Asylum For Blood-Feuds-Affected Person -- Lawyer Recommandation

[borsellino]

There is this inherent insecurity about the consequences of your actions (related to the absurdity of the world), and to the fact that, in experiencing your freedom, you also realize that you will be fully responsible for these consequences; there is no thing in you (your genes, for instance) that acts and that you can "blame" if something goes wrong. Of course, most of us only have short and shallow encounters with this kind of dread, as not every choice is perceived as having dreadful possible consequences (and, it can be claimed, our lives would be unbearable if every choice facilitated dread), but that doesn't change the fact that freedom remains a condition of every action.

Sartre calls it "bad faith" when you deny the concept of free will by lying to yourself about your self and freedom. This can take many forms, from convincing yourself that some form of determinism is true, to a sort of "mimicry" where you act as "you should." How "one" should act is often determined by an image one has of how one such as oneself (say, a bank manager) acts. This image usually corresponds to some sort of social norm. This does not mean that all acting in accordance with social norms is bad faith: The main point is the attitude you takes to your own freedom, and the extent to which you act in accordance with this freedom. A sign of bad faith can be something like the denial of responsibility for something you have done on the grounds that you just did "as one does" or that your genes determined you to do as you did. Lying to yourself might appear impossible or contradictory. Sartre denies the subconscious the power to do this, and he claims that the person who is lying to himself has to be aware that he is lying - that he isn't determined, or this "thing" he makes himself out to be.

MAn, don't get me started with Sartre, cuz it'll get really really cold in here .. Sartre indeed derides those who act out roles: bourgeoisie with their comfortable sense of 'duty', homosexuals who pretend to be heterosexuals, peeping Toms who get caught in the act of spying and, most famously of all, waiters who rush about. All of these, he says, are slaves to other people's perceptions - 'the Other'. They are exhibiting mauvaise foi -- 'bad faith'. He emphasizes what is not over what is, the latter being a rather humdrum sort of affair consisting of the kind of things that scientists examine, while the 'what is not' is really much more interesting. He sums up his view (if "sums up" is ever an appropriate term in existentialist writing) thus: "The Nature of consciousness simultaneously is to be what is not and not to be what it is." And hence, we come back to our own natures, our own 'essences'. We exist, yes, but how do we 'define ourselves'? It is here that the waiter comes in:

His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the hand and arm ("Being and Nothingness")[1943]

This spotlight on 'consciousness' is what made Sartre's name. But, curiously enough, another book that came out in 1943, "She Came To Stay," by his lifelong intellectual confidante and companion Simone de Beauvoir, also describes various kinds of consciousness, in passages ranging from wandering through an empty theater (the stage, the walls, the chairs, unable to come alive until there is an audience) to watching a woman in a restaurant ignore the fact that her male companion has begun stroking her arm: "it lay there, forgotten, ignored, the male's hand was stroking a piece of flesh that no longer belonged to anyone." As well as this one:

It's impossible to believe that other people are conscious beings, aware of their own inward feelings, as we ourselves are aware of our own," said Françoise. "To me, it's terrifying when we grasp that. We get the impression of no longer being anything but a fragment of someone else's mind."

Curiouser and curiouser, although the two books came out in the same year, Simone de Beauvoir's was written some time earlier, and Sartre read the drafts avidly on his brief army leaves before commencing "Being & Nothingness." Now who's showing bad faith? Sartre or the waiter?

Sartre even records in his diary how Beauvoir had to correct him several times for clumsy misunderstanding of existentialist philosophy. It turns out that Sartre simply borrowed all Beauvoir's ideas and used them (unacknowledged) in his own work. The only unknown is why Beauvoir was content to allow this, indeed, repeatedly denied any credit for Sartre's work. But then the Sartre-Beauvoir relationship, although much celebrated and something of a philosophical icon, is also completely misunderstood. Truly it is itself a philosophical tale. On the one hand there is the well-known plot of Sartre the womanizer who denies the dutiful Beauvoir the marriage in order to preserve his 'existential freedom'. On the other, and much less known, is the factual history recorded in their letters to one another. This records that, in 1930, Sartre proposed marriage to Beauvoir. She was aghast at this, both for the conventionality of the proposal, and for the conventionality of Sartre's assumptions, and it was she who insisted instead that if they were to spend their years together she wanted to be able to continue to have other relationships (with both male and female lovers).

