An observation about something or other...

"Clausewitz, while not so difficult as his reputation--and actually much easier to read in his native German, to my mind--is tough going compared to the work of a Keegan, in which afactual wishing passes for insight. (Keegan...may be the most inaccurate critic of Clausewitz ever to put pen to paper.) Clausewitz is the big leagues. In fact, he constitutes the only team in his league. He is a giant, born of the Romanticism that flourished east of the Rhine, a thinker rational on the surface but actually profoundly intuitive and visionary..."

This quote is from here. It's a page from this very good website about Clausewitz in general.

The quote caught my eye though because a part of it reminded me of some of the writers on theology in that whole Christian blog world I just recently exited. "[A] thinker rational on the surface but actually profoundly intuitive and visionary..."

There is alot of rational thinking in theology, but underlying "intuitive" and "visionary" is rare.

If anyone reading this read much at all of those blogs I was flitting around on there was a very 'rigorous' philosophical (or 'critical thinking') vein in the midst of it that all the others tended to admire and even make folk heroes of.

They could write circles around me, but only in a sense: they reminded me of me when I first came on the fourth way forums and I had something resembling a systematic understanding of the Work which no one else had bothered to obtain, if they could. So I could always do that thing where you sort of undercut a person's point or insight by presenting it in a larger context with clear definitions which carries with it the slap down that you don't really know the subject matter fully, which is true -- yet, the worth of your insight is not measured by you not having the bigger picture to place it within, necessarily. You can have an intuition and vision the rational killer philosopher who has all the 'categories' down doesn't possess. In theology the game can get shallow too because inevitably a philosophical approach to Scripture, as valuable as it can potentially be, locks a person in at a certain level by default. In fact, you find that the severe philosophical types tend to be adherents of one or another human influences (with definite limitations). I ran into this on the first Calvinist forum I got involved in that had seminary professors as well as self-taught types on it. I found there were 'Clarkians' and 'van Tilians'. And I instinctively avoided learning about each because I discerned both sides as being similar to what philosophy in general and mathematics were in the climb up the mountain of B Influence: something to basically know of but not to get sidetracked or stuck at. Because what they both do (philosophy and mathematics) is lock you into the limitations of your waking mind. You may get very sharp in either discipline, yet it's a sharpness at the level of lower intellectual center and hence not real sharp in the big picture. Certainly not conducive to real inner development, i.e. real increase of level of being. So I avoided the Clarkians and van Tilians thing, and lo and behold it turned out to be a central thing in the very area of theology I was hanging out in: Calvinism.

It's NOT Calvinism, but in the 20th century it's become associated with Calvinism. Kind of like what happens when Stanford professors discover the Work and then write books about their discovery that not surprisingly read like books written by Stanford professors whether they'd learned of Ouspensky or not. Consciousness in the Work becomes the same old academic level understanding of consciousness (or they might get crazy and import a current fad like dancing wu-li physicist meditation theory along with their scientific, sociological academic take on consciousness and etc. and it all becomes the usual academic level of pretty much anything.

I think I said what I was trying to say in all that.

There's an arrogance of 'intellect' involved in the theology realm too. It shows in their disdain to teach. One commentor on a blog written by one of the killer critical thinking philosopher-theologian types asked for a reference where he could learn to present a basic argument and how to structure it (like they did) and so on. What he was reading on those kinds of blogs. The blog owner didn't respond to his request. "What? Give up that kind of valuable knowledge? I'm here to impress you, not teach. Find out for yourself, if you can." There is some source they're feeding off of too, because I observe in that world that individuals who a few years back were criminals and drug-addicts are suddenly now constructing arguments using rhetoric that gets even the people with doctorates all giddy.

Sometimes it takes awhile to see their limits, but eventually they appear. They become little personality cults with seemingly no chinks in their armour, but if you keep looking you either see them operating outside their field of strength and hence you get a fuller picture of them, or you just simply find their sources. Ultimately, it is level of being that is lacking.

(Some might say I could be talking of myself above, but notice I never disdained to teach and I never hid my sources, EVER. And notice I don't have a problem being seen as innocent. Also, I always responded to anyone and everyone. The personality I describe above can't do that. They are kind of socially undeveloped to go along with being intellectually and socially arrogant. They also are very big in the area of being 'respecters of persons'. If you don't have a seminary degree, or aren't currently working on one (or just any academic degree) you are nothing in their view. I could tell stories about how they reacted to me so differently when I'd write using a fake university (.edu) email...)

So of course I come along and in my unique language (a style very much unrecognized in the scholarly salons) can make an insightful point or challenge or query, and I'm seen as a neophyte and a distraction and an annoyance. I mean, I can get to the foundational aspects of the subject matter, but it's not 'written right'. Not presented right. Of course, usually to present it write you have to write a 'paper', or a small treatise, which they don't seem to mind doing for everything they write. (That too tells you they are working off a formula.)

Calvin actually didn't write like them. And he was a precise, lawyer type.

Anyway, that kind of writing and approach can be valuable, but, getting back to the quote above, if there is no intuition and vision underneath the intellect it's all cardboard, for the most part.

My approach (and the real approach) is to avoid what stultifies real development of level of being; and you have to be able to not care if you're seen as a fool because you don't want to make an idol and self-stumblingblock of lower intellectual center and your vanity... In other words: I don't want to be a 'Clarkian' or a 'van Tilian'. I'll admit it's impressive when a former criminal becomes a 'van Tilian', but that is not development of level of being, per se. It's starting from a criminal level, not a good householder level... He's going to have to break up that personality shell eventually to then move on to real inner development...at some point...