God vs Objectivity : A critique of self-serving religious hype, and an example of how it works.
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Thursday, April 24, 2008
Stuff concerning the Texas branch of the new polygamist church of the latter day saints:
This post is more than atheistic & antisocial, it's probably tacky & I apologize for that, but it describes stuff that's simply not questioned, or acknowledged, stuff fundamental (if you will) to our own, and many other species lives. Stuff that should be referenced somehow before undertaking anything which might otherwise require a short prayer.
this is a partial, exemplary list of un-citizenly behaviors:
Disrespect is the main one, (all others follow) for example disrespect of the Sea, of Death, the Unknown, and areas of Karmic response (like pissed off motorists and large men w/ chainsaws wearing goalie masks). These require an assessment of potential for which we're unavoidably responsible, with the caveat of stupidity.
Stupidity is socially acceptable to respectable people, because a stupid person would seem to be unaware, and they make the lives of respectable people look coherent. Without The Stupid, their lives would be meaningless. Or rather, without someone stupider than ones self, the pecking order could shift up a notch, and irrelevancy could happen to YOU.
My 8th grade math class was seated by order of achievement. The girl of my dreams was at the front nearest the teachers desk (Mrs. Witt), I sat in the last seat farthest from the desk (but nearest the door), and behind several inbred hillbillies. Charlie R. sat in front of me, and gave me answers (IQ of 60, in 1959, Special Ed. was only one class during study hall), which were useless, but he was a genuinely good guy (and stupid). Charlie was a good guy because his survival trait was agreeability, he was forced to be sucessful because nobody had his back, whereas the hillbillies all had giant beetle browed cousins.
Shame can be great stuff, porn actors get off on it. It seldom gets real public scrutiny though, either by the people who like it or the people who hate it. So what is it?
Schmeegle the Gollum killed his fishing buddy. Some say it was out of greed, others say it was because he was weaker than the ring of power (well who isn't?). He was ashamed to hang with his people afterwards though, & the ring seemed to be enough to get by on. He was still Hobbit enough to honor those values he dumped on himself for, & he couldn't let go or reconcile, so he became schizophrenic. The fact that his insanity saved the world is seldom mentioned because his actions appeared to be selfish (rather than stupid or altruistic), but we'll never know for sure, so he'll mostly be remembered for his treachery and fantastic CGI animation.
Ok, treachery means selling out your people. If you're not ashamed for that, you're probably psychopathic (which means lacking the ability for remorse, and thus, you have a great future in politics), or inhuman. Inhuman isn't a fair lable though, because dogs are more loyal than people, even though they & other carnivores usually require food rewards for their loyalty, not so with Meercats in their own society, but they, like dogs, expect it from humans, so though I'm not an animal whisperer, I suspect their infidelity revolves around mistrust. As a human I couldn't blame them, but this definition is getting anthropomorphic, so lets get back to whatever the topic was, oh yeah... treachery, well that about covers it.
Now getting back to shame: the final judgment on shame comes from ones self, it's decided by what's really detrimental to personal success. Islamist, Jews, Meercats and Christians all follow approximately the same code when it comes to premarital sex, which is (in case you haven't heard) that you shouldn't do it.
How come?
Because un regulated population uses up more resources than the populators can supply (because they're otherwise distracted), so everybody looses (except psychopaths, and cannibals). So then why don't these societies promote birth control? It's not because laws governing marriage and promiscuous behavior were written before birth control existed, there's always been birth control (though often drastic in some respect).
Rather, the nature of power is such that it requires sacrifice and obeisance. And getting a population to deny their sexuality, (sometimes donating their forskins, or sewing up their vaginal labia) is real obesiance. Starting on a family level (because mom says), through tribal (because Cochise says), and (viola) ending with national policy and church doctrine (because W says). Leaders depend on ritual warfare, sacrifice, and ancestor worship to legitimize their rule. In the old days, some forced their retinue of wives, concubines, and servants to follow them into death. Meercats don't do that, but every baby Meercat is taught by physical & social contact, to stick with the group, and that ostracization is fatal, and stupid.
In other words, population control is a survival trait of the species, whereas powers' control over it's followers is a survival trait of the leader.
With this contradiction of intent, we have the formula for schizophrenic policy on who controls reproductive rights, which (like Schmeegle) can't let go or reconcile.
....
Part of the concern about sex comes from parents worried about breaking their family group, and part comes from social institutions concerned about losing control of their social base. Sex is dangerous to learn, not so much because of predators & pervs but more from hormonally forced rationalization, which causes a change of personal fidelity to be possible. To preserve continuity of known social patterns, both institutions have vested interests. A solution would be to formulate a structure for rationalization, that maintains existing ties. "Yes, you can spend the night over there, but call us first so we know where you are", & stuff like that. By the way, kid sex is at least as real to kids as grownup sex is to adults, the hormones sometimes aren't identical, but they still compel, and the result is the same.
Teaching kids about close encounters affects their social competitiveness as much as sports. The kind of teaching influences the effect. I don't advise anything though because acceptability changes from region to region, and the topic is usually taboo because of the above vested interests, so: Good Luck. A lot depends on the circumstances, of "the taboo topic which must not be named" though, and I suspect it's associated strictures are a lot like fundamentalist strictures everywhere, for example Mohammed said women shouldn't travel alone, for the simple reason that at the time it was dangerous, and he looked forward to a day when women could travel alone. But later fundamentalist interpretation (in this case, including the court) means "not ever, under any circumstances". The looming commitment of having "inter-age" sex in contemporary society, can't be applied equally, and it's easy for the stronger and more sophisticated partner to diminish the other. With that in mind, all kinds of legal protection for jail bait can inspire respect from even the most jaded pervert, but who protects the adult? Heck, adults can protect themselves, right? not if fundamentalistic judgment causes them to loose their job, home, family, & community respect. A court system that allow that (much less promotes it) assures it's own future relevance, but aggravates the problem.
The problem here is that the state enforces a set of values which are just as fundamentalisticly dumb as the Revised Church of the Latter Day Saints. Don't get me wrong, they both creep me out in their own way, but I can say that because I, (like the church and the state), have my very own blog which doesn't allow comment, so I don't have to consider opposing views :-)
This post is more than atheistic & antisocial, it's probably tacky & I apologize for that, but it describes stuff that's simply not questioned, or acknowledged, stuff fundamental (if you will) to our own, and many other species lives. Stuff that should be referenced somehow before undertaking anything which might otherwise require a short prayer.
this is a partial, exemplary list of un-citizenly behaviors:
Disrespect is the main one, (all others follow) for example disrespect of the Sea, of Death, the Unknown, and areas of Karmic response (like pissed off motorists and large men w/ chainsaws wearing goalie masks). These require an assessment of potential for which we're unavoidably responsible, with the caveat of stupidity.
Stupidity is socially acceptable to respectable people, because a stupid person would seem to be unaware, and they make the lives of respectable people look coherent. Without The Stupid, their lives would be meaningless. Or rather, without someone stupider than ones self, the pecking order could shift up a notch, and irrelevancy could happen to YOU.
My 8th grade math class was seated by order of achievement. The girl of my dreams was at the front nearest the teachers desk (Mrs. Witt), I sat in the last seat farthest from the desk (but nearest the door), and behind several inbred hillbillies. Charlie R. sat in front of me, and gave me answers (IQ of 60, in 1959, Special Ed. was only one class during study hall), which were useless, but he was a genuinely good guy (and stupid). Charlie was a good guy because his survival trait was agreeability, he was forced to be sucessful because nobody had his back, whereas the hillbillies all had giant beetle browed cousins.
Shame can be great stuff, porn actors get off on it. It seldom gets real public scrutiny though, either by the people who like it or the people who hate it. So what is it?
Schmeegle the Gollum killed his fishing buddy. Some say it was out of greed, others say it was because he was weaker than the ring of power (well who isn't?). He was ashamed to hang with his people afterwards though, & the ring seemed to be enough to get by on. He was still Hobbit enough to honor those values he dumped on himself for, & he couldn't let go or reconcile, so he became schizophrenic. The fact that his insanity saved the world is seldom mentioned because his actions appeared to be selfish (rather than stupid or altruistic), but we'll never know for sure, so he'll mostly be remembered for his treachery and fantastic CGI animation.
Ok, treachery means selling out your people. If you're not ashamed for that, you're probably psychopathic (which means lacking the ability for remorse, and thus, you have a great future in politics), or inhuman. Inhuman isn't a fair lable though, because dogs are more loyal than people, even though they & other carnivores usually require food rewards for their loyalty, not so with Meercats in their own society, but they, like dogs, expect it from humans, so though I'm not an animal whisperer, I suspect their infidelity revolves around mistrust. As a human I couldn't blame them, but this definition is getting anthropomorphic, so lets get back to whatever the topic was, oh yeah... treachery, well that about covers it.
Now getting back to shame: the final judgment on shame comes from ones self, it's decided by what's really detrimental to personal success. Islamist, Jews, Meercats and Christians all follow approximately the same code when it comes to premarital sex, which is (in case you haven't heard) that you shouldn't do it.
How come?
Because un regulated population uses up more resources than the populators can supply (because they're otherwise distracted), so everybody looses (except psychopaths, and cannibals). So then why don't these societies promote birth control? It's not because laws governing marriage and promiscuous behavior were written before birth control existed, there's always been birth control (though often drastic in some respect).
Rather, the nature of power is such that it requires sacrifice and obeisance. And getting a population to deny their sexuality, (sometimes donating their forskins, or sewing up their vaginal labia) is real obesiance. Starting on a family level (because mom says), through tribal (because Cochise says), and (viola) ending with national policy and church doctrine (because W says). Leaders depend on ritual warfare, sacrifice, and ancestor worship to legitimize their rule. In the old days, some forced their retinue of wives, concubines, and servants to follow them into death. Meercats don't do that, but every baby Meercat is taught by physical & social contact, to stick with the group, and that ostracization is fatal, and stupid.
In other words, population control is a survival trait of the species, whereas powers' control over it's followers is a survival trait of the leader.
With this contradiction of intent, we have the formula for schizophrenic policy on who controls reproductive rights, which (like Schmeegle) can't let go or reconcile.
....
Part of the concern about sex comes from parents worried about breaking their family group, and part comes from social institutions concerned about losing control of their social base. Sex is dangerous to learn, not so much because of predators & pervs but more from hormonally forced rationalization, which causes a change of personal fidelity to be possible. To preserve continuity of known social patterns, both institutions have vested interests. A solution would be to formulate a structure for rationalization, that maintains existing ties. "Yes, you can spend the night over there, but call us first so we know where you are", & stuff like that. By the way, kid sex is at least as real to kids as grownup sex is to adults, the hormones sometimes aren't identical, but they still compel, and the result is the same.
Teaching kids about close encounters affects their social competitiveness as much as sports. The kind of teaching influences the effect. I don't advise anything though because acceptability changes from region to region, and the topic is usually taboo because of the above vested interests, so: Good Luck. A lot depends on the circumstances, of "the taboo topic which must not be named" though, and I suspect it's associated strictures are a lot like fundamentalist strictures everywhere, for example Mohammed said women shouldn't travel alone, for the simple reason that at the time it was dangerous, and he looked forward to a day when women could travel alone. But later fundamentalist interpretation (in this case, including the court) means "not ever, under any circumstances". The looming commitment of having "inter-age" sex in contemporary society, can't be applied equally, and it's easy for the stronger and more sophisticated partner to diminish the other. With that in mind, all kinds of legal protection for jail bait can inspire respect from even the most jaded pervert, but who protects the adult? Heck, adults can protect themselves, right? not if fundamentalistic judgment causes them to loose their job, home, family, & community respect. A court system that allow that (much less promotes it) assures it's own future relevance, but aggravates the problem.
The problem here is that the state enforces a set of values which are just as fundamentalisticly dumb as the Revised Church of the Latter Day Saints. Don't get me wrong, they both creep me out in their own way, but I can say that because I, (like the church and the state), have my very own blog which doesn't allow comment, so I don't have to consider opposing views :-)
Monday, December 10, 2007
Here's some idly interesting links
mega-preacher scandals and pentecostal meltdown
and Wauism
I used to belong to Bokonon but it turned out to be a scam that wrecked the world.
But this one explains a lot:
“If you fail to read (the Bible) properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh,”
The birth of christian fundamentalism came w/ the first printing of the Bible in common english in 1525.
