The Naked City

[rickdboy]

When I was quite young and still watching television and back when Australian television was mostly American television there was a crime/detective show called the Naked City. At the beginning of the show, there was obligatory theme music and theme images and then a voice over line that went something like: " There are a million stories in the Naked City, this is just one of them".

When I remember this line I am reminded of this forum, or I am reminded of what this forum could be: a million stories of which this is just one.

I also once heard someone talking about how the world was made up of "joiners" and "non-joiners" and I am now beginning to see just how true that might be. There are joiners on this forum in all the threads. We hear most from the joiners or more correctly the joined. They have found their story and they like to hear it time and time again.

Once, I believed I was joined but now I suspect I was a closet non-joiner. Well no! this is becoming less of a suspicion.

There are a million stories in the naked city and they don't all have a genre. I have resigned from the Christianity which nurtured me and i feel no need to join the islamists, the buddhists, the atheists or any of the other stories. On the other hand I like to hear their stories almost as much as I like to hear the many many more stories of other non-joiners.

Joiners can be very suspicious of non-joiners and even dismissive of them, whereas non-joiners, on the whole, don't mind joiners at all, as long as they don't try and convert them from non-joining to joining.

No! You know, I am not going to set up the society of non-joiners for there is no vision, no mission, no goals, no dogma. No! Just a million stories in the naked city, if not very many more. And may those blessings be heaped upon us, in their millions.

 

[rickdboy]

Maybe I should leave it a few days but I thought maybe there would be one or two others whose spirituality doesn't depend on joining this group or that, this 'ism' or that.

When you think about it so many spiritual frameworks are very dated, ancient even, and I wonder where to find the contemporary spiritual pioneers? Where are the new ideas, the emerging understandings?

I sometimes wonder if we are not in the middle of a spiritual dark age where there is no courage to break away from the thoughts of our ancestors. And it requires courage because thinking in new ways requires courage and fortitude.

I was wondering, for example, why it is that we haven't done away with the notion that there is separation between spirit and non-spirit? Being gay, for example is an opportunity to brooch this subject in a practical way. Am I gay or am I me? Perhaps there is no separation. Am I spirit or am I physical or a combination, or could it be that there is no separation. My physical self is my spiritual self.

Anyway, moving right along.

 

[Rand]

I think we are what we make of ourselves. Hopefully, we understand what we want to value, rather than blindly accept the values presented to us. If we understand what it is we value and promote those values within our lives, then we have made a success of ourselves.

But our values are what we make of them. Is being gay a value, or is being true to our self and thereby embracing our own gayness.

Do we value people for what they add to our lives or for what we can extract from theirs.

Such existentialism requires a degree of independence. But independence does not mean going it alone.

Does joining this or that enhance your being, add value to your life.

Some might think I post to share, but in reality I post to think and articulate my thoughts. That is the value, not in the thoughts being read by another.

 

[LaloGS]

Ah so grasshopper.

BTW the line was: "There are 8 million stories in the naked city and this is just one."

Early TV was so much more interesting than what we get today. Flipping through channels, the number of guns I see pointed at people or already firing is depressing. Our life is fearful because we see so much violence that passes for entertainment. My viewing has been much reduced to one or two sitcoms, but most of them are not funny. I also watch an occasional cooking show if I can learn something from it.
The animal shows are off my screen because all I see are JERKS harassing wild animals for our viewing pleasure. I aways wish the snakes they bother will bite the sons of bitches, or the lions will eat the fuckers, or the crocks will drag the bastards under the water and drown them.

 

[rickdboy]

Some might think I post to share, but in reality I post to think and articulate my thoughts. That is the value, not in the thoughts being read by another.

I share that value. And I post in the hope that I will find articulation and not lose that which I had.

 

[rickdboy]

Ah so grasshopper.

BTW the line was: "There are 8 million stories in the naked city and this is just one."

I stand corrected and yes it does have a better ring to it.
On the TV front I gave up watching anything several years ago now. On the odd occasion that I am visiting someone and TV gets put on, I am almost nauseous in response.

