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Sufism, sodomy and Satan (Spengler)
Asia Times ^
| 8/12/2008
| Spengler
Posted on 08/15/2008 4:54:34 PM PDT by mojito
click here to read article
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The always interesting Spengler.
1
posted on
08/15/2008 4:54:34 PM PDT
by
mojito
To: mojito
What an elegant writer the author is.
To: mojito
Third, pederasty has become a plague in parts of the West, and widespread abuse of children has occasioned a crisis in the Catholic Church. It is hard to avoid the impression that sexual misbehavior is associated with a retreat from faith in a personal God, namely the Jesus who lived on earth and was crucified and was resurrected, in favor of a mushy and unspecific spirituality - something like Sufism, in fact. Perhaps the same link between spiritual and sexual narcissism is at work in the West. This is a particularly complex and interesting article by Spengler. It's well worth reading.
3
posted on
08/15/2008 5:04:13 PM PDT
by
livius
To: mojito
Interesting. We used to call that narcisism meditating on your navel or your “ennymeeny.”
4
posted on
08/15/2008 5:06:20 PM PDT
by
Mercat
(Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;)
To: mojito
I thought this was going to be an article about the Democrat Convention.
To: mojito
From the article: As the psychiatrists explain, pederasty is an expression of narcissism, the love of an idealized youthful self-image.
There you have it! Lol.
6
posted on
08/15/2008 5:09:25 PM PDT
by
khnyny
(Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through temporary periods of joy)
To: mojito
Boy-oh-boy, does he go on about this.
7
posted on
08/15/2008 5:14:23 PM PDT
by
decimon
To: mojito
FTA:
Sufism enjoys a faddish ripple of interest in America, where self-admiration is the national pastime. As opposed to the Biblical God, the cosmos is an unthreatening thing to worship. The universe, after all, is no one in particular, and those who seek to merge their consciousness with no one in particular at the end are left alone with themselves. Worship the cosmos, and you worship yours truly; worship yourself, and it is not unusual to adore your own idealized image. This reminds me of many hard-core environmentalists. They don't worship the biblical God, and so they don't have the ambition or purpose of serving Him. To try to make their lives seem meaningful, they instead try to save the earth and create a heaven on earth. They, in essence, get to play God. Fits in well with much New-Age thought.
8
posted on
08/15/2008 5:17:29 PM PDT
by
DeweyCA
To: mojito
Dissolution of the ego is not exactly a playground for narcissists.
9
posted on
08/15/2008 5:19:14 PM PDT
by
JmyBryan
To: mojito
To: ModelBreaker; nina0113
What an elegant writer the author is.I agree. Whoever he really is, he's got a level of erudition and a gift for prose that's far above average.
11
posted on
08/15/2008 5:40:39 PM PDT
by
Tax-chick
(Octopuses have two legs and six arms.)
To: sionnsar; Mrs. Don-o; wagglebee; Frank Sheed; NYer
Ping to a *really* interesting article. Try the link in Post #10, and then use the “Complete Spengler” choice on the right-hand side of the page to select the article with this title. I don’t know what’s up with the link the Original Poster gave.
(Persian relevance, sionnsar.)
12
posted on
08/15/2008 6:00:03 PM PDT
by
Tax-chick
(Octopuses have two legs and six arms.)
To: Tax-chick
13
posted on
08/15/2008 7:22:18 PM PDT
by
Frank Sheed
(Fr. V. R. Capodanno, Lt, USN, Catholic Chaplain. 3rd/5th, 1st Marine Div., FMF. MOH, posthumously.)
To: Tax-chick
14
posted on
08/15/2008 7:24:43 PM PDT
by
dcwusmc
(We need to make government so small that it can be drowned in a bathtub.)
To: mojito
15
posted on
08/15/2008 8:33:02 PM PDT
by
redgolum
("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
To: mojito
16
posted on
08/15/2008 9:09:11 PM PDT
by
Dajjal
(Visit Ann Coulter's getdrunkandvote4mccain.com)
To: mojito
Omar Sharif plays a French Muslim in the recent French film Monsieur Ibrahim, where they show a scene of Sufi men dancing in ecstasy in a mosque.
17
posted on
08/15/2008 9:17:50 PM PDT
by
Ciexyz
To: Frank Sheed
Isn’t it? Spengler always has an original viewpoint and interesting information.
18
posted on
08/16/2008 5:49:34 AM PDT
by
Tax-chick
(Octopuses have two legs and six arms.)
To: Carry_Okie
19
posted on
08/17/2008 2:11:40 PM PDT
by
LomanBill
(A bird flies because the right wing opposes the left.)
To: caveat emptor
Thanks for the link - that one probably deserves a thread of its own. There was a certain element of tongue in cheek, I think:
...It is a measure of the inherent good-heartedness of Americans that they evince a low threshold of horror. ...That is understandable, but also unfortunate, for America still has a great deal of killing left to do around the world, and might as well get used to it.
...but the basic case is as original as this article, and one hopes, similarly wrong-headed.
As far as pederasty being an expression of love for an idealized self, it is an interesting model, and it explains to a degree the frequent callous disregard of the real humanity of the junior partner in that relationship. What genuine human being could live up to someone's idealized self-image?
It isn't every author that can work Sufi Islam, Persian poetry, Goethe's Faust, and rampant buggery into the same article quite so seamlessly. For some reason I find that vaguely disturbing. Nevertheless, I'd love to hear a reply from a genuine Sufi - the printable parts, that is. (And yes, I read the dirty bits of Faust some years ago and knew exactly what Goethe was implying. How he knew what he was implying is quite another matter, but I doubt it had a great deal to do with Sufism.)
A fine, erudite, thought-provoking essay, IMHO, with whose conclusions I'll have to reserve judgment. There may be a mystic, cosmic element to it, but to paraphrase Freud, sometimes buggery is only buggery. ;-)
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