Todays rant:
Awhile back (a year or so?) there was a theory proposed that people have a gene that makes us (them) selfish (discriptively called "the selfish gene"). it's survival benefit stems from putting ones own survival above family & friends during hard times. My arguement against it is that it would have to develop and become widespread within about 5000 years, (which is improbable) the reason being that a low density human population (> 3000 BC) lives in tribal groups where selfishness is actively culled. hoarding food from family members is unthinkable because the group has a better chance of survival than individuals (more hands and eyes to locate food & shelter). In that world, Loners are seen as witches that cause bad luck. A higher density population, like in towns big enough that you don't know everybody, provides a breeding environment for loners from a sense of isolation in the crowd, a lack of identity, & various neurosis and psychosis that "justify" selfishness. (yea witches & vampires there abound).
So yeah, sure there's a lot of selfish people around, but they still lack genetic viability, in fact any survival traits would be associated with the lack of a selfish gene.
the problem with theories & axioms, (etc.) is that they're all in ones head. to whit: there's no actual "conflict" in the real world. Floods, fires, giant meteor impacts, tsunamis, brain eating zombie invasions, species exterminatiions are all threats to the individual, but proof that the world is constantly self regulating.
In "real world" perfection there is a flawless piece of software (somewhere), (32 bit clean! according to the "rules of software"). It's not an independant entity however, because "the perfect software", like programs that compile it and the operating platform it runs on, and all the chips and hardware that usher electrons around to make the screen glow w/ the right pattern, are all based on theoretical models that seem to behave in a predictable way, until it self regulates or a zombie eats the observers brain. In the latter case, the experiment normally ceases because the observation discontinues. However, recent scientific advances (Nonlocality of a Single Particle Demonstrated Without Objections) have proven that a tree falling in the forest will make noise even if no one hears it, or to extrapolate slightly further: Zombie interference with an observation does not nullify the result, or (quite a bit further) "Rock & Roll will never die", or (the rational conclusion) "Convert to Zombiism Before it's Too Late".
OK to be honest here, this is mostly just anti-bullshit bullshit, the point here is that the stuff outside your head works fine on it's own mainly because it's uncontrollable & unknowable, (like God?), except like in abstractions. The problem is what goes on inside, (like drawing universal conclusions from limited data, kin you believe it?). Peoples brains aren't designed to work like computers, because computers don't have amigdulas and a dozen hormonal overrides (like fight or flight, shop or sleep). The most outstanding result is that people alter their environment to make themselves look good to OTHER PEOPLE, with NO regard for what it costs the world. like chain sawing the rain forests, and strip mining mountains, so they can get bling and the most buff sex (w/ a smug sneer). The cost to the world is definitely relative to how people effect people.
mega-preacher scandals and pentecostal meltdown
and Wauism
I used to belong to Bokonon but it turned out to be a scam that wrecked the world.
But this one explains a lot:
“If you fail to read (the Bible) properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh,”
The birth of christian fundamentalism came w/ the first printing of the Bible in common english in 1525.
Todays rant:
Awhile back (a year or so?) there was a theory proposed that people have a gene that makes us (them) selfish (discriptively called "the selfish gene"). it's survival benefit stems from putting ones own survival above family & friends during hard times. My arguement against it is that it would have to develop and become widespread within about 5000 years, (which is improbable) the reason being that a low density human population (> 3000 BC) lives in tribal groups where selfishness is actively culled. hoarding food from family members is unthinkable because the group has a better chance of survival than individuals (more hands and eyes to locate food & shelter). In that world, Loners are seen as witches that cause bad luck. A higher density population, like in towns big enough that you don't know everybody, provides a breeding environment for loners from a sense of isolation in the crowd, a lack of identity, & various neurosis and psychosis that "justify" selfishness. (yea witches & vampires there abound).
So yeah, sure there's a lot of selfish people around, but they still lack genetic viability, in fact any survival traits would be associated with the lack of a selfish gene.
the problem with theories & axioms, (etc.) is that they're all in ones head. to whit: there's no actual "conflict" in the real world. Floods, fires, giant meteor impacts, tsunamis, brain eating zombie invasions, species exterminatiions are all threats to the individual, but proof that the world is constantly self regulating.
In "real world" perfection there is a flawless piece of software (somewhere), (32 bit clean! according to the "rules of software"). It's not an independant entity however, because "the perfect software", like programs that compile it and the operating platform it runs on, and all the chips and hardware that usher electrons around to make the screen glow w/ the right pattern, are all based on theoretical models that seem to behave in a predictable way, until it self regulates or a zombie eats the observers brain. In the latter case, the experiment normally ceases because the observation discontinues. However, recent scientific advances (Nonlocality of a Single Particle Demonstrated Without Objections) have proven that a tree falling in the forest will make noise even if no one hears it, or to extrapolate slightly further: Zombie interference with an observation does not nullify the result, or (quite a bit further) "Rock & Roll will never die", or (the rational conclusion) "Convert to Zombiism Before it's Too Late".
OK to be honest here, this is mostly just anti-bullshit bullshit, the point here is that the stuff outside your head works fine on it's own mainly because it's uncontrollable & unknowable, (like God?), except like in abstractions. The problem is what goes on inside, (like drawing universal conclusions from limited data, kin you believe it?). Peoples brains aren't designed to work like computers, because computers don't have amigdulas and a dozen hormonal overrides (like fight or flight, shop or sleep). The most outstanding result is that people alter their environment to make themselves look good to OTHER PEOPLE, with NO regard for what it costs the world. like chain sawing the rain forests, and strip mining mountains, so they can get bling and the most buff sex (w/ a smug sneer). The cost to the world is definitely relative to how people effect people.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Real IN YOUR FACE Athiests will appreciate this link: Maggot Punks. I just discovered them by following links through my website stats & Myspace, wondering why I had so many hits to this photo (so I put an ad at the bottom):
The unspeakably unclean in the above picture is the larva of a kind of fly (Tachinid) that eats caterpillars. Unlike some carnivorous flies that eat dead stuff, these don't wait for the caterpillar to expire. They reproduce like The Alien using a live host, and burst forth from their chest w/ a defiant look before scurrying off to pupate & search for food.
Releases of Beneficial Organisms in the United States and Territories-1992. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous publication No.1505, 529 pp.
"Well over 20 million individuals of at least 151 species of insect and mite parasites and predators, almost exclusively of foreign origin, were released against at least 79 insect and mite pests, also predominantly introduced species, in the United States and its Territories in 1982. "... Aliens are among us.
The unspeakably unclean in the above picture is the larva of a kind of fly (Tachinid) that eats caterpillars. Unlike some carnivorous flies that eat dead stuff, these don't wait for the caterpillar to expire. They reproduce like The Alien using a live host, and burst forth from their chest w/ a defiant look before scurrying off to pupate & search for food.
Releases of Beneficial Organisms in the United States and Territories-1992. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous publication No.1505, 529 pp.
"Well over 20 million individuals of at least 151 species of insect and mite parasites and predators, almost exclusively of foreign origin, were released against at least 79 insect and mite pests, also predominantly introduced species, in the United States and its Territories in 1982. "... Aliens are among us.
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Here's a question, what's ubiquitous, every culture claims it defines them as a people (it's religion, duh, but): What is it?
Here's an answer: people talk to themselves internally, they read cereal boxes & online blogs so that their "consciousness" will have something to do. Internal talking reinforces the personal world. "I shot 15 hoops straight today!" not bad y'know, but so what? It's important because it gives one a social context, aids security and prevents isolation. Ok, but who cares? Exactly the point, somebody has to care, so that somebody takes place in ones head, they have a persona that's defined by people we know, (or read about, or see on tv, etc.)
Ok, now we're inside your head, both of us, or maybe it's mine (looks like my junk. You got this stuff too?)
The thing that Lovers, Charlatans, Priests, Politicians, and sugar Placebos all have in common is they affect a part of a persons brain associated with how one feels about themselves. In order to do that, there must be a willingness to believe & trust, and they must know what to expect. It's not a fake effect, the effect is real, the rational is false. Treat someone like a King & they'll grow to act like one, treat them like a fool & they'll grow to act that way too. Promise them honor & security forever & they usually consider it seriously because it tweaks that little part of their brain. If negative odds are too obvious, well, there's other ways to appeal: like The Relative Situation, which depends on context "sure things are ok, but they could be better, & think how much worse it could be if... bla bla" The hook is either set or not depending on the prep work.
You can pick your demise by gender. Gun rights are symbolic of a male dominated society, how do women ever cope? Same as ever, if its not guns, its some other kind of male dominated social destructiveness (gambling, smoking, drinking, drug dealing, porn) it's male, all male, how come? Well, there's female destruction too, it's passive, things just fall apart. If you get mugged & machine-gunned, that's male (like Shiva the destroyer). But if you get lost in the desert, perish of ennui & consumed by vermin, that's Kali "Nail-Cakes", goddess of death.
Traditional (or any other kind) of gods all appear to have traits of organic life forms, they're crafty & act just like people! Do they do that on purpose or does it just seem that way? Is it fair for people to anthropomorphize the forces of the universe as if though they were just invisible mortals? (NO, IT's NOT FAIR!) As a god I object to that kind of degradation! Gods can do anything & we can make up the rules as we go along. GW Tush thinks he enjoys my favor but, he's never bothered to approach me even once, he ignores the rational advisors I put at his disposal & I certainly never speak to him. I can't believe the hubris of that man. So that you all know that I am the supreme being, I shall visit him with boils and pestilence, & cause him to be a toy for the amusement of Nail-Cakes, my chick.
Here's an answer: people talk to themselves internally, they read cereal boxes & online blogs so that their "consciousness" will have something to do. Internal talking reinforces the personal world. "I shot 15 hoops straight today!" not bad y'know, but so what? It's important because it gives one a social context, aids security and prevents isolation. Ok, but who cares? Exactly the point, somebody has to care, so that somebody takes place in ones head, they have a persona that's defined by people we know, (or read about, or see on tv, etc.)
Ok, now we're inside your head, both of us, or maybe it's mine (looks like my junk. You got this stuff too?)
The thing that Lovers, Charlatans, Priests, Politicians, and sugar Placebos all have in common is they affect a part of a persons brain associated with how one feels about themselves. In order to do that, there must be a willingness to believe & trust, and they must know what to expect. It's not a fake effect, the effect is real, the rational is false. Treat someone like a King & they'll grow to act like one, treat them like a fool & they'll grow to act that way too. Promise them honor & security forever & they usually consider it seriously because it tweaks that little part of their brain. If negative odds are too obvious, well, there's other ways to appeal: like The Relative Situation, which depends on context "sure things are ok, but they could be better, & think how much worse it could be if... bla bla" The hook is either set or not depending on the prep work.
You can pick your demise by gender. Gun rights are symbolic of a male dominated society, how do women ever cope? Same as ever, if its not guns, its some other kind of male dominated social destructiveness (gambling, smoking, drinking, drug dealing, porn) it's male, all male, how come? Well, there's female destruction too, it's passive, things just fall apart. If you get mugged & machine-gunned, that's male (like Shiva the destroyer). But if you get lost in the desert, perish of ennui & consumed by vermin, that's Kali "Nail-Cakes", goddess of death.
Traditional (or any other kind) of gods all appear to have traits of organic life forms, they're crafty & act just like people! Do they do that on purpose or does it just seem that way? Is it fair for people to anthropomorphize the forces of the universe as if though they were just invisible mortals? (NO, IT's NOT FAIR!) As a god I object to that kind of degradation! Gods can do anything & we can make up the rules as we go along. GW Tush thinks he enjoys my favor but, he's never bothered to approach me even once, he ignores the rational advisors I put at his disposal & I certainly never speak to him. I can't believe the hubris of that man. So that you all know that I am the supreme being, I shall visit him with boils and pestilence, & cause him to be a toy for the amusement of Nail-Cakes, my chick.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Here's a good post from the BBCs' Newsnight: The God Delusion.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
For the benefit of all my devoted and desperate readers, who've been hanging on the edge of their seats for months to learn the result of how discovering god has reflected on my overall well being, I send my blessings and good news:
I lied.
The thing I thought was god in the back of my sock drawer turned out to be a mouse nest. When I attempted to communicate with the mouse, she ignored me. At first I took this as additional proof, but when my gut feeling told me to invade a 3rd world country that didn't have oil, I knew it was the work of Satan. So I tossed the nest & all in a blender. Ok, I didn't, I lied again. Life's hard when you're a heathen & a blasphemer, always avoiding good, doing evil, & coveting your neighbors ass (actually the guy's crazy & thoroughly unappealing. But see, that's what makes it hard).
