If it ever existed at all, it's impossible to leave one's philosophical past behind, to erase or delete that kind of cerebral content, some of it heretical, to do a neat & complete reset and arrive at a tabula rasa..,
This morning, I was horrified when I saw the title of this piece that I'm responding to. I took a few gulps and thought, "Oh no!" more "Kant & Co" and more humbug! We could be living at the end of days when there should be no time to waste, so please, please, not another long, rambling oracle of Ifa-like metaphysical rumination/mumbo-jumbo/mostly jumbo/ a dimension without head or tail, rhyme or reason or sense of purpose apart from the usual shrill insistence on wanting to be verbose!
Oh no – not some more mysterious, mystical & mystifying gobbledegook, charlatanism trying to create the kind of semantic impression by which yours truly will never be stirred or impressed, especially not after listening to His Holiness the 17th Karmapa last night (I had been at a retreat with his predecessor his earlier incarnation, His Holiness the 16h Karmapa & Kalu Rinpoche & their entourage of lamas of the Karma Kagyu (The Diamond Path) many years ago, but what struck me most about His Holiness last night, speaking here (several lectures) is all that he says, and says so simply, and with such humility…
But Russell is not Kant, and Kant, thank God, is not Bertrand Russell.
In gratitude here and now: A sincere great many, many, many, thanks to Tunji Olaopa for his – like Russell, thoughtful, very readable, down-to-earth, equally thrilling first-person account of Lord Russell's irrevocable if not irresistible influence, wherein I was sure to find some parallels with my own quests, non-quest, just questions and other mental acts and acrobatics, the teenage sceptic's poetics and politics of the imagination, counterarguments
The title itself "A Philosopher's Spiritual Journey And Bertrand Russell's Influence" was/ is intentionally, if not irrevocably provocative and did whet some curiosity as to the possible influence such a one could have had on e.g. anyone with a real and an authentic, not a merely fictional or imagined supernatural Amos Tutuola type of cultural/ religious background that is the very stuff of spiritual realities in "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts "which will forever (and ever) enjoy special status in the literary sphere celebrated as "Magical Realism", a literary genre in which big grammar has no place, no space, no face, indeed big grammar was and is not e.g. Tutola's forte - at least wasn't when the always positively word -drunk Dylan Thomas led the chorus of international acclaim describing Tutuola's masterpiece The Palm Wine Drinkard as "brief, thronged, grisly and bewitching"
Easy-peasy: We were required to read The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, as an introduction of what was to follow.
Can a dead man feel? The question invited a monosyllabic negative, as solid as rigor mortis. That was the essay topic Hugh Kenner gave us in my freshman class's first encounter with my chosen subsidiary, philosophy – prior to which in middle school Colin Wilson had sent me off to the British Council library on many a wild goose chase, checking out his many references some of which promised to lead to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow...
Russell's "Why I'm not a Christian" has had its own perverse effects on the indifferent, the innocent and not so innocent would-be believers in Christ Jesus. For a while, it was Bertie vs C. S. Lewis on whose Narnia. S Lewis essays, C. S. Lewis and Christianity
In his preface to "Why I Am A Christian", the now late John Stott addresses Russell squarely, briefly and dismissively (please click on that link)
Tunji Olaopa winds up telling us, " That is how far Bertrand Russell drove me to engage with my own thoughts and biases. I am the better for it, trust me."
Post-Russell, has Tunji Olaopa dialogued with this bunch of modern atheists: The four horsemen: Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett?
"Trust me"
The fact is some people have enough trouble trusting themselves, never mind trusting somebody else. Reminds me of this joke that Sheikh Sadiq ( of Najaf) a really smart Shia Muslim and with a sense of humour too told me just before I was supposed to give him my first English lesson. He said that a certain pious Muslim gentleman woke up in a morgue and that the conversation went like this:
The man who woke up in the morgue had questions:
"Where am I and what am I doing here? "
He got the answer: You are in the morgue and you are dead
No, I'm not dead, I'm very much alive and talking to you!
This time he got a more reinforced answer;
You are in the morgue and you are very dead. Do you know more than me? I'm the doctor!
It's the kind of story I should have told Hugh Kenner in answer to that question, "Can a dead man feel?" - or reserved for later questions pertaining to what believers believe is a cardinal belief in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – the resurrection when dry bones will put on new flesh
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