Gnwmythr's Glossary: October 2014

Friday, 31 October 2014

Immature Soul / Young Soul

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

To make that clearer, my definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

Hence, an Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

222. Personal Responsibility (this post is - effectively - the start of my Balanced Positivity theme); 061. Maturity; 227. Old vs. Mature; 062. Perspective; 115. “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth" and "Aliens Among Us": a Personal View; 196. The Only Planet of Choice, Star Wars and Kung Fu; 132. Ethics; 150. A Word Both Over-Used and Under-Used: Sorry; 153. Honour, mistakes, and forgiveness; 184. Meditation and the Purpose of Evolution; 205. Taking Action or Not, Plus Vengeance and Other Thinking; 149. Updates: Healing, World Peace, Vegan Witches, Crop Circles and Memory; 168. A Miscellany on Leadership, Growth Orientation, Charmaine Wilson, Acne and Security Theatre ... ; 213. A Sunnudagr (Sunday) Miscellany; 216. Virtues and Faults: a Matter of Octave? And Dreams vs. Responsibility ...; 248. Want to be a Knight in Shining Armour?; 270. Sugar'n'spice and hero/warrior stereotypes/archetypes; 279. The theme of the coming world religion/leader; 288. The ancient Spartans were NOT honourable; 289. Deity; 291. When you die, how do you want to live in the astral?; 325. Terminology; 330. Reflections, reading and how NOT to do a "rescue"; 335. Helping those who are disturbed; 347. Maturity: a refinement; 364. The Origin of Evil; 368A. This week's speculation, reading and other stuff; 380. Naiveté (inappropriateness); 391. Lessons from the world of ... money; 393. More Sunday thoughts ...; 396. Negative learning and Mediocrity; 400. Balanced positive; 421. Can one be too positive?; 440. The Magical Battle of Melbourne, Australia and Humanity; 469. A public talk on "Power"; 471. Update and public talk on "the means shapes the end"; 500. Perspectives; 505. Lessons from the past: the film "Kamchatka"; 509. For tonight's meditation: people change; 511. Failure to take action; 513. I am a walker upon the Path of Balanced Positivity, seeking Spiritual Maturity; 519. Why I never claim to like all children, or (blindly) love all humanity; 523. Some more thoughts on Balanced Positivity; Post No. 542 - the Strength Required of a Servant of the Goddesses/Gods/Light; Post No. 546: Some more thoughts on Balanced Positivity; Post No. 568 - Who will step up?; Post No. 571 - Changing the personality of oppressors; Post No. 573 - Post Script to "who will step up?"; Post No. 576 – Activism; Post No. 605 –Balanced Positivity (The History of), Bow Exercise and Reading;

Mature Soul / Old Soul

My definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

Maturity (non-physical)

I am going to leave the concept of physical maturity to the biologists to argue about, and confine this definition to non-physical forms of maturity - emotional, psychological, spiritual, and any others that may apply.

In that context, maturity is represented by the ability to function independently - and healthily so.

Our time as children is marked by our dependence on our parents: our time as adults marked by the lack of that - but it must be so in a healthy way.

Someone who can only function emotionally by propping themselves up on others, is not healthily independent. Someone who can only arrange things by whining or blackmailing others into helping them, is not functioning with healthy independence.

On the other hand, someone who is stubbornly independent to a fault (like me, some would say :) ), would also have trouble, perhaps, claiming to be healthily independent.

This definition of maturity is NOT related to chronological age. Some people in their 80s would count as immature under this definition, and some young people in their teens may count as mature, or mature in some aspects. I personally do not count an individual as physically mature unless they have moved out from the parent's/carer's house/home - or an institution, if they have been raised in an orphanage - and are financially supporting themselves. Someone who does have to work for a living may not meet my definition of maturity.

Spiritually, someone who is dependent on a religion or a priest or someone else is someone who is possibly not functioning independently, and thus may be immature.

There is a further subset of this topic, or perhaps it is a related topic, one that many people conflate with maturity: the topic of Old or Young Souls - or as I term them, Mature or Immature Souls.

My definition of a Mature Soul / Old Soul is one who is spiritually and generally mature, according to this definition, and ALSO living - or attempting to live, to the best of their ability - with the principles of Balanced Positivity, which is, according to according to my interpretation of Brendan Myers’ course “Clear and Present Thinking”, a form of Virtue Theory (Wikipedia discusses this as “Virtue Ethics” – and it is actually worth reading that link, particularly for the criticisms … well, it was worth reading it as of 25^th October, 2014). The course describes this along the lines of:

A vice, according to this doctrine, is a case of manifesting too much or too little of the particular quality that a situation calls for; And a virtue is the ‘right amount’ of the quality which the situation calls for; Courage, for example, goes between rashness or recklessness (which is too much courage), and cowardice (which is too little.)

All of which goes back to the work of Plato and Aristotle, who, interestingly, are discussed in Chapters 11 and 13 of Mr Myers’ book on pagan philosophers: “The Earth, The Gods and The Soul” (which I bought and read as part of my preparation for my interview on “Harmony in Diversity” - see here and here; Pub. Moon Books, 2013, ISBN 978-1-78099-317-1).

A Mature Soul / Old Soul behaves - particularly spiritually - appropriately, in a way that is balanced, and fundamentally (or overall) constructive.

An Immature Soul / Young Soul behaves in ways that cause real - not perceived: no grumbling about alleged problems such as rudeness etc - problems for others, or themself.

As with the topic of maturity generally, this has nothing to do with chronological age.

