advocating some sort of imposition of the caste system, any more than I would advocate stratification of society based upon Jungian typology. Having said that, there is a good chance that you will be happier in life if you know your Jungian typology -- your “psychological DNA,” so to speak -- and pursue a career consistent with it. In fact, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, let’s just stipulate at the outset that we are speaking “mythologically,” in a Jungian sense of the term. One Cosmos Under God Robert W. Godwin
Complements Will Get You Everywhere4 Dec 2006 by Gagdad Bob Yesterday someone characterized my caste as “priest artisan,” but perhaps “laborer priest” is more like it -- a blue backward collar worker. Ever since it came into existence, the United States has been the key to the material and ...
The Flat Cosmos Society and their Junk Metaphysics30 Oct 2006 by Gagdad Bob Now, all of the castes also exist within each caste, and I make no apologies for being a “warrior priest,” as it were, even if atheists end up with hurt feelings because they’re not used to someone above Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell’s ...
Men Without Chests and Women Without Breasts23 Oct 2006 by Gagdad Bob - References ... Jung’s useful system), caste (eg, priest, warrior, menial/intellectual laborer, merchant, etc.), and even zodiacal type (in the archetypal sense, not the debased “predictive” variety found in newspapers and most books on the topic). ...
Hey Baby, What's Your Caste?16 Feb 2006 by Gagdad Bob Now the Hindu caste system was originally based on the banal but accurate observation that individual human beings do indeed belong to different castes--that there are different personality types (for example, consider Jung's...
Cosmic Solidarity, Part One: A River out of Eden24 Oct 2005 by Gagdad Bob The caste system? Very bad. The American constitution? Unsurpassed. American materialism? Troubling. Etc. ***** A primordial fork in the road took place in mankind's evolutionary journey sometime after the 10th century BC, when both the ...

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Nudity per se not obscenity: Court

Dismissing a petition seeking a ban on publication of obscene photographs in newspapers, a Bench comprising Justice A.R. Lakshmanan and Justice Tarun Chatterjee said: "Where art and obscenity are mixed, what must be seen is whether the artistic, literary or social merit of the work in question outweighs its obscene content. In judging whether a particular work is obscene, regard must be had to contemporary mores and national standards."
Writing the judgment, Mr. Justice Lakshmanan quoted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling and said: "Articles and pictures in a newspaper must meet the Miller test's constitutional standard of obscenity in order for the publisher or the distributor to be prosecuted for obscenity. Nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene."
"While the Supreme Court of India held `Lady Chatterley's Lover' to be obscene," the Bench said, "in England the jury acquitted the publishers finding that the publication did not fall foul of the obscenity test. This was heralded as a turning point in the fight for literary freedom in the United Kingdom."
"The definition of obscenity differs from culture to culture, between communities within a single culture, and also between individuals within those communities," the judges added. "Many cultures have produced laws to define what is considered to be obscene and censorship is often used to try to suppress or control material that is obscene under these definitions."
"A blanket ban on the publication of certain photographs and news items etc., will lead to a situation where the newspaper will be publishing material which caters only to children and adolescents" and the adults would be deprived of their share of entertainment permissible under the normal norms of decency in any society, said a Bench consisting of Justices A.R. Lakshmanan and Tarun Chatterjee.
"The incidence of shielding the minors should not be that the adult population is restricted to read and see what is fit for children," the Bench said.
"In view of the availability of sufficient safeguards in terms of various legislation, norms and rules and regulations to protect society in general and children in particular from obscene and prurient contents, we are of the opinion that the writ at the instance of the petitioner is not maintainable,"

Gagdad Bob of One Cosmos

Who stumbles out of bed each morning at 5:00 AM, seizes the wheel of the cosmic bus, and embarks on a bewilderness adventure of higher nondoodling?
Who loiters on the threshold of the transdimensional doorway, looking for handouts from Petey?
Who, with Cousin Dupree's pliers and a blowtorch, has wrested the ancient sword from the stoned philosopher and stuck it in the breadbasket of metaphysical ignorance and tenure?
Whose blog is the vertical church of the New Testavus for the Restavus, channeling the roaring torrent of O into the feeble stream of cyber-k?
Whose absurcular mythunderstanding blows the locked doors of the empyrean off their rusty old hinges?
Who chucks the first water balloon out the hotel window at the annual Raccoon convention?
Who gets to steer the boat up to Raccoon Point this year? Bob! Can you dig it? My Web Page

Monday, December 04, 2006

Compassion and resolute regard for reality

dilys said... The gender sideline to the discussion simply underscores the taken-for-granted transgressiveness of the pomo/liberal disdain for conventional boundaries, which may need creative adaptation in occasional situations (what practial Christians call the "pastoral"), but which on the whole provide the cartography of human sanity ("right doctrine").
Your beginning meditation on castes has the most subtle resonance of anything of yours I remember reading. I've been thinking about careers, and "class" for years, and the Myers Briggs, but the way you bring them together here wonderfully combines compassion and resolute regard for reality. Ah reality, where we find the good stuff if we look closely, putting away wishful thinking, envy, and complaint, and receive the embrace of the harness of our respective rickshaws.As my spiritual mentor says, "Heigh ho, I Owe, it's off to work I go!" 12/03/2006 02:32:46 PM
Lisa said... Bob is so far off the ground he does have some sense of un-touch-ability!!!
HV said... Thanks for your praise of the warrior caste. Even though I've been an artisan from day 1, I've always admired the true warrior, because he has mastered the fear of death. This is not an exaggeration, because I've known a number of special forces guys in my life, and that's just how they are. How that works, I have no clue. 12/03/2006 06:53:33 PM