And the true sexual tale belies the professional one, oft-related, of Sartre the genius aided by Beauvoir the frustrated would-be wife turned into dutiful secretary. On the contrary, in truth, Beauvoir had both the intellectual and the literary edge on her younger partner. Beauvoir, from a convent school that no one was supposed to progress beyond, managed to pass France's highest philosphy exam a year early, while Sartre, with all the resources of privilege, struggled to pass on his second attempt. Sartre later claimed this was due to an excess of originality in his answers, but in truth this must have been a new departure if so. Up to then the greatest display of creativity he had shown had been when as a child he had carefully copied out stories from comics, adding in extra details from his grandpa's encyclopaedias. He had then passed the whole lot off as his 'novel' to admiring parents. In "The Words" Sartre acknowledges, with refreshing frankness, these early examples of 'bad faith' noting how his mother would bring visitors into the dining-room so that they could surprise the young creator at his school-desk. He would pretend to be too absorbed to be aware of his admirers' presence. They would withdraw on tiptoe, whispering that he was too cute for words, that it was too-charming...

Which play-acting brings us back to the waiter. Now I've observed waiters too. They often need to perform tasks quickly, for a practical reason, not an optional one related to their 'false consciousness'. The job is skilled -- demanding more than demeaning. They are indeed actors, as they have a role to carry out, and, of course, like actors, they have an audience watching them (even people like Sartre and Beauvoir, sometimes). So let's use a different analogy instead. That of the philosophy intellectual:

Their speech is a little too sonorous, the emphasis on words a little too firm. Their gesticulations seem ungainly in their self-consciousness, their eyes gaze a little too eagerly, their voice occassionally dropping in a pretend confidence as they struggle to communicate the essence of their latest theory, or rising, a note of disappointed incredulity coming in, if there is any dissent, as if sensing a lost equilibrium which can only be re-established by a flurry of paper...

[Birkena]

[…] most famously of all, waiters who rush about. All of these, he says, are slaves to other people's perceptions - 'the Other'. They are exhibiting mauvaise foi -- 'bad faith'. […] It is here that the waiter comes in:

His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the hand and arm ("Being and Nothingness")[1943]

[…]

 

Café de Flore
172 Boulevard Saint-Germain, 75006 Paris



Stop by Café de Flore  to indulge in Camus' 'local' after he had a falling out with Sartre and Beauvoir. Popular also among the surrealists, existentialists and la bande à Prevert, apparently Johnny Depp hangs out here too.

[PCRev]

It is here that the waiter comes in:

His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the hand and arm ("Being and Nothingness")[1943]

Now who's showing bad faith? Sartre or the waiter?

Which play-acting brings us back to the waiter. Now I've observed waiters too. They often need to perform tasks quickly, for a practical reason, not an optional one related to their 'false consciousness'. The job is skilled -- demanding more than demeaning. They are indeed actors, as they have a role to carry out, and, of course, like actors, they have an audience watching them (even people like Sartre and Beauvoir, sometimes). So let's use a different analogy instead. That of the philosophy intellectual:

Their speech is a little too sonorous, the emphasis on words a little too firm. Their gesticulations seem ungainly in their self-consciousness, their eyes gaze a little too eagerly, their voice occassionally dropping in a pretend confidence as they struggle to communicate the essence of their latest theory, or rising, a note of disappointed incredulity coming in, if there is any dissent, as if sensing a lost equilibrium which can only be re-established by a flurry of paper...