Oh wow though, Pam's ass was gorgeous when she lived over there. She made Brazillian beach bunnies look like dumpy farm girls. But I was trying to be a citizen, since she was married & had a daughter. Her husband was busted & locked up for dealing dope & she made it plain to me she was lonesome for company. Then he got out on parole & sincerely believed I'd been messing with her (probably because Pam needed some kind of leverage with him so she implied I had). He beat her up & made her pregnant & miserable, so she stayed drunk most of the time. Chelsey was the new baby, she was a sweetheart, but had an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because of the fetal alcohol before she was born. Chelsey'd do risky things like running along the top of the picket fence & climb up on the corrugated plastic roof of the porch to hang out with the cats whenever she got upset, because heavy adults couldn't go out there to catch her, and she liked the cats better anyway. By the time she was 4, she'd go hunting with them too. Pam finally got divorced but lost custody because of her history of dope & drinking. So without mom around, dad made kiddy porn videos of his 12 yr old older daughter (who took after Pam) & her friends in junior high cheerleaders. He tried to sell the stuff, but the buyer turned him in. The family fell apart. Grandma took Chelsey & moved to Italy. Pam moved in with her Xs' dad. The older daughter & her friend were both put in foster homes. I grandly imagine that I could have made a believable impression on ol' dad (or got killed), if I HAD kept company with Pam, but I also had a daughter & recent breakup too & I didn't want to make things worse for MY kid. And ol' dad had a pistol that once belonged to Charlie Manson & he was proud of it, more reason not to get too involved. Except for Pams beautiful tush, that whole episode was a whirlpool of chain saws. Wonder what god was doing then? Oh it's probably none of our business.
Catch 23: every catch has a catch.
OK Look: here's what god was doing then. Since, in fact, god's the unifying principle behind everything you DON'T know: god was furiously twiddling his hormones & smirking! Well no, that's only what it looked like he was doing, Actually he was casting around desperately to make sense of nonsense & trying to decide where to go with it. He'd only have that direction if an observer with an opinion is present. An opinion would require an assessment of the facts. You see this is rapidly spinning out of gods control. He morphs from everything you DON'T know to only those things you do. So "Poof" you read the above facts, what are the critical elements? suffering, hormones, attraction, revulsion, rightous voyeurism. But it doesn't have any meaning in it'self, because without people, god is nonsense. Furthermore, gods' existance violates his own definition, how can there be a mystical unifying reality that's unknown? (If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you cheap. In fact, forget the bridge: just send me all your money because you must). What's really causing the wonder of the universe is the potential in the wild, like Pams beautiful butt, forever unknowable & meaningless, (except for the hormones, eh?).
I lied.
The thing I thought was god in the back of my sock drawer turned out to be a mouse nest. When I attempted to communicate with the mouse, she ignored me. At first I took this as additional proof, but when my gut feeling told me to invade a 3rd world country that didn't have oil, I knew it was the work of Satan. So I tossed the nest & all in a blender. Ok, I didn't, I lied again. Life's hard when you're a heathen & a blasphemer, always avoiding good, doing evil, & coveting your neighbors ass (actually the guy's crazy & thoroughly unappealing. But see, that's what makes it hard).
Oh wow though, Pam's ass was gorgeous when she lived over there. She made Brazillian beach bunnies look like dumpy farm girls. But I was trying to be a citizen, since she was married & had a daughter. Her husband was busted & locked up for dealing dope & she made it plain to me she was lonesome for company. Then he got out on parole & sincerely believed I'd been messing with her (probably because Pam needed some kind of leverage with him so she implied I had). He beat her up & made her pregnant & miserable, so she stayed drunk most of the time. Chelsey was the new baby, she was a sweetheart, but had an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder because of the fetal alcohol before she was born. Chelsey'd do risky things like running along the top of the picket fence & climb up on the corrugated plastic roof of the porch to hang out with the cats whenever she got upset, because heavy adults couldn't go out there to catch her, and she liked the cats better anyway. By the time she was 4, she'd go hunting with them too. Pam finally got divorced but lost custody because of her history of dope & drinking. So without mom around, dad made kiddy porn videos of his 12 yr old older daughter (who took after Pam) & her friends in junior high cheerleaders. He tried to sell the stuff, but the buyer turned him in. The family fell apart. Grandma took Chelsey & moved to Italy. Pam moved in with her Xs' dad. The older daughter & her friend were both put in foster homes. I grandly imagine that I could have made a believable impression on ol' dad (or got killed), if I HAD kept company with Pam, but I also had a daughter & recent breakup too & I didn't want to make things worse for MY kid. And ol' dad had a pistol that once belonged to Charlie Manson & he was proud of it, more reason not to get too involved. Except for Pams beautiful tush, that whole episode was a whirlpool of chain saws. Wonder what god was doing then? Oh it's probably none of our business.
Catch 23: every catch has a catch.
OK Look: here's what god was doing then. Since, in fact, god's the unifying principle behind everything you DON'T know: god was furiously twiddling his hormones & smirking! Well no, that's only what it looked like he was doing, Actually he was casting around desperately to make sense of nonsense & trying to decide where to go with it. He'd only have that direction if an observer with an opinion is present. An opinion would require an assessment of the facts. You see this is rapidly spinning out of gods control. He morphs from everything you DON'T know to only those things you do. So "Poof" you read the above facts, what are the critical elements? suffering, hormones, attraction, revulsion, rightous voyeurism. But it doesn't have any meaning in it'self, because without people, god is nonsense. Furthermore, gods' existance violates his own definition, how can there be a mystical unifying reality that's unknown? (If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you cheap. In fact, forget the bridge: just send me all your money because you must). What's really causing the wonder of the universe is the potential in the wild, like Pams beautiful butt, forever unknowable & meaningless, (except for the hormones, eh?).
Friday, December 16, 2005
Pop died today at about 1:40 pm. He was 97. He broke his hip about a month or 5 weeks ago & got pneumonia. I could have kept him in the hospital but he would have been on life support and he didn't want that. So I let them move him into a convalescent hospital. His hip healed but he stopped eating. The pneumonia came back. When I came in, he was breathing hard, the nurse said "he's dying, this is the way it starts with pneumonia". I sat beside him while his lungs filled up. My brothers were flying in airplanes over the pacific to be here. He gasped a few times & died. The nurse came up and held a stethoscope against his chest and looked at the clock. She was patronizing & only slightly vulturene, (as opposed to the hospice workers who are actually repulsive) and offered condolences. I said "thank you", but meant "go away". I sat beside him for awhile & a physical therapist came in & said to Pop in a loud jolly voice : Hello Mr. Cornelius, How are you feeling today?" I said "he's gone", The therapist looked at me then at pop & then said "I'm sorry" and left. I held Pops' hand & said "go hunting pop, & bring home some bacon". It's something he always said before he'd leave to go hunting when I was a kid.
Then I took my dog for a walk in Doyle park where he played with some other dogs in a fenced in area for dogs that they close off in the winter so it won't get muddy, but people lift the gate and go in any way. There was a rotwieller and a brindle sausage shaped mutt. My dog has no social graces and he dumped in the middle of the play yard. People put plastic bags on the fence for just such occasions, & I used one.
Then we drove back to the convalescent hospital and retrieved Pops' things (clothes, shoes, razor, hearing aid). My older brother sent a bouquet from Hawaii, I put it all in a plastic bag & put that on the passengers seat of my car. I drove back to moms' apartment, she was asleep so I worked on my computer for an hour sending out emails to family, till she woke up & I told her. She'd been expecting it for awhile so she didn't break up. I verified that she had plenty to live on and the car was running (though she hasn't driven for 8 years & has no license).
Then I took my dog for a walk in Doyle park where he played with some other dogs in a fenced in area for dogs that they close off in the winter so it won't get muddy, but people lift the gate and go in any way. There was a rotwieller and a brindle sausage shaped mutt. My dog has no social graces and he dumped in the middle of the play yard. People put plastic bags on the fence for just such occasions, & I used one.
Then we drove back to the convalescent hospital and retrieved Pops' things (clothes, shoes, razor, hearing aid). My older brother sent a bouquet from Hawaii, I put it all in a plastic bag & put that on the passengers seat of my car. I drove back to moms' apartment, she was asleep so I worked on my computer for an hour sending out emails to family, till she woke up & I told her. She'd been expecting it for awhile so she didn't break up. I verified that she had plenty to live on and the car was running (though she hasn't driven for 8 years & has no license).
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Ok I'm sorry to bum everybody, but I just found God, (in the back of the sock drawer). I was just imagining what it would take to get away with all the stuff that gets blamed on God. (wouldn't be the devil because that's still the same thing). It has to include both, not good, not evil, not even indifference because god's not aware, (at least there's no evidence that God has awareness, that doesn't come through the filter of someone with their own motive. that's why it's exasperating to reason with the sucker). So god's indifferent & still has some kind of form or weird utility, & be a default "reason" for everything. (God invented daughters so they could wash the car)? I don't think so. It's more like this:
See, whatever it is has to be coherent & not contradictory, so just skip all the stuff that is, like science, politics, religion, truth, lies & all. What's left? Well, the physical world, like outside your head. but it's meaning & utility are entirely inside your head. So, are you God? shure that fits (sort of). wait there's more!
The classical form of prayer is beseeching someone invisible for favors, (you know the drill) because it's deserved. ok? so why's that a recognizable condition for God. (hint: it helps the definition) Nobody says "oh great God: give me cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn because I deserve it". No, see it's a kind of social thing, God is. God doesn't have secrets or a plan, God IS a plan, what you see is what you get: a universal mechanism, which helps the people survive. God says "Be good & Do right, & thou shall/shant & so on & I'll reward thee with all the riches of the earth plus free upgrades. Wild gods might do the same thing, but they do that only as people see them. Like whatever pushes the planets & cares for fuzzy animals (with big brown eyes like bunnies & aging wolverines). Those gods only attain meaning & existence through the perception of people, but like a tree falling in the forest, those gods also have their own worlds that people may never know. Of course a person could pray to those gods (or one cooked up by fundamentalists to serve some immediate folly) for ones cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn, but that's like plugging part of that world & it into the people, so it would have to have some kind of meaning for the people world too, to be recognizable. For example when you answer the door with blood up to your elbows & all you have is a flippant excuse ("Hey God said it was ok!"): it might not be the same meaning. So our first labor for God isn't to create light, it's to homogenize society.
Another point of definition says god'll punish you (for evil thoughts, etc.). looks like he's back to square one, except If you consider that God IS a plan, instead of having one, the plan is that stuff that breaks down society, ultimately comes back on the person that perpetrates the deed (just like flies on poop or Karma on Dubya!). Not that any of that stuff is intrinsically destructive to the perp, because there are cultures in the world today that consider almost anything to be acceptable behavior somehow, just as there are those that don't. But because we get along SO well with each other, legal stuff provides employment for someone to go around and insure that people who continue to eat up the neighbors are held responsible for whatever's wrong with it. Now all those guys that make their living selling God finally have something worthwhile to promote, like social tolerance, and liberal bias, so predators can have another harvest in a few years when the next peace matures. And the legal people employed to see that everything is legal will surely constrain themselves so that harmless & non-violent people aren't busted for the security of the legals' own employment because that's ultimately bad for society.
So: how come some societies COMMIT SIN & get away with it & some don't? Well heck! it's natural selection in action. Like all those societies that ate up their kids, pretty soon ran out of people. The Shakers (famously good, kind, pious, wholesome, etcetera), ran out of people & became extinct because they were celibate. Some societies even thrive on WAR, probably because they don't run up a 10 trillion dollar debt on the say-so of their pin headed commander in chief. (Note: all those that did, had to eat the leader to avoid starvation.... Just a thought).
