Mini Blogs

Today I made a list of a few blog-worthy ideas.  My usual M.O. consists of fleshing out an idea as I write.  Its a slow process, but it feels like exploring, and I like that.  The period at the end of each sentence is like a question mark-"where to now?".   Sometimes (usually) I get caught up in prefacing the thing I really want to say.  Building up to an idea can be torturous, but the context is sometimes important.  Today, I want to try something different.  I'm going to present a few ideas that I jotted down this morning in very short concise essays.  Brevity will be the goal.  If I'm intrigued enough by one or more of the subjects, I'll revisit them in the future.  Let's start with

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU BELIEVE
The ideas that you hold sacred could be anything.  There's no end to the combinations of wacky notions that could make up your "religion" (in quotes because religion could be defined in non-traditional ways).  You may believe in Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Mother Nature, The Angry Volcano, Sol, Maker Elves, The Turtle, The Great Spirit, whatever.  You could believe in your god and all the strange angels and devils and trolls and snakes and so on, and your life would be a success.  You would be happy and fulfilled, regardless of the unique combination of superstitious features in your religion.  Because these things don't exist, and if you have not been compelled by your beliefs to help or hurt anyone, your religion is for all intents and purposes nihilistic and impotent.  You could replace the features of your religion with any other combination of features and your life would not be changed.  Despite the religious dress we put on reality, our lives are guided by natural personal needs, social dynamics, and societal norms.

WAR IS A TOOL OF THUGS
Thugs, gangsters, hooligans, and cold blooded killers roam the earth unrestrained thanks to the cult of nationalism.  They are the men (almost never women) who decide to take nations to war and lead their followers to violence.  The brainwashed followers are the people who accept the reasons for war, and help perpetuate the myth that killing is somehow noble.  Thugs roam the streets and alleys of this world, starting fights and killing innocents.  We call these thugs Presidents, Prime Ministers, Clerics, Supreme Commanders, Master, Prophet, etc.

DIFFERENT DEATH
Death is a word that refers to the end of a life, but our reactions to death could not be more varied.  The death of our partner or our child can be so heartbreaking that we might feel like we our about to die as well.  We may go through life fearing our own death or the death of loved ones.  The end of life is such a terrifying proposition for many that some believe religions were spawned from that fear specifically.

Yet death is so prevalent in every aspect of our world.  At this very second, countless creatures-from single celled bacteria to complex life forms like our own species-are dying.  We live our lives with almost no thought or care for the genocide the natural world commits every second of every day.

Most death we dismiss-we're simply not intimately and cognitively aware of it.  Some death we are more aware of, but we are left emotionally unaffected by the dying.  Sometimes we do the killing ourselves-we can even feel good about it.  We squash bugs, we pull weeds, we eat...

Evolution (read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins) explains our varied emotional response to death.  Its explainable, but death itself can't be labeled by moralists as universally and pervasively bad.  There is not enough logic surrounding the subject to base a solid moralistic approach from.  As the most powerful species on the planet, we do take the right to create and enforce a morality that is human-centric as opposed to, say, squirrel-centric.  But we should always remember that at their base, moral systems are manufactured and arbitrary.  This doesn't mean, of course, that we don't take the subjects of character and behavior towards others seriously-they are worth discussing, debating, and developing.  And it doesn't keep us from having our natural feelings regarding death, nor does the fact diminish the nobility of those who work to minimize death and suffering in the world.

I GET IT
Hands in the air, reaching for god, tears of joy(?), communing with God, feeling his power-I get it.  I too have experienced "religious ecstasy".  You don't have to be in a church praying to God to feel that spiritual feeling.  Religion doesn't hold a monopoly on awe, joy, humility, gratitude, happiness, sadness, passion, connection, and any combination of these natural human emotions.  I feel that spiritual feeling when I listen to certain music, when I look up at the starts at night, when I watch certain movies, when I'm with certain people.  I get it guys.  What you're feeling is not a sign that your religious claims are right-its a sign that you're human.

