The Many Pathways to Bliss.

Share thoughts and ideas regarding what can be done to meet contemporary humanity's need for rites of initiation and passage.

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Evinnra
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Post by Evinnra »

somehopesnoregrets wrote:
Depending on the memory storage of this Robot, it could ask good questions and it could come up with intelligent conclusions as to what to do with the new information.
I doubt that. Since it is a thought experiment, you can of course simply insist that your thought robot is smarter than mine and has the Creativity 2.0 chip installed.

It seems to me that even the most sophisticated artificial intelligence functions logically and rationally. However, smart questions are nothing rational. The aren't simply formed by rearranging data but are a result of our practical experience with the world and our own thought processes and feelings. Since even the most amazing robot would essentially be limited to symbol manipulation, it would not be capable of what I consider TRUE creativity. But neither are most people you meet, so the robot would certainly not be alone with its limitation. There are many philosophers, scientists, and other folks who don' t have truly innovative ideas but simply regurgitate ideas others had before them.

To me that is the most interesting aspect of mythology and what I consider TRUE (there is this concept again) spirituality, that it opens up the channel to the above described TRUE creativity. Some people may call this the divine spark. Would you assume that, given an appropriate size of memory banks, one could construct a God-robot? I don't think one could, because robots are symbol manipulation machines, while God by Its very definition transcends symbolism.
Well, I’m struggling to understand what I’ve said to give the impression that I ‘assume’ we could make a God Robot. I most certainly do not hold that it is even theoretically possible to make a God Robot. You correctly saw my real assumption that in fact I believe sentience is nothing but the particular complexity of a particular perception process. Multiplying billions upon billions of sentient perceptions together with interconnected sensory abilities still won’t make a God Robot, just like multiplying the impressions of sentient beings with super fast and accurate communications to compile a heap wont produce a god either.
Provided the Robot has complex enough information analysis system that not only recalls data but has innate sensors to ‘weigh’ the accuracy of data in comparison to ALL available data
I might be wrong, but it seems to me that TRUE creativity is more than just data analysis, no matter how complex. But then, I might simply be romanticizing a rather simple process. The God I believe in is more than a complex machine.
The way I see it, Mary did know everything, except what it ‘feels like’ seeing colour.
Yes, but to me this "feeling like" what it is to actually, physically experience something opens up a whole new world with completely different rules. It seems to me that this experiencing has a poetic rather than a scientific quality. Asking wise questions is not just the result of randomly aligning linguistic symbols. It has something to do with feeling our own thoughts. Asking the right questions and wisely applying the results we find requires INSPIRATION in the truest sense, something I don't think a robot would possess.
So, you hold that inspiration in the truest sense is what makes human beings come up with the right questions and utilize available information, whereas I believe it is Faith that makes us disposed in a particular way to use what we know. Inspiration in my understanding is mostly correct information processing ability coupled with ‘sensing’ Faith. Without Faith I’d have no idea as to where my path is leading me, hence I’d have very little help to know which way to go with what I’ve already perceived. I could come up with reasonable and EXTREMELY innovative ideas – due to my own information processing ability – as to what to ask next, what to do with what I know, but I could not sense the ‘belonging’ of my ideas, where they supposed to lead . I couldn’t participate with whatever I have unless I can sense within what I want to participate in.

Returning to Mary, if Mary had learned nothing by actually experiencing the feeling of colour on her retina, scientists could say that Mary’s perception of important nuances are inadequate to aid her general perception. Why? Because there ARE significant differences between experiencing and NOT experiencing, and the devil lies in the detail. Similarly, a Theologist could argue that our particular Mary is just too thick to sense her own Faith, since she cannot even differentiate between real experience and imagination. If creativity in your terminology includes sensing what to grasp at with our tools available, then you are right, creativity does require something human. I did not connect creativity with the idea of Inspiration, for I can cook a meal without having faith in God that I can do it or alternatively God whispering in my ear what s/he wants for dinner, yet my cooking a meal is a form of creativity, though mundane in comparison with poetry. With my previous post what I’ve meant to say was that human sentience is perfectly capable of coming up with good questions and find good utility for all those things we know of. I never intended to say that we don’t need Faith to have Inspiration.

But if the claim is true that our memory is so unreliable that we can fervently believe in things that are not there, how could we ever believe our senses relating to us that there is God? When we read Mythology, is it merely the underlining ‘truth structures’ we sense or is it something more ‘ethereal’ or ‘illogical’ or ‘life-like’? I guess, if Mary did not find difference between what she knew before leaving the black and white room and after her return, she would be too thick to ever enjoy Mythology.


What, though, if we would give our robot an intricate web os sensors to mimic a feeling body, if we would create a robot that is in fact capable of suffering? If that robot would practice, would it be able to experience Bliss? Or would it just be able to imitate what Bliss looks like from the outside, to simply go through the motions? I'm not sure. Who knows, maybe the spark of Life is simply a question of appropriate complexity after all.
Indeed, the biggest problem today is that despite our access to fast communication and information with a huge variety of professionals, we do tend to remain in our own ‘paradigm’
Actually, in my opinion this is only a problem in people who aren't aware of that limitation of their thinking. Paradigmatic thinking isn't a big deal, but paradigmatic thinking that assumes it is original thinking tends to cause problems. When we see the cage in which we are caught, we can playfully use it as a tool rather than an obstacle. However, when our own level of ignorance obscures the cage, we are in trouble.
Julia, you are banging on open doors with this paragraph. We are in complete agreement and I believe my previous post stated it as well; that all we need to do is to beware of our own limitations.
– and when empirical science disregards the warnings of philosophers that scientific/empirical methods of analysing statistical data is far from being evidence – for despite the largeness of a sample involved in a psychological experiment, it simply can’t prove beyond all doubt that just one more experiment will produce the ‘typical’ outcome as observed before.
Philosophers who state that don't know much about science. Scientific evidence does not require absolute proof "beyond all doubt." In my area of relative expertise, psychological science, all statements that are made are probabilities rather than certainties. Statistical examination for example might reveal that "There is 96% chance that a certain measurement is due to an actual effect rather than a chance fluctuation." People who expect that anything can be proven beyond all doubt have no business conducting science. That's what religious cults are for... As I said in my previous post, in psychological science, one exception doesn't render a general observation invalid. If I show through a controlled study that CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is just as effective as anti-depressant medication and much more effective than distance prayer healing in combating low to medium intensity depressive states, then this is an important finding, even though there might be the occasional person who isn't helped by CBT and the occasional person who feels distance prayer healing has hit the spot. Even though there is no proof beyond all doubt that this will work for me, if I am depressed, it might be worth giving it a shot, because the chance that it helps is greater than the chance that it doesn't help. Science doesn't look for absolute certainty, it simply looks for furthering understanding.


Why do you think Philosophers and Religious people look for certainty? I think they do because Philosophy is like Mathematics; it is a valuable tool to access what we do know in order to ask good questions later. Religious people look for certainty because they sense that there is more to reality than what meets the eyes. If you try to claim that Scientists are not aiming for SOME certainty by finding empirical proof for their hypothesis, then I think you don’t know Scientists well enough. No scientist, philosopher or religious leader would claim to HAVE certainty in anything other than the present – or perhaps not even in that - but all thinking people ultimately AIM for some kind of certainty. Aiming to think chaotically would be a very boring thing to do.


Instead of trying to eradicate doubt, TRUE science celebrates it.
Hold on for a moment. I can distinctly recall NASA celebrating their latest achievement of placing a surveillance robot on Mars. Were these scientists and all of us celebrating the chaotic human mind’s ability to plop an object onto a strange planet by accident, or did we celebrate the fact that human efforts at calculating, building and creating had actually succeeded? (Although, as a religious person I would say God could have skewed our efforts, I am truly happy that everything went according to plan!!!!)

