Caustic Ramblings

It goes without saying that intelligence is very prized and valued in our culture. What I mean by intelligence is a grab bag of “big brain” traits like mental sharpness, cleverness, mathematical proclivity, and good verbal skills. In so many of our culture’s high-paying, high-status occupations, intelligence is key. Intelligence is very useful; especially when it comes to manipulating the physical environment and coming up with ever-more efficient ways of extracting goodies from it. Having an advanced degree from a prestigious academic institution is supposedly a good proxy (err...a very expensive one!!) for being gifted in the area of measurable intelligence, or so the story goes.

Wisdom is much harder to measure, if it can even be measured at all. It’s why grading papers (beyond the technical aspects of writing) is mostly a subjective art, as opposed to the completely-objective process of scoring a math test. If Intelligence corresponds with the so-called “left brain,” then Wisdom is the domain of the “right brain.” Wisdom contains the intangible and unquantifiable aspects of what actually make us “smart.” Wisdom is creative, artistic, and intuitive, whereas Intelligence is technical, nimble, and quantifiable. If Intelligence is STEM, then Wisdom is the Humanities side of academia.

Those familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, and similar Fantasy Role Playing Games (RPGs), will immediately recognize these two terms as being attributes found on the player’s character sheet. Intelligence is what makes a powerful Wizard, and Wisdom is what makes a good Cleric. Of course, the human physical and psycho-spiritual makeup is magnitudes more complex than a simple list of eight attribute scores. But to make a quick point, a small dose of nerdy category-reductionism can be sometimes helpful. In D&D, Wisdom is a shorthand way of saying “psycho-spiritual acumen.” It’s much better marketing to use a commonly-understood word than to explain the game mechanics using clinical-sounding psychobabble. But I do digress.

Incarnation as a levelling-up process

Our finest spiritual teachings might suggest that both Wisdom and Intelligence are things that increase in the individual soul as it accumulates more and more human incarnations under its belt. One very key thing to take into account is that Intelligence all by itself has nothing to do with a person’s morality; intelligence is a gift that can be used for good, evil, and neutral purposes. A soul that develops intelligence at a fast past over a limited number of human incarnations may experience several lifetimes where they misuse their intelligence in service of various self-serving and short-sighted goals; this would be the “clever fool.” To understand the sometimes-amoral nature of intelligence, it’s interesting to recall that Mercury is the god of thieves and fraudsters. Mercury is the celestial intelligence that rules over flexibility and nimbleness of all kinds, including mental nimbleness. Mercury is raw intelligence. Mercury is the god of Tricknology. (Sorry D&D purists, but Intelligence is really just Cognitive Dexterity)

There is a connection though between Wisdom and moral agency; a wise person may “know” what’s right in a situation, even if they fail to act on that realization. In isolation, Wisdom is a passive state consisting of a cross-contextualization of accumulated experiences and abstract impressions. Without right action, Wisdom is wasted potential. A soul with a lot of Wisdom (been there, done that, many times over) will cultivate a native sense of right and wrong; such a person will have much less dependence on whatever set of concrete rules and moral commandments their culture imposes on them. As a result, a “wise” person can become quite resentful if they happen to live in a society that’s way too conformist and restrictive. In excess, this resentment can result in a state of perma-rebelliousness and a tendency toward reactive anitnomianism. Another downside of Wisdom is the tendency to get lost in lofty abstractions and lose touch with the banal reality on the ground. Adults without families (or businesses) to take care of are especially prone to this sort of psychological waywardness. No, “fur babies” don’t count. Au contraire, our spiritual “lessers” still know how to touch grass.

Ugh, more categories

In the Myers-Briggs personality typology (a commercial bastardization of Carl Jung’s psychological type theory), the trait “Intuition” is a fairly close proxy for the sort of Wisdom I’m getting at here. The so-called “Intuition type” has become an identity for adoring fans of this system to latch onto as a crude means of differentiating themselves from the hordes of those pitiful, simple souls with less Wisdom (i.e. “Sensing” types) than thou, or so the story goes. “INTJ” and “INTP” types are those who fancy themselves as being gifted in the areas of both Intelligence and Wisdom. “NF” types like INFJ are more specialized in the area of Wisdom, though typically with an artistic, creative, or romantic bent (maybe this is where that other attribute, Charisma, starts to creep in).

There are of course other systems of accounting for the varying levels of soul maturity found throughout humanity. The Gnostics of late antiquity uses a tripartite scheme. They categorized all people into three categories, from least to most wise, (1) Hylics, (2) Psychics, and (3) Pneumatics. Hylics have very little Wisdom. They are are those young, immature souls who are the most drawn toward the ordinary sensory experiences the material world has to offer; they are sensual, possess rudimentary intellect, and are mostly driven by their base appetites. Pneumatics have Wisdom out the wazoo are seen as being spiritually gifted; these are the rare souls known to us as sages, mystics, philosophers, and saints; that is, when they do decide to come out of their hidey-holes and show themselves to the unwashed masses. Psychics are the broad mass of humanity that makes up the middle ground between these two extremes. Really, there are many different levels and gradations that might fall within this expansive umbrella. Most people reading this post are likely going to be in the mid-to-upper tiers of the Psychic category.

