Religion in the Modern Age

If I were teaching a bar/bat mitzvah age class with freedom to do my own thing, I would have them write down all the things they have been TOLD by other people or books or whatever about god/divinity. And then perhaps at the same time, perhaps after going through those, have them write down things THEY think about divinity, no matter what it is, even "there can't possibly be such a thing" or if there were, what qualities would it necessarily have (imaginary? subjective? good? neutral? etc.).

It is especially important to me to emphasize that the world is filled with people who will tell you What God Is And What God Isn't, and it's all bs. No one knows. It's about figuring that stuff out for oneself, figuring out if the word "god" is even RELEVANT anymore to the individual. What Matters To You? What Is Meaningful To You? Religion is supposed to be about giving meaning to what we know, and maybe pushing the boundaries of what we don't know with curiosity, but I don't believe it should be about defining and pretending we know what we don't know. That's why the religion vs. science debate is so ridiculous. If someone's religion/belief directly contradicts something empirically provable then the religion/belief is simply not tenable. If a religion/belief is framed in such a way that it CAN conflict with empirical data, then there's a problem already. The exception could be psychology since it deals directly with emotions and perceptions, and of course there is no One Right Way of pursuing psychology. From what I know at least, there's a LOT of different stuff out there from different people, that works well for some and not at all for others. And it all intersects with our current culture and norms, of course.

This idea that our very beliefs shift as our culture and norms shift is probably terrifying to someone who subscribes to an absolutist point of view of religion/belief. But of course that isn't even the biggest problem I have with absolutism in religion, since every religion I have ever studied (and I have a degree in it for what it's worth) only becomes absolutist in the hands and mouths of absolutist people. On paper (if there are writings) they never really are because religions are created by people, and they shift with people or they fail. Religions are concepts, institutions, traditions, communities which people create to fill a specific need, and when the need disappears or the expression changes, the religion changes or people find a new way to fill the transformed need. 

The discussion of what those needs can be, and how all this manifests in the current time, is one to be had when I have more time to verbalize my thoughts (and don't have piles of homework due). Suffice it to say that these are my observations, and not perhaps the most well-spoken version of my observations, but I want to leave this here as a placeholder to come back to, as part of an ongoing babble into the internets.

A few thoughts on domestic violence

So today I saw this video of Patrick Stewart:



And read this written by Patrick Stewart:
Patrick Stewart: the legacy of domestic violence
As a child, the actor regularly saw his father hit his mother. Here he describes how the horrors of his childhood remained with him in his adult life.

And I had some thoughts:

Until our society empowers people to feel entitled to justice...until the most common reaction to abuse is to speak out, speak up and LISTEN to those who do...we will continue to wring our hands and wish for a better world. The better world starts with us, with raising our children and expecting our peers to listen, to treat everyone with respect, not just decrying victimization, but empowering those who are victims to speak out for themselves, and empowering those who hurt others to seek help and believe in their own ability to do the right thing.

Not everyone who hurts others is a sociopath without empathy. It all starts somewhere, and I think it's fair to say that right now many people would rather live with hurtful, even violent tendencies rather than try to get help because we subtly train them to compromise themselves in exchange for not being considered "crazy." We as a society, in our media, talk about so many psychological issues as if they are diseases, and treat people who are mentally imbalanced as though they are either vying for attention or a time-bomb ready to blow up in our faces. There is not, as far as I know, a pathogen which creates domestic violence. There is, though, a prevalent social climate which finds excuses for the inexcusable and which can train children to manipulate the emotions of others while remaining blind to their own.

I grew up in a family free of violence, free even of most drama. And that foundation has helped me to overcome issues in my own life, some pretty deeply entrenched issues that at one point almost sent me into a downward spiral. I can only imagine how hard it is for those brave people who overcome issues far more problematic than mine who were even trained as children to see those things as "normal." When you grow up and one or both of your parents emotionally manipulates you, and you struggle free of their influence, it is an act of incredible strength. For those people who are overcoming issues of domestic violence, bigotry, sexism...I am always seeking out ways to help and spread information which could help such people. Because I believe that we have to try to help, or else nothing ever changes.

Late Night Conversations™: Letting Go

[edited slightly to be more readable]

Not Me:
Coincidentally, this is one of the reasons I've always been shy about the idea of pushing boundaries, pushing limits. I should think the best environment for letting go is one that is at all levels completely safe and comfortable, where you can know without question, or hesitation, where you can really feel that you won't ever be put in a place where you don't want to be, so you can surrender that need to protect yourself more comfortably. Do you have thoughts about that?

