From reid@xxxxxxxx.xxxx Fri Feb 19 08:58:07 1999 X-Digest-Num: 65 Message-ID: <44114.65.265.959273824@eGroups.com> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 10:58:07 -0600 (CST) From: Christopher Palmer Well, one of my looooong-term projects is a philosophical novel with > three characters (all of whom are basically aspects of myself). One is > a philosophy lecturer who is having problems expressing her own > philosophy, one's an English teacher with a hang-up about modal verbs > (c.f. General Semantics) and one's a tantric yogini looking for a > culturally neutral mysticism. That certainly sounds like something I'd learn more lojban to read. :^) But my question is, could there even exist a 'culturally-neutral mysticism' ? From what I understand, systems of mysticisms (heh love the way that sounds) depend very much on extremely culture-specific elements. Without a culture to support it and to feed back into, mysticism would have no psychological 'hooks' and levers for the mystic to use, and mysticism would be greatly reduced in its purpose. I'm sure you've thought more about this than I have. Please enlighten me! :^) > Looking at the extreme variety of people on this list, a common culture > would be pretty problematic! We've got right-wing libertarians, > left-wing libertarians, scientists, mystics, poets .... you name it! > The only common theme seems to be the Vulcan motto "infinite diversity > in infinite combinations". Indeed. (And you forgot anarchists.) :^) ---------(( Christopher Reid Palmer : www.pconline.com/~reid/ ))--------- the characters i am, made into a word complete -- Meshuggah