Did you get a chance to read the article about her that I quoted in my last post?


No, Julia, I haven’t read the article and not intending to do so. The fact that our memories are subjectively influenced is well known fact by now. But if the claim is made by this article – as your summary seems to relate - that we can make up memories without having ANY foundation what so ever to rely upon, I would not waste time reading something so blatantly absurd.

If there are some foundations to why I think that I had been traumatised by aliens – for instance – then knowing that my memories are subjectively influenced by all of my experiences is good enough tool for me to search further in my memories why I had this dream. (For example, what have I eaten for dinner before going to sleep and dream about being abducted by aliens? What sort of emotional issues clouding my reasons to project aliens in my dream molesting me when in fact I’m subconsciously just too scared of my neighbour, etc.etc.) What my previous post intended to convey was that as long as we know our limitations in reasoning and we earnestly search for what is the truth, we all have good enough capacities to IMPROVE our reasoning and perhaps reach clarity in our mind. I don’t have dreams about aliens, nor do I ever accent with my mind to things that cannot be perceived by independent observers as well. What independent observers cannot verify is simply not the case – even though it is true that some things can not be verified and they in fact could be the case – those unverifiable things will have to wait indefinitely for proof of existence as far as I recon. But all of our memories are there because there was SOME foundation for them to be there. No, not all of our memories are correct, but they CAN BE MADE CORRECT.

Among those things that awaiting verification in my mind is the existence of God. I can logically argue for God’s existence and against it. I will never find empirical proof for either of my reasoning. God’s existence is just something that I ‘intuitively know’ and am happy to leave it at that.
Actually, some current research shows that it's not the lack of forgetting that is the problem in PTSD but the obsessive recreation of the memory. That's also why some forms of mindfulness practice and bodywork (meditation, yoga, relaxation exercises) are helpful to some sufferers of PTSD, because they help break the cycle of cognitively recreating the situation and continually retraumatizing oneself. I'm oversimplifying, of course, for the sake of brevity, but wanted to emphasize that the main task in coping with PTSD does not seem to be to forget but to move on. Forgetting and moving on are two very different things.
You are onto something here, Julia. Moving on somehow is what really matters for traumatised people. The trauma seems to BE an obsession with a certain emotion felt within, not the actual trauma it self. Some would say: love is the answer. If one can find enough love in others, one can step over this hurdle of obsessive pain perception. I am less optimistic about love having this ability to make people lose focus on their obsessive-compulsive emotional disorder of sticking like glue to a past pain. I think, working out rationally what makes one stick to a certain emotional pain removes the fear involved. For what is fear if not lack of knowing? If a person displays contradictory emotional responses to me I will fear this person even though I know sometimes s/he is very nice to me. My mind will obsessively return to this person, not because I love her/him, but simply because I want to make sense of our respective boundaries and interrelations. Once I find proof of what s/he holds inside his/her soul, I will stop obsessing about this person and my emotions will return to normal.

Let me use the example of once being swept out into the ocean by an undercurrent. I was lucky to survive by somehow managing to swim parallel to the shore and reach some young surfers who dragged me out of the water. For hours I was sobbing and obsessing over what the hell I could have done wrong to be caught in the RIP tide. One moment I was walking in water up to just above my knees, the next I was so far out in the ocean that it seemed like I was a kilometre away from anything alive. It took me hours of self-examination what I should have done to avoid it, before this unbelievably strong fear began to subside. (To be honest, I think God saved me, for I am not a very strong swimmer and I had no idea what on earth was happening to me. My instincts took over, and that is how I managed to survive what many weak swimmers like my self cannot survive.)

So, in essence, I will not give you the invaluable answer to the question: WHAT is it that makes us human. Sentience – I’m quite sure – is not enough to make us human. Nor is love, for other living things can feel love too. Recently I remember hearing it that even a belief in higher powers is not a uniquely human attribute. (I just can’t recall where I’ve heard it.) Nor can creativity make as more than robots, for complexity of a system provided, robots could come up with poems that far surpass in quality some postmodernist attempts at being ‘cool’.

What makes us human is something that we simply feel.
Cheers,
Evinnra :P
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

Well, I’m struggling to understand what I’ve said to give the impression that I ‘assume’ we could make a God Robot. I most certainly do not hold that it is even theoretically possible to make a God Robot. You correctly saw my real assumption that in fact I believe sentience is nothing but the particular complexity of a particular perception process.
Sorry, Evinnra. I didn't mean to put words into your mouth. I guess the misunderstanding comes from my particular, rather idiosyncratic view at God. I often forget that most people don't look at "God" in the same way I do (if "looking at" is even the correct term, because I trust that God is in us and all around us, so there is no dualistic "looking at something outside of myself" but there is a God in my world). In my current world view (subject to change without notice), God is All That Is, including but not limited to your and my consciousness. The sum of all sentience and inspiration. When the Bible says that God makes us "in his own image," then I understand that, in both directions, the idea of God is mirrored in who we are. Since we, at least in my experience, act most "Godly" (caring, loving, self-transcendent), when we are aware, sentient, and inspired, to me getting to know God happens through getting to know ourselves. When we try to look for God on the outside, all we see are our projections. When we truly know all our own light and darkness and then add all the lightnesses and darknesses of everything and everybody around us, all past, present, and future experience, all ideas, dreams, hopes, feelings, all matter, all formlessness, and then some, we get an approximation of the glory of God, a small hint of God's beauty.

So, to me, based on these ideas of mine, your assumption that it might be possible to recreate sentience and inspiration in a machine, automatically leads to the conclusion that such a recreation would, with an increase in complexity, have to lead towards causing the creation of a God-machine.

That's actually, turning the argument around, why I believe sentience and inspiration are more than just the automatic outcome of high computational complexity. I literally believe sentience, faith, and inspiration are the "breath of God," but in my idea of the world, God isn't a creature or a being but a powerful Force, so the breath of God is for me both what breathes and what is breathed. When I have a powerful epiphany, I believe that it is my flowing in the breath of God and being a mindful and aware part of this breath, not an achievement of ego but a result of ego stepping aside and letting God work through my mind, body, spirit, skills, and intentions. I trust that we are always one with God but that many of us forget about it or never even notice.

To me, sentience and inspiration are not of the body but of the spirit, an elusive non-scientific and trans-symbolic concept, merely using the body to express themselves, like Mary is using our imaginary robot. So, to me it is not much of a logical jump between assuming one can create a spirit/soul machine (a robot that is sentient and inspired) to assuming one can create a God machine (a robot that is complex enough to hold all sentience and inspiration and then some). I'm not saying it is or is not possible, but find the question to be an interesting one.

Hope this lengthy explanation clarifies things rather than obscuring them further. It's always tough trying to clothe mystical experience into words. It always ends up looking weird or funny.

I can of course accept without problems that your idea of God is different from mine. In fact, I'm counting on it, since part of the complexity and beauty of God is to me that all our ideas of God differ and that each of us holds a different piece of truth that doesn't truly get to shine unless it's put into its place within the larger picture.
Multiplying billions upon billions of sentient perceptions together with interconnected sensory abilities still won’t make a God Robot, just like multiplying the impressions of sentient beings with super fast and accurate communications to compile a heap wont produce a god either.
How can you be so sure? I'm not saying it will or won't, but am wondering how you can be so certain about this.
So, you hold that inspiration in the truest sense is what makes human beings come up with the right questions and utilize available information, whereas I believe it is Faith that makes us disposed in a particular way to use what we know. Inspiration in my understanding is mostly correct information processing ability coupled with ‘sensing’ Faith. Without Faith I’d have no idea as to where my path is leading me, hence I’d have very little help to know which way to go with what I’ve already perceived. I could come up with reasonable and EXTREMELY innovative ideas – due to my own information processing ability – as to what to ask next, what to do with what I know, but I could not sense the ‘belonging’ of my ideas, where they supposed to lead . I couldn’t participate with whatever I have unless I can sense within what I want to participate in.
Does that mean a robot that would be able to ask truly inspired questions or to draw truly inspired conclusions would have to have FAITH, or am I reaching again here? Aren't we essentially saying the same thing, that true innovative "thought" goes beyond simply shuffling data?

