Off-topic: cultures and mysticism (was: Promoting Lojban)

[Christopher Palmer <reid@pconline.com>]

On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Robin Turner wrote:

> 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