Me:
I think that the idea you describe is partly (partly, mind you) an illusion. No matter how well-meaning others are, and no matter how much they love you, they will sometimes push you too far, or in the wrong direction, or say something wrong. In that sense, there is no such thing as a completely safe environment. I have said things which unintentionally set you off before, but you feel no less safe with me.

The point being that safety is not really about being safe. Surrendering that need to protect yourself comes when you feel comfortable enough with your ability to communicate your needs. Because the whole point of lowering those barriers isn't that there is some guarantee you won't be hurt. It's the slow (as slow as it needs to be) process of realizing that hurt happens and what's important is that we are with people who listen to us when we say "hey, that hurt," people who will respond to our needs, try to help us and help themselves.

So I guess what I'm saying is that yes, in part one should of course do one's best to safeguard the environment in which one does this sort of work. But there is a cliff of uncertainty no matter what, and I posit that instead of only coming up to the edge and stopping and remaining completely safe, one should, when one is ready, bungee jump. Because that is how we grow.

Sadness.

I watched the Sherlock season finale and now I find myself desperately craving chocolate. Is that what it means to be human, to feel so deeply even though your mind knows that there is no real reason for it? Is that why we are storytellers and poets? We cannot help but feel, and attempts to suppress it bring most people sorrow.

It probably doesn't help that I just finished the book Foreigner which is literally all about a man trying to translate between two completely different sentient species: human and atevi...who don't have emotions in the way that humans do. And the main character spends pretty much the entire book trying to understand not only what it feels like to be an atevi, but also reflecting and seeking out what it feels like to be a human. What are we, really? Why do we feel the things we feel? What is feeling?

Sometimes it all swirls up and overtakes me and I wish I could curl up by a fire somewhere and lose myself in happy stories and never have to feel sad or afraid. But then, I wonder. Is it really so bad, to feel pain and sorrow? We are trained practically from birth to process sadness as 'bad' and happiness as 'good.' But many of my experiences in life have led me to question that foundational assumption. To be clear, I do not think that just feeling itself is enough, that sad and happy are the same. I still think that my objective in life is to seek happiness. But, in what may or may not be an unusual way of seeing things, I believe that sadness doesn't cancel out my happiness, and that in order to continue to pursue happiness I actually have to feel sadness sometimes.

Sadness fills me with compassion, sadness breaks down the walls of my inner self and opens me up to the sadness and pain of the universe. Sadness is not what creates shells around people, rather people build walls around themselves to try to keep out the sadness. But I think it's within all of us, walls or not. And if we brick ourselves up we're just locking ourselves in a room with our own fears. If I open myself up, and let myself feel sad, I gain new understandings about myself, and the world. If I tell myself not to be afraid of the intensity of my feelings, to let go the need to be in control of my emotions...I'm free of myself.

What Is Real?

Oh to be free and alone by land or sea
And what does it mean to be free?
To experience the vastness
The interconnectedness of all things?
To feel no pressure to conform to illusion
To be in touch with what is truly real
And what is real?

The dirt beneath my feet and in my hair and on my skin
The trees and grass I pass through on my way
The stars that wheel around in never-ending cycles
The dance of living things that has existed before each petty social agenda
And will in some form outlive them all
What is real?

Is it real to feel things for no tangible reason?
Is it real to love, to laugh?
What’s funny to one person is offensive to another
What is real?

Is it real to get upset for no good reason?
Is it real to cry, to lament?
What’s sad from one side of time is rationalized from the other

What is real?

And what is merely consciousness
Or is it something mere
Is perception any less a player in the cosmic game
Is it the referee, making the calls
Or perhaps perception is the game itself
And our senses are the refs
And our friends the fans
And our emotions and values and choices are the players
Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose
But as long as we enjoy the game
When the game ends we can say we truly lived

It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die.

~*~

I can never, ever tire of Blade Runner. I can never hold it all in my mind; it's too much.

Is it a story about the future? About a cyborg's fight against death? A man's search for meaning in a vast, glittering, empty abyss of a world? A woman's discovery of her own darkness? About the rise and fall of genius? About something big, something small, something in between? Every single thing in this movie is rife with potentiality. Everything, everyone is pregnant, they have this glow about them of potential energy that cannot find a way to become kinetic. The world is too slippery, there isn't enough friction, the momentum of their lives carries them despite themselves. Even doing nothing is still doing something. And still the life inside them clamors, begging to be released, to be expressed. Every single eyeblink is fierce, every lick of the lips is a silent scream, invisible fists shaking against a cold darkness that spreads into every corner of their insides.

There is nothing good in this movie. There is nothing evil either. There are no extremes at all. Even death itself, supposedly the extremity of life, is transformed into something artistic, a statement about human conscience and consciousness. If a cyborg is "retired," is it still death? Do you have to be a human to be truly alive?