Seems to me, actually, that we mostly agree but simply use different terminology. I do believe that true innovation comes from sensing "the ‘belonging’ of my ideas, where they supposed to lead" and is impossible without it. I also feel that truly innovative thinking is rather rare and that most people redigest old ideas or cross-reference from other areas. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes, just sometimes, a person comes up with something truly original, and to me such rare phenomena deserve special attention.
If creativity in your terminology includes sensing what to grasp at with our tools available, then you are right, creativity does require something human. I did not connect creativity with the idea of Inspiration, for I can cook a meal without having faith in God that I can do it or alternatively God whispering in my ear what s/he wants for dinner, yet my cooking a meal is a form of creativity, though mundane in comparison with poetry.
I tend to look at creativity as something Divine that merely uses us as a channel. This is how I separate ego-ic manipulating elements into something else (as would be "creating" a meal) from trans-ego-ic getting hit by inspiration and forced to create no matter if it does or doesn't fit into my current plans. There is a beautiful, little Japanese movie called Tampopo, in which a female cook meets a truck driver, who leads her on her own hero journey about finding out how to create the perfect noodle soup. But to simply prepare a daily meal rarely has that level of spiritual and mythological depth. It can, though. Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen wrote at length about Zen kitchens and enlightenment and considered the Tenzo, the head cook, one of the most important roles in the monastery. So, it depends on the attitude and perspective of the person practicing it, if cooking is mundane or Sacred, just as it depends on the attitude and perspective of the poet, if poetry is mundane or Sacred. As you say above, I can in both cases either do it without faith or listening to the voice of the Sacred, making music with my body, mind, and spirit, at the same time singing and being part of the song. It seems to me that God might be doing the same thing, just on a much larger and more multi-faceted scale.
But if the claim is true that our memory is so unreliable that we can fervently believe in things that are not there, how could we ever believe our senses relating to us that there is God?
I believe we can do so not through memory but through present moment experience. The fallibility of human memory might actually be one reason why the transition from direct religious experience to institutional dogma tends to go awry at times. The solution I found for myself is what Jesus taught when asked how to tell real from false prophets (in a way each of our memory is like a prophet who tells us something about the nature of reality): "By their fruit you will recognize them." It is possible that our sensual experience of the Divine is merely some form of Sacred Madness, but as long as it helps us fill our life with transcendent meaning and compassionate, wise action, it doesn't matter if there is a physical representation to the idea that inspires me or not. If your faith helps you love your neighbor as yourself, then there is eternal transcendent value to your faith, no matter if your memory of what you are believing in is accurate or a fabrication. If what your senses relate to you produces unconditional Love rather than hate, fear, or profit seeking, then they are guiding you well, even if somebody else might look at your burning bushes and see nothing.

But if you are examining the nature of material reality, or if a medication designed to alleviate suffering, or if certain psychological practices are helpful or hurtful to the people living them, then you need more than faith. We can talk ourselves into seeing something as valuable that isn't or quickly dismissing things that deserve a closer look. Science, when conducted properly, is helping us add an objective observer perspective that allows us to gently let go of what doesn't work and to look closer at what works. This is a very long and arduous process, that's why many people who are uneducated in scientific methodology prefer the seeming certainty of pseudo-science.
When we read Mythology, is it merely the underlining ‘truth structures’ we sense or is it something more ‘ethereal’ or ‘illogical’ or ‘life-like’?
I believe it is the latter, but I tend to avoid the term "truth" as much as possible, because it can mean so many different things to different people and has the potential for causing a lot of misunderstandings. And, it is of course possible that I'm delusional and/or wrong.
Julia, you are banging on open doors with this paragraph.
:lol: Yes, I tend to do that a lot...

I like the metaphor of "banging on open doors." It reminds me of the Zen idea of "one hand clapping."
:-)
all we need to do is to beware of our own limitations
Yes.
:-)
Why do you think Philosophers and Religious people look for certainty?
Because they are human, and that's a general human tendency. Philosophy and religion by their very nature are looking for truth. Science is merely looking for cause-effect relationships. There is a difference. And there are of course plenty of ignorant scientists who don't get that, just like there is the occasional religious philosopher who transcends their need for certainty (the original first Buddha being a good example). Even good and mindful scientists have to keep reminding themselves that the goal isn't certainty but creating evolving islands of knowledge in an ocean of doubt. Most of what we know scientifically today will be outdated tomorrow, when we have better tools for looking at what we are trying to examine. That's not an accident but the very essence of science.
f you try to claim that Scientists are not aiming for SOME certainty by finding empirical proof for their hypothesis, then I think you don’t know Scientists well enough.
Those who do are misguided. Science as a tool cannot produce certainty. At best, we can conduct science with precision and accuracy. Accuracy means closeness of our particular estimate or calculation to what we are trying to measure. Precision means that the outcomes of different measurements I conduct are located in a fairly narrow area, with little spread. But there is always a measure of uncertainty in any science, and if I, as a scientist, don't see that then I'm kidding myself. Scientists who don't get that are in the wrong business. I know this sounds a bit arrogant, but I'm rather certain about that. And I do understand that such certainty is rather un-scientific...
:wink:
all thinking people ultimately AIM for some kind of certainty. Aiming to think chaotically would be a very boring thing to do.
I don't believe the opposite of "certainty" is "thinking chaotically." Certainty, thinking I am "right" and whoever doesn't think like me is "wrong," is a form of intellectual arrogance and has no business being in science. I believe that the opposite of "certainty" is "humility" and "healthy skepticism." But when I look at philosophical texts and religious scriptures, I see the illusion of certainty stare at me at each and every corner. Many religious practitioners and teachers confuse "healthy skepticism" with "corrosive cynicism" and think it's a bad thing. But it doesn't have to be. Certainty, absence of doubt, is the true enemy, I feel, because it is a potential breeding ground for fanaticism and hate. But then, maybe without that illusion of certainty, these different traditions' beliefs would have not survived the ravages of time. Maybe we have to be a little bit arrogant to make an idea last. Don't know...
The fact that our memories are subjectively influenced is well known fact by now. But if the claim is made by this article – as your summary seems to relate - that we can make up memories without having ANY foundation what so ever to rely upon, I would not waste time reading something so blatantly absurd.
As I said, that's not the claim the article makes but the conclusion I am drawing from it. If it is such as well-known fact that our subjective ideas can not only distort what we see but can even make us see patterns that aren't even there, then why don't more people take that into consideration in their interactions with each other? Why is there still so much "right-fighting" going on in the world (even in a place as Sacred as this site)? If even in something as simple as identifying who is holding a knife, an african-american or a white person (one of the many experiments that taught us these disturbing truths about our memory), large numbers of people make mistakes, how can we trust anything that we remember? To me, looking at those experiments and still thinking that we can tell truth just by surveying our own memories is a form of hubris. And I find most interesting and sad about the article that you don't find worth reading how devastating the effects that this lack of knowledge of the relative unreliability of our memory on some people's lives has had and continues to have. Some people have lost everything over this. It's more than subjective influence. Some people have been spending years of their lives in jail, because a therapist planted a false memory in a seeming victim and nobody cared to question the truth of those allegations. And the therapist did so without malicious intent, convinced to be on a quest for truth. Families have been ripped to shreds over this. Elizabeth Loftus herself has received death threats over her work. We make decisions based on such things, based on what we think is true, decisions that affect other people. If we can't rely on our senses and memories in a simple, reproducible witness account experiment, how can we rely on anything we feel or see, especially if we look at things that we can't tape with a video camera, because they involve our ideas, emotions, or other aspects of our inner life, an inner life that itself keeps shifting and changing.