All professions have a similar obligation imposed on them. There is the "ceremony" or the "dance" of the grocer, the auctioneer, the tailor. The public demands of them that they undertake this ceremony in order to prove that they are nothing but a grocer, an auctioneer, a tailor. A grocer who dreams is offensive. We don't want an auctioneer who tells us about the messy divorce he is going through. This demand is most obvious in the military, where the new soldier is instructed that he is not saluting the man, but the uniform. When the command "Eyes left!" is given when marching past the General's review stand, woe unto the soldier if his eyes actually make contact with the General's! (It may be difficult for young conscripts fresh from the farm to kill other young conscripts, but easier to kill other "uniforms.")

We are in bad faith when we try to turn the other person into a thing with our gaze (into "the waiter," "the tailor," "the auctioneer," "the soldier") but these individuals can also put themselves in bad faith by trying to be nothing but their roles. In fact, a waiter cannot BE a waiter in the sense that a rock is a rock, or an ashtray is an ashtray. That is, he cannot be it inthe mode of being-in-itself. If you are a waiter, you are so in the mode of not-being-a-waiter. Being-for-itself can never become a THING, even if it wants to. The issue here seems to be this: although the grammar of the verb "to be" is identical in these two sentences --

"This is a waiter"
"This is a rock"

in each instance the meaning of the verb is radically different. In the human case it cannot be part of a definition, for the being of the "for-itself" is always indefinable and incomplete, and even capable of self-cancellation. Therefore "good faith": A freedom which wills itself freedom is in fact a being-which-is-not-what-it-is and which-is-what-it-is-not, and which chooses as the ideal of being, being-what-it-is-not and not-being-what-it-is!

[modeld after]

[...] Nietzsche in his new valuation has defined Christian 'good' and 'evil' in the light of the will to power. [...]

Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell.

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is evil personified. Many followers of the Bible consider Satan to be a real being, a spirit created by God. Satan and the other spirits who followed him rebelled against God. They were allegedly cast out from Heaven by their Creator. Satan, being a spirit, is neither male nor female. However, like his Creator, Satan is usually referred to as a masculine being. Many believe that Satan, or the Devil as he is often called, can "possess" human beings. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil. The Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on those considered to be possessed. Satan is believed to have many powers, among them the power to manifest himself in human or animal form. The consorting has been recorded as often being purely physical and mostly sexual. For most of the history of Christianity there are reports of Satan having sex with humans, either as an incubus (male devil) or succubus (female devil). Witches and sorcerers were thought by many to be the offspring of such unions. They are considered especially pernicious because they inherit some of the devil's powers.

C.G. Jung's Answer to Evil

One of Jung's most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those aspects of ourselves that we're not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our peers. It could be an unusual or unhealthy inclination which the powers of civilization have apparently quelled. Because the shadow involves known and unknown aspects of the self, it relates to the ego, the unconscious and the external environment. In essence, the shadow reminds us that the mind is a like multistoried building. Our conscious mind, the ego, may or may not confront the mostly unconscious shadow. Once confronted by the ego the shadow may be integrated into consciousness. But for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of everyday awareness. Jung explains the shadow with his notion of the archetypes:

When it [shadow] appears as an archetype...it is quite within the possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

[neneh]

Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell.

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is evil personified. Many followers of the Bible consider Satan to be a real being, a spirit created by God. Satan and the other spirits who followed him rebelled against God. They were allegedly cast out from Heaven by their Creator. Satan, being a spirit, is neither male nor female. However, like his Creator, Satan is usually referred to as a masculine being. Many believe that Satan, or the Devil as he is often called, can "possess" human beings. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil. The Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on those considered to be possessed. Satan is believed to have many powers, among them the power to manifest himself in human or animal form. The consorting has been recorded as often being purely physical and mostly sexual. For most of the history of Christianity there are reports of Satan having sex with humans, either as an incubus (male devil) or succubus (female devil). Witches and sorcerers were thought by many to be the offspring of such unions. They are considered especially pernicious because they inherit some of the devil's powers.

