Let us note that much of this "response" looks staged, just like Ankhesenamun's response to Leah. If we look at Ramessu's response to Leah in another thread, what one sees seems much like a continuation of the sales pitch Leah initated, with the same lack of straightforwardness.
Ramessu
(usual poster)
04/12/01 01:04 AM
Re: Religion and empowerment [re: Ankhesenamun]
Ankhesenamun,
I believe you have a couple of fallacies in your thinking, the neters gave us free will there is NO grand scheme. (1) If there was they could do a better job than we ever could. (2)
> .. but also at that same time it reminds the person that
> .. s/he is really not a powerful force in the grand
> .. scheme of things.
The Book of the Dead is about progression, about working your way up into the higher strata of beings. Eventually attaining the knowledge and understanding of the neters. So in actuality you are learning to be a power. For knowledge is power. (3)
> .. However, religion also usually makes a clear distinction
> .. between the worshipper and the worshipped-
> .. between the person and the forces which actually
> .. hold the power.
Also an assumpption, many times throughout the Per-em-Heru you state I am Anpu, I am (insert name of Neter), this is to show the Neters lie within yourself. And that the only thing holding you back is YOU. For a good example: Turn your back on God.... you can't do it God is all around you and in you. All is God Force, including yourself. (4)
> .. it also offers a justification for when things go wrong.
> .. All is in the hands of the netjeru, and they know
> .. what is Ma'at.
This is to me escapism, why do you think that any Neter would bother with anyone of this earth? (5) These being are so vast that we are miscroscopic. (6) The ablilities to deal with our problems lie within ourselves, the tools to bring these abilities out in us were given to us by Heru-ta-ta-fu. If people are to afraid to deal with things and lay the blame on god or demon then they will get no where in life. (7)
We are given free will, why would the Neters insult us by not letting us solve our own problems? (8) The time of the Neters walking the earth is long over, it's time people take up responsibility for their own actions, and the actions of others as it effects them. (9) Instead of staying home and watching TV expand your knowldge, your intellect, and think. If you desire to know look within yourself. (10) Free will, and the ability to learn are the greatest gifts we have been given. (11)
Click here to return to "Setting the tone"
(1) If we are to accept this argument, then no sensible individual has ever made a plan, because being humans are free-willed (sort of, to varying degrees) when they deal with each other, not just with gods. Yet, we can see for ourselves that such is not the case. The fallacy lies in the assumption, implicit in this argument, that a plan must be rigid in order to be a plan.
When one plays a game of chess, does one assume that one's opponent will make a particular set of moves, as one plans one's strategy? Not if one wishes to win. One considers the various possibilities and builds a plan whose dictates are conditional, referring to what follows, not absolute ones, carried out blindly. Likewise, one might say, a teacher plays such a game with his student's own lack of understanding as his opponent (and often a surprisingly resourceful one at that).
A teacher will enter a classroom with a plan. He had better, or he is lost. Yet, like the chess player, he can not anticipate what his opponent (the confusion of the dedicated, but struggling student) will present him with, next. So his plan, like that of the chess player, is conditional, not absolute, existing in the mind of the teacher as a living thing which responds to that around it, not as something carved in stone, unmoving, and indifferent to the events around it. It grows more detailed in time, as the teacher becomes more aware of the student's particular difficulties.
However, to say that the teacher is simply improvising would be a mistake. He proceeds with a final destination clearly in mind, and goals to be reached along the way. He enters with lecture notes, which he will veer from as needed, but not discard. (In this, he differs from the chess player, who, dealing with an uncooperative and fully conscious equal, must invent his plan as the board develops, not before the game begins). Like the chess player, he knows that, given the fluidity of the reality he must contend with, each success is to be coaxed into being, not forced. The reality that this can be done is evident every time a teacher guides a student to understanding, or a chess player guides his opponent to defeat, the position of the other crumbling by inches, as it usually will. The reality that this can be done does not negate the reality that the student, or the other chess player, is free-willed. It merely shows us that there are sensible alternatives to blind perserverance and stubbornness.
The deity, in seeing the world from above, as he contends with the lack of understanding of those he would guide, may be as the teacher. We, as men, not able to see within the hearts and minds of those around us, must be content to be chess players, as we deal with those we contend with. (Click here to return to the text).
(2) A better job of what? A good teacher know that his student can not learn without doing his own work; a good parent knows that his child must be allowed to make a few mistakes. Even so, both parents and teachers have plans for those under their supervision. Those plans, however, call for the involvement of those they guide.
A world micromanaged by the gods might be a tidier place, but would be growing within it, and would what we were offered by it, be something that would pass for life?
(3) Perhaps so, but let us note that, as the colloquial name of "The Book of Coming Forth by Day" would suggest, this status would be attained after death. That the passage quoted from Ankhesenamun is written in the present tense should be clear to all, despite Ramessu's misleading response. Click here for Ankhesenamun's response.
(4) ... and here is Ankhesenamun's response.
(5) Click here for my response.
(6) How curious that he would say that, because later he will say that, as a species, we've outgrown the need for their help!
(7) A statement which has more than a small element of truth to it, and a good argument for making a division between the sacred and the secular, as is the tradition in the West. This is not to say that the sacred does not inform the secular. It is to say that the sacred is not to always be at the forefront of our minds. If we focus during worship, then how we condition ourselves during that time will carry over through the week, allowing us, as we think of secular things in secular terms, to clear our minds without losing our way.
Of course, also keep in mind that Ramessu is speaking of gaining power through what most would call "occult means", not through a focus on the real, non-conjectural, non-supernatural world. This is not the hard-headed embrace of reality that the hasty reader might infer that he is speaking of, but merely a draining of the spiritual and moral content from religion.
(8) Weren't we supposed to be "microscopic" compared to the netjeru? If so, then how could we not feel flattered if such beings as these thought that our problems were worthy of their consideration?
(9) Ramessu, as I recall, does seem to be in the habit of confusing the words "effect", and "affect"; context suggests that he means the latter, here, as the person is not an event.
Please keep in mind that this man is, by his own account, a Nietzschean. This comment of his is worth noting, for more than the butchered grammar. He has come out and openly said that we should take responsibility for the actions of others, as they affect us. So, for example, if you're walking down the street and somebody walks up to you, and on a whim, hits your in the head with a tire iron, shame on you for being hit. There's a word for somebody who takes this position fully to heart. He's called a sociopath.
This is an attitude that will be seen out of the House a great deal, as we shall see.
(10) Desire to learn what? Ramessu would seem to be suggesting a combination of solipsism and conscienceless aggression. The ability to learn must begin with an admission of that which one does not know, which is not the same as saying the belief that one knows nothing at all, in the easily refuted manner of the absolute skeptics.
(11) Free will without empathy becomes action without purpose. How is one to define success? By the domination of those who one places no value on? By the enjoyment of pleasures which will soon grow stale, in the absence of friends to share them with? To see what would be lost by adopting Ramessu's affected embrace of evil as one's path in life is easy; what is difficult is to see what is gained through such obliviousness to one's most basic nature.