Because I have an LJ: Ranting on the Gods
Who needs drugs, when you can read the right book, walk outside in the night if you choose and see gods behind your furniture?
Neil Gaiman is grinding my gears right now. Not in an irritating way, but in the literal sense - my mental clockwork is slipping and sliding, virtual teeth are snapping off and wheels running giddy circles in smooth uninterrupted gyres. Disconnected. Markets are to sell for the gods must be bargained for.
There is a tome!
I want more mention of Jesus. I have to say, of all the gods I've ever heard of, Jesus is the best of 'em. That, perhaps, is because he wasn't a god at all. He was the man who lived the perfect life, and therefore must have had godhood. Did I say perfect? No - sinless. The arrogance of youth still prevents me from thinking that the sacrifice was inevitable.
But the sacrifice was made and done. Redemption offered - a release from the karmic wheel. And not a release of non-existence, but a rebirth of redemption in this living world. How wonderful! I choose the proactive kingdom of heaven over the escape of Nirvana. Might not be possible, but damn it it's a whole lot more hopeful. I can't help but feel that there's something inherently selfish in a solitary quest to get yourself off the planet and off the re-gifting of consciousness. I'm an entertainer - the loaves and fishes appeal to me more than the end of the Mahabarata with its rejection of the fake heaven in the clouds and the solitary fire somewhere below the earth or whatever. I only saw the three-hour film adaptation, the Indian one where you can spot the techie's sneakers when Arjuna or the huge one whoever he was parts the shield wall and goes charging in in the final battle before that last pilgrimage. So sue me. :P
What was his name? Something starting with a B? Barras? Everything starts with a b, recently. I thought the Nemean Lion started with a B. Pah! At least "Borean" and "Nemean" rhyme, and I knew Borean was wrong. I wasn't that far off.
So yeah - that's why I pick Christianity. That, and I was raised in it so I know its pitfalls and its useless esoteria better, while getting into a new religion can have you easily following paths of useless esoteria - all that mystic stuff is nice and shiny but unless you understand the basics you'll never 'get' the secret knowledge or fully avoid the dangers of the personal experience. No point reinventing the wheel, unless you never really understood your particular wheel to begin with. Also, Jesus is pretty awesome. I've still yet to encounter any figure who comes close.
American Evangelical Christianity is hilarious to me right now for one reason - they seem to think they should vote Republican! I have it on good authority from an Anglican chaplain (and, once I finish reading the Gospels, my own memory) that Jesus mentions the evils of money more than sex. Jesus was a revolutionary. You ever read Acts? Jesus didn't set up the early church, and in some ways I'm grateful for that - because it's like a cross between a crazy cult and an anarcho-syndicalist commune. Its saving grace, aside from the greatness of the teachings, is probably that the position of divine leader was always vacant. There's a lot to be said for the separation of power and ultimate authority. It's how constitutional monarchies work. You know - that thing Australia, Canada and Britain do. Works pretty damn well, in my opinion. Mike Huckabee started something, I think - and once the evangelical kids read the Bible through a politically-awakened lens (especially if they're informed by the alternative view put forth by Obama), you are going to see some huge shakeups in the next generation of evangelical kids. Jesus refused to accuse the adulteress when her accusers departed, but said that unless the rich man gave away everything he could never enter heaven - and valued the widow's pennies more than the hundreds of pieces of silver given by the wealthy. Oh yes, once the spectre of communism recedes far enough, things will get very interesting.
And for those who would say the world is godless, tell me this: what is good? For saying there is no God is not because it's unreasonable, but because the evidence for doing so is intangible. God is quite a reasonable proposition, provided that you base your reasoning on some intangibles such as goodness. So the argument isn't that God is unreason, it's that God is immeasurable - there isn't empirical, provable, replicable evidence for a creator. That raises a question - if something is intangible, does it exist? Or, rather, the statement of verificationism - if it cannot be verified, if it is not physically extant, if there is no physical evidence for it, then it does not exist. Strong words, considering the current state of the Theory Of Everything. Strings, silt and sand? Well, strings and sand - I can't remember the third one. But the world doesn't fit together, and all it takes for you to break the universe as it's currently understood is the juxtaposition of things bigger and smaller than the Planck wavelength.