C.G. Jung's Answer to Evil

One of Jung's most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those aspects of ourselves that we're not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our peers. It could be an unusual or unhealthy inclination which the powers of civilization have apparently quelled. Because the shadow involves known and unknown aspects of the self, it relates to the ego, the unconscious and the external environment. In essence, the shadow reminds us that the mind is a like multistoried building. Our conscious mind, the ego, may or may not confront the mostly unconscious shadow. Once confronted by the ego the shadow may be integrated into consciousness. But for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of everyday awareness. Jung explains the shadow with his notion of the archetypes:

When it [shadow] appears as an archetype...it is quite within the possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

As Jung again said of Schopenhauer: "He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil -- all those things which the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility." It is an awareness of this aspect of the world that renders the religious ideas of "salvation" meaningful; yet "salvation" as such is always missing from moralistic or aesthetic renderings of religion. Only Jung could have written his "Answer to Job." Placing God in the Unconscious might strike most people as reducing him to a mere psychological object; but that is to overlook Jung's Kantianism. The Unconscious, and especially the Collective Unconscious, belongs to Kantian things-in-themselves, or to the transcendent Will of Schopenhauer. Jung was often at pains not to complicate his theory of the Archetypes by committing himself to a metaphysical theory -- he wanted the theory to work whether he was talking about the brain or about the Transcendent -- but that was merely a concession to the materialistic bias of contemporary science. He had no materialistic commitment himself and, when it came down to it, was not going to accept such naive reductionism. Instead, he was willing to rethink how the Transcendent might operate.

The Problem of Evil, which for so many people simply denuminizes religion, and which Schopenhauer used to reject the value of the world, became a challenge for Jung in the psychoanalysis of God. The God of the Bible is indeed a personality, and seemingly not always the same one. God as a morally evolving personality is the extraordinary conception of "Answer to Job." What Otto saw as the evolution of human moral consciousness, Jung turns right around on the basis of the principle that the human unconscious, expressed spontaneously in religious practice and literature, transcends mere human subjectivity. But the transcendent reality in the unconscious is different in kind from consciousness. As Jung said in "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" again: 

If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes -- the second cosmogony [ed. note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the "noosphere," the layer of "mind"]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain -- found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.

[d i f f e r e n c e]

Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell.

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is evil personified. Many followers of the Bible consider Satan to be a real being, a spirit created by God. Satan and the other spirits who followed him rebelled against God. They were allegedly cast out from Heaven by their Creator. Satan, being a spirit, is neither male nor female. However, like his Creator, Satan is usually referred to as a masculine being. Many believe that Satan, or the Devil as he is often called, can "possess" human beings. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil. The Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on those considered to be possessed. Satan is believed to have many powers, among them the power to manifest himself in human or animal form. The consorting has been recorded as often being purely physical and mostly sexual. For most of the history of Christianity there are reports of Satan having sex with humans, either as an incubus (male devil) or succubus (female devil). Witches and sorcerers were thought by many to be the offspring of such unions. They are considered especially pernicious because they inherit some of the devil's powers.

C.G. Jung's Answer to Evil

One of Jung's most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those aspects of ourselves that we're not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our peers. It could be an unusual or unhealthy inclination which the powers of civilization have apparently quelled. Because the shadow involves known and unknown aspects of the self, it relates to the ego, the unconscious and the external environment. In essence, the shadow reminds us that the mind is a like multistoried building. Our conscious mind, the ego, may or may not confront the mostly unconscious shadow. Once confronted by the ego the shadow may be integrated into consciousness. But for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of everyday awareness. Jung explains the shadow with his notion of the archetypes:

When it [shadow] appears as an archetype...it is quite within the possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.

