Change vs. final events of history

Dear Dino

I completely agree with you, and on both accounts.
I would say that strong determinism (which teleology and eschatology require) is incompatible with any notions of freedom of choice. Teleology is a Judeo-Christian-Islamic idea which I find no basis for in Zoroastrianism. Zarathushtra of course presents many ethical IDEALS in The Gathas which he recommends that we follow, but he most of all insists on our ultimate freedom (and our identity as free entities and co-creators of existence) as the absolute essence of his non-moralizing ethics.
We need to understand the difference here between dogma and poetry. And see the grand overall picture.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/26 special_kain
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Dear friends,

Maybe Zarathushtra believed in the perfection of the world at the end
of time, maybe he didn't. But let's see if teleology and eschatology
really make any sense in the light of modern science.
Teleology states that everything that has happened so far and
everything that is currently going on is directed at one final result.
Everything matters, everything has a purpose that is causally related
to the perfection of the world at the end of time. Just think of
something that is continually getting better. This is similar to
eschatology, which is a little more religious in nature and can be
found in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, the 17th century Enlightement
movement and even transhumanism. There's a linear progress towards a
goal set by God, nature, people's inner needs etc. So paradise is not
only a possibility, it's the future that we're heading into. Now some
of us think that this is also part of Zarathushtra's message, others
don't. I'm one of those who disagree in general with such
eschatological views, and I'd like to explain why.
Firstly, evolution is a non-directed process. There's coincidence
(variation and mutation) and necessity (selection), but there's no
goal, no purpose, no planning involved. Secondly, societies evolve
discontinuously. We never know in what kind of society our children
will be living in. We cannot anticipate the future of our society, we
can merely guess and discuss how plausible certain trends and
countertrends are. In this sense the world is creatively open. All we
have is a tangle of non-directed and interrelated changes and events.
It's a limitlessly creative process with no clear beginning and no
clear end. Any social theory that is saying otherwise has been
falsified in the past 20 years. So it seems that there are no
metaphysically predetermined or desired final events. All we have is
change, which is good in itself, because we're obliged to enjoy and
worship existence as such.
Any comments?

Ushta,
Dino // slowly waking up

Mind vs Wisdom (What is Mazda?)

Dear Dina

I must offer friendly but immediate disagreement.
It is true that Mind can be used for both good and bad.
But what we mean with the concept of Mazdayasna is that THE VERY EXISTENCE of Mind in itself is what is worth celebrating.
It is the existence of mind which is sacred to us, not what these minds produce. And there is an enormous difference between the capacity of something and the outcome of something.
So it is indeed MIND we mean with Mazda and not wisdom even though wisdom is of course preferrable to nonsense.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/24

Dear Maneck,
So far as Zarathushtra's thought is concerned (as best I can determine it from the Gathas), I do not think either 'mind' or 'intelligent mind' is an adequate description of his notion of "god" because both mind and intelligence can be either good or wrongful.

Sraosha Part 2

I totally agree.
Please note that the second of the three parts in Zarathushtra's formula concerns precisely this issue: Language. We think what we SPEAK what we act.
In other words: The language, the message, the communication, is what unites thoughts with actions, what binds our ethical identity together. So what we speak is or should be in unison with our thoughts and actions as they together form our identity. Communication is not only communication, communication is also that which ties thoughts with actions and thereby MANIFEST the divine in us.
Which is what I would refer to as "the presence of the divine in our lives as a flow". This is what I read into sraosha.
Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/12 ztheist

Ushta Alex

Yes it is something like the presence of AM or perhaps of His mind, I
agree. I think that what is basically saying though is that you get
like a communication and that it has to do with the message , not
necessarily the Gathas alone I believe it lso includes the
message/evidence in nature for, at least, Asha and manah standing
behind the reality of what we experience. Its a difficult concept to
grasp, but a very interesting one.