GRANDPA'S IDEAS
Grandpa Satchel was perhaps the most philosophically minded member of my family.  I had the privilege of living with him for a few months when I was 19-20(?) years old.  At the time, he was in his mid 70s and living in an a large old folk's apartment building in Independence, Kansas, my hometown (he died a few years later). My dad and stepmom had just divorced and Dad was moving to Arkansas. I had moved out of their house and was months away from moving to Boise to live with my brother, Seth.  Living with Grandpa Satchel was a temporary arrangement in that transitional period.

I wish I would have recorded some of the conversations Grandpa and I had.  And I wish my memory was better than it is.  At the moment, I can't remember much about Grandpa's ideas and beliefs.  I do recall that he belonged to some kind of society, and I think its symbol was a triangle, but I could be confused.  He had a necklace emblem that he'd sometimes wear.  Around that time he drove up to the Kansas City area for some kind of a meet-up with this society (he probably shouldn't have been driving at the time).  One thing I remember him saying was that life or consciousness transcended our bodies, like the information on a computer lives on even after the computer is destroyed.  It's always seemed like a flawed idea to me-no, energy is not destroyed when a computer is destroyed, but the order or design of that energy does not survive.  It seemed at the time that Grandpa was trying to argue for a life after death-that our minds would survive in some kind or another after we die.  Like I said, I wish I could remember more of what we discussed at the time, and I wish I could talk to him again (perhaps his eternal energy-based mind is reading this now).  I just remember this little snippet (along with various details of our daily lives in the apartment).  But I know his religious and philosophical positions changed multiple times in his life.  He was even a member of the LDS church at some point.  Perhaps he never could pin down "the Truth".  Unfortunately, I won't be able to talk to him to find out why.

ENGAGE
From an early age, I've felt something missing in casual, face-to-face social interaction.  There seems to be this facade that is put up, preventing people from connecting on deeper emotional and intellectual levels.  We all laugh, posture, recant stories, share opinions, etc-and all of this is meaningful and important to enjoy life and connect-but this at times does not seem like enough.  Really listening, really understanding, exploring ideas together, sharing wisdom...this is what I sometimes find missing.  Perhaps I should drink more beer with more amateur philosophers.

And from an early age, I've looked to adult members of my family to tell me what is really significant, to share the cache of wisdom they've collected during their lifetime.  Today, I keep my ears and mind open for more of the same from people around me and from society at large.  Its as though I've always wanted a father or mother or someone to sit down next to me, look me in the eyes, and say, "this is what you need to know about life...." Even though I have the utmost respect for my parents, I still feel as though I've rarely if ever experienced this kind of connection and sharing.  I have no plan to have a kid of my own, but I can say that having my chance to pass on life's lessons is one of the biggest motivators to consider the option.  Of course, there's this blog...

Hidden Language

If we wanted to we could write the languages of all the animals, because behavior is a way to express intention and feeling just as words are.  We're not being inaccurate when we translate a mother bear's aggressive behavior towards those who wander too close to her cub as something like, "you'd better back off or I'll hurt you!"  A male peacock with its plumage fully unfurled is saying, "hey ladies, check me out and come on over!"  Even much more subtle behavior, I believe, could be translated into words, regardless of the fact that the animals aren't thinking anything like words-they're feeling and doing instead.

This animal language project could be done in a way that doesn't embellish or subscribe intent or feeling to a behavior that simply has none.  The study could be done scientifically to ensure that a word or phrase that is attached to a behavior is always true-that it always means what its supposed to mean, regardless of the individual animal.

Anyway, its an interesting idea.  Imagine if animal language was translated into human language, and imagine if animals were given microchips and "voiceboxes" that did the translating and speaking (I think there's been a movie or two that have had a lot of fun with this idea).  A new age of enhanced empathy for our fellow creatures might be born.  Or, maybe, a new age of disregard for their stupidity or lack of morals.  Who knows?