As Jung again said of Schopenhauer: "He was the first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil -- all those things which the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility." It is an awareness of this aspect of the world that renders the religious ideas of "salvation" meaningful; yet "salvation" as such is always missing from moralistic or aesthetic renderings of religion. Only Jung could have written his "Answer to Job." Placing God in the Unconscious might strike most people as reducing him to a mere psychological object; but that is to overlook Jung's Kantianism. The Unconscious, and especially the Collective Unconscious, belongs to Kantian things-in-themselves, or to the transcendent Will of Schopenhauer. Jung was often at pains not to complicate his theory of the Archetypes by committing himself to a metaphysical theory -- he wanted the theory to work whether he was talking about the brain or about the Transcendent -- but that was merely a concession to the materialistic bias of contemporary science. He had no materialistic commitment himself and, when it came down to it, was not going to accept such naive reductionism. Instead, he was willing to rethink how the Transcendent might operate.

The Problem of Evil, which for so many people simply denuminizes religion, and which Schopenhauer used to reject the value of the world, became a challenge for Jung in the psychoanalysis of God. The God of the Bible is indeed a personality, and seemingly not always the same one. God as a morally evolving personality is the extraordinary conception of "Answer to Job." What Otto saw as the evolution of human moral consciousness, Jung turns right around on the basis of the principle that the human unconscious, expressed spontaneously in religious practice and literature, transcends mere human subjectivity. But the transcendent reality in the unconscious is different in kind from consciousness. As Jung said in "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" again: 

If the Creator were conscious of Himself, He would not need conscious creatures; nor is it probable that the extremely indirect methods of creation, which squander millions of years upon the development of countless species and creatures, are the outcome of purposeful intention. Natural history tells us of a haphazard and casual transformation of species over hundreds of millions of years of devouring and being devoured. The biological and political history of man is an elaborate repetition of the same thing. But the history of the mind offers a different picture. Here the miracle of reflecting consciousness intervenes -- the second cosmogony [ed. note: what Teilhard de Chardin called the origin of the "noosphere," the layer of "mind"]. The importance of consciousness is so great that one cannot help suspecting the element of meaning to be concealed somewhere within all the monstrous, apparently senseless biological turmoil, and that the road to its manifestation was ultimately found on the level of warm-blooded vertebrates possessed of a differentiated brain -- found as if by chance, unintended and unforeseen, and yet somehow sensed, felt and groped for out of some dark urge.

Jung claimed to have identified three stages of religious evolution. The first stage was the archaic age of the Shamans. This was followed by the ancient civilisation of prophets and priests. Then came the Christian heritage of mystics. At every stage of religious history, all human beings share in the inner divinity, the numinous. When Jung talks about God, he is really talking about the God within, the self. He was once asked if he believed in God. He answered: "I don't believe. I know." Thus Jung made an act of faith in the existence of the collective unconscious and archetypes and he interpreted Christianity in the light of his beliefs. As a example, let us examine the doctrine of the Trinity. For Jung, this doctrine is replete with psychological meaning. The Father symbolises the psyche in its original undifferentiated wholeness. The Son represents the human psyche and the Holy Spirit the state of self-critical submission to a higher reality. For this myth to be authentic, it must be found in other cultures and Jung found similar Trinitarian ideas in the Babylonian, Egyptian and Greek mystical traditions.

However, he believed in a Quaternity, the fourth person being the principle of evil. Without the opposition of satan, who is one of God's sons, the Trinity would have remained a unity. In Jungian terms without the opposition of the shadow or the fourth person, there would be no psychic development and no actualisation of the self. Jung came to believe that Mary became the fourth person following her Assumption. She is the necessary feminine element, the opposition of the shadow. His idea of wholeness means that God approves of evil. He wrote: "since I knew from experience that God was not offended by blasphemy, that on the contrary, he could encourage it, because he wished to evoke not only man's bright and positive side but also his darkness and ungodliness, God in his omniscience arranged everything so that Adam and Eve would sin. God intended them to sin." Thus Jung blames God for the fall of Adam and Eve. He causes them to sin because He Himself is both good and evil. In his essay on Job, Jung contends that Yahweh desired the love of mankind but behaved like a thoughtless and irritable tyrant, indifferent to human misery. Like Adam, who is mythically married to Lilith, daughter of Satan, and to Eve, so is Yahweh married to Israel and to Sophia, who compensates for Yahweh's behaviour by showing human beings the mercy of God. Her appearance in the visions of Ezekiel and Daniel leads to a fundamental change. God transforms himself by becoming man. Yahweh has wronged the creatures who have outdone Him and only by becoming man can he atone for His injustice.

Jung appears to have lost his faith during his childhood. He wrote: "Lord Jesus Christ was to me unquestionably a man and therefore a fallible figure." Maintaining a tradition put forward by Gnostics, he believed that Christ is the symbolic representation of the most central archetype, the self. However, the sublime goodness of Christ means that from a psychological perspective, he lacks wholeness. Missing is the dark side of the psyche, the element of evil. Christ receives wholeness in the person of the Anti-Christ. The Church teaches that Christ died in order to save us. For Jung, this is a misleading rationalisation for an otherwise inexplicable act of cruelty. The angry Yahweh of the Old Testament is full of guilt and is in need of atonement. Jesus dies on Calvary to expiate the sins of God the Father. To conclude by way of quotes from three eminent Psychiatrists. The Catholic Psychiatrist Doctor Rudolph Allers wrote: "For Jung, God is not a transcendent reality of whom man may achieve some knowledge by natural reason but, rather, an archetype, a basic tendency in human nature. The idea of God and of a future life are not seen as expressing reality but as a corresponding subjective need."

[three_lotteries]

Jung appears to have lost his faith during his childhood. He wrote: "Lord Jesus Christ was to me unquestionably a man and therefore a fallible figure." Maintaining a tradition put forward by Gnostics, he believed that Christ is the symbolic representation of the most central archetype, the self. However, the sublime goodness of Christ means that from a psychological perspective, he lacks wholeness. Missing is the dark side of the psyche, the element of evil. Christ receives wholeness in the person of the Anti-Christ. The Church teaches that Christ died in order to save us. For Jung, this is a misleading rationalisation for an otherwise inexplicable act of cruelty. The angry Yahweh of the Old Testament is full of guilt and is in need of atonement. Jesus dies on Calvary to expiate the sins of God the Father. To conclude by way of quotes from three eminent Psychiatrists. The Catholic Psychiatrist Doctor Rudolph Allers wrote: "For Jung, God is not a transcendent reality of whom man may achieve some knowledge by natural reason but, rather, an archetype, a basic tendency in human nature. The idea of God and of a future life are not seen as expressing reality but as a corresponding subjective need."

So basically God is a projection on the man's part (of himself)? And that just like the man, God is both good and evil?

[Peter s Father In Law]

Honor killings like the ones you're describing are also reported in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A 16-year-old girl was killed by her own family, for instance, when some years later the girl walked out on her bogus husband that she had been pre-arranged to marry in order to split with a boy she wanted to marry originally. She was stuffed down a well, with her neck been broken. Her parents walked the streets with their heads held high cuz the family honor has been preserved.

Another young woman was lured to her home having been told she was forgiven. Her brother pulled out a knife and killed her. A crowd of some 100 people danced in the street, cheering him as a hero and a real man. Her brother had thought over his decision, but eventually he did it because the community pushed him to. Otherwise he'd be regarded as a small person.

The typical killer is usually the father, husband, or brother of the victim (teenage brothers are chosen as they'll go to jail for a short time). While the victims mostly women, the males involved in the "crimes" should die as well. In general, the accused females are killed first, giving men the opportunity to go away. At the same time, the "marked" men can escape death by paying monies to the family of the female victim -- this evolves to an "honor killing business" between tribes, police and negotiators. There are also some rumors about males having killed other men in murders unrelated to honor issues who then will kill a female of their own family to cover up the initial killing.

One clarification here - Islam has nothing to do with honor killings. This is tribal, medieval mentality that is also seen in tribes in Pakistan and India, and often even in communities that are not Islamic. It is basically part of the ignorance of a tribal community.