OK now here's gods will: (I God, being of sound mind & body, record herewith my will & testament...) Gods will is what someone decided was the solution for social misfits: make nonconformity so unpleasant that people won't want to go there. (actually it was some bureaucrats plan and not Gods), and it doesn't work (see footnote 1). Writing down all the possible ways a person might disrupt society (& disobey God), makes for a predictable future, so long as the code is relevant. Then maybe someone decides that the letter of the law is more profitable than the spirit (I love that comparison, it could mean anything), so the codified plan becomes a tool for exploitation & is no longer Gods plan. a couple of examples are: the Statutes of Negritude (legal reasons why white people could exploit blacks, cir. 1650-1860), & 3 strike laws applied to nonviolent offenders (reasons why rich people may exclude marijuana users from society, cir. 1980-present). Sure if you agree with those laws then they're relevant, ie.: The cranial measurements of the heads of the colored races predisposes them to servitude, and, Marijuana makes you crazy. The point here is that nobody can write a perfect law & nobody can define God for the same reason. (see footnote 1)
See, whatever it is has to be coherent & not contradictory, so just skip all the stuff that is, like science, politics, religion, truth, lies & all. What's left? Well, the physical world, like outside your head. but it's meaning & utility are entirely inside your head. So, are you God? shure that fits (sort of). wait there's more!
The classical form of prayer is beseeching someone invisible for favors, (you know the drill) because it's deserved. ok? so why's that a recognizable condition for God. (hint: it helps the definition) Nobody says "oh great God: give me cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn because I deserve it". No, see it's a kind of social thing, God is. God doesn't have secrets or a plan, God IS a plan, what you see is what you get: a universal mechanism, which helps the people survive. God says "Be good & Do right, & thou shall/shant & so on & I'll reward thee with all the riches of the earth plus free upgrades. Wild gods might do the same thing, but they do that only as people see them. Like whatever pushes the planets & cares for fuzzy animals (with big brown eyes like bunnies & aging wolverines). Those gods only attain meaning & existence through the perception of people, but like a tree falling in the forest, those gods also have their own worlds that people may never know. Of course a person could pray to those gods (or one cooked up by fundamentalists to serve some immediate folly) for ones cannibalism, incest & kiddy porn, but that's like plugging part of that world & it into the people, so it would have to have some kind of meaning for the people world too, to be recognizable. For example when you answer the door with blood up to your elbows & all you have is a flippant excuse ("Hey God said it was ok!"): it might not be the same meaning. So our first labor for God isn't to create light, it's to homogenize society.
Another point of definition says god'll punish you (for evil thoughts, etc.). looks like he's back to square one, except If you consider that God IS a plan, instead of having one, the plan is that stuff that breaks down society, ultimately comes back on the person that perpetrates the deed (just like flies on poop or Karma on Dubya!). Not that any of that stuff is intrinsically destructive to the perp, because there are cultures in the world today that consider almost anything to be acceptable behavior somehow, just as there are those that don't. But because we get along SO well with each other, legal stuff provides employment for someone to go around and insure that people who continue to eat up the neighbors are held responsible for whatever's wrong with it. Now all those guys that make their living selling God finally have something worthwhile to promote, like social tolerance, and liberal bias, so predators can have another harvest in a few years when the next peace matures. And the legal people employed to see that everything is legal will surely constrain themselves so that harmless & non-violent people aren't busted for the security of the legals' own employment because that's ultimately bad for society.
So: how come some societies COMMIT SIN & get away with it & some don't? Well heck! it's natural selection in action. Like all those societies that ate up their kids, pretty soon ran out of people. The Shakers (famously good, kind, pious, wholesome, etcetera), ran out of people & became extinct because they were celibate. Some societies even thrive on WAR, probably because they don't run up a 10 trillion dollar debt on the say-so of their pin headed commander in chief. (Note: all those that did, had to eat the leader to avoid starvation.... Just a thought).
OK now here's gods will: (I God, being of sound mind & body, record herewith my will & testament...) Gods will is what someone decided was the solution for social misfits: make nonconformity so unpleasant that people won't want to go there. (actually it was some bureaucrats plan and not Gods), and it doesn't work (see footnote 1). Writing down all the possible ways a person might disrupt society (& disobey God), makes for a predictable future, so long as the code is relevant. Then maybe someone decides that the letter of the law is more profitable than the spirit (I love that comparison, it could mean anything), so the codified plan becomes a tool for exploitation & is no longer Gods plan. a couple of examples are: the Statutes of Negritude (legal reasons why white people could exploit blacks, cir. 1650-1860), & 3 strike laws applied to nonviolent offenders (reasons why rich people may exclude marijuana users from society, cir. 1980-present). Sure if you agree with those laws then they're relevant, ie.: The cranial measurements of the heads of the colored races predisposes them to servitude, and, Marijuana makes you crazy. The point here is that nobody can write a perfect law & nobody can define God for the same reason. (see footnote 1)
1: Because right & wrong are subjective & dynamic, while laws and judges are static and objective, Law & Gods definition try to keep the world from changing, but without constant feedback and adaptation, it's inherently futile. Ideally, a democracy provides as much feedback as it needs, (the price of freedom is constant vigilance), but of course depends on the social honesty of it's representatives & poll takers (there's always a catch).
Monday, August 08, 2005
Here's another post copied off the web (NY Times). It describes an old religious scam that has been honed & refined by the republican right, and fed back with more "authority" than ever. At the bottom I placed a link to one of the groups who want to impeach Bush, please sign their petition.
Op-Ed Columnist
Design for Confusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 5, 2005
I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Related More Columns by Paul Krugman
Forum: Paul Krugman's Columns
Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.
Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."
"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."
Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.
You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.
The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.
There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?
Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.
Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.
Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians have a deep hatred for Darwinism. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed the theory of evolution for the Columbine school shootings. But sheer political power hasn't been enough to get creationism into the school curriculum. The theory of evolution has overwhelming scientific support, and the country isn't ready - yet - to teach religious doctrine in public schools.
But what if creationists do to evolutionary theory what corporate interests did to global warming: create a widespread impression that the scientific consensus has shaky foundations?
Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone. But intelligent design, which spreads doubt about evolution without being too overtly religious, may succeed where creation science failed. Check this example (it's real): "The Final Theory"
The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Impeach Bush NOW.
Op-Ed Columnist
Design for Confusion
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 5, 2005
I'd like to nominate Irving Kristol, the neoconservative former editor of The Public Interest, as the father of "intelligent design." No, he didn't play any role in developing the doctrine. But he is the father of the political strategy that lies behind the intelligent design movement - a strategy that has been used with great success by the economic right and has now been adopted by the religious right.
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Related More Columns by Paul Krugman
Forum: Paul Krugman's Columns
Back in 1978 Mr. Kristol urged corporations to make "philanthropic contributions to scholars and institutions who are likely to advocate preservation of a strong private sector." That was delicately worded, but the clear implication was that corporations that didn't like the results of academic research, however valid, should support people willing to say something more to their liking.
Mr. Kristol led by example, using The Public Interest to promote supply-side economics, a doctrine whose central claim - that tax cuts have such miraculous positive effects on the economy that they pay for themselves - has never been backed by evidence. He would later concede, or perhaps boast, that he had a "cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit."
"Political effectiveness was the priority," he wrote in 1995, "not the accounting deficiencies of government."
Corporations followed his lead, pouring a steady stream of money into think tanks that created a sort of parallel intellectual universe, a world of "scholars" whose careers are based on toeing an ideological line, rather than on doing research that stands up to scrutiny by their peers.
You might have thought that a strategy of creating doubt about inconvenient research results could work only in soft fields like economics. But it turns out that the strategy works equally well when deployed against the hard sciences.
The most spectacular example is the campaign to discredit research on global warming. Despite an overwhelming scientific consensus, many people have the impression that the issue is still unresolved. This impression reflects the assiduous work of conservative think tanks, which produce and promote skeptical reports that look like peer-reviewed research, but aren't. And behind it all lies lavish financing from the energy industry, especially ExxonMobil.
There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that nonscientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?
Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.
Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitists who think they're smarter than the rest of us.
Which brings us, finally, to intelligent design. Some of America's most powerful politicians have a deep hatred for Darwinism. Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, blamed the theory of evolution for the Columbine school shootings. But sheer political power hasn't been enough to get creationism into the school curriculum. The theory of evolution has overwhelming scientific support, and the country isn't ready - yet - to teach religious doctrine in public schools.
But what if creationists do to evolutionary theory what corporate interests did to global warming: create a widespread impression that the scientific consensus has shaky foundations?
Creationists failed when they pretended to be engaged in science, not religious indoctrination: "creation science" was too crude to fool anyone. But intelligent design, which spreads doubt about evolution without being too overtly religious, may succeed where creation science failed. Check this example (it's real): "The Final Theory"
The important thing to remember is that like supply-side economics or global-warming skepticism, intelligent design doesn't have to attract significant support from actual researchers to be effective. All it has to do is create confusion, to make it seem as if there really is a controversy about the validity of evolutionary theory. That, together with the political muscle of the religious right, may be enough to start a process that ends with banishing Darwin from the classroom.
E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com
Impeach Bush NOW.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
It may be that this particular argument (see below: 1/15/2005) was just poorly presented, that another description would offer another conclusion, but this one presents the crucial dilemma: Why is it necessary to describe the indescribable? Well that's the question. The old 60s' Twilight Zone TV series (in B/W eh?) did a story about a neighborhood that went bonkers & started shooting each other when they decided unexplainable stuff was caused by Aliens or Russians trying to take over. It turns out it was Aliens in flying saucers trying to find out how people react to impossible events. Their conclusion was that we were all unstable but ripe for invasion (if they could think up any reason to do it (this was when GW was like 16)), because our psyche requires that we deny half of our awareness. Carlos Castaneda's friend Don Juan describes everything we know as being a thing called the Tonal & everything we don't know (everything else) as a thing called the Nagual. The Tonal is made of conventions and knowledge. The Nagual is indescribable and is the media of sorcerers (also of charlatans and demagogues)
The intelligent design movement essentially says that the unknown is a "force" which is attributable to God.
The Non believer says if it's real, show me?
The Believer says what you don't know is god, so you can't argue.
So: is a vacuum actually a force? sure, metaphorically speaking, just like darkness is light.
My opinion is that animals, and humans especially (because we depend on thinking so much) are stuck with an intellectual blind spot: if it doesn't have a name, it doesn't exist, and if it does have a name, then it has to exist: GOD. So for all practical purposes, God is a catchall to explain a certain vacuum in the human brain. Dogs run away when they don't understand & that's a very realistic and pragmatic reaction. Fundamentalists however fall down & beg forgiveness from earthquakes & volcanos, or blame what they don't understand on unexplainable designs of a projected social superior. (see below: November 28, 2002) Then if they survive, it's proof that god accepts their homage, & if they get covered up with lava, no one ever hears about it. Because life's complexity can’t be explained without a supernatural creator, eh? Sez professional evangelical business persons.
The intelligent design movement essentially says that the unknown is a "force" which is attributable to God.
The Non believer says if it's real, show me?
The Believer says what you don't know is god, so you can't argue.
So: is a vacuum actually a force? sure, metaphorically speaking, just like darkness is light.
My opinion is that animals, and humans especially (because we depend on thinking so much) are stuck with an intellectual blind spot: if it doesn't have a name, it doesn't exist, and if it does have a name, then it has to exist: GOD. So for all practical purposes, God is a catchall to explain a certain vacuum in the human brain. Dogs run away when they don't understand & that's a very realistic and pragmatic reaction. Fundamentalists however fall down & beg forgiveness from earthquakes & volcanos, or blame what they don't understand on unexplainable designs of a projected social superior. (see below: November 28, 2002) Then if they survive, it's proof that god accepts their homage, & if they get covered up with lava, no one ever hears about it. Because life's complexity can’t be explained without a supernatural creator, eh? Sez professional evangelical business persons.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Here's a post I had to copy because it'll be replaced with other topics shortly on his site at
The Schwartzreport
Genital Theology and the Quest for Pelvic Orthodoxy
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor
Unless you live in some very remote portion of the earth over these past weeks the death of one Pope and the coronation of another, has exposed you to a seemingly endless discussion about the Roman Catholic Church and what is likely to happen with Benedict XVI at the helm. At the same time the American Religious Right, which seems to have taken control of the Republican Party has, itself, been focusing intensely on many of these same issues, and making a politician's position on them a litmus test for their support, which has skewed the national political process in profound ways. Based on what we view and read the inner spiritual experience once considered the well-spring of Judaeo-Christian thought has been replaced by Genital Theology.
A preponderant number of the public statements made in the name of religion actually deal with sexuality: Adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, homosexuality, priestly chastity; this is the stuff of the religion pages of almost any newspaper. Conclaves of American bishops, rabbis or pastors routinely discuss masturbation and pre-martial sex, but it is almost inconceivable to imagine them discussing angels or individual transcendental experiences such as those that created their religions in the first place. Issues of the groin dominate almost all so-called religious discussions, and taken together they comprise a quest for pelvic orthodoxy.