The Gnostics borrowed this scheme from Plato’s conception of the soul having thee parts (and infused it with their obsession with spirit/matter dualism): Nous (Higher Mind), Thumos (Spiritedness, Passion), and Epithumia (Appetite, Survival Instincts). This is somewhat similar to the three “gunas” of Hindu Yoga philosophy: Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. In Taoist internal alchemy theory there are: Shen, Qi, and Jing. So on, so forth, you get the picture.

Diversity is our strength

These overlapping theories might lead one into the uncomfortable territory of entertaining the notion that “humanity” is in fact an intractable hodgepodge of differing levels of soul-development and maturity; some individual souls are closer to the animal realm they recently emerged out of, whereas others are closer to graduating out of humanity and eventually becoming something akin to a demigod or angelic being.

The next logical step within this theory is the idea that these differing qualities manifest quite differently in different cultures and ethnic groups, when we speak of group-average traits and behaviors. After 2000 years of mono-ideologies ruling the roost, the notion of Difference has become somewhat of a scare-concept; after all, the American constitution says we were all created “equal” or something. Today, the discussion of innate difference is quite taboo in some circles. Among the educated literati of the West, the tendency of outright bunk theorizing is either to deny human group difference outright (Blank-slate Egalitarianism) or to embrace it in a gross, vulgar, materialist-reductionist manner (Race Realism); when the lowly plebes latch onto the latter theory, it tends to get even more gross and vulgar. I think the taboo fixation associated with the former comes from the sort of cognitive dissonance that is a product of the West’s obsession with Practical Intelligence; we love it and we hold the entirety of humanity to a weird standard that’s defined by almost solely by ideals associated with Intelligence-related aptitudes. When the facts on the ground report back to us that an imbalanced development of Intelligence isn’t the global norm, nor is it the be-all, end-all of human existence, Western brains start to go haywire and respond erratically (what’s known as “Reeeeeeeeeee!” in today’s memeology). Few “smart” people these days can talk about this sensitive topic without an emotional meltdown quickly ensuing.

Closing thoughts

I think this is one of those areas where Intelligence and Wisdom should certainly be harmonized. But, no, a balanced approach to discoursing on hot topics is apparently something the ancients were able to do, not us (I’m being a bit facetious here; surely, the ancients of various locales each had their own assortment of no-no topics).

Whatever one’s perspective may be on this subject matter, it’s quite apparent that there is no shortage of sup-topics to explore on the wonderfully-varied landscape of human psycho-spiritual qualities. With Intelligence and Wisdom gracefully-applied in tandem, such exploration will be something more nuanced and interesting than an IQ score, a D&D character sheet, a crude racial stereotype, or a silly Myers-Briggs personality type profile.

“My favourite definition of 'Intellectual' is: 'A person whose education surpasses their intelligence.'”
–Arthur C. Clarke

“The realization that you can't predict the future -- and mold it -- could only come as a shock to an academic.”
― David Harsanyi

“Intellect, you see, is not the same as spirituality. While spirituality makes you humble, intellect without sensitivity just makes you snobbish and egoistic.”
―Abhaidev, The World's Most Frustrated Man

“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”
―G.K. Chesterton

“What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world’s stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual’s theories serves as proof of humanity’s irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy?”
―Daniel J. Flynn, Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas

“If an engineer makes a mistake, for example, and their building collapses killing hundreds, they are ruined. In the same vain, if someone who’s only profession is being an intellectual makes a mistake and millions die there is virtually no accountability.”
-Thomas Sowell

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
-George Orwell

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."
-H. L. Mencken

“There is nothing that an intellectual less likes to change than his mind, or a politician his policy.”
―Theodore Dalrymple

“Intellectuals are a pretty unique species all by themselves, given to advocating things out of sheer brazenness that they could not themselves stomach if they were ushered in to witness the scene.”
―Matthew Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy

“Leftists of the oversocialized type tend to be intellectuals or members of the upper-middle class. Notice that university intellectuals constitute the most highly socialized segment of our society and also the most leftwing segment.....The leftist of the oversocialized type tries to get off his psychological leash and assert his autonomy by rebelling. But usually he is not strong enough to rebel against the most basic values of society. Generally speaking, the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own, and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.”
―Theodore J. Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

“I was utterly convinced that an intellectual could never be anything but an intellectual, was simply not capable of being anything else, that his intellectuality would, sooner or later, erode his faith or erode whatever he'd masked it with . . . For example, intellectuals like to dress themselves up as peasants . . . but it never works. The intellectual's constitution is impervious to such things - it permits only one object of worship - oneself. Generally speaking, an intellectual in the contemporary version is an exceptionally resourceful and, essentially, pitiful being.”
―Leonid Borodin, Partings

“Too much elite education renders a person unpractical. And tell you what? The highly educated people are further away from reality than the less educated ones. I would rather rely on the opinion of a less educated poor person who constantly deals with people, than an overly educated idiot who views this world only through an academic lens while sitting alone on his comfy couch.”
―Abhaidev, The Influencer: Speed Must Have a Limit

“I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers.

I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals.”
―Mary Rose O'Reilley

“An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
―G.K. Chesterton

Please forgive me if the following comes off as moralistic preaching, but I feel compelled to shout from the rooftops that I have no business telling other people how to live their lives. Nor do you. Specifically, I mean that I have no business providing unsolicited advice to strangers and casual acquaintances. Now, what about those people within my own little circle of immediate family and close friends? If I feel so inclined, I may offer a few pointers and other forms of light feedback on whatever is it they are doing or expressing, granted the person in question seems at all interested in what my opinion might be on whatever is troubling them. And even if the issue is something that’s bugging me quite a bit, I’ve learned over the years to tread lightly, and mind my own P’s and Q’s before gawking at the mote in an eye that is not mine.