I have touched on this topic in many posts, most of which have been summarised in a particular section of the "key posts" section of my blogiography, which is copied below (as it was at the date this definition was first written):

Balanced Positivity, Spiritual Maturity, Peace and Personal Conduct

and also
Post No. 620 - Magickal maturity;

Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Syncretism

Now, this word is one that I use differently, so I may yet add more or write my own definition. (In the interim, you could read this article of mine.)

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

Henotheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

I may well add more at a later date, as the concept is one that I find interesting.

Animism

Panentheism

Pantheism

Monism

Unitarianism

Omnitheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary. In that post she thinks the word should be attributed to Anomalous Thracian, but hasn't found the exact post as yet. I found a definition at Wiktionary here.

Polytheism

Now, this word is actually one that I have planned on doing my own definition of for some time, so this should be regarded as a somewhat interim definition.

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

Trinitarianism

Duotheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and, although the online Oxford Dictionary's definition doesn't have a definition, you can find another definition here.

I do have some strong thoughts on this, however, so may well add more at a later.

Monotheism

Agnosticism

Nontheistic

Atheism

This definition is not mine. I've been inspired to write something as a result of reading the definitions at Ember's blog "EmberVoices: Listening for the Vanir", in her post A Theological Glossary.

I'm not going to give the actual definitions, but you will find her definition and explanation and discussion of the differences between terms there, and you can also find the online Oxford Dictionary's definition here.

I do have some strong thoughts on this, however, so may well add more at a later.

Deism

Theism

Thursday, 16 October 2014

(human) dignity

From my post on this topic:

Human Dignity is the inherently cumulative, holistic combination of human rights, wellbeing and potential, and all actions or interaction which promote, realise or facilitate same. The converse also applies: whatever degrades, diminishes or robs humans of dignity, is inherently undignified.

Other points from that post include:

· in my opinion, no person has human dignity who deprives another of their dignity, or lessens their dignity - which is different to the situation of human rights, where one person may deprive another of human rights that the first still has. To put that another way, dignity is not “just” about respect, as the person whose dignity is under attack still has or is entitled to respect, but the person doing the attacking is not. Again, that is my opinion, and differs slightly from, for instance, Wikipedia [1] , which states that “Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically”;

· The attribution of “contemporary dignity” to the UDHR suggests that the UDHR would be a good starting point for specifics, but human dignity goes beyond that, and beyond the measure others hold us in (i.e., respect) to something that is inherent – unless we are robbing others of that. (And, for what it is worth, dignity is also held by other sentient lifeforms);

· I propose that the specific bases for dignity are :

o never lessening another’s dignity;

o actively promoting human dignity;

o never acting in contravention of others’ human rights;

o actively respecting and promoting human rights;

o seeking to be all that they can be, and to ensure that others also have the opportunity to choose to be all that they can be, if they wish to freely choose that; and

o living in accordance with the principles of Balanced Positivity and Spiritual Maturity.

· if we look at the loss of dignity, Wikipedia proposes :

o Human dignity can be violated in multiple ways. The main categories of violations are:

- Humiliation

- Instrumentalisation or objectification

- Degradation

- Dehumanisation

o Also from Wikipedia :

- “Some of the practices that violate human dignity include torture, rape, social exclusion, labour exploitation, bonded labour and slavery. Both absolute and relative poverty are violations of human dignity, although they also have other significant dimensions, such as social injustice. Involuntary poverty is unusual among violations of human dignity because it is usually the result of acts of omission rather than acts of commission. Absolute poverty is associated with overt exploitation and connected to humiliation (e.g., being forced to eat food from other people's garbage), but being dependent upon others to stay alive is a violation of dignity even in the absence of more direct violations. Relative poverty, on the other hand, is a violation because the cumulative experience of not being able to afford the same clothes, entertainment, social events, education, or other features of typical life in that society results in subtle humiliation, social rejection, and marginalization and consequently diminished self-respect.”

- All of which contravene the principles of Balanced Positivity and Spiritual Maturity. Another way of putting this, perhaps, is that a loss of dignity is caused if mental or emotional harm is deliberately inflicted by another person. Harm could occur as a result of natural catastrophes, disease, etc, but I don’t see that as causing a loss of dignity - which suggests that dignity is a matter of human interactions and relations. That is, action, not just state of being;

· For further background :

o From Wikipedia :
The English word "dignity", attested from the early 13^th century, comes from Latin dignitas (worthiness) by way of French dignité. In ordinary modern usage it denotes "respect" and "status", and it is often used to suggest that someone is not receiving a proper degree of respect, or even that they are failing to treat themselves with proper self-respect. There is also a long history of special philosophical use of this term. However, it is rarely defined outright in political, legal, and scientific discussions. International proclamations have thus far left dignity undefined, and scientific commentators, such as those arguing against genetic research and algeny, cite dignity as a reason but are ambiguous about its application;

o From the online Oxford Dictionary, dignity is :
“The state or quality of being worthy of honour or respect” (and is also about high position in society - which I have completely discounted from my considerations of this matter 😊 );

[1] See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dignity&oldid=1377992646 : “Dignity is the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically. In this context, it is of significance in morality, ethics, law and politics as an extension of the Enlightenment-era concepts of inherent, inalienable rights. The term may also be used to describe personal conduct, as in "behaving with dignity". The content of contemporary dignity is derived from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, summarized in the principle that every human being has the right to human dignity. In Article 1, it is stipulated that 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood".^[1] References to human dignity became more common in constitutions and charters of human rights after World War II, in the aftermath of Nazi and fascist atrocities.^[2]”

For my original writing ONLY on this blog:

NO AI I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product. Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Links to others works and excerpts from others works are NOT covered by the hereinbefore, and remain subject to the conditions of the original source.