The use of religion to regulate sexuality is not new. What is different is the self-righteous linkage of fundamentalist Christianity and patriotism. During the administration of John Adams, the second President of the United States, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli which had been negotiated by American diplomat Joel Barlow during Washington's administration. Article XI of the treaty said, "The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
James Madison, the fourth President, and the father of the Constitution is on record saying, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. He wrote, "During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride, indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both superstition, bigotry and persecution."
It would be correct to say that the founders were Deists. They believed in a "guiding intelligence or principle." Like the third President, Thomas Jefferson, they felt, "The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." America's Christianity, then, as now, when the Religious Right frames everything in terms of Jesus and Christian faith, when their arguments are carefully considered are actually arguing about culture not spirit.
This failure to address spiritual needs and the placement of tribalizing judgments, above all other considerations, is having an effect on democracy in America. According to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago's, National Opinion Research Center as long ago as 1984, 43 per cent, or 101 million men and women have had an "unusual spiritual experience." This is a much larger group than the "born agains" alone. It is even larger than the entire church going population. And of that more than 100 million, 68 million men and women, 29 per cent of the total population, believe they have received a "spiritual vision." It is one reason the Consciousness (New Age) Movement, that often underground river that has flowed through American culture from Revolutionary Masonic presidents, to the 19th Century's Transcendentalists, to today's public shamans such as Deepok Chopra or Mary Ann Williamson has become so prominent in recent years. This dereliction from addressing spiritual experience has divided the country and is, I believe, at the core of the Red/Blue split. This abdication by religious leaders of their traditional role, has made psychiatrists, psychologists, mediums, and astrologers, the true priests of our culture, while our theologians and clergy have increasingly become political operatives.
The Schwartzreport
Genital Theology and the Quest for Pelvic Orthodoxy
Stephan A. Schwartz, Editor
Unless you live in some very remote portion of the earth over these past weeks the death of one Pope and the coronation of another, has exposed you to a seemingly endless discussion about the Roman Catholic Church and what is likely to happen with Benedict XVI at the helm. At the same time the American Religious Right, which seems to have taken control of the Republican Party has, itself, been focusing intensely on many of these same issues, and making a politician's position on them a litmus test for their support, which has skewed the national political process in profound ways. Based on what we view and read the inner spiritual experience once considered the well-spring of Judaeo-Christian thought has been replaced by Genital Theology.
A preponderant number of the public statements made in the name of religion actually deal with sexuality: Adultery, pre-marital sex, abortion, homosexuality, priestly chastity; this is the stuff of the religion pages of almost any newspaper. Conclaves of American bishops, rabbis or pastors routinely discuss masturbation and pre-martial sex, but it is almost inconceivable to imagine them discussing angels or individual transcendental experiences such as those that created their religions in the first place. Issues of the groin dominate almost all so-called religious discussions, and taken together they comprise a quest for pelvic orthodoxy.
The use of religion to regulate sexuality is not new. What is different is the self-righteous linkage of fundamentalist Christianity and patriotism. During the administration of John Adams, the second President of the United States, the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship with Tripoli which had been negotiated by American diplomat Joel Barlow during Washington's administration. Article XI of the treaty said, "The Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."
James Madison, the fourth President, and the father of the Constitution is on record saying, "Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. He wrote, "During almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride, indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both superstition, bigotry and persecution."
It would be correct to say that the founders were Deists. They believed in a "guiding intelligence or principle." Like the third President, Thomas Jefferson, they felt, "The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained." America's Christianity, then, as now, when the Religious Right frames everything in terms of Jesus and Christian faith, when their arguments are carefully considered are actually arguing about culture not spirit.
This failure to address spiritual needs and the placement of tribalizing judgments, above all other considerations, is having an effect on democracy in America. According to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago's, National Opinion Research Center as long ago as 1984, 43 per cent, or 101 million men and women have had an "unusual spiritual experience." This is a much larger group than the "born agains" alone. It is even larger than the entire church going population. And of that more than 100 million, 68 million men and women, 29 per cent of the total population, believe they have received a "spiritual vision." It is one reason the Consciousness (New Age) Movement, that often underground river that has flowed through American culture from Revolutionary Masonic presidents, to the 19th Century's Transcendentalists, to today's public shamans such as Deepok Chopra or Mary Ann Williamson has become so prominent in recent years. This dereliction from addressing spiritual experience has divided the country and is, I believe, at the core of the Red/Blue split. This abdication by religious leaders of their traditional role, has made psychiatrists, psychologists, mediums, and astrologers, the true priests of our culture, while our theologians and clergy have increasingly become political operatives.
Saturday, January 15, 2005
The concept of god as an evolutionary dead end.
Some say god created us because he was lonesome, like he needed company
ok here's God. he's either us or not, whatever. Let's assume He created us and not vice versa. God existed first so He has to be perc eived on a scale of time, which may be called His Great Plan. Plans require a purpose/goal. The rapture perhaps, but then what?. The rapture is a development of his son's advocates, maybe not bad, but NOT God The Origional and wasteful in the writers opin ion, because the chosen enter heaven in their physical form, and the rest of the physical world is discarded (where does it go?). If God gets angry because humanity rejects his plan for a perfect world, then He must put some value on it. Heck, what's this God the Son revisionism anyway, if there's one god, he needs to be updated more plausibly. Ok, I'm digressing, this is just hypothesis anyway, the main point here is that there's a time scale & a goal (and it looks suspiciously like a perception of those who live in a time-space continuum ie: not-god).
Since God has no beginning & no end, & He can look at the future like we look at the past, He should have an advantage in the evolution of events. Apparently He chooses not to use it, possibly because He's inscrutable and mysterious, (or perhaps we're just idiots). This is serious: Why not use the advantage of total consciousness?
I'll wait while you ponder & then present my fecklessly self serving opinion/answer.
.....
Ok, it's because planning to avoid past mistakes increases entropy instead of reducing it because there are fewer evolutionary options. (like crop mono-culture) "nay nay" you say "because God isn't bound by the laws of thermodynamics!" Maybe, but so far we don't have that evidence, and we do have evidence that everything He created is. Could it be that God is made up as we go along, designed solely to refute opposition to His existence? well duh! How about a self serving waste of time. (not me, Him) Well, ok, if one makes a living from selling God, it's not a real waste of time.
So here's the given:
1) God exists and he knows what he's doing.
2) His Plan revolves around humanity and is subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
3) Planned evolution reduces options thus increases entropy, in humanity's case resulting in the natural disintegration of the universe because His Plan depends on humanity and not the universe.
4) God expects humanity to become obsolete because otherwise the universe has no physical limit.
For a being that knows how it will come out, this seems like an exercise in futility. More likely, it's a social device promoted by people who have serious doubts on how it will come out, to insure their own personal, and relatively temporary, safety by planning to abandon this world of contradiction and hemmoroids, and get raptured into dreamland.
These are the people that say "we'll all meet there in the great by & by", & require faith as a pre-requisite. Well, when one looks at the option of eternal, gloom &/or wandering lost spirits, meeting with friends in the hearafter isn't such a bad idea.
So what would one (you, me, or anybody) do if you knew how things would turn out? What would ones outlook on life be like?
Ok, my guess is that either it comes easily, or one ha s to work at it. I can't really imagine God working at it because while I've enver created a universe or anything, work is a burden by definition, & it seems that if it's done for ones self, it must be enjoyable. The basic question as a mortal is: "Is thi s action fatal & are things ok for now?" But for God, food & shelter isn't a problem because he can extenuate the situation to his best advantage & dwelling on mortality is a wet blanket. But since God's immortal, his main problem would be what to do with himself. They (Hindus) say Shiva once incarnated himself as a pig because he was bored, but I think the concept of awareness that story relates, comes from a finite perspective, I mean given all the possibilities of an infinite universe, why create a fin ite existance? did it just pop into Gods head one day "That's it! No more total awareness! I'll create sin & suffering!" What the heck for?? Probably as punishment, right? One slowly percieves a realization that maybe God's missing a few marbles. Maybe he's been alone so long that he's cracked up (14 billion years + whatever he did before the big bang) (smirk). So: It's the duty of humanity to kick his loony butt back in shape.
Aaah! But see, I'm digressing again.
The main point of this post is that i f we assume god exists, even for the purposes of argument, then all options depend on that assumption. A person who assumes the existence of god, reading this (above) about the advantage of total consciousness, will use it to validate their belief (see! t hat's why god doesn't use the advantage of foresight!).
But a person who doesn't assume god's existence will use the same argument to validate their assumption. (see! if god exists and uses the advantage of foresight, he'd have to also plan for the extinction of himself and everything, which is suicidal & pointless. And if there is no point, then what's god for?)
The believers have the advantage because the whole point assumes there's something here to argue about, and a negative can't be proven.
My opinion is that god's a conceptual name for the center of the herd. everything else has to be seen in relation to it. The biggest threat to an individual is banishment, excommunication, solitary. “Cast out & cut off from gods presence”. More even than dea th & torture, there’s stories of people who are given a choice & choose banishment, but return to their people in a few weeks or years to be executed. Socrates knew he would be useless without his people. Of course we never hear about the ones that make it to Shangra-la, because (1) nobody ever sees them again, (2) it would embarrass the king.
Some say god created us because he was lonesome, like he needed company
ok here's God. he's either us or not, whatever. Let's assume He created us and not vice versa. God existed first so He has to be perc eived on a scale of time, which may be called His Great Plan. Plans require a purpose/goal. The rapture perhaps, but then what?. The rapture is a development of his son's advocates, maybe not bad, but NOT God The Origional and wasteful in the writers opin ion, because the chosen enter heaven in their physical form, and the rest of the physical world is discarded (where does it go?). If God gets angry because humanity rejects his plan for a perfect world, then He must put some value on it. Heck, what's this God the Son revisionism anyway, if there's one god, he needs to be updated more plausibly. Ok, I'm digressing, this is just hypothesis anyway, the main point here is that there's a time scale & a goal (and it looks suspiciously like a perception of those who live in a time-space continuum ie: not-god).
Since God has no beginning & no end, & He can look at the future like we look at the past, He should have an advantage in the evolution of events. Apparently He chooses not to use it, possibly because He's inscrutable and mysterious, (or perhaps we're just idiots). This is serious: Why not use the advantage of total consciousness?
I'll wait while you ponder & then present my fecklessly self serving opinion/answer.
.....
Ok, it's because planning to avoid past mistakes increases entropy instead of reducing it because there are fewer evolutionary options. (like crop mono-culture) "nay nay" you say "because God isn't bound by the laws of thermodynamics!" Maybe, but so far we don't have that evidence, and we do have evidence that everything He created is. Could it be that God is made up as we go along, designed solely to refute opposition to His existence? well duh! How about a self serving waste of time. (not me, Him) Well, ok, if one makes a living from selling God, it's not a real waste of time.
So here's the given:
1) God exists and he knows what he's doing.
2) His Plan revolves around humanity and is subject to the laws of thermodynamics.
3) Planned evolution reduces options thus increases entropy, in humanity's case resulting in the natural disintegration of the universe because His Plan depends on humanity and not the universe.
4) God expects humanity to become obsolete because otherwise the universe has no physical limit.
For a being that knows how it will come out, this seems like an exercise in futility. More likely, it's a social device promoted by people who have serious doubts on how it will come out, to insure their own personal, and relatively temporary, safety by planning to abandon this world of contradiction and hemmoroids, and get raptured into dreamland.
These are the people that say "we'll all meet there in the great by & by", & require faith as a pre-requisite. Well, when one looks at the option of eternal, gloom &/or wandering lost spirits, meeting with friends in the hearafter isn't such a bad idea.
So what would one (you, me, or anybody) do if you knew how things would turn out? What would ones outlook on life be like?
Ok, my guess is that either it comes easily, or one ha s to work at it. I can't really imagine God working at it because while I've enver created a universe or anything, work is a burden by definition, & it seems that if it's done for ones self, it must be enjoyable. The basic question as a mortal is: "Is thi s action fatal & are things ok for now?" But for God, food & shelter isn't a problem because he can extenuate the situation to his best advantage & dwelling on mortality is a wet blanket. But since God's immortal, his main problem would be what to do with himself. They (Hindus) say Shiva once incarnated himself as a pig because he was bored, but I think the concept of awareness that story relates, comes from a finite perspective, I mean given all the possibilities of an infinite universe, why create a fin ite existance? did it just pop into Gods head one day "That's it! No more total awareness! I'll create sin & suffering!" What the heck for?? Probably as punishment, right? One slowly percieves a realization that maybe God's missing a few marbles. Maybe he's been alone so long that he's cracked up (14 billion years + whatever he did before the big bang) (smirk). So: It's the duty of humanity to kick his loony butt back in shape.