What does this have to do with the nature of science? If our personal experience is so vulnerable to the power of suggestion, then (methodologically well conducted) science is in fact our only hope for telling what actually happened. And, as I emphasize above, even science is only able to do so with limited reliability rather than absolute certainty.
Sentience – I’m quite sure – is not enough to make us human.
Why is that?
Nor is love, for other living things can feel love too. Recently I remember hearing it that even a belief in higher powers is not a uniquely human attribute. (I just can’t recall where I’ve heard it.)
Actually, unconditional love might be a good candidate for the answer to the question what makes us "Godly." I find that question a lot more interesting than the one that asks what makes us human. I personally find humanity rather overrated. Only when we transcend our humanity and learn to be kind to not only our own kind but the universe at large has our life real meaning, I feel. But to consider ourselves more valuable than for example dolphins or anthills or eco-systems, simply because we are "homo sapiens sapiens" to me is simply speci-ism, and, from a slightly detached point of view, not much better than racism or any other -ism and just as dangerous and potentially destructive. In regards to the above "by their fruits shall you tell them," ideas that put a strict barrier between the rights of humans and other life tend to produce their share of rotten and poisonous fruits, so I tend to look at them with suspicion.

I guess, another way of saying "What makes us Godly?" would be "What helps us find our Buddha nature?" I'm not advocating the hubris of wanting to be like God here, but the honest and humble search for what allows us to hear the voice of God clearly through the noises of daily life. To me, following one's Bliss is merely one of many different metaphors for this Sacred Listening (and, of course, the other, just as important part, Acting Saintly or Sagely in accordance with what we hear).
Nor can creativity make as more than robots, for complexity of a system provided, robots could come up with poems that far surpass in quality some postmodernist attempts at being ‘cool’.
Most postmodern attempts at creativity seem in fact rather robotic to me, so no argument here...
:-)
What makes us human is something that we simply feel.
Feeling is not unique to humans at all. Our feelings are governed by the limbic system in our brain, a structure we share with most mammals. I would be a bit cautious about ascribing "love" to animals, especially the unconditional kind, since much of our witnessing such "love" look like forms of projection to me. But if I were the gambling kind, I would bet on mammals simply feeling, too. If you are indeed trying to find out what makes humans uniquely human, I don't think that is it.

Free will might be another possibility for a quality that distinguishes those of us who choose to exercise it from animals and robots. But, again, it's something I don't see a lot, not even in so-called "homo sapiens sapiens."

As I said, the more important questions to me would be those of the nature of "what makes me Godly?," "what helps me be a good person?," "what is goodness?," "can I integrate my flaws and weaknesses/shadow side into living a complete and caring life?" etc.

and, last but not least,

"Who is asking all of these questions?"

Hugs.
:-) Julia

Evinnra
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Location: Melbourne

Post by Evinnra »

Well, Julia, apparently my English is not getting any better. :?
What makes us human is simply something we feel.
Feeling is not unique to humans at all.
What I intended to say is that WHAT thing we feel that makes us human IS something we simply feel. Obviously, I agree that having feelings and/or sentience is not a uniquely human attribute.

You ask:
As I said, the more important questions to me would be those of the nature of "what makes me Godly?," "what helps me be a good person?," "what is goodness?," "can I integrate my flaws and weaknesses/shadow side into living a complete and caring life?" etc.

and, last but not least,

"Who is asking all of these questions?"
My simple answer is that it is the Imago Dei (Image of God) that makes humans Godly. Yet, this innate ‘picture’ (well, not quite a picture but something truly indescribable) cannot be expressed to outsiders, not even to our own children, as it can only be experienced. Hence, if we deny that humans can have reliable access to their own experiences, we simultaneously deny that humans can have access to the Imago Dei.
But please do not take it that I was merely attempting to salvage the possibility of perceiving this divine image with my previous posts. It is a well-established claim that nothing can come from nothing. From this it must follow that whatever memories we have – although our memories are confused by our own subjectivity – they all have something real for their foundation.

Cheers,
Evinnra :P
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

noman
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Post by noman »

Ladies, (Venusians), great conversation. I’m not a topic Nazi. Talk about whatever you wish. But I can only focus on one issue at a time, and this is the one I choose – for now.

It delights me that you find my writing clever, even though I hope that the cleverness is merely a vehicle for something more. I’ve seen cleverness in many forms, show-offy, trying to make other people feel inferior, hunting for approval, things like that. I hope that my cleverness isn’t any of those things, but that it instead is merely preparing a path for true wisdom. I know that’s asking a lot.

- SomeHopes


* * * * * * *

The pop-psychology, that took-off in the 1970s, I believe, is less about science and more about mythology / religion. It is weighted toward the humanities.
- NoMan

* * * * * * *

Are you sure it’s about mythology and religion and not just about making money? I guess I’m a bit jaded by the fact that I did interact with a new age publisher in 1999. Even though they did see themselves as spiritually oriented, they had no intention of staying true to what I wanted to write about. Instead, they kept nudging me towards what they wanted me to write about that would "sell well." There was much interest in making money, and very little interest in finding truth (scientific, spiritual, personal, or otherwise). I compromised for a while, figuring, hey, the second book will be what I actually believe in, but as I told you before, the project (fortunately) never came to completion.

- SomeHopes
True wisdom – half wisdom – making money. This is fun to talk about and one of the themes I had in mind when I started this thread. As I said earlier, to some people, the whole $8.5 billion a year ‘self-help’ industry is a scam. We could probably agree on who is a charlatan and who is an authentic. But you and I are not the judge and judgette of the universe. And if we were we would still have a problem. One can’t take a book or a lecture and highlight just the parts that are wisdom.

True wisdom is an elusive prey in that it has a habit of vanishing just at the moment of capture.

When I first started listening to POM I thought to myself, here we go again. Here is another charlatan peddling his wares, promoting his books, and himself. Understand, that by the time I listened to POM, I was a savvy psycho-spiritual consumer/seeker. But something broke through for me and for millions of others. It was the voice of authenticity and sincerity. It was just recently, a year or two ago, that I learned of Campbell’s renunciation of the Sixties and hippyism. The Sixties, you must know, was a time he said he watched his book royalties increase ten-fold. It’s obvious to me that his life was not about selling books and being socially successful – though he was. He loved to learn and he loved to teach, and would not be sullied by the seductress of money and success.

Campbell’s writing career began when he and Henry Morton Robinson decided to corroborate on an analysis of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. They agreed that Campbell would be the authority on content while Robinson would be the authority on how it was written. Campbell had this great wealth of knowledge on mythology, history, and literature. Robinson knew how to deal with publishers. But the publisher they were working with showed an interest in the unknown, unpublished scholar named Joseph Campbell. Rondo, as Campbell refers to him, called him one day and said, “they want you to write a book on mythology - and if you don’t come off of your high horse I’ll sock you…”

So Campbell meets with the publisher and they tell him they were thinking of an updated version of Bullfinch’s Mythology. It makes sense from a financial point of view. A must-have reference book on world mythology would make a lot of money for both the publisher and the author. And Joseph Campbell was the prime candidate for the project. But Campbell said he wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Then he told them he wanted to write a book on how to read mythology. They went along with his idea but as I told you before, that publisher wasn’t interested in his finished product.

In one of his lectures Campbell once said that the artist to truly pity is the one who tries to write a money maker and become established - and then thinks once they’re established they’re going to write the book. He also spoke once of the artist who says the hell with publishers (and marketing people) and moves up to - let’s say - Alaska, gets a little shack to work in, little fingers working away through six months of darkness. He or she may have to go out and chop wood or shoot and elk every so often. But this is the person who doesn’t concern themselves with delivering the product. If it’s a high quality product it will find and audience. It might be centuries from now, but that won’t disturb the true artist. This is one way to deal with the money-making machine.

