🚀 go-pugleaf

pspat@opera.iinet.net.au (Patrick Canion) writes:

>As I've indicated previously in this thread, I respect (and hence
>tolerate) people's right to partake in any legal activity.  But
>this tolerance does not imply an embracing of the relativism that
>denies the existence of any Absolute.

I guess you're saying that you'll tolerate peoples' beliefs right up to
the point where their beliefs lead them to activities that you feel to
be Absolutely immoral? That doesn't sound like very much tolerance -
less than I imagine you'd maintain in other contexts than this one. I
suspect that this may come down to an issue alien to Absolutes: the
"Frankenstein point".

This is a name for the point where a person sees a particular activity
become "monstrous".  It varies from person to person, and often varies
in an single individual depending on context. I, for example, am quite
content to consider various bodily functions and medical procedures in
graphic detail - except when I am eating, when such discussions make me
squeamish.

There's nothing wrong with having a low "Frankenstein point" - many
friends of mine do. But I wonder whether you'd admit that such visceral
criteria influence your attitudes here? Do you, for example, maintain
the same reservations about killing in wartime that you do about VE?

>Let me be polemical:  How much of tolerance boils down to "if it feels
>good, do it" ?

Let me be polemical too: none.

>>>>     Give away what you don't need.        |
>>>BTW, excellent advice!
>>A quote from Lao Tse - try "http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/gnl.html".

>"A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be
>refreshed."  King Solomon, circa 1000 BC (Proverbs 11:25)

Yes. Although Lao, if he was more than a myth, is supposed to have lived
around the same time as Solomon, his work appears at least partially
derivative from the Bhagavad Gita, which predates both these fellows by
about 3,000 years. There may indeed have been a common root.

Actually, Lao has a passage that combines this with notions of tolerance:

   The sage does not distinguish between himself and the world;
   The needs of other people are as his own.
   
   He is good to those who are good;
   He is also good to those who are not good,
   Thereby he is good.
   He trusts those who are trustworthy;
   He also trusts those who are not trustworthy,
   Thereby he is trustworthy.
   
   The sage lives in harmony with the world,
   And his mind is the world's mind.
   So he nurtures the worlds of others
   As a mother does her children.

Note that I pretend to be a taoist, not a sage :-)

-- 
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| http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/ |         Give away what you don't need.        |