Aaah! But see, I'm digressing again.
The main point of this post is that i f we assume god exists, even for the purposes of argument, then all options depend on that assumption. A person who assumes the existence of god, reading this (above) about the advantage of total consciousness, will use it to validate their belief (see! t hat's why god doesn't use the advantage of foresight!).
But a person who doesn't assume god's existence will use the same argument to validate their assumption. (see! if god exists and uses the advantage of foresight, he'd have to also plan for the extinction of himself and everything, which is suicidal & pointless. And if there is no point, then what's god for?)
The believers have the advantage because the whole point assumes there's something here to argue about, and a negative can't be proven.
My opinion is that god's a conceptual name for the center of the herd. everything else has to be seen in relation to it. The biggest threat to an individual is banishment, excommunication, solitary. “Cast out & cut off from gods presence”. More even than dea th & torture, there’s stories of people who are given a choice & choose banishment, but return to their people in a few weeks or years to be executed. Socrates knew he would be useless without his people. Of course we never hear about the ones that make it to Shangra-la, because (1) nobody ever sees them again, (2) it would embarrass the king.
Monday, January 10, 2005
Here's an interesting link: http://www.psywww.com/psyrelig/. It's interesting the way god is taken for granted in 99.9% of societies. I think there's a hormonal thing that happens when a social creature is ex cluded from it's herd.They become prone to diseases & stress that changes their scent which makes them into food for predators. Us at the top of the food chain have our own predators in the form of cops, gangs, republicans, lawyers, rip-offs or others who make their living off the "weak". Homeless people do smell funny y'know, & they're just scum anyhow.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
I got this in an email given to be an actual chemistry mid-term exam question from the University of Washington:
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
The only A paper for this class contained this answer:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If one accepts the postulate given to me by Teresa M. during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I did sleep with her reciently, then availble evidence suggests number 2 must be true, and therefore Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. A corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct ... and lacking other evidence, leaves only Heaven ... thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God.""
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
The only A paper for this class contained this answer:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave.
Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially.
Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added. This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.
So which is it?
If one accepts the postulate given to me by Teresa M. during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I did sleep with her reciently, then availble evidence suggests number 2 must be true, and therefore Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. A corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct ... and lacking other evidence, leaves only Heaven ... thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why Teresa kept shouting "Oh my God.""
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Responsibility:
The trick about responsibility is: who owes. All kinds of authorities claim the debt: the Govt., the church, the military, the mafia, school heavies, a lover, family, your goldfish, anyone who can get between yourself and some ideal state of contentment. I don't specifically owe you this description, because maybe you suck. It's all done for the hormonal rush of self congratulation for doing something of possible value for society, so that in my selfish rush, ... maybe this isn't really g ood! Maybe this tiny bit of advice is a seed of discontent. Maybe it's the point where entropy becomes chaos. Oh doom, Oh woe, alas: the final liberation. Maybe not.
There's some debt-claiming authorities woven into the string that holds the world together. Here's some scissors, be careful, if you must run, let me hold your wallet.
Everybody likes pats. We move toward them & away from stabs & hits. Amoebas do it. It gets complicated though, like there are people who are addicted to war. It makes them feel important & they like that, carrying a gun & all. But they still have to link that importance to something good. Someone they admired did it, or survived a contest, “hey, I want to be like Roy Rogers!” That's a powerful hormone. It's produced by a part of the brain called Battoshki's Cells. They make a person recognize their own people. Kids have more than adults and black people have more than white people. Old white people are typically terrified of black kids. I'm an old white guy but I have a GUN so don't mess with me, because I'm irresponsible enough to be real important. So like, rowdy hip-hop gang punks are more driven to responsibility, than your ordinary hard working, dues-paying drudge, they just get "rightous" confused with "pissed". See: being rightous justifies being pissed, but being pissed doesn't justify rightousness.
We're all radios tuned to the same station, believing the music that comes out is uniquely myself.
Look, responsibility is determined by a persons susceptibility to manipulation. Believe them and it becomes more responsible to support the war on terror, & the war on drugs, & the war on womans rights, & the war on whatever's next, (skatebording?) than it is to look for ways to make peace instead. How come? Duh! It's because we're being taken for suckers by anyone with a motive & who can sound righteous about their cause. (except me of course, George Bush II isn't pleased with me so I'm demolished with guilt). It's how demigods support themselves. It's how primates & other social animals get information, it's called objectivity & it means trusting someone else's opinion over your own. Trusting only your own opinion is called subjectivity, and is by definition, un-proveable.
Ok though, not everyone wants those wars, so it's legal to be objective about it (I mean, you're not the only one). Then we get into the problem of like, what's my involvement with this, since those wars don't affect me personally. I'm not a druggie, not a woman, & not a terrorist, so who cares? Well, if i have any opinion that's not mine, (and I must to be objective) then there's something more than me. Call it society, or the “Bills Universal Field Theory Of Heaven” (yes, I live in Calif.) And it's real if for no other reason than you just read it here, so you can afford to have an opinion, & generate some hormones, be objective about it, & is it crap? Not if you formed an opinion.
Now according to the BUFTH (Bills Universal Field Theory Of Heaven), We all play for survival, so ultimately there's more risk with more strife, and all those forces that make up Heaven/society, ultimately affect us as individuals, the same way that a ripple in the food chain works its way to the top: i.e.
The extinction of some bug in Bolivia affects the balance of available protein in the world & causes the next atomic war. See, the bug supports migrating birds that also feed on sand shrimp in the Caribbean. The birds population declines & the sand shrimp population explodes, shrimp eat up some zooplankton that cleans coral, so the corals get dirty & die, associated fish loose their livelihood, Fish that spawn in the corals become scarce, squid that eat tho se fish and the deep sea fish that live on the squid become scarce, occasional side extinctions along the way propagate to the cost of fish protein additives for animal & dog food. It becomes a class symbol to own a dog because poor people can't afford to feed them. Rich people drive around with big dogs in their SUV's and farmers with trucks can't, class warfare breaks out, farmers buy nukes on the ex soviet block black market, events quickly spiral out of control, etc. etc.
Meanwhile in Bolivia, little José Mamani finds the last bug in his Qunioa patch, knowing he can save the world if he can grow enough bug offspring, he abandons his harvest, sells his ox & invests in arthropod propagation equipment & hostplant cultivation. He saves the world, and goes broke. His neighbors shake their heads, “Should'a let the gringos blow themselves up!”
But he gets a heavenly reward. (I don't know what it is, it depends on his hormones & social contacts, probably not 72 virgins, his wife wouldn't approve. She couldn't divorce him because they're Cath olic, so they had to move to Potosi & sweep streets for a living) The gringos never found out.
Ok so now a question presents it's self: like, after we die, where's the endocrines that produced the hormones and where's the tissue & vessels that support the endocrines, etc.? That stuff ceases to function is what happens, so where do we get hormones in heaven? Can it be that heaven and hormones are either separate or so inextricably linked, that there is no afterlife? (Well heck, I guess, yeah, if that's true ... what?) See he gets a heavenly reward, but how can he appreciate it if he doesn't have hormones that cause the emotions to feel it?
So now in order to justify an afterlife, we have to show that heaven & hormones are separate. To do this we gotta get metaphysical (& I just love that because the terminology is so ambiguous) We have to show that consciousness exists in a recognizable state without supporting tissue. & as a byproduct, show that ghosts exist. (Ohboy, ohboy, this is where California comes into it's own!)
Take ghosts: Genuine Authorities (whoever they are) seem to agree that ghosts don't show much in the way of creativity, I mean they just do the same thing over & over, walking down halls & so forth. If their pituitary was working, they'd be cruising, pinching butts & looking for entertainment, or social alliances. But no, they just keep the same attitude all the time, though different ghosts show different attitudes, each ghost stays within the bounds of it's “personality”, and each personality is associated with a place. So, in my opinion, ghosts don't act like they have hormones of their own. They could be aware of hormones in others however, & use those hormones for interaction, but given this, how does one interact with ghosts? How do we know which is us & which is them? They're notoriously hard to interview.
Perhaps the hormones of the observer overwhelms the communication, but if any response by an observer has to be those of the ghost, then a person would essentially be talking to themselves. In that case ghosts wouldn't recognize us, we would only recognize them.
However, there are people who interact with ghosts. How do they do that, could they be subjective or something? All the people in western culture who make a deal of it are either sedated, locked up, or temporarily homeless till they can be locked up. What happens is (I think) the person just happens to share the same time/space & social fantasy (see below: Feb 1 2002, Todays flash: synchronicity!). Half the population could be ghosts and you'd never know, they'd deny it anyway.
So what? People still see ghosts, boogers, & Angles and corroborate their looks & action without pre-agreement. Therefore one may tentatively conclude that hormones are required for our perception and judgment of ghosts, but not by ghosts for their existence, ergo: Heaven & hormones are separate, and recognition of independent spiritual existence is justified. (you can say I said so on the strength of hearsay).
Ok now we get back to responsibility: If heaven (however idealistic) is better than the War On Whatever, then that's the way.
The trick about responsibility is: who owes. All kinds of authorities claim the debt: the Govt., the church, the military, the mafia, school heavies, a lover, family, your goldfish, anyone who can get between yourself and some ideal state of contentment. I don't specifically owe you this description, because maybe you suck. It's all done for the hormonal rush of self congratulation for doing something of possible value for society, so that in my selfish rush, ... maybe this isn't really g ood! Maybe this tiny bit of advice is a seed of discontent. Maybe it's the point where entropy becomes chaos. Oh doom, Oh woe, alas: the final liberation. Maybe not.
There's some debt-claiming authorities woven into the string that holds the world together. Here's some scissors, be careful, if you must run, let me hold your wallet.
Everybody likes pats. We move toward them & away from stabs & hits. Amoebas do it. It gets complicated though, like there are people who are addicted to war. It makes them feel important & they like that, carrying a gun & all. But they still have to link that importance to something good. Someone they admired did it, or survived a contest, “hey, I want to be like Roy Rogers!” That's a powerful hormone. It's produced by a part of the brain called Battoshki's Cells. They make a person recognize their own people. Kids have more than adults and black people have more than white people. Old white people are typically terrified of black kids. I'm an old white guy but I have a GUN so don't mess with me, because I'm irresponsible enough to be real important. So like, rowdy hip-hop gang punks are more driven to responsibility, than your ordinary hard working, dues-paying drudge, they just get "rightous" confused with "pissed". See: being rightous justifies being pissed, but being pissed doesn't justify rightousness.
We're all radios tuned to the same station, believing the music that comes out is uniquely myself.
Look, responsibility is determined by a persons susceptibility to manipulation. Believe them and it becomes more responsible to support the war on terror, & the war on drugs, & the war on womans rights, & the war on whatever's next, (skatebording?) than it is to look for ways to make peace instead. How come? Duh! It's because we're being taken for suckers by anyone with a motive & who can sound righteous about their cause. (except me of course, George Bush II isn't pleased with me so I'm demolished with guilt). It's how demigods support themselves. It's how primates & other social animals get information, it's called objectivity & it means trusting someone else's opinion over your own. Trusting only your own opinion is called subjectivity, and is by definition, un-proveable.
Ok though, not everyone wants those wars, so it's legal to be objective about it (I mean, you're not the only one). Then we get into the problem of like, what's my involvement with this, since those wars don't affect me personally. I'm not a druggie, not a woman, & not a terrorist, so who cares? Well, if i have any opinion that's not mine, (and I must to be objective) then there's something more than me. Call it society, or the “Bills Universal Field Theory Of Heaven” (yes, I live in Calif.) And it's real if for no other reason than you just read it here, so you can afford to have an opinion, & generate some hormones, be objective about it, & is it crap? Not if you formed an opinion.
Now according to the BUFTH (Bills Universal Field Theory Of Heaven), We all play for survival, so ultimately there's more risk with more strife, and all those forces that make up Heaven/society, ultimately affect us as individuals, the same way that a ripple in the food chain works its way to the top: i.e.