So what is good? Simply what the current social mores are? There is no ultimate good? If you hold to that idea, then I hope you view with equal skepticism the idea that leptons existed before they were "discovered" in a giant magnetic tube in Switzerland. Otherwise you're holding the tangible and intangible to different standards of credence. Considering that goodness impacts our lives just as surely as whatever makes up physical substances do, there's precious little reason to have this double standard of proof.
Evil, of course, is far less disputed. In today's postmodern world, good can be seen as evil so very easily - is it good for us to have children when doing so will mean the death of more of the planet's other biomass to sustain them? Is modern medicine good if its breakthroughs are based on the torture of creatures, the exploitation of misery for profit and if its fruits lead to a population explosion that could tip the world into Rwandan chaos? Is America doing good if it fights communism by invading nations? Even if it's preventing a worse system from taking hold? Are the Arab nomads in Darfur evil for driving out their farmer neighbours when the encroaching Sahara means that they must have more land for their herds to survive? Is it right for a girl to have an abortion if she cannot raise the child, or is it right for her to have a child she feels she cannot raise properly and who is statistically likely to become a drug-dealing criminal? Good has become nebulous - most of its social manifestations can be seen as evil from many directions, even if it's just the evil of self-deprivation or depriving your family to help others/strangers. But murder is always murder, slavery is always slavery, misery is always misery, selfishness always selfishness, foolishness always foolisness, greed always greed. Only consensual lust is seen as harmless, except when it ends in pregnancy - and the older faiths militate against it. So confusing.
This is why those who don't even entertain the notion of a God will still be gripped by fear of the devil, or fears of ghosts and other such things when the only truly frightening things on this planet are physical and usually walk in human form. Like Tony Robbins said, fear of pain trumps hope for pleasure...unless you exercise some personal power to tip the scales.
The beauty of consciousness. We are bound by our desires and fears, but not inextricably. Statistically we may all be Gary Becker's children, but individual deviance from that cost-benefit norm is something his disciples cannot explain. Game theory may work in international relations, but I doubt that it always will. There's still a ghost in the machine. Deus ex machina. It's more than a plot device. Or maybe it is THE plot device:
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts...
Heheheheheheeeeeee!!!!! :D XD
Set up an experiment based on cost-benefit transactions, and you will find people weighing things according to cost-benefit analyses. The speed dating study done by the economists cracks me up. They looked at the records of a speed-dating company and concluded that humans date according to cost-benefit, not according to any ideas of romance. Why speed-dating data? Well, it takes out all that noise, you see. All those mixed signals found in normal dating.
So romance is dead, because speed-daters are, statistically, going to select the best available rather than hold out for Mr. or Ms. Right. Pardon me while I internalize this information...and then laugh at the bleeding idiocy of its general premise. Cutting out the noise! Hah! The noise is what it's about.
There will come a theory of individual deviance. Just you wait. The very idea of statistical analysis being the bedrock of economic research will be questioned. And systems will shift.
That's our generation - observing the meta-structure. Our music is like that - re-sampling previous developments, not adding a new sound per se but questioning sound itself. That's what indie-rockers are doing. They're questioning the very idea of good and bad sounds. They're using imperfection as a musical element. It goes beyond the amateur stuff of the 60's - that was what it was. This questions what it is. Or something. It's so clear at times and places, but then I forget the words by the time I write them down, later.
But the confluence is approaching. I remember Douglas Hofstadter. We run in strange loops. And what intelligence has always had is the ability to jump out of those recursive patterns into new systems. That's one model of seeing the world. I think we're going to break the model.
Old mores weren't enough. Verificationism isn't enough. Detachment won't be enough. It's confused, doesn't understand itself, nascent, struggling, but it's being born. A generation demographically huger than the Baby Boomers is coming of age. And the world will tremble.
