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From: Logical Language Group <lojbab@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
Subject:      TECH: re'enai and the emotion classifiers (long)
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To: Erik Rauch <rauch>
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X-From-Space-Date: Tue Nov  9 09:18:58 1993
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>Bob answers me:
>++++++++>
> My envisioning of re'enai is a situation where someone says a remark
>calculated to violate standard religious atmosphere/connotatyions/conventions.
>
>I do not mean "sacrilege" as an accusation of someone elses sacrilege.
>How about Galileo's "It still moves re'enai"?
>
>non-spirittual would be re'ecu'i to me - something that simpoly does not
>register on the rleigious scale.
>>+++++++++
>
>This seems bizarre to me.  Spirituality (which is what I thought re'e
>meant) has NOT THE SLIGHTEST THING to do with connotations or
>conventions.  I demand a word that expresses that I am speaking about my
>spiritual or non-spiritual experience.
>
>I accept that there might be a case for making
>'non-spiritual/materialistic' the mid-point (re'ecu'i), though I find it
>hard to think of what the negated pole might be (Jorge's suggestion of a
>mixture of prosaic, materialistic and philistine makes some sort of
>sense, but I see that as simply 'non-spiritual' on the spiritual axis
>combined with some other things).
>
>Sacrilege is several quite different things, only one of which seems to
>me to fit re'enai in the slightest:
>
>1) accepting and deliberately perverting the spiritual nature of
>something (eg the Black Mass - re'evu'enai perhaps?  - but it is still
>very definitely re'e)
>
>2) countering teaching or dogma that is attached to religious belief (eg
>Galileo.
>
>I accept that some of his critics might have regarded his activities as
>re'enai,but that is because they would see it as anti-spiritual, not
>because it was simply counter to the Church's teachings.  The person
>doing the countering is unlikely to want to position himself on the re'e
>axis at all)
>
>3) cynical or cruel misapplication or travesty of matters which are of
>spiritual significance to others.  This meaning indeed contains re'enai,
>but it contains other things as well - probably uunai

I don't think we really disagree, but I may be guilty of misusing a
word, or of bringing too much of my personal religious
experience/background into my definitions.  (I toyed with the idea of
responding this time to you by trying to talk about this in Lojban,
where I would not be as hindered by the semantics of English - but we do
want the books done ...  'Twould have been an interesting effort.)

Checking my dictionary, perhaps "profanity", in the sense in which it is
applied not merely as secularism but as anti-religious/spiritual
expression or action, would be better than sacrilege for what I have in
mind, but it is there in the definition of sacrilege too.

Most if not all people have their religious beliefs defined by their
cultural/religious backgrounds.  Being "spiritual" is generally seen by
both them and by others in terms of how they deal with and relate to
their background.  This doesn't mean that a few people don't actively go
out and investigate a range of religions, and some may actually learn
enough about them to meaningfully choose a religious tradition other
than their own as a basis for their spiritual/religious ideas and
expression.

But I contend this is rare.

Cultural/religious traditions of course have strong ties to language -
Sapir-Whorf MIGHT dictate that it really is impossible for a native
English speaker to become a spiritual Moslem or Hindu without learning
Arabic and Hindi/Sanskrit respectively to fluency and perhaps to near
native-proficiency.  But even there, I am not sure that could learn to
be religiously Hindi without living amongst others as part of the social
system that is tied to that religious system and is rather alien to our
British and American traditions (or others)

More importantly, my experience is that most people who choose to
investigate a tradition other than their own do so out of rejection or
revolt against that tradition.  For example, my first wife was Mormon
for the most part because it flew in the face of her parents attitudes
and relative non-religion.  (I think a lot of people who do seek other
religions do so in or shortly after adolescence as part of their
identity and independence seeking.  And, for example, the high frequency
of paganism in the SF fandom community is surely coupled with the
tendency among the same population to challenge other norms of society.
I've also seen these people having a rather strange and strained idea of
just what their own tradition is, this in turn seems to lead to their
form of spirituality in the alternate religion DEFINED by its
differences from 'traditional', i.e.  Christian practices.)

