Intelligent Conversation

I watched with interest, a conversation develop over at the Wall Street Bear Forum yesterday. When you have intelligent people talking, regardless of particular individual tendencies to 'a side' of any political or economic position, you can see the unfolding along useful and correct pathways, of any ideas involved.

Yep, this was how we grew up - these were the sorts of
adults of my memory, but the rooms were a lot larger.
It is still the way the boys and girls at the Wall Street Bear Forum
carry on!

As someone who grew up, effectively, within a radical Tamillian Sanskrit Vedic tradition rather than any normal or usual Western religious philosophical one - and at that, a RADICAL Tamil tradition... 

Penang, where my father was stationed, contains two or three of the most important Hindu and Buddhist temples and locations in the world. The Hindu God of War - Lord Karthikaya - has his temple center and main religious festival here.

A 'radical' Vedic tradition denotes an actual specific religious group, albeit one that is superficially not distinguished from and not called anything different to, those systems that study and practice the ancient Vedas of the Sub-Continent. However, it is unlike the Hindu tradition of castes and fairly rigid orthodox formats of Hindu-ism - which, to be blunt, I would have to say is barely distinguishable to the Western eye, when you witness what goes on in the temples, to an Anglican High Church or Roman Catholic cathedral: you have all these well-dressed middle class people, prayer books in one hand, and a lighted candle in another, reciting verses and prayers in a very organised and rather benign stylized 'service...!' That is really true, by the way, should you ever go to a Hindu Temple, especially a modern era one.

The South Tamil religious philosophy, however, is very demanding of the gods, and of divinity as such. Tamil Vedic culture is a science, and not a 'practice' alone. If something doesn't work, they don't use it.

The point was made, among the Wall Street Bear people - as the discussion moved from people's tendency in investment markets, to possess either a positive or a negative predisposition, to the question of actual outcomes - that the disappointment of one of these 'manifesting vision'-type outlooks calls into question the point of a non-skeptical basic stance.

As I say, the Tamil radical religious philosophy - which is to a large extent a phenomenological study - has a skeptical core, but then it also firmly grasps hold of things which prove themselves over time; these things become 'lore' and religious belief.

One must be able to transition from skepticism to knowledge and then to firm expectations about solid reality and from there to a science of conscious living. And this is true whether one is wealthy or only moderately so.

Milagu, or Murughu Thani (pepper water soup)
also known as 'rasam.'

It is nothing for the Tamil to look at the phrase 'after you die, go towards the light' and say, well I did that while I was alive, and now, I think I shall move towards the curry. In all seriousness.

I think the idea that most people have, who default to a permanent position of skepticism, is that well, if there really were some special path to material gain and success, wouldn't there be exponents of the method around you could see and refer to -?

And I agree of course, that is a moot point indeed. When the rib-eyes are on the grill, and the beers in the ice-box, who ever advertises 'I am an exponent of the radical Tamil Vedic mantra technology of material attainment!'

But the morning after the over-indulgence of the night before, I ask no one's advice about the rasam pepper-water soup that is a cure for hangover. After all, there is generally no one left around to laugh.

Now here's a really good beer.

And this is no different to when you make a lot of money; there is generally no one else left standing around you. Not because it was too hard or that you 'bested' them or something devious like that - it is because forward motion is scary to people.

Rib-eyes on the grill and beers in the fridge are where the ordinary people dwell. And they are fun. Up to a point. After you get too much of them though, you will get a head-ache from them. And then you need to go towards the spice.

Rib-eyes and beers do not denote the after-party from the making of wealth; not to me at least.

Of course the symbolism is all a bit of an irony too though we have to accept. The idea is that you want to be an ordinary person with little social and cultural pressure on you (the beer) and still you want to have the substance (the rib-eye steak). 

Ah. Social and cultural pressure must equate to wealth.