Ushta te
Ron

Sraosha (or seraosha)

Dear Ron

Very good question!!!
First of all, Zarathushtra certainly did not mean to personify sraosha, as we would both agree on, that is a much later habit from within folk Zoroastrianism. Rather sraosha seems to be the state of "rightness" when thoughts, words and actions are in harmony with each other and therefore a presence of the divine can be experienced. As such, sraosha is that which unfies us with Ahura Mazda, or if we prefer, that state when we experience our connection with Ahura Mazda, as a "presence" of the divine. I just don't think we can find one word for sraosha in any western language, since the concept itself is alien to western thought.
According to Zarathushtra, good thoughts, good words, good actions, constitute a feedback loop. I believe that is what sraosha is all about. It is when the loop prolongs itself so that the loop itself begins to guide us right. And our emotions etc then go along with the flow of the loop så that staying within the loop becomes the natural, the easy thing to do.
What do you think?

Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/11 ztheist


Ushta ALEX

What is seraosha to you then? I mean it certainly is not obedience ,
with all due respect to Insler, Dina, et al. It seems to be related to
the Gathic message, the Manthra, and Jafarey translates it as the
Divine Voice, which might be going too far. It seems to be something
like inspiration or contemplation of the Gathic message that leads to
inspiration, but what is you opinion? It does have an inference of
communication hinting some sort of feeling of the presence of AM in
the Gathic message but this seems to be secondary, IMO.

Ushta te
Ron

Ashem Vohu

Exactly!!!
There is a POINT to why Zoroastrians for 3,700 years have spoken of Asha as something to respect and hold sacred and Ashem Vohu as something to do and to love. The world operates the way it does (according to asha, according to functionality, according to that which fits or that which works) and No 1 is to find out what is asha (natural) and what is not (the supernatural, which we as Mazdayasni are not interested in) and THEN make a decision to act upon this knowledge (to think, speak and do good asha, ashem vohu, to be proper cultural beings). In modern philosophy this is called pure ethics.
I also believe that Asha is what conmects with Ahura and Ashem Vohu connects with Mazda in Ahura Mazda, the most genial divinity ever invented.
This is also why I have always said that Zoroastrianism is a purely ethical and not a moral religion.
For the sake of Ushta and Haurvatat
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Alexander

2009/2/7 Parviz Varjavand

Dear Alex,

Thank you for doing it to me anyway what I begged you not to do in my P.S. What you write now is exactly the point I have been trying to make for so long. You were taking off in the direction of Functionality as a definition for the Best of Asha last. Functionality may not be the Best Of Asha. Fascism may be a more functional form of government than Democracy, but it is not the Best. Neither is the Absolute Asha, the "There is only ONE path and that is the path of Asha" kind of Asha the answer to the riddle of what Asha- Vahishta is in the mental world.

The answer, as far as I am concerned, is that there are many Ashas out there in the Minoo (Mental) world. You line them up and choose the best that you think will give you your best Ushta. The most Functional one may not give you your highest Ushta. That is what I think the meaning of Ashem Vohoo is and this is also why I think it is the most sophisticated declaration of freedom of thought that anybody has come up with yet.

A very Functional Asha be upon you, and may it have much Ushta in it for you too!
Parviz


--- On Sat, 2/7/09, Alexander Bard wrote:

From: Alexander Bard
Subject: Re: [Ushta] Functionality, rather than truth
To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, February 7, 2009, 6:13 AM


Actually, theft is far more common in cultures where hands of thieves are being cut off than it is in countries like Japan and Switzerland where tight communal bounds bind people together in a feeling if interpendence and responsibility for each other. I believe Japan and Switzerland illustrate better what is good asha. Even if it seems the good asha towards the issue of thievery comes at the price of an uninspiring culture artistically according to our dear Dino. ;-)
Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/7 Parviz Varjavand

Dear readers,

Theft is a bad thing. We all wish to stop thievery.

There are courts that based on instructions from sacred sources have found an Asha that cures theft!? In lands where this Asha or Law is applied, theft stops dramatically and abruptly. The Asha they have discovered is very simple, they cut off the hand of the person who steals.

Yes, there is Asha in the mental realm. I claim that cutting off the hands of thieves is one such Asha. It is very very Functional too. I challenge anybody to show me why it is not an Asha.