I think every artist has to make decisions between creating what they want and think is good and creating what they think will sell. I don’t think there are any guidelines to follow. A person like Joseph Campbell could hardly be motivated by money. Some artists, successful artists, care only about making money and they love it. They create marketable products because it makes them happy and it makes their audiences happy. It’s not a crime.

A great film that explores this artist’s dilemma is Woody Alan’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. The actor Alan Alda plays the shallow successful artist that everyone loves. And poor, pathetic Woody Alan plays the artist who has a great deal of depth, and insight, and heart, but can’t make it as an artist socially. But this theme is interwoven with an answer to Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Instead of a person revealing himself by his own guilt and being punished for his crime of murder, the murderer gets away with it, and gets back to his life as best he can, as though it were just a misdemeanor. And in real life the true artist, the person with true wisdom, is often overlooked for the charlatan who makes money and is loved and appreciated as Doctoorr so and so.

Here are quotes from a couple of professors of art history:
Money no longer serves and supports art, art serves and supports money. When money showers its blessings on art, the way Jupiter showered money on Danae, art spreads its legs in gratitude. The days when Mark Rothko said that "the artist can abandon his plastic bank-book" (1947) are over. So are the days when art seemed "timeless" and "transcendental," to use his words.



…one must recall Andy Warhol's prescient idea of business art, that is, his recognition that art has become a business and making money in business is an art, implying that the making of money and the making of art involve the same motivation. A new hierarchy of value has in fact been established: money has come to have a higher value than art.

http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/featur ... 3-6-07.asp
In the book Cultural Creatives, the authors, a couple of sociologists, say that prior to the Sixties, there were ‘two streams’ of psychology one flowing from hospitals and clinics, and one flowing from the universities. But a third stream emerges in the Sixties. It might be best to call it the pop psycho-spiritual movement. It didn’t start on a particular day in the 1960s any more than the scientific method started on a particular day in the 17th century when the ink dried on Bacon’s Novum Organum. There were ‘self-help’ books prior to the 60s. I can remember reading The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) as a child.

But I see a parallel between the emergence of this cottage industry of pop psycho-spiritual self-help movement, it’s manifestation in our culture after the Sixties, and the observation of Professor Donald Kuspit over the change in our attitude toward art. It’s part of the same general trend. Part of the horror of the Sixties that I keep harping on.

It doesn’t mean everything created prior to the Sixties is the expression of a pure heart and everything after the Sixties is the expression of a sick heart. But I wonder if most people, especially young people, are aware of the volume of money-making, psycho-spiritual junk food on the shelves.

After Theodor Seuss Geisel, (Dr. Seuss) died in 1991 I heard a story that his agent told him if he would just agree to let an advertiser use a few of his words in an advertisement he would be remembered as the highest paid author per word – in history. He answered by saying that he would rather be remembered as the author who turned down the highest per word payment in history.

I could never imagine a boomer saying something like that.

- NoMan

Clemsy
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Post by Clemsy »

Neil Young, Carlos Santana, The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and John Densmore all refuse product endorsements. I'm sure there are more.

Careful with that broad brush stroke there Noman!
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

True wisdom is an elusive prey in that it has a habit of vanishing just at the moment of capture.
A very wise and true observation! We can't ever capture wisdom. All we can do is observe it in its native environment and sometimes, just sometimes, under just the right conditions, help trigger its genesis in another mind by sharing what has triggered a (fleeting) moment of wisdom in us. Like a finger pointing to the moon. We can't capture this moon. But if we're lucky, we are open enough to allow it to teach us, momentarily not confusing it with the finger pointing towards it.

Despite my suspicious attitudes about certainty, this is something about which I am in fact certain, at least for now: That is, in one way or the other, the true metaphorical meeting of any spiritually effective text ever written, suggestions and instructions as to direct ourselves towards a path to wisdom. Since people are diverse, so are our paths. There is no one single "right" path that fits each and everyone. There is no absolute truth as to how to get to our own center. But when we are there and connect with somebody else who is, the similarities of experience can be striking. That is the space at which mystics dwell. This is also the meaning that tends to get temporarily lost, when we fall prey to forms of literalism (seducing us into making "graven images" of stories meant to be metaphorical travel guides for personal growth). This is also the meaning that tends to get temporarily lost, when we give in to "greedy" fears of "not having enough, substitute "curious, open mind" with "gainful mind," and become "merchants in the temple."
It was the voice of authenticity and sincerity.
Yes.
If it’s a high quality product it will find and audience. It might be centuries from now, but that won’t disturb the true artist.
Exactly. That was actually the conclusion at which I arrived. After grieving the loss of the dream of traveling over the lands in a fancy book tour and having people go "ooh" and "aah" over what I would have written and read (that was before kids), I realized that being true to the realizations I had been given mattered more than making money or getting attention. I had almost sold and betrayed what mattered to me most. I was lucky. Many others don't have my luck or Campbell's levelheaded integrity. I appreciate your reminder to not harshly judge them, because I would have been in exactly the same situation, had things developed differently. Instead I ended up packing the manuscript away, with thoughts of carefully rewriting it a decade from now (when the little ones spend more time in school). Between now and then, I get to learn more and hone my craft. For a moment, I worried that somebody else might write about it before then and would "steal my thunder," but I ended up deciding that it would be fine, too, as long as it will be written and read by somebody. I consider myself a steward rather than an owner of those ideas.
art spreads its legs in gratitude
Yes. There is a certain whorishness about it, isn't there? Not that I have a problem with whores, as long as they practice safe sex and aren't exploited by a pimp. But it isn't my idea of bliss or truth. Another example of how each new invention has its light and shadow sides. The rise of democracy has also led from a shift of kings' funding artists to artists having to compete for consumers. Some artists rise to the challenge and create multi-layered works, works that function on more than one level, thus skillfully walking the tightrope between commercial success and transcendent quality. You can see that in good children's animation, that it enchants the little ones but sometimes has a fascinating mythological or ironic subtext for the grown up sitting there with the child. Others (who I refuse to call "artists," but then, again, I'm picky about language) simply go for what sells, for the lowest common denominator. Then again others don't compromise at all but divide their time up between art and a crummy day job. I guess that could be one type of "Alaska." In a conversation with a friend I once said that I don't trust any artist who never waited tables...
But I see a parallel between the emergence of this cottage industry of pop psycho-spiritual self-help movement, it’s manifestation in our culture after the Sixties, and the observation of Professor Donald Kuspit over the change in our attitude toward art. It’s part of the same general trend. Part of the horror of the Sixties that I keep harping on.
And yet, wasn't some of the sixties' counterculture about rebelling (not very successfully, I admit) AGAINST mass marketing and cheap, industrialized imitations of true creativity? Wasn't that part of what the whole "back to nature" was about? Of course, savvy salespeople immediately capitalized on that and made it a cheap, mass-marketed trend, but I do believe the original intentions were quite genuine.
But I wonder if most people, especially young people, are aware of the volume of money-making, psycho-spiritual junk food on the shelves.
What I have even more of a problem with is the pseudo-medical junk. Most of the psycho-spiritual junk merely takes people's money and their time, but some of the self-declared anti-establishment medicos talk people into complete distrust of anything that reeks of "mainstream" medicine. Some of them claim they can cure cancer and other severe diseases, potentially talking people into delaying or forgoing treatments that might have otherwise saved their lives, while, in the process, taking them for all they have. And I keep running into kind and caring people on-line, who try to turn me onto that kind of cr*p, sincerely believing it is the "real truth," because they swear it did in fact help a friend of a friend once..
:roll:

Stubbornly optimistic,
despite all evidence to the contrary,
:-) Julia

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

Well, Julia, apparently my English is not getting any better.
What do you get when you put together a Hungarian-Australian and a German-Californian? An interesting multi-cultural mix of perspectives and the occasional linguistic glitch... Your English is fine, we're just talking on a lot of different levels and keep juggling perspectives, so the occasional misunderstanding is to be expected and nothing to be afraid of or worry about, I feel.
:-)
Obviously, I agree that having feelings and/or sentience is not a uniquely human attribute.
It seems to me that, based on the current research, sentience might in fact be mostly unique to humans and the very occasional smart and human raised primate. There have been reports of bonobo chimps and chimpanzees in captivity who, when shown a mirror image of him- or herself with a dot on their forehead, tried to remove the dot. So, there seemed to have been a very simple idea of "self." Also, one of the smarter apes in one of those studies was asked to sort pictures of people and apes and reportedly sorted herself into the group of "people." But it seems such reports are rare and it's possible that the phenomenon is limited to apes raised by humans. In the wilderness, sentience might be providing an obstacle rather than a survival advantage, because it tends to slow down our reactions, when we ponder stuff. It is civilization that creates the room for us to actually think about stuff.