Neil Gaiman is grinding my gears right now. Not in an irritating way, but in the literal sense - my mental clockwork is slipping and sliding, virtual teeth are snapping off and wheels running giddy circles in smooth uninterrupted gyres. Disconnected. Markets are to sell for the gods must be bargained for.
There is a tome!
I want more mention of Jesus. I have to say, of all the gods I've ever heard of, Jesus is the best of 'em. That, perhaps, is because he wasn't a god at all. He was the man who lived the perfect life, and therefore must have had godhood. Did I say perfect? No - sinless. The arrogance of youth still prevents me from thinking that the sacrifice was inevitable.
But the sacrifice was made and done. Redemption offered - a release from the karmic wheel. And not a release of non-existence, but a rebirth of redemption in this living world. How wonderful! I choose the proactive kingdom of heaven over the escape of Nirvana. Might not be possible, but damn it it's a whole lot more hopeful. I can't help but feel that there's something inherently selfish in a solitary quest to get yourself off the planet and off the re-gifting of consciousness. I'm an entertainer - the loaves and fishes appeal to me more than the end of the Mahabarata with its rejection of the fake heaven in the clouds and the solitary fire somewhere below the earth or whatever. I only saw the three-hour film adaptation, the Indian one where you can spot the techie's sneakers when Arjuna or the huge one whoever he was parts the shield wall and goes charging in in the final battle before that last pilgrimage. So sue me. :P
What was his name? Something starting with a B? Barras? Everything starts with a b, recently. I thought the Nemean Lion started with a B. Pah! At least "Borean" and "Nemean" rhyme, and I knew Borean was wrong. I wasn't that far off.
So yeah - that's why I pick Christianity. That, and I was raised in it so I know its pitfalls and its useless esoteria better, while getting into a new religion can have you easily following paths of useless esoteria - all that mystic stuff is nice and shiny but unless you understand the basics you'll never 'get' the secret knowledge or fully avoid the dangers of the personal experience. No point reinventing the wheel, unless you never really understood your particular wheel to begin with. Also, Jesus is pretty awesome. I've still yet to encounter any figure who comes close.
American Evangelical Christianity is hilarious to me right now for one reason - they seem to think they should vote Republican! I have it on good authority from an Anglican chaplain (and, once I finish reading the Gospels, my own memory) that Jesus mentions the evils of money more than sex. Jesus was a revolutionary. You ever read Acts? Jesus didn't set up the early church, and in some ways I'm grateful for that - because it's like a cross between a crazy cult and an anarcho-syndicalist commune. Its saving grace, aside from the greatness of the teachings, is probably that the position of divine leader was always vacant. There's a lot to be said for the separation of power and ultimate authority. It's how constitutional monarchies work. You know - that thing Australia, Canada and Britain do. Works pretty damn well, in my opinion. Mike Huckabee started something, I think - and once the evangelical kids read the Bible through a politically-awakened lens (especially if they're informed by the alternative view put forth by Obama), you are going to see some huge shakeups in the next generation of evangelical kids. Jesus refused to accuse the adulteress when her accusers departed, but said that unless the rich man gave away everything he could never enter heaven - and valued the widow's pennies more than the hundreds of pieces of silver given by the wealthy. Oh yes, once the spectre of communism recedes far enough, things will get very interesting.
And for those who would say the world is godless, tell me this: what is good? For saying there is no God is not because it's unreasonable, but because the evidence for doing so is intangible. God is quite a reasonable proposition, provided that you base your reasoning on some intangibles such as goodness. So the argument isn't that God is unreason, it's that God is immeasurable - there isn't empirical, provable, replicable evidence for a creator. That raises a question - if something is intangible, does it exist? Or, rather, the statement of verificationism - if it cannot be verified, if it is not physically extant, if there is no physical evidence for it, then it does not exist. Strong words, considering the current state of the Theory Of Everything. Strings, silt and sand? Well, strings and sand - I can't remember the third one. But the world doesn't fit together, and all it takes for you to break the universe as it's currently understood is the juxtaposition of things bigger and smaller than the Planck wavelength.