But in another way the stuff that is served up on those screens is an indicator of the mass spirituality of our society . . . and in regard to that I am very much not a joiner

 

[LaloGS]

If spirituality is represented by the mass culture on television, then we are in deeper shit than I ever imagined. The fact that the majority of entertainment shows are basically about violence and mayhem, philandering marriage partners, or devastating medical problems, it seems to preclude any level of spiritual conscience on the tube.

Even animals are mistreated, and isn't there a show on the Animal channel specializing on showing in detail abused animals? While the Animal control people are trying to help these animals being abused, the TV cameras seem to revel in showing the abuse. This is just sick. Like the show Bad Boys, where the lives of poor people and addicts are shown as if they are some exhibit in a zoo for America's viewing pleasure. Spiritual? You bet.

 

[rickdboy]

If spirituality is represented by the mass culture on television, then we are in deeper shit than I ever imagined.

In regard to what is on television, you may be way ahead of me for I literally never watch. In regard to our spirituality, however, perhaps the shit, as you say is very deep indeed. But I would prefer not to make a judgement about that but rather to observe that we have developed a great capacity to separate spirituality from our every day lives.

Perhaps the challenge for us is that spirituality is not some higher plane, not some elevating principle that is above the everyday but rather it is is our everyday. And if television screens are mirrors on our lives then they are mirrors on our spirituality.

Over the years I have heard many a preacher urge congregations not to be 'Sunday Christians' only but rather to strive to be that spiritual model all day everyday. Well, for me they were hitting on something that I suspect they did not understand. My thought is that the Sunday behaviour was the attempt to separate spirit from life and that really the task was not to change the life to meet the separate ideal but to recognise that the life being led all week was the spirit already.

 

[LaloGS]

. . . And if television screens are mirrors on our lives then they are mirrors on our spirituality.

Over the years I have heard many a preacher urge congregations not to be 'Sunday Christians' only but rather to strive to be that spiritual model all day everyday. Well, for me they were hitting on something that I suspect they did not understand. My thought is that the Sunday behaviour was the attempt to separate spirit from life and that really the task was not to change the life to meet the separate ideal but to recognise that the life being led all week was the spirit already.

OK. I think I understand your point, but if I do, then I still have to disagree with you. I think you are saying that gong to church is the only ligitimate way to attain any kind of spirituality. (Am I correct?)

Spirituality is either in the heart of an individual or it's not. I haven't set foot in a church since I was 7 years old, (63 now) and my folks made me go. I quit going because the preacher (Southern Baptist) was preaching hate for other religions, and people of color not to mention homosexuals, (about which I had no idea at the time) but I knew I didn't want to spend my life hating people and things because somebody told me to on Sunday morning.

I consider myself a Humanist, which includes a large amount of reverence for spirituality, but I had to arrive at my belief system through a life of study and contemplation. I didn't arrive where I am spiritually by letting some hate mongering church man telling me what to think and believe.

 

[rickdboy]

OK. I think I understand your point, but if I do, then I still have to disagree with you. I think you are saying that gong to church is the only ligitimate way to attain any kind of spirituality. (Am I correct?)

I must be too obtuse LaloGs because that is pretty much the antithesis of what I am saying. I'm saying the preachers had it all wrong because they thought that going to church was the real thing whereas I think the everyday week was the real thing. What I am conceding they may have got right is that we should make the two the same.

In other words we should recognise that spirituality is an innate quality of humanity expressed daily in their lives, not on Sundays when they might go and sing religious songs and listen to preachers.

Maybe, just maybe, most of the religious and spiritual ideas we have, so far, are getting way way too old for the real spirituality of people's daily contemporary lives. I'm looking for the spiritual pioneers not the habitual watchers of spiritual rear vision mirrors.

As I said. perhaps I am obtuse.

 

[rickdboy]

I didn't arrive where I am spiritually by letting some hate mongering church man telling me what to think and believe.

Amen and amen