Feelings (or "emotions") are more widely spread. Most mammals have simple "positive" and "negative" emotions. Most primates can experience "happiness," "anger," and "sadness," and studies have shown that all humans, no matter what culture they belong to, recognize and experience a certain set of distinctly different emotions: Happiness, anger, sadness, fear, disgust, surprise, and contempt. The way, in which we express those emotion, when we decide to display or conceal them, and what triggers them is culturally and individually variable. I am actually working with one of the leaders on cross-cultural emotion research here in California (as an undergraduate student, I get to mostly crunch numbers, listen, and learn). You can find information about the kind of research he does here: http://www.davidmatsumoto.info/ He has worked with and is close to Paul Ekman, about whose work you can find more here: http://www.paulekman.com/pdfs/basic_emotions.pdf

Being raised in a very rational culture, I sometimes find it challenging to distinguish my thoughts from my feelings. "Angry" is a feeling. "Oh, that darn person has taken my spot in line" is not a feeling but a thought that rests on a number of assumptions (a certain definition of "person," for example, as well as a concept of "my" and "self"). Of course thoughts and feelings interact. Feelings trigger thoughts and vice versa. So, I'm wondering if when you talk about "that WHAT thing we feel that makes us human," you might possibly be, without realizing, talking about thoughts rather than feelings. It's a very common misunderstanding that can only be cleared up through cautious and non-judgmental self-observation (as done, for example, in some forms of sitting meditation). Marshall Rosenberg's "Non-Violent Communication" actually makes learning to skillfully distinguish feelings from thoughts one of the core concepts of his method:
Feeling: When we notice things around us, we inevitably experience varying emotions and physical sensations in each particular moment. Here, distinguishing feelings from thoughts is an essential step to the NVC process.
From: http://www.cnvc.org/en/learn-nvc/nvc-in ... tion-guide
What makes you believe that animals are sentient, too? Is it just a hunch or is there some kind of evidence that you found? Just curious about what made you arrive at your conclusion that moments of connection between humans and animals are in fact based on some level of sentience on the animals' part rather than anthropomorphic projections and wishful thinking on part of the humans, who like to overlay simple conditioned responses with deeper meanings, since it makes us feel less alone in the universe.

Hugs.
:-) Julia

noman
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Post by noman »

How absolute the Knave is! We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.

- Hamlet (Act V Scene 1)
Hello SomeHopes,

When I consider the avalanche of words and ideas in all your posts, there is one thing that is most striking. It isn’t your ideas, though you have some great ideas IMHO. And it isn’t your writing style, though you have a marvelous style. But what stands out the most – is you – your personality.

I’ve never focused my attention before on someone’s personality in web conversations. But you are very outgoing, extroverted, and a psychologist. And you don’t seem to mind talking about yourself. I’m just the opposite. Myself is my least favorite subject. So if you think my opinion of you is too much just shoot me a private message and I can erase this. I really do think your character is interesting. I had to look back to all the people I’ve met on the web to decide that no one comes close to being like you.

You take me back to my college days. There’s a certain type of young man that will stay up all night drinking and arguing philosophy with his buddies – ever anxious to prove they know more, or that they can outwit their opponent. If someone says black is black and white is white the other says, ‘that’s not necessarily true’. There’s no real harm in it. It’s an exercise, a mental exercise, or perhaps more of an exorcism.

I like it when people show me I’m wrong about something in these forums. I thought it was brilliant when you questioned my saying that Campbell sees science as mythic. It forced me to reexamine the issue from several angles. But to question everything anyone says on the basis of some semantic ambiguity – I mean – your posts are like a drive-by shooting! And you answer so quickly. That post I did with the picture of the cat wasn’t even edited before I got a response.
But it just seems there is something wrong with people seeing psychology, and especially pop-psyche, as science, or believing that it should be as scientific as physics and chemistry. I think its important for even ordinary folks like myself to be able to make that distinction.

- NoMan

Actually, you strike me as far from “ordinary”…

- SomeHopes
You’re right. I’ve been accused of many things in my life – but never of being ordinary. I simply meant that I wasn’t a scientist or a scholar.
What makes us human is something that we simply feel.

- Evinnra


* * * * * * *

Feeling is not unique to humans at all. Our feelings are governed by the limbic system in our brain, a structure we share with most mammals.

- SomeHopes
I knew what she meant - in the context of what you were talking about; that is, AI and the philosophy of mind. Human consciousness is a great mystery, perhaps the greatest mystery we face, and the ‘Mary Problem’ is part of the attempt by philosophers to get some kind of handle on it. But there’s a point at which we just have to say, with our current understanding, that human consciousness is something we simply ‘know’ or ‘feel’ – that can’t be completely rationalized. That’s all.

But you take the word ‘feel’ and use the literal interpretation to start talking about the limbic system and how ours is or isn’t like certain other animals. Going off in one of many interesting tangents. I enjoy tangents – but so many.
..and when empirical science disregards the warnings of philosophers that scientific/empirical methods of analyzing statistical data is far from being evidence – for despite the largeness of a sample involved in a psychological experiment, it simply can’t prove beyond all doubt that just one more experiment will produce the ‘typical’ outcome as observed before.

- Evinnra


* * * * * * * *

Philosophers who state that don't know much about science.

- SomeHopes
Though I doubt that in real life any scientist is going to listen to a philosopher, I understood the idea she was just trying get across. There are limits to what knowledge can be gained using the inductive method - as argued by David Hume. Scientists are certainly aware of their limitations in gaining knowledge of nature. But in philosophizing about science as we are doing here, it seemed appropriate to point this out.
It seems the negative aspects of science are manifest but we, as a society aren’t taking advantage of the positive aspects.

- NoMan

Is that true? In the industrialized world, we benefit greatly from science on so many fronts.

- SomeHopes
Now, really, SomeHopes. Do you think I’m some hippie liberal from the Sixties that believes that all technology is evil and we should throw off our clothes and eat organic fruits, nuts, and vegetables? You could have considered what I said in the context of the conversation. Moyers said in POM that science had made a house-cleaning of our religious beliefs. I said that our culture is immersed in science and that we are mostly science illiterate. You said later that we can ill afford to be scientifically illiterate.

I was speaking to the mythic import of science in our culture. Just consider the first function of mythology as defined by Campbell; to awaken a sense of awe before the mystery. Science is perfect for that – but most of us aren’t taking advantage. There are, of course, negative and positive aspects of science and technology that have nothing to do with mythology and religion. But that wasn’t what we were talking about.

Newton was into astrology.

- NoMan

* * * * * * *

Not according to these websites.