The extinction of some bug in Bolivia affects the balance of available protein in the world & causes the next atomic war. See, the bug supports migrating birds that also feed on sand shrimp in the Caribbean. The birds population declines & the sand shrimp population explodes, shrimp eat up some zooplankton that cleans coral, so the corals get dirty & die, associated fish loose their livelihood, Fish that spawn in the corals become scarce, squid that eat tho se fish and the deep sea fish that live on the squid become scarce, occasional side extinctions along the way propagate to the cost of fish protein additives for animal & dog food. It becomes a class symbol to own a dog because poor people can't afford to feed them. Rich people drive around with big dogs in their SUV's and farmers with trucks can't, class warfare breaks out, farmers buy nukes on the ex soviet block black market, events quickly spiral out of control, etc. etc.
Meanwhile in Bolivia, little José Mamani finds the last bug in his Qunioa patch, knowing he can save the world if he can grow enough bug offspring, he abandons his harvest, sells his ox & invests in arthropod propagation equipment & hostplant cultivation. He saves the world, and goes broke. His neighbors shake their heads, “Should'a let the gringos blow themselves up!”
But he gets a heavenly reward. (I don't know what it is, it depends on his hormones & social contacts, probably not 72 virgins, his wife wouldn't approve. She couldn't divorce him because they're Cath olic, so they had to move to Potosi & sweep streets for a living) The gringos never found out.
Ok so now a question presents it's self: like, after we die, where's the endocrines that produced the hormones and where's the tissue & vessels that support the endocrines, etc.? That stuff ceases to function is what happens, so where do we get hormones in heaven? Can it be that heaven and hormones are either separate or so inextricably linked, that there is no afterlife? (Well heck, I guess, yeah, if that's true ... what?) See he gets a heavenly reward, but how can he appreciate it if he doesn't have hormones that cause the emotions to feel it?
So now in order to justify an afterlife, we have to show that heaven & hormones are separate. To do this we gotta get metaphysical (& I just love that because the terminology is so ambiguous) We have to show that consciousness exists in a recognizable state without supporting tissue. & as a byproduct, show that ghosts exist. (Ohboy, ohboy, this is where California comes into it's own!)
Take ghosts: Genuine Authorities (whoever they are) seem to agree that ghosts don't show much in the way of creativity, I mean they just do the same thing over & over, walking down halls & so forth. If their pituitary was working, they'd be cruising, pinching butts & looking for entertainment, or social alliances. But no, they just keep the same attitude all the time, though different ghosts show different attitudes, each ghost stays within the bounds of it's “personality”, and each personality is associated with a place. So, in my opinion, ghosts don't act like they have hormones of their own. They could be aware of hormones in others however, & use those hormones for interaction, but given this, how does one interact with ghosts? How do we know which is us & which is them? They're notoriously hard to interview.
Perhaps the hormones of the observer overwhelms the communication, but if any response by an observer has to be those of the ghost, then a person would essentially be talking to themselves. In that case ghosts wouldn't recognize us, we would only recognize them.
However, there are people who interact with ghosts. How do they do that, could they be subjective or something? All the people in western culture who make a deal of it are either sedated, locked up, or temporarily homeless till they can be locked up. What happens is (I think) the person just happens to share the same time/space & social fantasy (see below: Feb 1 2002, Todays flash: synchronicity!). Half the population could be ghosts and you'd never know, they'd deny it anyway.
So what? People still see ghosts, boogers, & Angles and corroborate their looks & action without pre-agreement. Therefore one may tentatively conclude that hormones are required for our perception and judgment of ghosts, but not by ghosts for their existence, ergo: Heaven & hormones are separate, and recognition of independent spiritual existence is justified. (you can say I said so on the strength of hearsay).
Ok now we get back to responsibility: If heaven (however idealistic) is better than the War On Whatever, then that's the way.
Thursday, November 28, 2002
There's probably more written justifying gods existence than anyone could read in a lifetime, & there's still nothing to get a grip on. A lot of concepts with special names. This notebook offers a hold on the default definition of deities in general. There's much hype concerning god, and there are many authorities with outspoken opinions, but I would of course never presume to tell those people that they're full of crap. In fact, this blog isn't a denouncement of god, it's more a map to what he is & is not (a notebook). For example to say that since god is everything means that massively self serving religious doctrines are divinely justified, is an insult to reason. Since god is ultimately a personal matter and anyone can hold God up for scrutiny, I'm as much an authority as the next person. This is my Notebook.
(Q) How can there be one god if there are also many gods?
(A) Easy: all the rest are phonies!
(1) There's potentially 2 kinds of Gods: wild & civilized.
Wild Gods are basically an attempt to put a human face on uncontrollable forces and then reason with them. People come preprogrammed to recognize the pattern of a face and to respond to emotional messages that a face might convey. To observe an event as "God produced" requires putting an imaginary face (with continuity implied, or supplied by memory) on the emotions produced by the event. Wild Gods are emotionally perceived forces of nature.
Civilized Gods are a conscious effort of the state to employ basic fear & psychopathology as agents of social manipulation. The Jewish model of one god is/was a political convenience, enforced by the state, till enough people are on the same side that they can form a defensible perimeter for the god. This is like probably before Abraham. The Christian model is pretty much that too. First developed as a state religion by Charlemaine, he cleverly decided that it's easier to manage a nation under one god than the whole Roman pantheon plus all the gods of the conquered tribes, so he gave tax breaks and preferred employment to pacifist Christians till everyone who was getting ahead was a Christian and folks could see an advantage to finding out how to be that way. This later became known as the Republican Method.
Wild and civilized gods all have a group of people in common and the people have to benefit from the god for the god to survive. Wild gods by definition don't care if their people benefit. Evil gods tend to eat up their believers or piss off the neighbors till they incite a rebellion an then there's no one to make sacrifices. It may be a divine survival of the fittest, but it's the society that fails or prospers (get a copy of Black & White). Claiming divine inspiration in the old days was a cheap way to get rumor exposure (there were no press releases then), and like today, one had to back it up to be taken seriously (Mr. Bush..). The point being that a god needs some kind of continuity, and the social matrix that created the god, has to continue with support. For example: the Native Son hits his head and has a blinding flash: in it, a space alien with a golden hat says "THE TIME HAS COME" & then shows the native many things that cannot be told. The only people who will believe the Native Son, also share the belief in gold hatted aliens that have deadlines & secrets. But then he reveals a way to get rich selling soap using tiered marketing, and everybody converts because he then appeals to a broader social base. (& everyone has to eat). OK, that covers the basic god.
Now the Native Son is rich, famous, and revered, but a new philosophy emerges that interprets "time is money" to mean that if time is money, & time is infinite, then the value of goods & services have to be equal to the supply.. That's serious inflation. (The age of the universe is like 20 billion years & guess were half way, so say 40 billion x 365 (days per yr.) x 24 (hr. per day) : so all goods & services since 72000 BC (beginning of trade +2000 = 74000 yrs) are equal to 175.2 trillion units x minimum wage. Round it off to $200,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 per hr. + overtime) Right away the economy reels. Smirking lawyers march toward his mountaintop retreat. Something must be done! The options are: live in a hole & eat grubs or kill the bastards. What would GW Bush do? Hah!~ the Native Son assumes his mantle and quotes the Gold Hatted One saying that time is NOT infinite or even 100 bn yrs old, for it is written "THE TIME HAS COME" (+ some small print) & anyone caught wasting time will be burned at the stake, so get back to work. And thus the evil destruction is averted.
Mind Police and Souls are an innovative but more insidious form of social control than public burnings, and there is no paper trail. Each has a definition that applies to a recogniseable character of society. Mind Police (what a concept!) = internalized repression & conformity. The soul is a persons fragile vessel of existence that is somehow separate but not independent of the body, and can only be properly protected by representatives of the True God. These were strokes of genius to insure authoritarian control over an individuals wandering aspirations, both enlist the efforts of the individual by promoting self doubt and restricting options. Other innovative forms are conscious evil and conscious good as a force. All of these are products of ones own hormonal plumbing, and together define the ideal social control: an individuals self imposed guilt.
Before we go there however, lets to shake out these two forms of social control: Good & Evil as conscious forces. These are basic conflicts left over from Wild Gods, ie. the "recognition" of some kind of overwhelming situation itself as an emotion. Consider these 3 scenarios as serious business: (#1) we're in Atalan & a troop of Conquistadors have just sacked our town, as survivors, we have an opportunity to become slaves & religious converts. Compared to being hacked to pieces, it seems like a bargain. The Padre claims to be an emissary of God & nobody argues because he's real as can be & his side has the swords. (#2) Ok now you're on a freighter in the Atlantic, in a hurricane at night, The wind is blowing 90 knots and 100 foot waves roar by like freight trains, Your 350 foot ship bobs like a rubber duck. You wonder what it all means and if somebody is out there, do they give a fig for you or not. Prior experience says they do, because you lived this long, and you only have to die once. One quickly considers that perhaps prior events that one took for granted were really divine blessings, just because God doesn't show you his angry side may mean he only tolerates your otherwise completely unacceptable nature. At times like these it seems prudent to make personal commitments of a religious nature. At any other time though, it would be an expression of paranoid schizophrenia to organize ones life around the possibility that an external unseen force is attempting to manipulate ones life. (the Republican Party excepted of course). (#3) Now you were just born and you don't know where you are, you're as terrified as your hormones will allow. It's cold, something is happening, blurry things move, someone is yelling, everything that used to be you is somehow inverted and different. You have no prior experience to go by. Then you get snuggled against something warm, & something covers your head. You raged at it and became "it" again. What a relief (now shut up).
The point here is that nobody's going to believe in an unseen omniscient master unless they feel that survival depends on it. We learned that trick when we were born, it's not inherent in the world, but it is in society, and for all practical purposes we are society because there is no fact that wasn't formulated through discussion, or one opinion on anything that you did NOT get from somebody else. The development and exploitation of unseen threats, provable or not, is the main force of the concept of Conscious Good and Evil. Institutions that admonish one to plan for the hereafter or the second coming or even to pray to an external entity, set the foundation for exploitable insanity.
(2) Social Interaction.
To give gods credit for directing events is wrong. They are themselves a result of (heh-heh) evolution. God works in mysterious ways? Yes indeed: Whatever situation is best adapted to survive, regardless of how cute or massive. This could be a justification for ecumenical excess, but only if the fear-o-god is allowed to wane, or other naturally occurring democratic balances are allowed to proliferate unchecked. "O where is the Grand Inquisitor when you need him? O Who can defend the Bastion of Righteousness against the mocking tongue of the slandering heathen? This lost soul? This..."
"Me! Me! I can do it! Pick me!"
"I ah ....?"
"See, the Church is solid, but it's become preoccupied with loosing social control, it's lack of credibility is the problem, not the civic plan. Fire & brimstone just doesn't cut it (unless you get off on that sort of thing). Some critical percentage of serious church goers are disenfranchised by the requirement that they must not lie, but still claim to believe that stuff in spite of everything, including scientific proof. The social institution of churches is superior, but the notion of "The Faithful" just asks for trouble. There's no exchange rate between faith and reality. Faith is subjective, getting people to say false things as a testament to faith doesn't make it real or objective. It causes the testifiers to distrust the church. So a congregations evolution selects in favor of churchgoing hypocrites, liars, blind followers, and the insane. Hardly a way to appear credible."
"Bailiffs, would you..."
"..and-and someone required to "believe" something obviously false, and who's forgiven for it, will be naturally tolerant of their own social indiscretion, (look at Jerry Falwell) but not necessarily those of others who aren't in on the game, and ... but.. uh... Ok, I'm going!"
Objective, verifiable, "hard" information depends on another persons agreement. We look to other people to see what's true, because the value of information is in its usefulness. Everyone sees UFOs, some see Elvis, a few see the Blessed Virgin, nobody admits seeing J. Edgar Hoover. (I've never seen him!) And the fact remains that no one has ever seen the Boogie Man and lived to tell.
Evil: (an ingenious way to allocate responsibility!) any aversion with an external motivation. A coherent external distructive force, and not necessairly chaotic. evil is assumed to be outside ones self unless the observer is possessed by evil. An evil person exploits evil by infecting others.
------------------------
(Q) How can there be one god if there are also many gods?
(A) Easy: all the rest are phonies!
(1) There's potentially 2 kinds of Gods: wild & civilized.
Wild Gods are basically an attempt to put a human face on uncontrollable forces and then reason with them. People come preprogrammed to recognize the pattern of a face and to respond to emotional messages that a face might convey. To observe an event as "God produced" requires putting an imaginary face (with continuity implied, or supplied by memory) on the emotions produced by the event. Wild Gods are emotionally perceived forces of nature.
