Cultural substrate

[Guest guest]

Robert,

 

I don't know that I have the right

to grant what you're asking for, but

if I did I surely would.

 

Tolerance, it seems to me, can only

be based upon knowledge and mutual

respect. You are absolutely accurate

in detecting my judgments. I don't

think I try to obscure them. In fact

my aim in participating includes wanting

to make my judgments known to the community

so that I can receive very necessary feedback

and guidance in making them in the future.

 

I, myself, am so damn tolerant of

other people and the diversity that

they constitute and represent that

is just ain't funny.

 

I have never and hope never will advocate

any kind of intolerance...except the

intolerance of intolerance.

 

The only position I've ever stated here

....or anywhere...in which I have expressed

any slightest desire to legislate or otherwise

enforce a point of view on the field is when

I have suggested that students be forced to

study and learn the nomenclature of the subject.

 

And in this I gladly wear the mantle of

extremist. I extremely believe that people

should know what they are talking about.

 

Ken

 

PS. The personal/emotional jazz just blows

by. Don't give it another thought. Email is

just not adequate for conveying the complexity

of certain communications. We try. We fail.

 

No problemo, baby.

[Guest guest]

, " kenrose2008 "

<kenrose2008> wrote:

>

>

> PS. The personal/emotional jazz just blows

> by. Don't give it another thought. Email is

> just not adequate for conveying the complexity

> of certain communications. We try. We fail.

>

> No problemo, baby.

 

ken,

 

just so you understand, no insult was ever intended. Un abrazo.

 

rh

[Guest guest]

Robert,

 

> ken,

>

> just so you understand, no insult was ever intended. Un abrazo.

>

> rh

 

And none was ever inferred or received.

 

Ideas simply need to be banged around

in order to knock the rough edges

off sometimes. Thanks for helping.

 

Ken

[Guest guest]

Perhaps too profound to discuss without accurate references. It would

take a historical treatise to do so. Since spirit means many things to

many people in the West, and is a culturally determined term, there

would have to be an arbitrary choice of definition of 'spirit' before

such a discussion could even begin. 'Shen' as used in Chinese medicine

has a specific definition. In the Wiseman dictionary, shen2/spirit is

defined as the following: " that which is said to be stored by the

heart, returning to the heart during sleep " and : (that which) normally

makes us conscious and alert during the day, what becomes inactive

during sleep, and thus corresponds to the concept of the English word

" mind " , in the sense of the mental capacity to think, feel and respond.

 

My conclusion is that when practicing Chinese medicine, we use the

definitions of Chinese medicine so we are accurately treating what the

medicine was designed to do.

 

 

On Monday, August 4, 2003, at 01:29 AM, Are Thoresen wrote:

 

> Hi Rosenberg,

> what would be interesting is to discuss the difference between the

> " Shen " in chinese people and the " I-function " or you may call it

> " Spirit " or in German " Ich " of the people in the occident, and the

> implications of this difference concerning therapy.

> Are

[Guest guest]

Hi Robert,

 

I'm just popping in here on your conversation with Ken.

 

I often sense that people are confusing "individual style" in the treatment of patients with two worlds of science, East and West. If you can clearly see the leukotrienes and prostaglandins and also feel the dozens of pulses and see the CM patterns, then you've made a diagnosis from many perspectives. You might also treat with both CM and WM tools. But you will not exactly perceive WM by looking at CM nor will you perceive CM by looking squarely at WM.

 

The point is that even if practitioners could possibly "assimilate" with regard to CM and WM, that does not mean Linus Pauling has played mahjong with the Yellow Emperor. (That was an attempt to write in the style of Ken Rose). The scent of each science is a fragrance that has each lasted for decades in one land and for millennia in another land. Some aspect of each is behind glass in some museum, yet each is also vividly alive in this moment ... arising from its own premises, experiments and cultural setting.

 

Emmanuel Segmen

 

-

kampo36

Sunday, August 03, 2003 4:23 PM

Re: Cultural substrate

, "kenrose2008" <kenrose2008> wrote:I think you're just giving> in to the devil and his advocacy of...whatever> it is you're advocating.> > Which is what? I don't clearly see it.i dunno... tolerance, i suppose. Acknowledgement that possibly we in the West are contributing something of value not specifically tied into how closely we can imitate the Chinese. Do we think that Japanese have contributed anything of value to the development of CM? How about the French?> > outside of personal predilections> there is no reason whatsoever to study,> understand, appreciate, "the Chinese mind"...> > ...unless, that is, if one were interested in> understanding any of its various artifacts...> > ...such as Chinese medicine.> > ...Next time i visit my son's pediatrician, i'll ask him if he's been reading Hippocrates lately... or Culpepper... the Eclectics... somehow i think i know how he'll react... i think he's a good pediatrician, but perhaps he doesn't really understand medicine....arrrgghhh... the devil again!actually, "artifact" might be an appropriate word, because i suspect if we include the assimilation of an entire foreign culture as a prerequisite to the practice of CM, we'll be looking at it as an artifact -- extinct, behind a glass in a museum. We can be divided and snobbish about the whole thing and we can preside over the premature demise of what might actually be a fruitful transformation of medicine not only in the West but all over the world. We need people like you, Ken, but we also need Alon, Z'ev, Jim, Emmanuel, etc, to make this thing work. "Ours is not a caravan of despair, come as you are, come again, come..."> > We should simply get it together as a group> to recognize the source of our subject.> It has a source and it can be recognized,> albeit not that clealy at many times.> i think that we do recognize it... again, here, you're largely preaching to the choir. i don't think any of us here are poles apart, unless Ulett or Randi are lurking on the list. How deeply we participate in the source culture is another matter, and i think this is something which is an individual decision. Just like i think the Alt-med Health-fascist thing is likely to backfire, so the Cultivation Police will too. Unless we are willing to consider Centering Prayer or Sufi dancing or electric violin playing or meditative dog-walking or whatever else close enough to Cultivation, we'll never assimilate -- CM will be an "artifact" while the technical end of it, the needles and formulae, will become the provenance of biomedicine. Extremism only serves extremists, no one else benefits. rhChinese Herbal Medicine, a voluntary organization of licensed healthcare practitioners, matriculated students and postgraduate academics specializing in Chinese Herbal Medicine, provides a variety of professional services, including board approved online continuing education.

[Guest guest]

My conclusion is that when practicing Chinese medicine, we use the definitions of Chinese medicine so we are accurately treating what the medicine was designed to do. On Monday, August 4, 2003, at 01:29 AM, Are Thoresen wrote:

Thanks, Z'ev. Irrelevant of personal style (WM and/or CM), this makes the larger perspective so much clearer.

 

Emmanuel Segmen