The Divorce of Religion and Science

There are kernels of truth in most religions, but critics focus on the inconsistencies that plague any attempt at describing that which underlies language itself. Religion occupies that space beneath rational thought, hence its ceaseless brushes with science, which is an exclusively rational tool. Though religion and science could live side by side, our civilization has somehow divorced them from each other. I think the scientists simply got disgusted with how things in the church were going, and in retaliation, the church became even more dogmatically rejecting of verifiable observations of science. They have their own spheres and shouldn't be fighting, but unfortunately they are. The attrition has weakened both parties, and now both the scientific community and the religious are more dogmatic than ever.

Without a humane framework, science becomes a tool for lifeless corporations bent on extracting value from people and the earth and not really replenishing them. Sure, there are scientists working on clean fuels and higher yielding agriculture, but without the context afforded by spirituality, their only measure of success is money and other quantifiable things. Human happiness and well-being aren't quantifiable as even economists admit, so applying science this way can never produce happy humans. Without tools for investigating that which can be measured, religion degenerates into fact-denying superstition, witch hunts, outright war.

I believe we need to salvage spirituality from war-worn religion and reintroduce faith into the scientific community. Not faith that God exists as a bearded sky-daddy, but faith that kindness and humanity to others will prevail. Our vision manifests as physical reality, and without a positive vision, we will create a dark world no matter how shiny our tools are.

Civilization is a Blow-Up Doll

"From the perspective of all other life, human civilization is a cancer, but from the perspective of humans, civilization is a blow-up doll, a dead synthetic membrane that we play with for shallow pleasure, in a mockery of real procreation, because we are too frightened and incompetent to deal with the complexity and aliveness of reality."
-Ran Prieur http://www.ranprieur.com/essays/changevery.html

What a great way to put it. I love hating civilization because then it won't feel so bad when it collapses.

Philosophy is for People

Schools teach you certain very nice tools you can use to evaluate and create ideas. One caveat is that those trained to use these tools tend to only be able to communicate with their kind. Hence, the usual lack of rapport between the credentialed scholar and the undocumented one. However there are 2 even bigger divisive factors at play: insecurity and pre-verbal worldview. I will touch on the latter.

Two people who speak different languages will obviously have a problem communicating, but a translator can help. But even if the two have the same language, they can have a different approach in using the language. This difference can sometimes be enough to render productive interaction impossible. There is something beneath language and logic that must be aligned in the two partners for the conversation to be useful.

It's good that those with similar pre-verbal worldviews build with one another. We also need people who can facilitate communication between the worldviews so we can share the progress we all make. On the global scale, this is being done with interfaith organizations that hold conferences where insight is exchanged peacefully and usefully. Teachers facilitate communication between the university culture and the vernacular, but unfortunately the communication is usually one way.

To me philosophy is not just the love of knowledge, but the love of wisdom and what wisdom entails (at least according to Jesus, Buddha, et al): the love of others. A love of knowledge alone can become a race for knowledge, a competition of accumulation. "I know more than you." A more well-rounded philosophy IMHO includes the love of sharing useful knowledge with others. Note there is no forcing in sharing and no sense of condescension.

Stubbornness: The Only Real-Time Sin

No path is wrong because all wrong can be redeemed. Search back along the path until we reach the point where there was no sin of a particular nature. Remember life prior to that point. That life was ours! We can reclaim it! Resist the tendency to relinquish control to the "present," the present habit, which consists of past repeated behavior beginning with the original sin. But there are multiple pasts, segments of pasts, phases. An appropriate present--without the quotes--would consist of consciously chosen pasts and completely novel present actions. It would not be a complete repetition of the past.

In fact, history in its entirety is cruel and purposeless. But taken in segments, we see parts that we like and parts that we'd rather edit out. Editing out doesn't mean erasing the past, though. Keep that article there, like an old newspaper clipping catalogued in huge drawers. Editing out means removing its redundant rewriting in the present article. The present article should be free to explore new territory, not encumbered revisiting past stories that even with the continual replaying, we haven't gotten enough of yet. Remember how many times they showed the twin towers falling on TV? We have the same habit as the mass media. Rerun, rerun, and rerun dramas. Perhaps a change of cast here and there, even genre innovations, but the same themes.

Editing out will free up the channels to display something genuinely novel. Editing out frees up the mind to create new thoughts and entertain new perspectives. Eliminate Stubbornness, the only true sin. It is a real-time sin, something we're doing right now, not the past. Yes, we may have been addicted in the past and potentially again in the future, but right now, we have the choice to reject the real-time sin of stubbornness.

This is true freedom. Freedom is not the freedom to break a law, done merely to rebel against the law, written or unwritten. Freedom is the opportunity to make a deliberate choice whether to break the law. Freedom is the opportunity to make a deliberate choice whether to break the habit, to break stubbornness.

Aggro-Agriculture

Thousands of cultures through the millenia do not have the same desire we do to propagate our beliefs. What many of these cultures have in common is that they are hunter-gatherer societies. Daniel Quinn told me that in his books. I'd like to add reclusive Taoists and Buddhists to the list, among other nondualistic philosophies, but even then is it rare that an agrarian society can produce people who do not have the insatiable urge to xerox their brains onto other brains. Maybe Quinn was right and there's something truly abominable at the root of totalitarian agriculture--the idea that WE control the Earth strictly for our benefit and not our competitors (wolves, insects, birds). And since we are in control, we decide what is good and what is evil. And if you disagree, off with your head.

People are alarmed when a boy burns ants with a magnifying glass or a man runs over a bunch of geese with sadistic glee, thinking it's only a matter of time before he moves on to running over people. Couldn't that line of thinking be applied to institutionalized killing like totalitarian agriculture with its pesticides and competition elimination? If you have given yourself the power to determine which animal species deserve to live, it's only one step short of determining which human group deserves to live. Hunter-gatherers have battles. Agriculturalists have genocides. A requirement for genocide is a sense of absolute and universal righteousness, the same kind that enables a totalitarian agriculturalist to call himself king over the fish, the plants, and the pigs.

Equanimous Equilibrium

Why are breakups so hard? I understand it's good evolutionary practice to keep relationships stable enough to take care of the kids, but why is it so hard to move on even after that's done? Investment in memories. I'm a nostalgic type of guy. I will remember the good times disproportionately. I have trouble recalling the pain, annoyance, bickering, playing games. I wish I can cue my emotions up at will so I can remember to care for someone when I'm taking them for granted and to take them for granted when I no longer have their affection. It's silly how my emotional feedback circuits are so implacable, but I guess equilibrium is based on that bouncing back and forth. Is there such a thing as equanimous equilibrium? A balance that is held not by violent reaction but by sober resolution?

Yes. It is accessed by having a clear intention and thoroughly following through with it, plugging daily results into a conscious feedback mechanism rather than the unconscious one of habitual emotions. If I am ever to get anywhere in life, I must decide and do rather than deliberate, dwell, and allow chance to run my life for me. This is hard, but it's harder to live and die a slave to circumstance and stupidity.