I’m going to define Moralism here as the art and science of telling strangers how they should and shouldn’t conduct their own affairs. It’s an art and science usually based on some sort of religious or philosophical code, or simply whatever the prevailing social norms happen to be at the time. But first, we need to get definitions out of the way. What is a stranger? Well, pretty much the entirety of humanity, I’d have to say. I think I sort of get at this in the above paragraph. Since those of us who are inmates of the contemporary industrialized Western word are now mostly atomized, and thus without community-proper, anyone outside of our own personal bubbles is effectively a stranger.

When your Facts touch my Feelings

Am I going to get a bit cranky when I see someone wearing ratty sweat pants out in public, like say in the supermarket? Sure. How about those skin-tight, spandex “yoga pants” that are all the rage these days among young women? No comment. Ditto for vulgar displays of tattoos, piercings, and other forms of so-called “body art” that come off to some of us as an expression of self-vandalism rather than beauty. How about when someone dumps their garbage out their car window and onto the road? How about when someone drives like an utter maniac on the same road I happen to be driving on?

Fortunately there are laws and ordinances in place to address those last couple items. But I think you might be getting the point here. One of the great struggles of life here on this planet is dealing with how utterly obnoxious, rude, and self-unaware other people can be. Those behaviors which yield manifest externalities can be justifiably dealt with via the aforementioned legal process. But it’s the subtle things that often irk us the most. It’s when we attempt to legislate against those subtle transgressions of common decency that the problems start happening. This is when the situation calls for a priesthood of one type or another to determine when, where, and how to censure those behaviors and actions which don’t do any harm in a directly-measurable manner, but might do harm in the long term if not contained, according to the gut feelings of many members of the community. Now we get into the icky territory where facts and feelings collide and create an intractable mess.

Middle Class Insecurities

I’m going to assert that Moralism is a modern-day phenomenon. It’s a very middle class (bourgeois, in the old lingo) type of social control. Our Moralism arose long after the dissolution of the self-policing societies of yore. By this, I mean the clans, tribes, extended families, and other intimate forms of social organization; those that had no need to write down their systems of rules, obligations, and entitlements. Contrast this with the Nation State, which is an entirely modern creature. Or really, it’s the Polis expanded out onto a wider territory. The modern Nation State is the vain attempt to create a family where there’s only masses of strangers who happen to inhabit the same geographic expanse, speak the same language, and have some vague sense of common origin or collective purpose. It actually seems to work ok (to an extent) when everyone residing within the geographic expanse-in-question does in-fact speak the same language, follow the same type of religion, and most members of the nation look not too dissimilar from one another. But nothing beats the old-type family network, where the web of accountability and reciprocity was an up close and personal affair. Under this arrangement, transgressions against familial norms elicited face-to-face consequences. Compare this to the impersonal state of the modern era, where it’s some form of byzantine jurisprudence that has been put in place to deal with myriad forms of social turbulence which might arise.

Fear-based Righteousness

Now we might see that Moralism is the outer expression of an inner angst that goes something like, “THAT PERSON is behaving in a way that makes my blood boil but there is nothing I can actually do about it!! Arrrgh!!” That’s right, it’s the type of existential torment known as powerlessness.

The Old Ways would of course counter with this simple piece of advice, “If they’re not your family, why do you even care?”

I think I have to defer to the ancients on this one. Really, if you have no formal social connections with another person, and they are not directly doing harm to you, then why is their business your business? On what authority do you have the right to police their conduct?

The inner turmoil of the Moralist is one that is fueled by the loss of membership in meaningful social arrangements. When we feel a sense of powerless over our surroundings, fear starts to bubble up. And that fear grows until it finds a release. The is the stuff or moral panics and “mass formation” sorts of collective outbursts that end up making life miserable for anyone within earshot.

Moral Sovereignty

Back in the ancient past, it was the Clan Chieftain, or Tribal Elder, or Parish Priest (or some equivalent figure) who was tasked with nipping these things in the bud; they were empowered to take quick, decisive action before the petulant whiners and complainers of the tribe could slowly brew up a fresh batch of bubbling hysteria over this or that contentious issue. That Clan Elder, or Friendly Neighborhood Rabbi was probably on a first-name-basis with anyone in the community who mattered.

So fast forward back to our crappy today. Instead of getting all in tizzy about what the countless human abstractions around us are doing, why not find or join a family? (Whatever that Family is, it can take on many forms; blood relation need not be required) And then stopping stressing out about whatever harmless idiosyncrasies non-family might be acting out?

I suppose now I can boast about my blissful indifference to total strangers thumbing their nose at what is proper and decent.

From a conversation I was having in a chat recently:

In my own view, Saul of Tarsus (St. Paul of the Christian tradition) would seem to be a rather tragic personage, and on his own abilities and personality, a sort of pseudo-knower (Gnostic). Granted, he must have been quite wise and intuitively-gifted, and probably had a fair number of profound spiritual experiences of his own. However, like many other failed initiates of his era, it seems apparent that he never bothered to master any of the systems of practice he had been involved with prior to starting his own cult (classic blunder of failed initiates). And thus he never effectively dealt with his own ego issues prior to having the bright idea (on the Road to Damascus, surely) of starting his own religion. And predictably, the cult he did found ended up being permanently tainted by his own ego-flaws. Paul could be seen as a classic example of the junior initiate who betrays the mysteries by sharing some of the teachings with the masses; which he most certainly did when he dumbed down some of the inner teachings (which he undoubtedly pilfered from whatever mystery cults he did actually belong) into into silly parables and simple doctrinal talking points. He would have called these digestible tidbits, 'milk for babes.'