Animals get along fine without the alphabet, distinct vocalized symbols (words and phrases), and logic.  My claim for this blog is that humans still live and communicate through a hidden language-through behaviors, impulses, signals, etc that are not logical, but entirely natural just like some animal subject of a National Geographic special.  We do what we do not out of loyalty to truth, logic, or reason-at least not normally.  Rather, we usually fall in line with cultural trappings-religious, familial, national, social, or otherwise.  And we continue to work to satisfy the same natural/primitive urges and inclinations that kept our family line surviving over all these hundreds of thousands of years.  Obvious natural urges are things like sexual desire, care for children, wanting to grow or hunt food, securing a home and goods.  Slightly less obvious natural inclinations are things like the desire to gain and keep status, loyalty, the desire to wander, and even animosity towards others.

Facebook has made a few things clear to me.  1) People want to be liked and noticed.  2) People want to laugh.  3) People like to express their views.  4) People don't want to think.  I know, it sounds harsh. But ideas and logic and the desire to express and argue about them are not natural inclinations for most people.  What is natural is responding emotionally to others.  The weight of maintaining social happiness and harmony bears too heavily on most minds to allow those persons to divorce their preferences and sensitivities from logical discussions of ideas.  In short, we haven't really begun to talk about ideas until we've learned to communicate without our egos.

(more thoughts on the subject to come)

Freedom Flies on the Wings of Truth

Violence is one of the greatest threats to free speech and unhindered, creative thought.  A cause may be just, the change it promotes may be sorely needed, but in today's world, where violence is routinely denounced at all levels of society, the actions of a few may poison public perception of the cause, and its advocates may be viewed in an unfair, negative light.  The same can be said for religious beliefs and affiliations, ethnic groups, and so on.  Those who are willing to destroy also threaten to destroy the kinds of socially harmonious environments that are necessary for ideas to flourish.  For the sake of good, guiltless people everywhere-people who have every right to have divergent views and beliefs-tolerance must be encouraged and violent extremism denounced.  

An environment that allows for dissent, creative thinking, the introduction of seemingly alien ideas, and the open discussion of everything is *simply* the means to other ends.  Those ends are greater truth and greater freedom.  The hope is that truth makes itself known when opposing ideas are discussed intelligently and at length.  The greater the discourse, the more decisive truth's victory.  The stronger the opposition, the stronger truth becomes.  Or so liberal philosophers contend.  

I choose to believe that truth's quality is inherent and its benefits are all pervasive.  It IS a big deal.  But truth does serve as a means itself.  I can't think of any other way to put it: Truth is like a bird that delivers freedom to all (envision a bald eagle or something...).  If we make Truth our king, our emperor-our ultimate authority-;then no king, no emperor-no pretender-can take away our physical freedom or undermine our wills with their false ideas (they may still literally be able to do so... this is why we rely on democracy to make the last statement correct).  

Ok, I'm done playing John Stewart Mills.  Let's refocus on the subject at hand (there is a connection, I promise).  In the last post I began by calling for a deep understanding of seemingly irrational behavior.  When I described a scenario that could cause some of us to act in ways we now perceive as abhorrent, I knowingly risked coming across as an apologist for terrorists or cold blooded killers.  

As usual, I had more than one motivation for bringing up the subject.  First, I thought to myself, "What if this twisted rational-that an individual can justify the evil that they commit by placing all the blame on the general policies and actions of others (in the example discussed, the policy of the British government regarding Afghanistan and the muslim word)-were to catch on?  Think of the horrors we would face as a civilization if people who are now peaceful allowed themselves to be won over by the immoral/irrational thinking of extremists."

Second, I had to ask:  "What IS immoral/irrational about the thinking of extremists?"  I could provide a one or two sentence answer at this very moment.  But the philosopher in me wants to give this question greater deliberation, particularly in light of the fact that anyone can understand, with a little effort, why they do what they do.  We need to ask, "Why shouldn't they do what they do?"  And, "What is irrational about their choices."  

Third, there's a very utilitarian, pragmatic reason for breaking down the conditions and rational that give rise to extreme/absurd ideas/behavior.  Mainly, we want to prevent these things from happening again.  If we knew for a fact that all it took to create the next Hitler was X + Y + Z, it would be outrageous to allow X, Y, and Z to take place without some serious discussion, regardless of how seemingly innocent X, Y, and Z are on their own, and regardless of the fact that ultimate responsibility for Hitler's actions lie with himself.  

Plenty to dive into for the next post.