I am myself a rather spiritual person, but one with almost nothing to
revolt 'against'.  My parents were an apostate Catholic and a
non-practicing Jew, neither of whom taught me anything of their
religions (or even really mentioned the subject).  So I did have to find
my own path, and I had some spiritual needs that I've never had
fulfilled by close identification with any tradition.  This has also
made me sensitive to (my own and) others' pseudo-identification with
traditions that really aren't theirs.

Most especially (much more strongly than I hold the above attitudes
about people's relations to non-traditional religions), I feel that
agnosticism and atheism and secularism are so grossly misunderstood and
misused terms that I almost always discount anyone who uses the terms
unless they immediately clarify what they mean by them to show what they
really intend to say (if they indeed KNOW what they intend).

Specifically atheism as most identify it is a rejection of the
Judeo-Christian religious tradition, usually with no effort to replace
it by anything else.  In some cases, it is replaced by a secularism, a
materialism, or humanism, which in itself becomes a form of spiritual or
perhaps political expression (I have wondered whether we don't need to
add 'political' as a 7th category to the rVV set, that seldom really
fits in with any of the others, and IS indeed a form of expression - a
separate issue, though [re'u is available if anyone thinks this
worthwhile]).  Most often, though, atheism is merely a rejection of
spirituality and rather a thoughtless one at that.

Agnosticism is also of two breeds.  Most I have heard call themselves
agnostic (and many who have called themselves atheists are again simply
people who have rejected the Judeo-Christian background.  The agnostic's
rejection is not total:  they revolt, but admit that they aren't sure.
The bulk of the people in this category really turn out to be
irreligious.  Not non-spiritual, but just people who decide that since
they aren't happy with their traditional answers, and haven't any
particular attraction (or necessarily interest) in some other tradition
of spirituality, they just don't care.  (oftentimes, these people
actually adopt some form of their traditions, but without the overt
religiosity, and rejecting the labels/terminology that are associated
with these traditions.  Non-practicing Jews like my mother and Nora may
not associate with anything labelled 'religious' by our society, but
they seem to have strong ethical and moral positions that are thoroughly
orthodox.  I can see parallel traits looking at my dad, the
non-practicing Catholic and his attitudes.

Far rarer is the true agnostic who is actively searching, has and
recognizes spiritual needs, but has either not found a satisfactory
answer, or has found multiple answers that have appeal but are mutually
contradictory in some critical ways.  I put myself in that category,
though I have pretty much limited my investigations to Judeo-Christian
traditions and their derivatives.  Frankly, I do not believe I have the
capacity to truly learn and understand one of the alternatives that I
can only address as 'alien' (not in the mabla sense)

In this context, then, let me attempt to rephrase.

To me, spirituality is a form of internal or 'emotional' (in quotes to
distinguish from the narrower set of "ro'i" emotions) expression, and
thus in the Lojban hierarchy it is manifested in parallel with the
social/mental/emotional/physical/sexual series expressed by ro'V which
are other kinds of such expression.  All of these are expressed in
language, and particularly in Lojban, only when the speaker for some
reason decides or >needs< to make an external manifestation of the
internal 'emotional' state.

Most of these scales have no commonly used expressive meaning by
themselves.  We simply don't often recognize in ourselves (much less
overtly express at least in the natlangs) an attitude of 'mentalness'
without tying it to some other less abstract 'emotional' label.  But
each probably has a pure undiluted expressive nature that might manifest
itself given that the words are there - if so, then great - SWH has
probably been proven.  I can certainly >imagine< sexuality that is felt
but doesn't easily resolve into specific emotions like desire.  At least
one type of meditation taught by psychologists I've seen involves a pure
focus on and recognition of our bodies, and this might result in a pure
enough focus to allow the meaningful expression of non-specific "ro'o".
I've experienced a mental rush that might be worthy of the non-specific
label "ro'e"

Spirituality is an exception, I think, in that it has traditional means
of expression that have manifested themselves linguistically (Amen!) and
this is at least one reason why we didn't immediately recognize it as
one of the basic 5 categories, moving it to re'e from .e'e when we found
a needed non-categorical attitude label to assign the latter to (I
believe this was proposed by Eric Raymond - and was one of the first, or
even THE first of changes to the language to originate from Lojban List
discussion).