Yes, it seems Saul was a rather complicated character. He was caught between two worlds, the Jewish and Hellenic (Platonic, to be more specific), and as a result had an inner identity conflict he tried to resolve though the hybrid cult he ended up trying to spread all over the Mediterranean. I suspect that earlier in his life he was an avid reader of both Plato and Philo's Jewish take on Plato's philosophy. And as I alluded to above, he probably also belonged to one or more Hellenic mystery cults, likely each with a Platonic or Neo-Pythagorean core theme; his lifetime and geographic region would have made a plausible case for him possibly having been a student of the great 1st century CE Neopythagorean sage Apollonius of Tyana, or perhaps a student of an offshoot school of his.

So at some point Saul had the bright idea of trying to convert fellow Jews to his own peculiar, rather dualistic and partially-Judaized interpretation of Platonic doctrines. And when that mostly failed he took his strange new cult doctrine to the non-Jews; mostly the Hellenes of various Anatolian cities of the Roman Empire. And for one reason or another, disaffected Hellenes were eventually joining his cult in droves, though in the letters we're clued into the probable reality that the laity and clergy were taught very different doctrines. In other words, the common rabble, with their vulgar, wordily understanding of reality, were starkly differentiated from the initiates who had tasted the first fruits of Gnosis. At this point in early Christianity, the Knowers and Hearers (to use the old Pythagorean organizational model) were members of the same Church body. At the new religion spread around further and gained more members it started schisming off into different sects. Undoubtedly, there were many hearers who were deemed unsuitable for initiation into the ranks of knowers, but that didn't stop them from thinking they had things figured out on their own, and the more egocentric among them would go off and forms their own churches, sans-knowers. And we all know how history proceeded from there.

I would agree with Nietzsche's assessment of Pauline Christianity being 'Platonism for the people.' This does indeed seem like what Saul was attempting to accomplish in spreading his new cult ideology around the Eastern parts of the empire. But this all raises the question, what did Saul actually himself believe? My best guess is that his beliefs were a combination of what I mentioned above (Judaic Platonism), coupled with a grab-bag of mystery school doctrines which were circulating around during the 1st century. Two primary ideas he would have understood were, (1) the cycle of rebirths human souls experience over countless lifetimes, and (2) the Precession of the Equionixes, which is the esoteric doctrine which informs on the Astrological Ages we experience here on Earth. A thorough understanding of the latter doctrine would inform the initiate that humanity at the time was entering a long 'dark age' and thus the next 6,000 years or so would be a time of sorrow, ignorance, crass materialism, degeneracy, non-virtuous living, and a whole host of other spiritual ills. In other words, a terrible time to incarnate on this planet. Perhaps to Saul, the best viable alternative would be to gain sufficient Gnosis in order to ascend into 'The Kingdom of Heaven' which really was just his own quasi-Judaized way of referring to Plato's realm of Perfect Forms. The idea was, "we must get out NOW, before it's too late!!" And here Saul conveniently borrowed the immanency and urgency of Messianic Jewish time-perception and incorporating it into his own bastardized set of public teachings. He may of purposefully withheld the (true) doctrine of reincarnation from the Hearers, possibly thinking that telling the truth would undermine the sense of urgency he was trying to convey to his followers. Though some of the later, more mystically-inclined Church Fathers like Origen (along with many of the so-called 'Gnostics') would openly profess the reality of reincarnation. Again, the problem with the teaching of reincarnation is that it undermines and subverts the sort of microscopic time scales Abrahamic religions revolve around (this is the #1 reason why the post-Nicene Roman Church tried so virulently to expunge this doctrine from the written record). If there are indeed countless lifetimes available to a human soul to grow and evolve, then the message of "Immediate Salvation in this very lifetime, noowwwwwww!!' is rightly seen as being immensely infantile, especially when foisted upon less-mature human souls.

In summary, I believe Saul of Tarsus was a failed initiate of the higher mysteries and an ardent popularizer of Platonism (or rather, his own understanding of Platonism). He tried in vain to share some of these teachings with the masses and as a result ended up creating countless more problems than he solved. Hell, even the New Testament (a direct product of Paul's teachings) warns against this very act!!

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.
-Matthew 7:6

As we know, the original core of initiates that constituted the leaders of early Christian movement were eventually trampled underfoot by the uninitiated literalists and dogmatists who later took over the church and remade it in their own cruddy image.

What a tragic figure indeed Paul was!

A little refresher from the first time around:

1. Mind Cultivation - cultivation of insight via contemplation and meditation methodologies.
2. Knowledge Acquisition - Scholarly study of various Natural Law sciences, doctrines, scriptures, teachings, ect.
3. Good Works - Selflessly putting spiritual knowledge and insights to practice in the material world, for the benefit of the community, and sentient beings in general.
4. Devotion - Veneration of higher beings, and the taking of vows, precepts, and/or initiation.
5. Wellness and Purification - On the mundane level, this is the various methods of conditioning of the physical body for optimum fitness, and on the higher levels, this is the various methods of energetic purification of the subtle bodies and its energy centers.
6. Austerity and Renunciation - The process and methodology of withdrawing oneself from the hustle and bustle of worldly life. At the more rudimentary level, this is simply the various practices of moderation in daily living and the cessation of bad habits.

