"Punch in the nose" says Pope Francis...

I foresee Jedi style Yab-yum- Jesus and Parvati, Mohammed and Mother Theresa, Osiris/Min with Pele, and the White Shell Woman with the Buddha.

Prints starting at 100-

I think the Pope was taking the side of religion for the sake of taking the side of religion.

If your faith can't stand a few jokes being lobbed in its direction, it's not a faith worth having. I read an article in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack wherein someone quoted an editor as saying something along the lines of "If I can harm your omnipotent being with a joke, how omnipotent can he be?" I wish I could quote directly from the source, but I seem to have lost the link.

As for HH's analogy about talking about his mother--insulting my mother doesn't change my mother's character. At all. If my mother is compassionate, or kind, no amount of "yo' mama" playground insults will change that. Likewise, if HH's mother is a saint (figuratively speaking), nothing I could say about her would change the reality of who she is. So why is violence acceptable?

The point is, if your faith can be shaken by a jest, if your boat sinks because someone giggled at it, and if your omnipotent deity can't handle a little mere-human cackling at its expense, your religion is worthless. It could never withstand the rigors of everyday life, were that the case, and you should abandon it with utmost haste.

All of you people are fantastic

Your ideas are teaching me and helping me to understand my ideas
in reading thus far its helped me articate to myself something that i think is relevant

first that i have definite ideas about what it means to me to be a jedi as opposed to being an average normal or regular person

its not that i am superior per se but that the emphasis of my life is focused differently

more deliberately and less compulsively

i realize as i read your words that a huge underlying principal of being and becoming jedi is that its often more about what i let go of than what i discover

discovery is obviously part of tbe path

What im talking about is the COMPULSION TO OFFENSE

like
so what if someonetalks about my mother
i love my mother very much. I am a mommas boy in a real and visible way; i exchange affections with my mother constantly. I recently returned to my mothers home after being gone for about eight years and i intend only to be here a short while so when i say i am a mommas boy it iz not to mean that i accept the idea that the structure of my life must REQUIRE her support or even her participation, but to say that i have meanigful and personal appreciation of her as a person and as a person who is and has been THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT OF MY LIFE- that i wouldnt be here without her,obviously

but that part of me that gets offended

that part which lashes out compulsively in response to something as meaningless as a "yo mamma" joke

that part of me is beneath my jedi self
its not that i should RESTRAIN my anger
or that my discipline leads me to a superior control of my own emotions or reactions

although these things are absolutely true

the real achievement for me is to release as unneccessary that beliefs that there is any thing to be offended about in the first place

i understand mentally that any time the OFFENSE response is solicited in me that its just like being TICKLED as a child

nothing is funny when im being tickled but i laugh
and for a moment ot feels good and i even enjoy the moment of laughing or of venting my offense/striking back/punching someone in the nose
but that soon the experience changes from being playful and having fun into a kind of torture where i no longer have control of my own physiology

someone else has taken my control away without ever touching me

and the difference is that the part of me that is being OFFENDED is a part of me that i can let go of altogether without adverse effect on my being

that lower uncontrolabls part of me
not the part that lashes out-thats the part that finds the experience to be either pleasurable or painful and reacts or PUNCHES; i can control that eventually with discipline and presence of mind

But that compulsive part that gets offended in the first place
I dont see how that part of me is necessary to the greater functions of my life

but i do see how it degrades my experience
by keeping me constantly stuck in a place of always being offended or TICKLED

I belive i can BETTER love and value and admire and appreciate
i can BETTER experience and express all of the higher more worthwhile impulses of my nature
by letting go of that part of myself that takes offense at anything

this is also the part of me which feels the impulse to offend others and the impulse to defeat others or to be superior to others

if ever i am successful of wholly releasing that aspect of my character then i will be as light as air
i can blend and relate with my fellow man in a way that is vastly more effective and more meaningful that what i am used to
thats how i see it for myself

but also

as a jedi i belive that it is my duty or responsibility to understand both the impulses behind my actions and the consequences of them
not only am i supposed to understand WHY im doing a thing

but also what the effects of the thing that i am doing are going to be

so on the one hand
for me to say whats right or wrong about what the pope is doing or saying is absolutely absurd - like i see how its a waste of time to even think of it from a perspective of being "right" or of being "wrong"

its really an issue of being offended or not being offended and of being or not being (or rather feeling the compulsion to be) offensive
and in the moments where i have dropped that part of me that can be offended or desires to offend
the entire conversation just collapses into irrelevance

but on the other hand i can use his behaviour as a contrast to my own and to others that i knowof to express that while the LETTING GO and the DELIBERATENESS of being jedi do not make one BETTER per se

no life is of an inherently more value or worth than any other life

its only that part of me that gets offended which belives in superior or inferior worth like that

so this letting go doesnt make a jedi's life more WORTHY
but it IS more MEANINGFUL at the experiential level

and as far as johnny or jenny or betty ot billy
once i stop being offended i also lose the ability to feel sorry for betty or jenny facing the consequnces for their actions

if jonny tripped over jennys foot he wasnt paying attention to where he was going

this is not a judgement of jonnys worth but an observation made from a place unconcerned with being offended . like im not saying you DESERVED IT perse jonny but if you dont pay attention to your feet especially when you walk past jenny whom you know is a snotty brat or you would know this if you had been paying attention- then the jennys of the world will trip you
im actually happy for you to have this experience because it provides a valuble lesson

and if jenny gets punched in the nose immediately after tripping jonny its because she also had an underdeveloped apreciation or understanding of the nature of her actions
and their likely consequense

if then if billy punches jonny for punching jenny its the same thing

And on and on and its all because people get offendd and want to offend and dont appreciate the effects or results of thier own behavior

thank you for helping me understand this in a functional way

I agree.....