So what is good? Simply what the current social mores are? There is no ultimate good? If you hold to that idea, then I hope you view with equal skepticism the idea that leptons existed before they were "discovered" in a giant magnetic tube in Switzerland. Otherwise you're holding the tangible and intangible to different standards of credence. Considering that goodness impacts our lives just as surely as whatever makes up physical substances do, there's precious little reason to have this double standard of proof.
Evil, of course, is far less disputed. In today's postmodern world, good can be seen as evil so very easily - is it good for us to have children when doing so will mean the death of more of the planet's other biomass to sustain them? Is modern medicine good if its breakthroughs are based on the torture of creatures, the exploitation of misery for profit and if its fruits lead to a population explosion that could tip the world into Rwandan chaos? Is America doing good if it fights communism by invading nations? Even if it's preventing a worse system from taking hold? Are the Arab nomads in Darfur evil for driving out their farmer neighbours when the encroaching Sahara means that they must have more land for their herds to survive? Is it right for a girl to have an abortion if she cannot raise the child, or is it right for her to have a child she feels she cannot raise properly and who is statistically likely to become a drug-dealing criminal? Good has become nebulous - most of its social manifestations can be seen as evil from many directions, even if it's just the evil of self-deprivation or depriving your family to help others/strangers. But murder is always murder, slavery is always slavery, misery is always misery, selfishness always selfishness, foolishness always foolisness, greed always greed. Only consensual lust is seen as harmless, except when it ends in pregnancy - and the older faiths militate against it. So confusing.
This is why those who don't even entertain the notion of a God will still be gripped by fear of the devil, or fears of ghosts and other such things when the only truly frightening things on this planet are physical and usually walk in human form. Like Tony Robbins said, fear of pain trumps hope for pleasure...unless you exercise some personal power to tip the scales.
The beauty of consciousness. We are bound by our desires and fears, but not inextricably. Statistically we may all be Gary Becker's children, but individual deviance from that cost-benefit norm is something his disciples cannot explain. Game theory may work in international relations, but I doubt that it always will. There's still a ghost in the machine. Deus ex machina. It's more than a plot device. Or maybe it is THE plot device:
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players:
they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts...
Heheheheheheeeeeee!!!!! :D XD
Set up an experiment based on cost-benefit transactions, and you will find people weighing things according to cost-benefit analyses. The speed dating study done by the economists cracks me up. They looked at the records of a speed-dating company and concluded that humans date according to cost-benefit, not according to any ideas of romance. Why speed-dating data? Well, it takes out all that noise, you see. All those mixed signals found in normal dating.
So romance is dead, because speed-daters are, statistically, going to select the best available rather than hold out for Mr. or Ms. Right. Pardon me while I internalize this information...and then laugh at the bleeding idiocy of its general premise. Cutting out the noise! Hah! The noise is what it's about.
There will come a theory of individual deviance. Just you wait. The very idea of statistical analysis being the bedrock of economic research will be questioned. And systems will shift.
That's our generation - observing the meta-structure. Our music is like that - re-sampling previous developments, not adding a new sound per se but questioning sound itself. That's what indie-rockers are doing. They're questioning the very idea of good and bad sounds. They're using imperfection as a musical element. It goes beyond the amateur stuff of the 60's - that was what it was. This questions what it is. Or something. It's so clear at times and places, but then I forget the words by the time I write them down, later.
But the confluence is approaching. I remember Douglas Hofstadter. We run in strange loops. And what intelligence has always had is the ability to jump out of those recursive patterns into new systems. That's one model of seeing the world. I think we're going to break the model.
Old mores weren't enough. Verificationism isn't enough. Detachment won't be enough. It's confused, doesn't understand itself, nascent, struggling, but it's being born. A generation demographically huger than the Baby Boomers is coming of age. And the world will tremble.