- SomeHopes
I was aware of that fact - Newton himself did not believe in astrology. It was a bit sleazy of me – and I should know better than to try to pull the synthetic polyester over SomeHope’s eyes. I once read that Newton would do astrology for people on the side for money or whatever, though he didn’t believe in it himself. And it makes sense considering he was a great authority in his life, and considering astrology had been around for thousands of years and was taken very seriously. I never considered that some new age astrology lovers would use this fact to help justify their belief in astrology. But this has little to do with the point I was making – that Newton lived in a much different world than the one we live in considering what science meant in his time and in ours.
He certainly seemed to have been fascinated with theology (a fascination that I share)…

- SomeHopes
You must feel pretty close to Isaac for this shared interest. I too, would like to have a drink with the man and discuss natural philosophy and religion. I found this at Wiki:
Newton's scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the occult wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some have commented that the common reference a "Newtonian Worldview" as being purely mechanistic is somewhat inaccurate. After purchasing and studying Newton's alchemical works in 1942, economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, opined that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians."

However, it should be noted that in the pre-Modern Era of Newton's lifetime, the educated embraced a world view different from that of later centuries. Distinctions taken for granted today – such as between the natural and supernatural, or between science and pseudoscience – were still being formulated, and a devoutly Christian Biblical perspective permeated Western culture.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newt ... lt_studies
Consider this exchange of claims:
Science is really very young. The word ‘scientist’ didn’t enter the language until the early part of the 19th century.

- NoMan

* * * * * * *

The term may be rather young. However, the basic ideas of the scientific method are much older than the term "science" and were described beautifully by Francis Bacon in his "Novum Organum," almost 400 years ago:

- SomeHopes


* * * * * * *

Empiricism is a relatively new invention.

- SomeHopes


* * * * * * *

Everything before [Francis Bacon] was philosophy rather than science.

- SomeHopes
I’ve never seen anyone so confident of their understanding of a subject. You know for certain that science is older than I claimed. You know for certain that science is younger than I claimed. And you know for certain exactly when and where science began.
Bacon was the first who proposed and explained inductive thinking.
Aristotle was using deductive logic not induction (collecting large amounts of data, finding patterns, coming up with general rules based on what we find, using experimentation to verify or falsify those rules) as Francis Bacon did. That was the great innovation. Everything before then was philosophy rather than science.

- SomeHopes
Aristotle described three methods: induction, deduction, and dialectical. He favored deduction, as you say, because he felt that a logical proof was the best method for discovering truths. For example, he gave a proof that the earth was a sphere. Ships sailing away from shore will drop below the horizon hull first, then lower sails, then upper sails. The shadow the earth made on the moon during a lunar eclipse was always circular even as the shadow moved. A sphere was the only shape that could cast a circular shadow consistently he argued. He had an elaborate explanation of the apparent position of the stars as one changed latitude. The North Star would move closer to the horizon as one moved toward the equator. But in all of these proofs the premises had to be provided by observational data.


I don’t know of Aristotle doing any experiments himself, but he did collect data, or had others collect data for him, he did find patterns, and he did come up with general rules. It’s just that most of his rules are so ridiculous to us now that we forget about them. He said that a thing can move in three ways – in a straight line, in a circle, or in a combination of the two. Things on earth move in straight lines. Things in heaven move in circles. Heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones. A force must be applied to an object to make it continually move or it will stop.


In the 3’d century BCE Eratosthenes conducted a famous experiment to determine the circumference of the earth. He also determined the tilt of the earth’s axis.

About the same time, Aristarchus of Samos conducted an experiment to determine how far away the sun was from the earth. He reasoned that when there was a half moon, a right angle would be formed from the earth-moon line and moon-sun line. Then, he considered the angle between the half-moon on one side of the sky and a half moon on the other side of the sky. He reasoned that half of that angle would be the angle between the moon and sun from his view. With a right triangle, and knowledge of one of the two acute angles, the triangle could be completed proportionally – meaning he would know all three angles but not the size of the triangle. So he concluded that the sun was 19 times farther away from the earth than the moon. It’s actually 360 times farther away. But because the sun and moon are the same apparent size in the sky, he knew the sun was much, much larger than the moon. And with this information, he hypothesized that the earth may go around the sun as the moon goes around the earth. More like a hunch. But it was still a hunch in Copernicus’s time, who read Archimedes account of Aristarchus’s suggestion for a heliocentric system. The so-called Copernican revolution certainly didn’t make it any easier for astronomers to track the planets. Copernicus had the planets going in perfect circles and at constant speeds.

Tycho Brahe, one of the first great modern empiricists, who died just at the end of the 16th century, decided that Mercury and Venus went around the sun, and the sun with these two ‘moons’ went around the earth, and the outer planets, mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, went around the earth-sun system.

Kepler had the theoretical mind to come up with elliptical orbits with varying speeds. I think it should be properly called the Brahe-Kepler revolution rather than the Copernican revolution because this is where we see the scientific method we celebrate of rigorous data collecting and brilliant imaginative theory.

How much harder can science get than pure mathematics?

- SomeHopes

First you say science uses the inductive method and empiricism. Then you say hard science doesn’t get any harder than pure mathematics. Mathematics is based on proofs – it is based on deductive reasoning, exclusively. The question for you to consider is this: how much more deductive can you get than pure mathematics? Furthermore, mathematics may or may not mimic reality. Much of what mathmeticians do has no practical application. But there’s a reason for this twisty thinking. It’s a problem that Francis Bacon, who wasn’t a mathematician or much of a scientist (natural philosopher) fudged and it has been fudged by science ever since.

The ancients respected logical proofs, deductive arguments, and mathematics/geometry the same as us. We love it when things follow logically and we can be certain about something. But the inductive method is useful as well. If I see one thousand crows and they are all black, I suspect that the next crow I see will be black as well. But not only is there no guarantee for this, there is really no way to even put a probability on it. At least not that I know of. This is something David Hume realized and what I think Evinnra was alluding to. We can’t justify our believing that the next crow we see will likely be black.

But the fudge factor, both in the 18th century and in our own time is this: we fool ourselves into believing that the inductive and deductive methods can somehow be bridged by a certain rigorous scientific method. They can’t. Aristotle knew this. So what do we do? We juggle them, and sort of - pretend they fit together.

But what I am describing are the problems with science in general before I even get into the so-called soft sciences and the ‘Mary Problem’.
Science is merely looking for cause-effect relationships. There is a difference. And there are of course plenty of ignorant scientists who don't get that…

* * *

Science, when conducted properly, transcends individual differences. If conducted humbly and with awareness, it might even, on a case by case basis, transcend arrogance. If somebody who comes from a vastly different cultural background conducts the same experiment I do and achieves a different result, then I have found a good reason to suspect that my methodology is in this case vulnerable to bias. So I have to restructure my method and conduct a new and improved experiment. But I don’t throw out science altogether, as some humanists propose.

…scientists have to keep reminding themselves that the goal isn't certainty but creating evolving islands of knowledge in an ocean of doubt.

People who expect that anything can be proven beyond all doubt have no business conducting science.

- SomeHopes
It sounds like some scientists and some humanists could learn a thing or two from you.

To claim that there is an ‘island of knowledge’ is to claim that science has discovered some truth. What is knowledge unless it contains some truth. But you also say that scientists can’t discover truth without recognizing some doubt. So who gets to decide just the amount of doubt tolerable within any such an island of knowledge to make the discipline of science and the knowledge acquired by science unfuzzy? This is where politics comes in and it is one of the many problems posed by all sciences.
At best, we can conduct science with precision and accuracy.

- SomeHopes
You may conduct science with precision but how will you be so cocksure that you are conducting science with accuracy. It may be very accurate, or it may not be accurate. This is where belief comes in and makes a mess of things. But you act as though this is no problem if the methods are sound.
Science is the language of thought. Without experience to inspire the thought and to come forth from the thought, the thought isn't worth anything. That's the real problem with science (and thought), that some people think it can fill in for experience. Of course it can't.