I'm just discussing....

Why are we not trying to end it at the source?

By the logic I've seen so far, calling our gay friends "queer" or "faggot" is on them, right?

Ok, that was a bit personal, so not our friends....:lol:...

But how about the recent conversation about "retards"?

I actually still use the word occasionally, but its more a slip, than an intentional thing.... I have a special uncle, and we always referred to him as retarded... i love the man, its not a slam... But, people don't know that, and I see the point, so I don't use it when I am paying attention... Which is improving...

I still occasionally refer to Asians as Orientals, as that's how they were referred to in my youth, I'm working on that too.. lol... According to an Asian friend of mine, thats considred an insult to younger Asians...

Anyway...

When I say "retard" or "oriental", is it my fault? Or the one I've offended? I don't say it to be mean...

Why is the initial offence OK to my invisible being (not mine, but for pretend, lol) whom I take as my spiritual role model, my strength and blah, blah, blah... Whom I emulate and desire to be like, and its OK for someone to insult this being?

As Jedi, we strive to be our best...

But, Christians strive to emulate Jesus and Islamics emulate Allah...

Buddha said "don't follow me", these other two said "follow me"

I'm paraphrasing, you scholars will have to excuse me, :lol:....

When we have issues, we nip them in the bud... At the source...

I dont like being angry, so I work on it....

I don't like the results of my anger... So I nip it at the source...

It sounds like maybe I should just tell those affected by my anger, that its their problem?

is it insulting if i call MYSELF a retard?
cause honestly ive met a bunch of people in the course of my life with "mental disabilities" but im the only actual retard that i know

I'm not sure that the Pope is so much saying that it's 'okay' to react in righteous anger, as that if you behave provocatively you have to accept that you run the risk of provoking a (not okay) human response.

I'd like to think that he wouldn't be very pleased with himself if he were to punch someone, but that he accepts that even he, the Pope, is human, and therefore is not totally above such things as instantaneous emotional reactions. Through the example of insulting his mother, he is illustrating that people tend to have certain buttons that, when pressed, cause them to reach the limits of their self-control much quicker and that religion is one that is particularly inflammatory. That doesn't justify the inflammatory reaction, but it does make the reaction predictable and thus, caution is advisable...

It's like, if you see a big red button that says DO NOT PRESS and you choose to press it anyway, you ought to be able to forsee the possibility that something bad might come of it, even if you technically have a 'right' to press the button...

At least, that's how I interpret what he was saying...

yea, but all the things that they have big red buttons for are beyond ridiculous already.

and, imo, i think you should be able to draw cartoons of whatever you want.

even if they are magic beans.

V-Tog wrote: It's like, if you see a big red button that says DO NOT PRESS and you choose to press it anyway...

IMO, these are the only kinds of people worth being friends with.

I don't think anything should be off-limits on any broad scale. If people want to censor themselves around me because I get personally offended when I'm called a "liar" or a "know-it-all", then that's due to their understanding and personal compassion, not because I'm forcing them. If I can't control my reactions, then I have a lot of growing to do. And sometimes we do control our reactions, and they are bad reactions. And that's okay, too. No one is free from the consequences of their speech, but I don't think we deserve to live in a world where a cartoon gets people murdered in cold blood because someone thought their invisible sky-friend with unlimited power needed someone on the ground to pull the trigger for him.

ghost dog wrote: yea, but all the things that they have big red buttons for are beyond ridiculous already.

and, imo, i think you should be able to draw cartoons of whatever you want.

even if they are magic beans.

"i think you should be able to draw cartoons of whatever you want." within reason, but whose reason.

i started thinking about how crazy people are, and then i thought to myself yea some people shouldn't draw cartoons of whatever they want.


the world is going in lots of crazy directions at once.

so people who take the codes, creeds, and doctrine of the Jedi seriously are severely needed.

It was more than a single occurance...

Have I irritated you steamboat?

Maybe not too bad, but I'm still not completely clear on where we stand... (words meaning things)

While not the point here, I take a while to understand things sometimes, lol... Seriously, I'm not provoking here, just using an example...

It wasn't one time, they drew a cartoon, but many...

How about if I kept posting on our topic? Every day?

How long till you complain to the council? What if they said "freedom of speech"?

I mean, I'll just bump the threads, or maybe ask for more clarification... Lots of smiles, and innocent comments....

But maybe i don't get it, or am trying to convince you of your error (example, not that you are wrong)

+++++++++
Why are they publishing this comics?

Because they can?

Because they have "the right"? The "freedom"?

To teach? Art?

Just talking...