And now how these relate to the various religions, using a 5-star rating system. The overall rating each religion gets here isn't necessarily indicative of how 'good' or 'bad' (those are subjective valuations anyway) a religion is, but rather how much the religion overall is oriented toward spiritual practices (and to a lesser extent, the study of philosophy) for its adherents. The highest ranked on this list excel in what I would term as a 'whole spiritual system'; in other words, it's strongly spiritual and philosophical in focus and includes a number of different methods/practices/approaches to both spiritual attainment and the manifestation of spiritual principles in the mundane world for a mass of adherents. Those that rank lower tend to be religions that are either (a) mostly secular in content, i.e. legalism, fossilized dogma, and dry ritualism, or (b) a spiritually-focused system that's too specialized or overly-focused on just one or two approaches to spirituality.

I've simplified some of the above category names for the purpose of rendering easily-understandable format below.

Greco-Roman Natural Religion (Hellenism)
Meditation: 2/5
Philosophy: 5/5
Charity: 2/5
Ritual & Prayer: 4/5
Wellness: 3/5
Austerity: 1/5
Overall: 57%

Indian Natural Religion (Hinduism/Sanatana Dharma)
Meditation: 5/5
Philosophy: 5/5
Charity: 3/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 5/5
Austerity: 2/5
Overall: 83%

Buddhism
Meditation: 5/5
Philosophy: 3/5
Charity: 4/5
Ritual & Prayer: 2/5
Wellness: 2/5
Austerity: 4/5
Overall: 70%

Judaism
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 2/5
Ritual & Prayer: 4/5
Wellness: 2/5
Austerity: 2/5
Overall: 37%

Catholic/Orthodox Christianity
Meditation: 2/5
Philosophy: 3/5
Charity: 4/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 1/5
Austerity: 2/5
Overall: 57%

Protestant Christianity
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 0/5
Charity: 3/5
Ritual & Prayer: 4/5
Wellness: 0/5
Austerity: 2/5
Overall: 30%

Islam
Meditation: 1/5
Philosophy: 2/5
Charity: 4/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 1/5
Austerity: 3/5
Overall: 53%

Zoroastrianism
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 3/5
Ritual & Prayer: 4/5
Wellness: 2/5
Austerity: 1/5
Overall: 37%

Taoism
Meditation: 4/5
Philosophy: 4/5
Charity: 0/5
Ritual & Prayer: 2/5
Wellness: 5/5
Austerity: 3/5
Overall: 60%

Japanese Natural Religion (Shinto)
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 1/5
Ritual & Prayer: 4/5
Wellness: 1/5
Austerity: 1/5
Overall: 33%

Manichaeism
Meditation: 1/5
Philosophy: 2/5
Charity: 4/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 1/5
Austerity: 5/5
Overall: 60%

Sikhi
Meditation: 2/5
Philosophy: 2/5
Charity: 3/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 3/5
Austerity: 3/5
Overall: 60%

Jainism
Meditation: 3/5
Philosophy: 2/5
Charity: 4/5
Ritual & Prayer: 5/5
Wellness: 2/5
Austerity: 5/5
Overall: 70%

Secular Ideologies that can be said to be religious in function

Western Secular Humanism
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 2/5
Charity: 3/5
Ritual & Prayer: 0/5
Wellness: 0/5
Austerity: 0/5
Overall: 17%

Neopaganism
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 0/5
Ritual & Prayer: 3/5
Wellness: 0/5
Austerity: 0/5
Overall: 13%

Marxism/Socialism
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 1/5
Ritual & Prayer: 1/5
Wellness: 0/5
Austerity: 1/5
Overall: 13%

Neo-Marxism (Social Justice Ideology)
Meditation: 0/5
Philosophy: 1/5
Charity: 1/5
Ritual & Prayer: 1/5
Wellness: 0/5
Austerity: 1/5
Overall: 13%

Overall Rankings

1. Hinduism -- 83%
2. Buddhism -- 70% -tie with- Jainism
3. Taoism -- 60% -tie with Sikhi- and Manichaeism
4. Hellenism -- 57% -tie with- Catholic/Orthodox Christianity
5. Islam -- 53%
6. Judaism -- 37% -tie with- Zoroastrianism
7. Shinto -- 33%
8. Protestant Christianity -- 30%

Dishonorable mentions: Neopaganism and all the secular ideologies

Yes, another list. Here goes:

1. Groundless Faith
2. Qualified Faith
3. Direct Faith

1. Groundless Faith -- We could call this weak or insincere faith. This is the type of faith that comes about from factors like: (a) fear, coercion, or other psychological manipulation tactics, (b) credulity and wishful-thinking, and (c) faith that is "bad faith" which is the kind of faith adopted for cynical and pragmatic reasons like social opportunism, i.e. status and power-seeking, or simply an easy means to fit into a group, regardless of the person's true views or beliefs on the religion in question. And of course, Groundless Faith may come about as any combination of the above factors.

2. Qualified Faith -- This is the type of faith that is arrived it by means of rational thought processes. A simple term for this type of faith might be something like "Faith of Trust." For example, almost everyone who has ever peered at a world map has faith that Antarctica does indeed exist, despite having never personally visited Antarctica. When someone witnesses a number of people they trust practicing a specific religion and perceiving that good deeds/conduct and happiness results from the practice of this religion, then they might be inclined on rational grounds to start practicing that religion as well.

