man made gw
An oxymoron, bit akin to "honest politician

But where does civilization originate and what is Western "civilization" really all about?
Hasnt it inevitably failed, and NOT because we have abandoned the half-baked principles on which it was founded? The all-inclusive failure is the inevitable result/manifestation of those half-baked principles.

Look at the dreadfully dark state of USA culture, or what remains of it.
It is quite literally a "culture" of death. Its all-dominant institution is the Pentagon death-machine, aka the military-industrial-propaganda/"entertainment"-complex, the "values of which permeate and control every aspect of USA "culture".

Isnt the appearance of the moral monstrosity or the Insane Clown President perfect in-your-face-proof of the failure/collapse of USA "culture".

"Reality"-TV now rules and now controls the destiny of Earthkind altogether.

What is the nature and purpose of the much vaunted death-haunted Western all-objectifying mind?
Whatever is presumed to be an object to you instantaneously becomes your mortal enemy, with which you are always in conflict, which in one way or another you will be unconsciously patterned to control/dominate, and eventually (inevitably) destroy. Such is the collective SCAPEGOAT pattern that now drives and controls the entire world.

Studying the Western so called "great books", including the highly over-rated Bible, will not, cannot, make even the slightest positive difference to that now potentially catastrophic situation.

Have you really read the dark "news"!

runner,
>as much as the marxist hate it the bible has resulted in the most civilised people that the world has ever seen.
Not all the marxists hate it. The South American marxists tend to love it.

>We have replaced it with murdereing the unborn with no shame
Dubious - that's been going on for centuries.

>and the barbaric Islam ideology.
Exactly what "barbaric Islam ideology" do you think we have replaced the bible with?

>What fools our unis are filled with. No wonder they are producing marxist who often top themselves when they realise the absolute stupidity of the garbage they have sprouted.
Where did you get that impression?

>man made gw
>An oxymoron, bit akin to "honest politician
Is that what you actually believe? If so, why?
Do you believe God would intervene to prevent climate change, like people a few centuries ago thought God would intervene to prevent species extinction?

Aidan,
If there really is a God in the form religious manipulators would have us believe, then I'm just about certain he has given up on us. I kow I would if I were in his shoes.

This paragraph describes the nature of the academy as it was at Columbia university in the early-mid sixties. Where left-brained spirit-killing "philosophy" was the only kind of "philosophy" that was acceptable. Such was then the case in all Western universities. It is of course still very much the case, with no exceptions

"There was no real academy at Columbia. there was simply an academic reduction of philosophy, a departure from the academy situation suggested in the tradition of Socrates,Plato, Plotinus, and such, where the pursuit of Wisdom , or some higher ultimate Realization, was what it was all about, and where the manifestation of the philosophical state as a disposition transcending opposites was what it was all for".

I guarantee you that nothing remotely like that could even be possible with anything promoted by the Ramsay outfit.

Also

The scholastics of the Middle ages made a molehill out of a mountain by putting angels on pinheads thus reducing the Great Matter to drivel.The scholars of our period vivisect the Body of God and the Sources of whole-body Enlightenment and Influence and mount them on pins for display, making them into scapegoats, and crucifying them on the left-brained linear structures of language.

Why not read the poem The Hollow Men by T S Eliot.
Although it was written in 1926 it is still perfect description of the zeitgeist in this time and place - even more so.
It could be said that Eliot's poems were the last great epic produced in the West.
As was the work of James Joyce, especially Finnegans Wake which was published in that fateful year of 1939 when all hell broke loose in Europe. Finnegans Wake was essentially a reassessment of the entirety of the Western literary tradition. It was simultaneously a (funeral) wake for the then (already) dead end of European literary culture.

The Hollow Men is also a perfect description of the director of the Ramsay outfit, and of Tony Abbott too. Howard is of course also a war criminal having helped to facilitate the shock-and-awe invasion of Iraq by the coalition-of-the-killing, which was illegal under international law.

Anyone notice that none of the suggested "great books" are written by women. Notice too that most of the "authorities" to be studied are long since dead.

Why aren't there more modern 20th and 21st century writers, artists and poets.

In fact it is now impossible for anyone living in the left-brained spirit-killing prison of Western "culture" to write a truly universal epic work of philosophy or literature.

That having being said check out the Thinking Otherwise essays available here: http://www.wildriverreview.com/2015/05/william-irwin-thompson

Essays which effectively show that all of the usual left-brained academic assessments of the state of world civilization in the 21st century are one-dimensionally sterile.

Check out his book Coming Into Being too.