Ushta,
Parviz
P.S. Don't give me that it is Asha, but it is not the Best of Asha. It is more than ten years that I have been trying to illustrate this one point alone ;-(

Functionality, rather than truth

Dear Dina and Dino

Functionality is indeed not subjective, rather it is a scientific term more than anything and as objective as any term will ever be. It is also an at least as good a translation of asha as truth. And Dina, I never said there is no absolute truth, there certainly is, it is called asha (for example, it is absolutely true that there is something rather than nothing etc), but only as long as you stay in nature. However, in the cultural environments of our minds, dependent on a linguistic interpretation of the world, there can be no absolute truths. Mental asha (the patterns of our thinking) is radically different from physical asha (the laws of the universe). Please keep the two apart even if they are both expressions of the same one substance of existence.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/5 Special Kain

Dear Dina,

Functionality isn't subjective at all. It's just a different concept. When two theories disagree on every important point, but applying both of them leads to intersubjectively testable results, we're dealing with functionality, rather than truth. Because in this sense both theories are "true". And the accumulative process you're describing is exactly what Nietzsche coined as perspectivism, which is far removed from truth (and was heavily criticized when postmodernism and poststructuralism were popular). So we should make a pragmatic decision and replace truth with functionality, and objectivity with intersubjectivity.

Ushta,
Dino

--- DINA MCINTYRE schrieb am Do, 5.2.2009:

Von: DINA MCINTYRE
Betreff: Re: [Ushta] Functionality, rather than truth
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Donnerstag, 5. Februar 2009, 17:11

Dear Dino,

Possibly because "functionality" is subjective.

I offer friendly disagreement with Alexander and those who think truth is not absolute. In my view, it is our perception of truth that is not absolute -- that is subjective. But as we grow in understanding, our perception of truth becomes more and more accurate, until eventually, truth, and our perception of it, is the same. That is the Zarathushtrian "heaven" -- the House of Good Thinking" -- a state of being that comprehends truth. That is also his notion of the divine -- a state of being that is Wisdom personified, (another way of saying a state of being that comprehends truth).

My two cents.

Wishing us the best,

Dina G. McIntyre.

Asha vs Logos

I believe the crucial point is that WE are PART OF ASHA.
Asha is not something external to us, it is not a pre-set law that we have to abide with and relate to.
We are within asha too, this is the Zoroastrian "freedom". Not a freedom from something, as is the case in western thinking, but a freedom to be part of and get involved with.
This is why mental asha involves our own actions, ethics is all about who you are to yourself, it's about your self-identity. Moralizing ideals (behavior according to preset laws strictly) is alien to Zoroastrian thinking.
To say that something is right because it is right is just sloppy. The proper question to ask when hearing such statements is: "Yesm we know this already, it's a tautology, but do you MEAN with RIGHT?
I'm glad that Dino brought up Heraclitus and "logos". Heraclitus is the Zoroastrian thinker of the ancient Greeks.
Ushta
Alexander

2009/2/4 Special Kain
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Dear Parviz,

I agree with Charles Sanders Peirce that metaphysics often is nothing more than debating questions of personal or social taste. There are fads in philosophy. For example, postmodernism hasn't been very popular in the last ten, fifteen years, but I guess that Alexander knows more about fads in contemporary philosophy than I do. He's a philosopher, I'm a sociologist.
So I think that you're somewhat right with your French men discussing wine and cheese. Personally, I favor the Habermasian approach to Asha, even though I'm not a Habermasian. But it would be really interesting to hear Dina's words on the subject, indeed!

Ushta,
Dino


--- Parviz Varjavand schrieb am Mi, 4.2.2009:

Von: Parviz Varjavand
Betreff: Re: [Ushta] Asha as Law and Asha as Truth.
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
CC: zoroastrians@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Mittwoch, 4. Februar 2009, 11:42

Ushta Dino,

I would like very much to hear what Dina has to say about Asha on all these plains (is it still "That Which Fits"?).
Jafarey says that Asha is doing the right things with the right tools at the right time....and he keeps going on with many more right this and right that, ...to reach the right result; and that is Asha to Jafarey.
This is how a group of large nosed French persons sit around sniffing their vine glasses talking about that perfect vine and the perfect cheese and that perfect mistress wearing the perfect negligee and......... .on and on. I don't think this kind of talk is Philosophy talking.

Parviz