3. Direct Faith -- When a person has a direct experience of a particular concept or phenomenon, they cultivate True Faith in that particular thing, having grasped its inner essence in a way far beyond what mundane language can describe. The Greeks would have termed this process as "Gnosis." When True Faith is accrued or cultivated, the person might develop an unshakable degree of certitude in the veracity of the thing in question. This is most clearly the strongest type of faith.

I'm of the mind that it's becoming clear that so-called "Secular ethics" has no coherent metaphysical foundation. At the end of the day, it just ends up being each proponent of secular ethics attributing their own particular views/opinions on what constitutes proper secular ethics to "human reason"...which is really silly, because anyone can claim their opinions are based on reason (well, because reasons). In effect, what we end up with is an anarchy of competing "human reason"(s). Which begs the obvious question: "by which objective standard do we employ to determine if this or that value/view/doctrine is based on reason?" Ayn Rand and Karl Marx both attributed their respective hot takes on reality to "human reason." And anyone with half an IQ point would probably know that they would agree on very little, if anything at all.

The final result of this almost three century game-of-sophistries is an eminently-arrogant and dizzingly-anarchic clash of mere human opinions whereby there are no universal values but rather a Nietzschean battle of competing wills. The Postmodernists were quite right on this. Secular Liberalism as some sort of universal value system is a complete farce, and anyone with an ounce of philosophical literacy coupled with intellectual honesty should be able to reach that conclusion rather quickly. Without religious scriptures or philosophical treaties based on some conception of Natural Law, all we really have to work with in terms of determining right from wrong is something along the lines of, "This is the truth because I say so!! And I have an army behind me to force everyone to bend the knee to thing thing I claim to be the truth."

The secular morality project has a whole whoppin' 250 or so odd years behind it. (vs. many millennia of stable, religion-based cultures and civilizations). Chronological pissing contests aside, for most of this period a bulk of the western populations were still firmly Christian. Anyone adhering purely to secular ethics would have been a very tiny minority of educated intellectuals. Up until the most recent time period, these intellectuals still would have been paying some degree of lip service to Christian morality and Christian-Western cultural heritage in general. In retrospect, this whole project of trying to power a morality engine using a fuel input of secular rationalist doctrines, ended up being little more than a long protest movement against Abrahamic theocracy (IMO, Abrahamism is another affront to Natural Law, but that's a whole different topic for a different time, lol)

The long and short: A culture cannot sustain itself on an anarchy of values and principles. Let's hope some day we can get something more nuanced and philosophically-competent than Biblical religiosity.

Long live Natural Law, or Dharma, or whatever else you might want to call it!

Third Ennead, Fourth Tractate

OUR TUTELARY SPIRIT.

1. Some Existents [Absolute Unity and Intellectual-Principle] remain at rest while their Hypostases, or Expressed-Idea, come into being; but, in our view, the Soul generates by its motion, to which is due the sensitive faculty- that in any of its expression-forms- Nature and all forms of life down to the vegetable order. Even as it is present in human beings the Soul carries its Expression-form [Hypostasis] with it, but is not the dominant since it is not the whole man (humanity including the Intellectual Principle, as well): in the vegetable order it is the highest since there is nothing to rival it; but at this phase it is no longer reproductive, or, at least, what it produces is of quite another order; here life ceases; all later production is lifeless.

What does this imply? Everything the Soul engenders down to this point comes into being shapeless, and takes form by orientation towards its author and supporter: therefore the thing engendered on the further side can be no image of the Soul, since it is not even alive; it must be an utter Indetermination. No doubt even in things of the nearer order there was indetermination, but within a form; they were undetermined not utterly but only in contrast with their perfect state: at this extreme point we have the utter lack of determination. Let it be raised to its highest degree and it becomes body by taking such shape as serves its scope; then it becomes the recipient of its author and sustainer: this presence in body is the only example of the boundaries of Higher Existents running into the boundary of the Lower.

2. It is of this Soul especially that we read "All Soul has care for the Soulless"- though the several Souls thus care in their own degree and way. The passage continues- "Soul passes through the entire heavens in forms varying with the variety of place"- the sensitive form, the reasoning form, even the vegetative form- and this means that in each "place" the phase of the soul there dominant carries out its own ends while the rest, not present there, is idle.

Now, in humanity the lower is not supreme; it is an accompaniment; but neither does the better rule unfailingly; the lower element also has a footing, and Man, therefore, lives in part under sensation, for he has the organs of sensation, and in large part even by the merely vegetative principle, for the body grows and propagates: all the graded phases are in a collaboration, but the entire form, man, takes rank by the dominant, and when the life-principle leaves the body it is what it is, what it most intensely lived.

This is why we must break away towards the High: we dare not keep ourselves set towards the sensuous principle, following the images of sense, or towards the merely vegetative, intent upon the gratifications of eating and procreation; our life must be pointed towards the Intellective, towards the Intellectual-Principle, towards God.

Those that have maintained the human level are men once more. Those that have lived wholly to sense become animals- corresponding in species to the particular temper of the life- ferocious animals where the sensuality has been accompanied by a certain measure of spirit, gluttonous and lascivious animals where all has been appetite and satiation of appetite. Those who in their pleasures have not even lived by sensation, but have gone their way in a torpid grossness become mere growing things, for this lethargy is the entire act of the vegetative, and such men have been busy be-treeing themselves. Those, we read, that, otherwise untainted, have loved song become vocal animals; kings ruling unreasonably but with no other vice are eagles; futile and flighty visionaries ever soaring skyward, become highflying birds; observance of civic and secular virtue makes man again, or where the merit is less marked, one of the animals of communal tendency, a bee or the like.