[caracosta]

Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell.

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is evil personified. Many followers of the Bible consider Satan to be a real being, a spirit created by God. Satan and the other spirits who followed him rebelled against God. They were allegedly cast out from Heaven by their Creator. Satan, being a spirit, is neither male nor female. However, like his Creator, Satan is usually referred to as a masculine being. Many believe that Satan, or the Devil as he is often called, can "possess" human beings. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil. The Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on those considered to be possessed. Satan is believed to have many powers, among them the power to manifest himself in human or animal form. The consorting has been recorded as often being purely physical and mostly sexual. For most of the history of Christianity there are reports of Satan having sex with humans, either as an incubus (male devil) or succubus (female devil). Witches and sorcerers were thought by many to be the offspring of such unions. They are considered especially pernicious because they inherit some of the devil's powers.

C.G. Jung's Answer to Evil

One of Jung's most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those aspects of ourselves that we're not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our peers. It could be an unusual or unhealthy inclination which the powers of civilization have apparently quelled. Because the shadow involves known and unknown aspects of the self, it relates to the ego, the unconscious and the external environment. In essence, the shadow reminds us that the mind is a like multistoried building. Our conscious mind, the ego, may or may not confront the mostly unconscious shadow. Once confronted by the ego the shadow may be integrated into consciousness. But for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of everyday awareness.

I tend to believe there is no consensus over whether either good or evil are intrinsic to human nature.

Sometimes, evil is attributed to the existence of free will and human agency.

A variety of Enlightenment thinkers alleged the opposite, by suggesting that evil is learned as a consequence of tyrannical social structures.

Evolutionary speaking, humans are biologically adapted to carry out a variety of game theory strategies, some of which may promote individual utility at the expense of group utility, which, if the disparity is extreme enough, would be termed evil.

[show_my_IP]

Baphomet, as Lévi's illustration suggests, has occasionally been portrayed as a synonym of Satan or a demon, a member of the hierarchy of Hell.

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is evil personified. Many followers of the Bible consider Satan to be a real being, a spirit created by God. Satan and the other spirits who followed him rebelled against God. They were allegedly cast out from Heaven by their Creator. Satan, being a spirit, is neither male nor female. However, like his Creator, Satan is usually referred to as a masculine being. Many believe that Satan, or the Devil as he is often called, can "possess" human beings. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil. The Catholic Church still performs exorcisms on those considered to be possessed. Satan is believed to have many powers, among them the power to manifest himself in human or animal form. The consorting has been recorded as often being purely physical and mostly sexual. For most of the history of Christianity there are reports of Satan having sex with humans, either as an incubus (male devil) or succubus (female devil). Witches and sorcerers were thought by many to be the offspring of such unions. They are considered especially pernicious because they inherit some of the devil's powers.

C.G. Jung's Answer to Evil

One of Jung's most compelling ideas is the shadow. Jung describes the shadow as those aspects of ourselves that we're not too proud of. The shadow might be a desire frowned on by our peers. It could be an unusual or unhealthy inclination which the powers of civilization have apparently quelled. Because the shadow involves known and unknown aspects of the self, it relates to the ego, the unconscious and the external environment. In essence, the shadow reminds us that the mind is a like multistoried building. Our conscious mind, the ego, may or may not confront the mostly unconscious shadow. Once confronted by the ego the shadow may be integrated into consciousness. But for the most part, the shadow lies beyond the threshold of everyday awareness.

I tend to believe there is no consensus over whether either good or evil are intrinsic to human nature.

Sometimes, evil is attributed to the existence of free will and human agency.

A variety of Enlightenment thinkers alleged the opposite, by suggesting that evil is learned as a consequence of tyrannical social structures.

Evolutionary speaking, humans are biologically adapted to carry out a variety of game theory strategies, some of which may promote individual utility at the expense of group utility, which, if the disparity is extreme enough, would be termed evil.

Interesting caracosta - four simple fragments - but thoughtful ones!