Civilized Gods are a conscious effort of the state to employ basic fear & psychopathology as agents of social manipulation. The Jewish model of one god is/was a political convenience, enforced by the state, till enough people are on the same side that they can form a defensible perimeter for the god. This is like probably before Abraham. The Christian model is pretty much that too. First developed as a state religion by Charlemaine, he cleverly decided that it's easier to manage a nation under one god than the whole Roman pantheon plus all the gods of the conquered tribes, so he gave tax breaks and preferred employment to pacifist Christians till everyone who was getting ahead was a Christian and folks could see an advantage to finding out how to be that way. This later became known as the Republican Method.
Wild and civilized gods all have a group of people in common and the people have to benefit from the god for the god to survive. Wild gods by definition don't care if their people benefit. Evil gods tend to eat up their believers or piss off the neighbors till they incite a rebellion an then there's no one to make sacrifices. It may be a divine survival of the fittest, but it's the society that fails or prospers (get a copy of Black & White). Claiming divine inspiration in the old days was a cheap way to get rumor exposure (there were no press releases then), and like today, one had to back it up to be taken seriously (Mr. Bush..). The point being that a god needs some kind of continuity, and the social matrix that created the god, has to continue with support. For example: the Native Son hits his head and has a blinding flash: in it, a space alien with a golden hat says "THE TIME HAS COME" & then shows the native many things that cannot be told. The only people who will believe the Native Son, also share the belief in gold hatted aliens that have deadlines & secrets. But then he reveals a way to get rich selling soap using tiered marketing, and everybody converts because he then appeals to a broader social base. (& everyone has to eat). OK, that covers the basic god.
Now the Native Son is rich, famous, and revered, but a new philosophy emerges that interprets "time is money" to mean that if time is money, & time is infinite, then the value of goods & services have to be equal to the supply.. That's serious inflation. (The age of the universe is like 20 billion years & guess were half way, so say 40 billion x 365 (days per yr.) x 24 (hr. per day) : so all goods & services since 72000 BC (beginning of trade +2000 = 74000 yrs) are equal to 175.2 trillion units x minimum wage. Round it off to $200,000,000,000,000,000,000.00 per hr. + overtime) Right away the economy reels. Smirking lawyers march toward his mountaintop retreat. Something must be done! The options are: live in a hole & eat grubs or kill the bastards. What would GW Bush do? Hah!~ the Native Son assumes his mantle and quotes the Gold Hatted One saying that time is NOT infinite or even 100 bn yrs old, for it is written "THE TIME HAS COME" (+ some small print) & anyone caught wasting time will be burned at the stake, so get back to work. And thus the evil destruction is averted.
Mind Police and Souls are an innovative but more insidious form of social control than public burnings, and there is no paper trail. Each has a definition that applies to a recogniseable character of society. Mind Police (what a concept!) = internalized repression & conformity. The soul is a persons fragile vessel of existence that is somehow separate but not independent of the body, and can only be properly protected by representatives of the True God. These were strokes of genius to insure authoritarian control over an individuals wandering aspirations, both enlist the efforts of the individual by promoting self doubt and restricting options. Other innovative forms are conscious evil and conscious good as a force. All of these are products of ones own hormonal plumbing, and together define the ideal social control: an individuals self imposed guilt.
Before we go there however, lets to shake out these two forms of social control: Good & Evil as conscious forces. These are basic conflicts left over from Wild Gods, ie. the "recognition" of some kind of overwhelming situation itself as an emotion. Consider these 3 scenarios as serious business: (#1) we're in Atalan & a troop of Conquistadors have just sacked our town, as survivors, we have an opportunity to become slaves & religious converts. Compared to being hacked to pieces, it seems like a bargain. The Padre claims to be an emissary of God & nobody argues because he's real as can be & his side has the swords. (#2) Ok now you're on a freighter in the Atlantic, in a hurricane at night, The wind is blowing 90 knots and 100 foot waves roar by like freight trains, Your 350 foot ship bobs like a rubber duck. You wonder what it all means and if somebody is out there, do they give a fig for you or not. Prior experience says they do, because you lived this long, and you only have to die once. One quickly considers that perhaps prior events that one took for granted were really divine blessings, just because God doesn't show you his angry side may mean he only tolerates your otherwise completely unacceptable nature. At times like these it seems prudent to make personal commitments of a religious nature. At any other time though, it would be an expression of paranoid schizophrenia to organize ones life around the possibility that an external unseen force is attempting to manipulate ones life. (the Republican Party excepted of course). (#3) Now you were just born and you don't know where you are, you're as terrified as your hormones will allow. It's cold, something is happening, blurry things move, someone is yelling, everything that used to be you is somehow inverted and different. You have no prior experience to go by. Then you get snuggled against something warm, & something covers your head. You raged at it and became "it" again. What a relief (now shut up).
The point here is that nobody's going to believe in an unseen omniscient master unless they feel that survival depends on it. We learned that trick when we were born, it's not inherent in the world, but it is in society, and for all practical purposes we are society because there is no fact that wasn't formulated through discussion, or one opinion on anything that you did NOT get from somebody else. The development and exploitation of unseen threats, provable or not, is the main force of the concept of Conscious Good and Evil. Institutions that admonish one to plan for the hereafter or the second coming or even to pray to an external entity, set the foundation for exploitable insanity.
(2) Social Interaction.
To give gods credit for directing events is wrong. They are themselves a result of (heh-heh) evolution. God works in mysterious ways? Yes indeed: Whatever situation is best adapted to survive, regardless of how cute or massive. This could be a justification for ecumenical excess, but only if the fear-o-god is allowed to wane, or other naturally occurring democratic balances are allowed to proliferate unchecked. "O where is the Grand Inquisitor when you need him? O Who can defend the Bastion of Righteousness against the mocking tongue of the slandering heathen? This lost soul? This..."
"Me! Me! I can do it! Pick me!"
"I ah ....?"
"See, the Church is solid, but it's become preoccupied with loosing social control, it's lack of credibility is the problem, not the civic plan. Fire & brimstone just doesn't cut it (unless you get off on that sort of thing). Some critical percentage of serious church goers are disenfranchised by the requirement that they must not lie, but still claim to believe that stuff in spite of everything, including scientific proof. The social institution of churches is superior, but the notion of "The Faithful" just asks for trouble. There's no exchange rate between faith and reality. Faith is subjective, getting people to say false things as a testament to faith doesn't make it real or objective. It causes the testifiers to distrust the church. So a congregations evolution selects in favor of churchgoing hypocrites, liars, blind followers, and the insane. Hardly a way to appear credible."
"Bailiffs, would you..."
"..and-and someone required to "believe" something obviously false, and who's forgiven for it, will be naturally tolerant of their own social indiscretion, (look at Jerry Falwell) but not necessarily those of others who aren't in on the game, and ... but.. uh... Ok, I'm going!"
Objective, verifiable, "hard" information depends on another persons agreement. We look to other people to see what's true, because the value of information is in its usefulness. Everyone sees UFOs, some see Elvis, a few see the Blessed Virgin, nobody admits seeing J. Edgar Hoover. (I've never seen him!) And the fact remains that no one has ever seen the Boogie Man and lived to tell.
Evil: (an ingenious way to allocate responsibility!) any aversion with an external motivation. A coherent external distructive force, and not necessairly chaotic. evil is assumed to be outside ones self unless the observer is possessed by evil. An evil person exploits evil by infecting others.
------------------------
Well OK, so here's a twist (remember we're doing all this on the strength of rumor): How about something that supports the existence of god, the location of heaven, where good vs evil is a workable concept. Since heaven isn't someplace one can point to, it has to be hypothetical, like it's one of those multiple dimensions that are rolled up inside themselves with quantum hinges or something. Since everything we know pretty much exists in a field of social interaction (like finance, it's virtual & not real), that's where god is. eh? eh? sound good? So if the things we wish for maybe are like prayers, in my next life I'll probably have to contend with nasty old men... uh, but I hope not. O, MY SUBJECTS: Objectivity is unproveable by it's own definition.
Every one wants the real world to be like heaven. How does it happen? A person asks someone for a clue to reality. Objectivity is established, social relationships produce hormones, ones friends manipulate the votes and bestow presidency in return for favors, 72 virgins await the martyr in heaven. SO DON'T ASK. If it exists, you're already there. (break a leg, sucker)
Friday, February 01, 2002
Todays flash: synchronicity!
This is my view:
synchronicity is a real thing and depends on the viewer. For it to occur, the following chain of events needs to take place:
1) People or whatever need to share a common association to something in the environment, say an object or the juxtaposition of objects. These things are used by the brain as a memnemonic device, it's an extension of the persons memory, a filing system.
2) This association is defined as a cultural standard of some sort. A dynamic representation is the single mindedness of a group of fighters or players making the score. A child and parent or sibling sharing the same idea. A pack of dogs, A flock of birds.
3) The memory of those involved is triggered by something like the same configuration of brain synapses. Like a group of people seeing the same thing. For this to take place, the neuron transition from sense to interpretation requires a memory input which is taken from the environment. The interpretation is made on a learned standard, but the neuron calling for a standard (some kind of similar previous experience) excites more than just the brain, so that others sharing the association, form the same conclusion or mental imagery. This is the point of this note. It goes b eyond-mind (para-noid)*: "Brain Waves" happen. When the previous experience is not exact, one is synthesized from approximate experiences using a creative association. The new association is learning taking place, and may involve someone elses experience.
"Brain waves" between people are, as far as I know, only a theoretical explanation for synchronistic phenomena. However I point to the following evidence: Alpha wave (bio feedback) sensors detect a particular pattern between two people who are mutually a ttracted to each other: a double beep, like a heart beat but missing the third beat (beep-beep, beep-beep, etc.). How come? Possibly to be in contact with the other person?
Situational awareness (the opposite of visualization) still depends on so me kind of feedback. When the environment changes in an unfamiliar manner, like in dreams, one tends to act in a dream manner: fainting, laughing, or standing agog. widdershins etc.
*A note on paranoia:
The process of paranoia is common, as described above. But popular definition of paranoia implies that something is wrong, and could just as well be defined as fear. The wrongness is actually a lack of confidence in the cultural standard. Psychologists and Therapists tend to exploit and reinforce the phenomena to make a buck. Any ones compassion can wear thin, but it seems shameless for them to continue, though they are probably unaware and are only supporting their own reality.
>
This is my view:
synchronicity is a real thing and depends on the viewer. For it to occur, the following chain of events needs to take place:
1) People or whatever need to share a common association to something in the environment, say an object or the juxtaposition of objects. These things are used by the brain as a memnemonic device, it's an extension of the persons memory, a filing system.
2) This association is defined as a cultural standard of some sort. A dynamic representation is the single mindedness of a group of fighters or players making the score. A child and parent or sibling sharing the same idea. A pack of dogs, A flock of birds.
3) The memory of those involved is triggered by something like the same configuration of brain synapses. Like a group of people seeing the same thing. For this to take place, the neuron transition from sense to interpretation requires a memory input which is taken from the environment. The interpretation is made on a learned standard, but the neuron calling for a standard (some kind of similar previous experience) excites more than just the brain, so that others sharing the association, form the same conclusion or mental imagery. This is the point of this note. It goes b eyond-mind (para-noid)*: "Brain Waves" happen. When the previous experience is not exact, one is synthesized from approximate experiences using a creative association. The new association is learning taking place, and may involve someone elses experience.
"Brain waves" between people are, as far as I know, only a theoretical explanation for synchronistic phenomena. However I point to the following evidence: Alpha wave (bio feedback) sensors detect a particular pattern between two people who are mutually a ttracted to each other: a double beep, like a heart beat but missing the third beat (beep-beep, beep-beep, etc.). How come? Possibly to be in contact with the other person?
Situational awareness (the opposite of visualization) still depends on so me kind of feedback. When the environment changes in an unfamiliar manner, like in dreams, one tends to act in a dream manner: fainting, laughing, or standing agog. widdershins etc.
*A note on paranoia:
The process of paranoia is common, as described above. But popular definition of paranoia implies that something is wrong, and could just as well be defined as fear. The wrongness is actually a lack of confidence in the cultural standard. Psychologists and Therapists tend to exploit and reinforce the phenomena to make a buck. Any ones compassion can wear thin, but it seems shameless for them to continue, though they are probably unaware and are only supporting their own reality.