For each of these categorizers, seen as scales, I see the neutral on the
scale then as being a absence or failure to manifest an emotion in that
category.  I think this is in keeping with most of the neutrals in the
set of attitudinals.

Most people who identify themselves as atheists or agnostics are going
to rarely find themselves expressing a non-neutral 'spiritual' scale.
They don't identify in themselves a need to express spiritually.  The
rVV scale is sufficiently cognitive-analytical and outside the norms of
expression in language, that I cannot see people expressing these
categories subconsciously in the manner we might express ".ue" in
surprise or ".ie" in agreement.  Maybe they may come to be 'expressed'
non-analytically in a non-linguistically-productive way - where a
pattern invented consciously like perhaps ".uire'e" (spiritual ecstacy)
is intenralized into ones language habits so it comes out just like any
other emotional expression, in circumstances where such an emotion as
spiritual ecstacy is felt.

I therefore see the neutrals of the scale only being useful when someone
wants to explicitly and consciously DENY that they are making a
statement or expression out of religious or spiritual emotion/belief.
This is the denial of the 'agnostic' who simply doesn't care about the
spiritual.

The negatives of the RVV scales I see as a more active REJECTION of the
positive value of the scale. ro'onai is the denial of the physical;
ro'inai an attempt to be Stoic; ro'anai anti-social; ro'enai mindless;
ro'unai - well, I won't try to figure out what English term applies; I
think I've heard misogyny used in the context, but it isn't what the
word means.

In this context, re'enai is the active denial or rejection of SOME
spiritual context which is latent in the individual or the surroundings.
My background tells me that this will most often be a rejection of some
aspect of the established cultural norm, because I see most peoples'
attitudes as defined by their relationship to that norm.  My reference
to Galileo is based on my understanding that he for the most part
remained a practicing and believing Catholic (certainy not rejecting it
enough to go to the stake as a result), on the issue where he made the
expression, I >hear< this spiritual rejection of the 'truth' he
otherwise accepted.  This is distinct from the attitude of 'challenge'
that is found elsewhere in the attitudinal list (.e'inai, but also
sometime .a'unai) - in this instance Galileo chose NOT to challenge, but
in this instance he actively rejected a spiritual belief.  (If my
reading is at variance with actual history, chalk it up to my
ignorance).

Based on this, a Black Mass which is held because a person actually
spiritually wishes to express worship towards Satan, is not a form of
re'enai.  But someone who does so for the purpose of giving the finger
to religious or societal norms (which I expect is more typical of
Satanists), as a challenge or rejection of Judeo-Christian spirituality,
is expressing re'enai.  I also suspect that such people wouldn't have
too many qualms about admitting it and using the word.

Colin's other possible interpretations of 'sacrilege' also fit my sense
of re'enai AS APPLIED AS A ATTITUDE CATEGORIZER (and hence usually
appearing after the basic emotion being categorized.  Black Mass as
vu'enaire'enai.  Countering a dogma or convention might be
(.e'inaire'enai) unless it is tied to the positive expression of some
other spiritual 'truth'.  And anti-spiritual cruelty is .uunai like
Colin said, but with the emotional category of "re'enai".  (It certainly
isn't the positive .uunaire'e, which would be some type of cruelty that
IS a manifestation of spirituality - as for example by a legitimate
Satanist, or someone who believes perhaps that the cruelty inflicted
upon someone/something is in some way a spiritually purifying force).

Thus I conclude that bare "re'e" probably fits Colins need/desire for
spiritual expression that among other things need pay no heed to any
conventions or sets of beliefs or practices.  "re'enai", though, if it
has a use by itself, almost certainly must be a denial of some
convention, perhaps with the sole exception of some form of pure atheism
that in some way rejects all forms of mans' spiritual nature.  As a
spiritual person myself, though, that is a vacuum that my mind abhors,
and my experience tends to feel that such 'atheists' tend to replace the
norm with some contradictory secularist religion or spiritualism.


lojbab