3. What, then, is the spirit [guiding the present life and determining the future]?

The Spirit of here and now.

And the God?

The God of here and now.

Spirit, God; This in act within us, conducts every life; for, even here and now, it is the dominant of our Nature.

That is to say that the dominant is the spirit which takes possession of the human being at birth?

No: the dominant is the Prior of the individual spirit; it presides inoperative while its secondary acts: so that if the acting force is that of men of the sense-life, the tutelary spirit is the Rational Being, while if we live by that Rational Being, our tutelary Spirit is the still higher Being, not directly operative but assenting to the working principle. The words "You shall yourselves choose" are true, then; for by our life we elect our own loftier.

But how does this spirit come to be the determinant of our fate?

It is not when the life is ended that it conducts us here or there; it operates during the lifetime; when we cease to live, our death hands over to another principle this energy of our own personal career.

That principle [of the new birth] strives to gain control, and if it succeeds it also lives and itself, in turn, possesses a guiding spirit [its next higher]: if on the contrary it is weighed down by the developed evil in the character, the spirit of the previous life pays the penalty: the evil-liver loses grade because during his life the active principle of his being took the tilt towards the brute by force of affinity. If, on the contrary, the Man is able to follow the leading of his higher Spirit, he rises: he lives that Spirit; that noblest part of himself to which he is being led becomes sovereign in his life; this made his own, he works for the next above until he has attained the height.

For the Soul is many things, is all, is the Above and the Beneath to the totality of life: and each of us is an Intellectual Kosmos, linked to this world by what is lowest in us, but, by what is the highest, to the Divine Intellect: by all that is intellective we are permanently in that higher realm, but at the fringe of the Intellectual we are fettered to the lower; it is as if we gave forth from it some emanation towards that lower, or, rather some Act, which however leaves our diviner part not in itself diminished.

4. But is this lower extremity of our intellective phase fettered to body for ever?

No: if we turn, this turns by the same act. And the Soul of the All- are we to think that when it turns from this sphere its lower phase similarly withdraws?

No: for it never accompanied that lower phase of itself; it never knew any coming, and therefore never came down; it remains unmoved above, and the material frame of the Universe draws close to it, and, as it were, takes light from it, no hindrance to it, in no way troubling it, simply lying unmoved before it.

But has the Universe, then, no sensation? "It has no Sight," we read, since it has no eyes, and obviously it has not ears, nostrils, or tongue. Then has it perhaps such a consciousness as we have of our own inner conditions?

No: where all is the working out of one nature, there is nothing but still rest; there is not even enjoyment. Sensibility is present as the quality of growth is, unrecognized. But the Nature of the World will be found treated elsewhere; what stands here is all that the question of the moment demands.

5. But if the presiding Spirit and the conditions of life are chosen by the Soul in the overworld, how can anything be left to our independent action here?

The answer is that very choice in the over-world is merely an allegorical statement of the Soul's tendency and temperament, a total character which it must express wherever it operates.

But if the tendency of the Soul is the master-force and, in the Soul, the dominant is that phase which has been brought to the fore by a previous history, then the body stands acquitted of any bad influence upon it? The Soul's quality exists before any bodily life; it has exactly what it chose to have; and, we read, it never changes its chosen spirit; therefore neither the good man nor the bad is the product of this life?

Is the solution, perhaps, that man is potentially both good and bad but becomes the one or the other by force of act?

But what if a man temperamentally good happens to enter a disordered body, or if a perfect body falls to a man naturally vicious?

The answer is that the Soul, to whichever side it inclines, has in some varying degree the power of working the forms of body over to its own temper, since outlying and accidental circumstances cannot overrule the entire decision of a Soul. Where we read that, after the casting of lots, the sample lives are exhibited with the casual circumstances attending them and that the choice is made upon vision, in accordance with the individual temperament, we are given to understand that the real determination lies with the Souls, who adapt the allotted conditions to their own particular quality.

The Timaeus indicates the relation of this guiding spirit to ourselves: it is not entirely outside of ourselves; is not bound up with our nature; is not the agent in our action; it belongs to us as belonging to our Soul, but not in so far as we are particular human beings living a life to which it is superior: take the passage in this sense and it is consistent; understand this Spirit otherwise and there is contradiction. And the description of the Spirit, moreover, as "the power which consummates the chosen life," is, also, in agreement with this interpretation; for while its presidency saves us from falling much deeper into evil, the only direct agent within us is some thing neither above it nor equal to it but under it: Man cannot cease to be characteristically Man.

6. What, then, is the achieved Sage?

One whose Act is determined by the higher phase of the Soul.

It does not suffice to perfect virtue to have only this Spirit [equivalent in all men] as cooperator in the life: the acting force in the Sage is the Intellective Principle [the diviner phase of the human Soul] which therefore is itself his presiding spirit or is guided by a presiding spirit of its own, no other than the very Divinity.

But this exalts the Sage above the Intellectual Principle as possessing for presiding spirit the Prior to the Intellectual Principle: how then does it come about that he was not, from the very beginning, all that he now is?

The failure is due to the disturbance caused by birth- though, before all reasoning, there exists the instinctive movement reaching out towards its own.

On instinct which the Sage finally rectifies in every respect?

Not in every respect: the Soul is so constituted that its life-history and its general tendency will answer not merely to its own nature but also to the conditions among which it acts.

The presiding Spirit, as we read, conducting a Soul to the Underworld ceases to be its guardian- except when the Soul resumes [in its later choice] the former state of life.

But, meanwhile, what happens to it?

From the passage [in the Phaedo] which tells how it presents the Soul to judgement we gather that after the death it resumes the form it had before the birth, but that then, beginning again, it is present to the Souls in their punishment during the period of their renewed life- a time not so much of living as of expiation.

But the Souls that enter into brute bodies, are they controlled by some thing less than this presiding Spirit? No: theirs is still a Spirit, but an evil or a foolish one.

And the Souls that attain to the highest?

Of these higher Souls some live in the world of Sense, some above it: and those in the world of Sense inhabit the Sun or another of the planetary bodies; the others occupy the fixed Sphere [above the planetary] holding the place they have merited through having lived here the superior life of reason.

We must understand that, while our Souls do contain an Intellectual Kosmos they also contain a subordination of various forms like that of the Kosmic Soul. The world Soul is distributed so as to produce the fixed sphere and the planetary circuits corresponding to its graded powers: so with our Souls; they must have their provinces according to their different powers, parallel to those of the World Soul: each must give out its own special act; released, each will inhabit there a star consonant with the temperament and faculty in act within and constituting the principle of the life; and this star or the next highest power will stand to them as God or more exactly as tutelary spirit.

But here some further precision is needed. Emancipated Souls, for the whole period of their sojourn there above, have transcended the Spirit-nature and the entire fatality of birth and all that belongs to this visible world, for they have taken up with them that Hypostasis of the Soul in which the desire of earthly life is vested. This Hypostasis may be described as the distributable Soul, for it is what enters bodily forms and multiplies itself by this division among them. But its distribution is not a matter of magnitudes; wherever it is present, there is the same thing present entire; its unity can always be reconstructed: when living things- animal or vegetal- produce their constant succession of new forms, they do so in virtue of the self-distribution of this phase of the Soul, for it must be as much distributed among the new forms as the propagating originals are. In some cases it communicates its force by permanent presence the life principle in plants for instance- in other cases it withdraws after imparting its virtue- for instance where from the putridity of dead animal or vegetable matter a multitudinous birth is produced from one organism.

A power corresponding to this in the All must reach down and co-operate in the life of our world- in fact the very same power.

If the Soul returns to this Sphere it finds itself under the same Spirit or a new, according to the life it is to live. With this Spirit it embarks in the skiff of the universe: the "spindle of Necessity" then takes control and appoints the seat for the voyage, the seat of the lot in life.

The Universal circuit is like a breeze, and the voyager, still or stirring, is carried forward by it. He has a hundred varied experiences, fresh sights, changing circumstances, all sorts of events. The vessel itself furnishes incident, tossing as it drives on. And the voyager also acts of himself in virtue of that individuality which he retains because he is on the vessel in his own person and character. Under identical circumstances individuals answer very differently in their movements and acts: hence it comes about that, be the occurrences and conditions of life similar or dissimilar, the result may differ from man to man, as on the other hand a similar result may be produced by dissimilar conditions: this (personal answer to incident) it is that constitutes destiny.

Some raw opinions rolling off might head right now:

One cannot be a true philosopher AND an apologist for any confessional creed; especially not a creed featuring a theology which is dependent on a series of hard historical claims. I think it is simply not possible to expound upon pure metaphysics within the narrow confines of a religious doctrine or theology that makes a lot of hard claims on the nature of reality, especially claims that assert truth-exclusivity at the sharp expense of other doctrines, or really just differ a whole lot from the claims other doctrines assert. In my view, even the smartest and most metaphysically competent of apologists and ideologists can only be Sophists at best.

Some rough notes, which is my current understanding of the three main legitimate spiritual approaches (or paths):

1. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the purpose of making one's current lifetime (or maybe the next several, if done with a longer-term vision in mind) more comfortable, pleasant, joyous, and prosperous. Or simply for learning the workings of the unseen aspects/layers of reality due to curiosity and the desire to experiment. The shadow side of this approach would be if this path was used to gain spiritual powers for the sole purpose of gratifying one's own ego and/or gaining power over other people.

2. Spiritual knowledge and practice for the primary purpose of being a service to others, whether its your family, friends, clan, tribe, nation, mankind, all sentient beings, ect. The shadow side of this approach would be the cultivation of a self-righteous and sanctimonious ego, whereby the practitioner uses their spiritual path to gain attention, glory, or a morally-purist image in the eyes of the people/group they are supposedly serving in a selfless manner.

3. Spiritual knowledge and practice for attaining union or communion with whatever one's religion or spiritual system's concept of the highest being or principle is. In the more elaborate religions this would be the attainment of various states of mystical realization, typically for the purpose of advancing one's consciousness to a higher state beyond the human level. The shadow side of this approach would be, (a) a rushed or too-intense degree of ascetic detachment from the world, before the seeker is actually ready (for the perspective of karmic and practical maturity), or (b) on the more mundane level, the path of the zealot or fundamentalist, which is the follower's total blind submission to their religion's doctrines, dogma, and ideological tenets, without the application of any reason or careful self-reflection.