Perhaps the most important question this movie forces you to ask is: What is beauty? Is beauty sexual? Is it sensual? Is it innocent, jaded, drunk, scummy, sparkling clean, classy, horrifying, inspiring? Does beauty exist in the eye of the beholder, or is it merely an attempt, an idea relegated to cyberspace, to the action potentials firing off in neurons?

More than anything else, this movie makes me feel small. Not in an insignificant way...but in an awestruck way. I could be any one of billions, perhaps trillions of people that wander the back alleys, the fancy plazas, the multiple planets and constructs of an unendingly alive universe. Everything dies, everything ends, but to end it must exist at all. Everything IS.

And that is all we can ever truly know. I am, now. Will I be, tomorrow? Was I, yesterday? My memories could be false, my hope for survival unrealistic. But in this moment, this one moment, under rain that blots out the stars, surrounded by lights, glare, traffic of all sort, but utterly alone...I exist. There are pyramids of light surrounded by vast expanses of vacuum and darkness. And the light that I cast, when I spend my potential, and my life becomes kinetic, is insignificant to the point of nothingness when compared to all the lights of all the lives that have ever been. But none of that matters, because I am not them. I can only ever be me.

All we are is a collection of lights, speeding around each other, engaging and disengaging. We swirl around inside ourselves, we whirl amongst each other, we are living stars. And one day all our collective lights will disappear.

Death is change is the nature of everything.

Part of my problem is that I deal with everyday personal stress and drama by letting go and releasing my mind into contemplation of the All of Everything...backing perspective outward and outward until we are ants scuttling in an unending sandhill that scatters into stars and seas and the silence of dark and space. It inundates my conscious mind with images of poetic nuance that shape the words that leave my mouth and fall like dead leaves to the wayside. People say that winter is the season of death but that is incorrect. Winter is the season of neutrality, of being dead. Of waiting, of hiding, of limbo. Fall is the season of death, of dying, of corpse grey and slow rotting. Plants die as do hopes and dreams, but so do fears and lacks and lies. Death brings change to the things that can no longer support themselves. Slowly the living wood on our outermost consciousness either hardens to heartwood and becomes part of our foundation or it peels and rots away. Negativity gives way to positivity which reframes extant negativity which peels away to reveal new positivity...into infinity.

There is no such thing as Good and Evil out in the vacuum of space, any more than in the sparks of neurons reaching action potentials and firing away. All morality and all language is an illusion of discrete perspective created in order to give a single consciousness a method of processing sensory input with a widely applicable range. We want to extend the line on our graphs, we want to predict what will happen so that we are less afraid and alone. We want to understand the emotional longings that we call loneliness at all. We want to be a part of something, to feel like this enormous universe, this complex interlocking constantly shifting state of existence is personally relevant, that it is within our ability to control, to regulate, to bend to our particular personality and taste. No grain of sand is too insignificant, no distant star is too irrelevant, because we are all minute particles in the endless sandstorm of universal birth, growth, decay, and death. One day there will be no evidence left to show that human beings ever existed. One day every speck of matter from our solar system will have transformed utterly into something unrecognizably different. That has not happened yet, but it is as inevitable as the illusory passing of time as measured by, once again, our infinite desire to codify the cycles of change around us into something recognizable, predictable, and ultimately answerable.

We learn to ask questions so that we get answers. We feel pain and therefore comfort, we feel alone and therefore we belong. We see beauty and want to set it in stone, forgetting that stone itself will crumble, and that beauty is something in constant flux. It is an ideal that can never be actualized into something concrete because there is no right answer. Beauty is something to strive for in one's own mind, something to interpret. It's not something worth pandering to others, because it's not something that can ever be truly achieved. Emotions color our interpretations of beauty; the more we get to know people the more beautiful we sometimes find them, even glossing over physical things that we normally find unattractive. If nothing else this means that although we can see a perfect stranger and appreciate their appearance, true beauty is always something which runs deeper than simple physicality because our own needs and desires are far beyond that. And beauty is nothing more than our projections of desire. Just like everything else.

Part of our interpretation of the universe is expression of, projection of, and derivative from our desires. Collective and singular. We build instruments to prove neutrality is possible and to isolate unbiased truths, forgetting that everything that ever was simply IS and our interpretations are what color and bias things in the first place. Light travels at its own speed. "Where there are physicists there are oversimplified simulations. If they can build a simplified simulation, you are not in the simplest possible universe. If they can't, you are not in the most complex possible universe." Does this negate the importance of such work? Of course not. It's intrinsic; it's the most important thing we CAN do. But only because what we want is to take control, to call shotgun and ultimately get our universal driver's license instead of being stuck in the backseat craning our necks trying to figure all this stuff out.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that some days I like just riding along in the backseat.