ConVocation report

[matt_arnold]

I just got back from a day at ConVocation, a local pagan convention. Since I'm not a pagan, many puzzled people have asked me to explain why I would do this. This was only beforehand-- not to the attendees of the convention itself, who seemed mostly indifferent to the presence of unbelievers. (At ConVocation, pretty much everybody is outside the

Comments

on psychological motivations...

[netmouse]

Bertrand Russell writes:

The child from whom for any reason parental affection is withdrawn is likely to become timid and unadventurous, filled with fears and self-pity, and no longer able to meet the world in a mood of gay exploration. Such a child may set to work at a surprisingly early age to meditate on life and dead and human destiny. He becomes an introvert, melancholy at first, but seeking ultimately the unreal consolations of some system of philosophy or theology. The world is a higgledy-piggledy place, containing things pleasant and things unpleasant in haphazard sequence. And the desire to make an intelligible system or pattern out of it is at bottom an outcome of fear, in fact a kind of agoraphobia or dread of open spaces. Within the four walls of his library the timid student feels safe. If he can persuade himself that the universe is equally tidy, he can feel almost equally safe when he has to venture forth into the streets. Such a man, if he had received more affection, would have feared the real world less, and

Re: on psychological motivations...

[matt_arnold]

I had previously focused my reading on the workings of self-sacrificing and controlling fanatical causes, whether religious or political. For that, one book which was amazingly insightful was The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. This is a short book of pithy sayings, highly accessible and quotable.

However, such reading about the modernistic mindset left me unprepared to encounter postmodernistic sects who think it's perfectly fine to not be in their religion. In this respect it's the inverse of the twentieth-century person Hoffer describes. Believing one's self to be in possession of Divine Truth makes more sense to me with fanatical evangelism than without it. But your quotes are very helpful. I want to read The Conquest of Happiness now. (By the way, on your recommendation I picked up Heinlein's For Us, the Living yesterday. Based on Spider Robinson's introduction I think I'm going to enjoy it greatly. Thanks!)

[matt_arnold]

Arguably the rede and the establishment clause of the first amendment could be considered distant paraphrases of each other. I suspect part of the attraction of a "religion of tolerance" is the fact we live in a pluralistic social structure which celebrates diversity in popular culture.

I should diclose in all fairness that my view of the world on most topics has a strong connection with science fiction. I've said before that my favorite works of fiction are those which require me to step back and suspend my belief, not my disbelief. In fact, the most profitable side-effect of my visit to ConVocation was that while my mind was on the topic of motivation, I turned that lens quite profitably on myself. That's a whole new journal entry of its own.

P.S., do I know you?

[matt_arnold]

Great! Hi Tom! Is the Frankenpuppy icon your own creation?

[lorrraine]

Hi Matt

[matt_arnold]

I don't misunderstand you, I call your bluff. From the description you've given here I repeat that you do not believe in magic. You redefine it. If magic is story and story is magic, you're using the word "magic" to mean something other than magic. As your own illustrations here demonstrate (money, America, directing the course of one's life), you are referring to something completely prosaic and obvious even to the most rock-ribbed rationalist who denies the supernatural. You don't believe in astrology either. Not really. You say you do but it doesn't predict the future. Therefore according to honest, straightforward language which acknowledges the meaning in the mind of the listener involves "predicting the future," you don't believe in astrology. You believe in other things, and co-opt the words. This is mostly a vocabulary issue. Same with Isis, according to what I'm hearing you say here. The language game is artistic and enriching, and I can understand how you would want to camouflage, but you and I are both smart enough that if

[lorrraine]

Hi Matt

[matt_arnold]

OK, this helps me to understand your position a lot better.

it's all science

[avt_tor]

One of the defining features of intelligence is our ability to abstract sets of related phenomena into symbols, and then to understand the aggregate behavior of objects as the behavior of the aggregates. Being human, we understand behavior as a human characteristic, so we anthropomorphize the policy of every agency of the United States as "Uncle Sam" or "Dubya", or of a storm as "Old Man Winter" or "Hurricane Edna". Our association of personality to the symbol doesn't give it actual sentience or independence, any more than the dancing 3 on Sesame Street depicts some deity of threeness

it's all science (pt. 2)

[avt_tor]

So one's person's magic may be another person's coincidence, but perhaps there's more to it than that. An apparent ability to control future events may simply be a side effect of being able to perceive future events, and the ability to perceive future events may just be a matter of manipulating symbols in an intuitive or hyperefficient way. One's subconscious may have a way of deducing "if A, then B" using symbols for which there is no proper vocabulary or which is not understood at a conscious level.

I read Julian May's The Intervention, which describes a near-future world where humanity is developing a growing awareness of psychic phenomena. While many of the characters express their diverse abilities and experiences as "magic", the story premise is that it's all just a series of parapsychic activity that can ultimately be understood in scientific terms