Charlie was another example of a "mid-level consciousness", which is the next level about the NPC. One of the fundamental characteristics of that level is that they lack an internal moral compass.
Now, it's not that they lack "morality", but morality is not quite what it is assumed to be. People would say that Charlie was a strong Christian. As a follower of the Christian moral code as it had been handed to him, he supported Israel. He was virtuous, in his own mind. He was also no dummy and could find no shortage of evidence to justify that position and did so for many years.
And that's the problem at the mid-level: the moral code is external. Pretty much everyone is smart enough to rationalize and justify any position of that moral code. Charlie somehow blotted out or necessitated or unfocused a plain genocide for years. It is a powerful facility of the human mind.
If you think of it like a funnel, yes, you can pour water through an upside-down funnel but it's very difficult and most of it's going to miss. It's very easy for mid-level consciousnesses to get it totally wrong in spite of the evidence. It's the internal moral compass that tells someone which way to orient the funnel for best results.
Another good example is Bill Maher. After years of vicious criticism, it's takes a personal visit and an evening with Trump before he comes to realize, "Hey, all I can say is that in person he's not like how everyone thinks he is from what is said about him on TV."
The subconscious mind builds tall and strong walls for the conscious mind.
To be frank, when you understand enough about what is really going on, you observe that almost everyone in the world draws a little circle around themselves. They call things within the circle "right" and things outside the circle "wrong". Of course, they never realize they have drawn the circle themselves, or that they adjust the lines from time to time.
When you're looking down at all these little Venn diagrams, you realize that the words "right" and "wrong" the way they are typically used have little applicability from that vantage. It's pointless to talk about.
If someone is looking down on these little Venn diagrams with you, well then, maybe there's something to discuss.
Well, just an an example of what I was talking about:
Suppose you went into a church--any church of your choosing--and handed out a simple 100-item multiple choice questionnaire to 100 different people regarding the tenets of "Christianity".
Unless you got back 100 identical answer sheets, then you'd have to say you had a problem even defining what "Christianity" was in the first place.
If you asserted that you or some other person was enough of an authority to decide how closely the questionnaires needed to match with less than 100% fidelity in order to define "Christianity", and which questionnaires did or not not satisfy that criteria, then "Christianity" would instantly be rendered an imperfect arbitrary human concept rather than a perfect absolute divine one. Then we'd also have to go back to how the questionnaire authorities were decided in the first place.
When someone could tell me the foregoing instead of me telling others, I would say that they had worked through numerous other issues for themselves and elevated their consciousness, and we were ready to proceed with the interchange.
Until such time, I would leave it to others to discuss the issues amongst themselves to see if they could elevate their consciousness and come to the realizations that I had, including that that discussion would never reach a conclusion and the true progression was to rise above it. It seems that in many centuries no such conclusion has been reached, so WTF does anyone want from me?
And if it strikes your mind that you find all this unsatisfactory and it's dodging the question or it's nonsensical or whatever else, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.
Charlie was another example of a "mid-level consciousness", which is the next level about the NPC. One of the fundamental characteristics of that level is that they lack an internal moral compass.
Now, it's not that they lack "morality", but morality is not quite what it is assumed to be. People would say that Charlie was a strong Christian. As a follower of the Christian moral code as it had been handed to him, he supported Israel. He was virtuous, in his own mind. He was also no dummy and could find no shortage of evidence to justify that position and did so for many years.
And that's the problem at the mid-level: the moral code is external. Pretty much everyone is smart enough to rationalize and justify any position of that moral code. Charlie somehow blotted out or necessitated or unfocused a plain genocide for years. It is a powerful facility of the human mind.
If you think of it like a funnel, yes, you can pour water through an upside-down funnel but it's very difficult and most of it's going to miss. It's very easy for mid-level consciousnesses to get it totally wrong in spite of the evidence. It's the internal moral compass that tells someone which way to orient the funnel for best results.
Another good example is Bill Maher. After years of vicious criticism, it's takes a personal visit and an evening with Trump before he comes to realize, "Hey, all I can say is that in person he's not like how everyone thinks he is from what is said about him on TV."
The subconscious mind builds tall and strong walls for the conscious mind.
Are you implying Christianity is false?
To be frank, when you understand enough about what is really going on, you observe that almost everyone in the world draws a little circle around themselves. They call things within the circle "right" and things outside the circle "wrong". Of course, they never realize they have drawn the circle themselves, or that they adjust the lines from time to time.
When you're looking down at all these little Venn diagrams, you realize that the words "right" and "wrong" the way they are typically used have little applicability from that vantage. It's pointless to talk about.
If someone is looking down on these little Venn diagrams with you, well then, maybe there's something to discuss.
Intresting takes, but this doesn't really answer the question if you were implying Christianity was false. Stream of consciousness?
Well, just an an example of what I was talking about:
Suppose you went into a church--any church of your choosing--and handed out a simple 100-item multiple choice questionnaire to 100 different people regarding the tenets of "Christianity".
Unless you got back 100 identical answer sheets, then you'd have to say you had a problem even defining what "Christianity" was in the first place.
If you asserted that you or some other person was enough of an authority to decide how closely the questionnaires needed to match with less than 100% fidelity in order to define "Christianity", and which questionnaires did or not not satisfy that criteria, then "Christianity" would instantly be rendered an imperfect arbitrary human concept rather than a perfect absolute divine one. Then we'd also have to go back to how the questionnaire authorities were decided in the first place.
When someone could tell me the foregoing instead of me telling others, I would say that they had worked through numerous other issues for themselves and elevated their consciousness, and we were ready to proceed with the interchange.
Until such time, I would leave it to others to discuss the issues amongst themselves to see if they could elevate their consciousness and come to the realizations that I had, including that that discussion would never reach a conclusion and the true progression was to rise above it. It seems that in many centuries no such conclusion has been reached, so WTF does anyone want from me?
And if it strikes your mind that you find all this unsatisfactory and it's dodging the question or it's nonsensical or whatever else, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying.