Reality Is Real, Life Is For Living It And A Better Use For Internet Comments - Perhaps the first Tuedsay Shorts, Tuesday usually being my busiest day

IF I AM LOOKING for advice about how to meditate more efficiently, I would look at the Buddhist Scriptures.  The focus of the Buddha and his followers was, for the most part, concentrated on meditating towards the end of achieving liberation from pain and sorrow and, so, that's the area of expertise those excel in. Obviously they don't have much to say about God unless you, as I do, think that's pretty much what the experience of Nibbana that is their goal is.

If I am looking for information to inform me about living life in order to achieve a decent society and life and the salvation that would result from a diligent application towards those ends, I look to the Jewish Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments because that was the primary focus of that tradition.  I've tried both and ended up more convinced by the Jewish tradition which I hold is the real font of egalitarian democracy.  I think the pagan Greek and Roman cultures had far less to tell us about much other than math and a few good plays, primarily those by Euripides.  They contain a lot of information about what not to do, most of what is wrong in the history of Christianity is a product of the worst of European and other traditions and cultures.  

The warnings of the Prophets about Israel and Judea being corrupted by evils opposed to the Sinai Covenantal tradition might have warned Christians in Europe about things in the indigenous cultures and others that they couldn't adopt without falling away from the Gospel.  I think the wisdom of many other cultures of smaller groups on all continents have more useful information and advice and examples to live by than those which have the greatest hold on our elite culture, since they will be drawn to everything that enhances the lives of the rich and, so, powerful, the evils of oligarchy and gangsterism.  A lot of the conflict between those who maintain a romantic view of the British monarchy and those who come from places still experiencing the aftermath of English then British colonial gangsterism in the reaction to the death of Elizabeth II is that right before our eyes just now.  Little to nothing wrong with the British monarchy isn't present in conventional American Constitutional hagiographic pseudo-history.  Including many if not most of the evils of British imperialism and its history of slavery.  Only instead of directly giving formal governance of colonies through appointed gangster bosses, we allow the corporations and others to do it through corruption of local oligarchs and dictators.  Hey, I'm a political blogger, you can't expect me to not get into that. 

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I never knew who "Phila" was except for what information he gave about his activities on his blog and at the two blog comment threads where I encountered him.   I have not read anything from him in ten years when he abruptly stopped blogging and stopped appearing, at least under that name, where I went online.  He and his blog are one of the very few that I can say I have really missed.  There are certainly others on that short list, almost all of whom have given up blogging.  At least where I can find them.

One of the things I remember was when we agreed that one of the best uses of online comments was to test the strength of arguments, to see if we could defend our ideas as they were attacked by intelligent, informed commentators.  Unfortunately, the quality of online attack isn't high enough to sustain that in most venues, usually the attacks quickly fall into a rote pattern of cultural assumption based on no evidence and little logic.  I've learned a lot from that, too, mostly in how startlingly bad how many those with college-crendentials are at rigorous thinking.   I don't know if it was always that bad but it certainly is now.  And, if anything, the young'uns are worse at it than the olds are.