- SomeHopes
Science IS an experience and scientists do it usually because they love it, not to compensate for life experiences.
It always seems to me that people like Hamilton, who look at myths as merely some kind of primitive proto-science, don't have a good understanding of mythology. It seems to me as if they are missing they point of what mythology can be. I don't think its function (for wise people, of course there've always been confused literalists) is explaining anything. Mythology is about connection not analysis.

- SomeHopes
Now why would you assume, that a great scholar like Edith Hamilton who has worked with myths all of her life, would be clueless as to the profound truths found in mythology and how they affect communities and individual’s lives. She said, in her intro to Mythology (1942), that when you get past all the nonsense, myths are man’s first attempt at science. Myths are explanatory. They explain how the earth and sky and people and other things came into being. They sometimes set a cosmic time frame around people’s lives and explain how the world will end. But science does that for us now. Of course, this wasn’t myth’s only function. Edith Hamilton surely would have known that. But the explanatory function of myth was, and still is, a very important function.

Earlier in the thread I quoted Ernst Mayr as one of the great icons of 20th century science.
The sharp break between the “sciences” and the “nonsciences” does not exist, once biology is admitted into the realm of science.

Evolutionary biology has more in common with history (one of the humanities) than with physics (one of the sciences)

- This is Biology: The Science of the Living World, Ernst Mayr, (1997)
When you read modern philosophies of science, the experts, whether scientists or philosophers, aren’t so cocksure about what science is or isn’t and about what constitutes knowledge. But SomeHopes is.
I don’t consider [Jung] a scientist at all but rather a philosopher.

- SomeHopes
That is a belief that I think many people would share. He stepped across the science/humanist line. But he felt it was necessary in his discipline. This is why I said in the ‘worst generation’ thread that he started the trend of psychologists defecting to some sort of religion. And that is exactly what makes psychology less scientific than the hard sciences.
But most psychology and sociology studies I’ve heard of have little to do with hard science.

- NoMan

To me that shows that psychology has a PR problem.

- SomeHopes
As you know, there has been a trend in psychology the last thirty years or so toward psychophysiology. Neurological studies make the headlines now-a-days. But traditionally, psychology has had this aura of fuzziness.

From Wiki:
A common criticism of psychology concerns its fuzziness as a science. Philosopher Thomas Kuhn's 1962 critique implied psychology overall was in a pre-paradigm state, lacking the agreement on overarching theory found in mature sciences such as chemistry and physics. Because some areas of psychology rely on research methods such as surveys and questionnaires, critics have claimed that psychology is not as scientific as many assume. Methods such as introspection and psychoanalysis, used by some psychologists, are inherently subjective. The validity of probability testing as a research tool has been called into question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology ... _a_science
Psychology has the hard science of psychophysiology. But sociology has no such crutch. I said most psychology and sociology studies have little to do with hard science. You tell me that is no longer the case with psychology. But it seems to me, that all sociology studies have little to do with hard science. But as I said before, even if that is true, that doesn’t diminish their value.
But Einstein’s relativity is hard science. It has nothing to do with the problem of human consciousness interfering with the natural world. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity is completely deterministic. One only has to consider the relative motions of the observers and what was being observed.

- NoMan

That is a big "only" though.

The way we ask our questions as to how to measure what we are trying to measure and how to compute the resulting measurements into something meaningful changed with Einstein.

it's still deterministic - and so are quantum mechanics

- SomeHopes
You’re not getting it. What I’m talking about has nothing to do with the practical application of Einstein’s theory, or with the difficulty in making measurements. In theory – it is deterministic and consistent. In a thought experiment, an observer makes measurements and they determine outcomes correctly.

But in the late 20s, as I said, quantum mechanics arrived on the scene. In a practical sense, there was no problem. Scientists go on doing science without worrying about philosophical implications. But Einstein famously rejected the idea of quantum theory. He wrote in a letter to Max Planck that he ‘didn’t think God played dice with the universe’. The concept, that assaulted rationality, was that even in a thought experiment, even with the most sophisticated measuring devices available, one could not determine both the position and velocity of an electron. Einstein believed there had to be a more basic structure to matter that would free us from this and other illogical attributes of nature. He worked on a unified field theory for the rest of his life – to no avail.

If you read the literature on this, you’ll understand the difference. Relativity posed no logical contradictions. It’s just that it is very weird. So most people who hear about the weirdness of physics point to Einstein and say it started with him. It did not.

And that brings me to String Theory. Here is a conversation on String Theory I had at another website.
NoMan wrote:

What does Quantum theory tell us about the fundamental nature of reality? I believe we are still struggling with that question.

But I think String Theories have been over-rated. They're over-rated
because we want so badly for these four forces of nature to fall into
one neat little theory that we can love. (ten dimensions for crying
out loud - did they run out of fingers?)
- NoMan

* * * * * * *

Earl wrote:
Sorry pal, this one is already done. Ed Witten presented this Formula conclusion at Cambridge some yeas ago. Hawkings is no longer a lead guy in this stuff. There is also another guy, Alan Guth who brought the "inflation theory" into being and soon, when the new super-collider is done, we will get a little closer to the science of everything.

But the formula is a done deal.

- Earl


* * * * * * *

One of the errors of assessing a scientific theory is that of giving weight to its longevity. The Ptolemaic Geocentric Universe survived from the 2nd century CE to the 17th century. It had time to acquire a lot of clout.

Of course, with mind shattering discoveries in science happening each year, we have a different concept of longevity. String theory had its gray beginnings in the late 60s and early 70s. But more important than its thirty-something age is the prestige of its advocates. Edward Witten and Alan Guth are only two of many brilliant minds that have devoted much of their lives in the pursuit of TOEs. (Theories of Everything)

But science does not play favorites, respond to prestige, or recognize Nobel prizes to reveal the elusive truth of nature. Science relies on testable hypotheses.

A few years after Einstein’s General theory hit the academic press, a Dutch astronomer and mathematician Willem de Sitter claimed that Einstein’s theory, if correct, indicated that the Universe is expanding. Edwin Hubble, in the late 20s, using the Palomar telescope gave physical evidence for the expanding model of the Universe.

Physicist Paul Dirac, in the late 20s hypothesized that an electron could have a positive charge as well as negative charge. He called the hypothetical electron a positron. In 1932 Carl Anderson found evidence for the existence of the positron experimentally.

An atom with a negative nucleus and a positive ‘electron’ or positron we call anti-matter. But anti-matter is not some exotic unproven like an anti-gravity machine. We use Positron Emission Tomography (PET scans) in hospitals everyday.

What does the Web have to say about String Theory?

* * * * * * *

From Wikipedia:

No experimental verification or falsification of the theory has yet been possible…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_theory

* * * * * * *

"Mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory in his book Not Even Wrong. He calls the theory 'a disaster for physics.' Which would have been a fringe opinion a few years ago, but now, after years of string theory books reaching the best sellers list, he has company."
http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/ ... 6257.shtml

* * * * * * *

Lawrence Krauss, a professor of physics and astronomy at Case Western Reserve University, has a reputation for shooting down pseudoscience….
Krauss' book is subtitled “The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions” as a polite way of saying String Theory Is for Suckers.


String theory, he explains, has a catch: Unlike relativity and quantum mechanics, it can't be tested. That is, no one has been able to devise a feasible experiment for which string theory predicts measurable results any different from what the current wisdom already says would happen.

Scientific Method 101 says that if you can't run a test that might disprove your theory, you can't claim it as fact. When I asked physicists like Nobel Prize-winner Frank Wilczek and string theory superstar Edward Witten for ideas about how to prove string theory, they typically began with scenarios like, "Let's say we had a particle accelerator the size of the Milky Way …" Wilczek said strings aren't a theory, but rather a search for a theory. Witten bluntly added, "We don't yet understand the core idea."
http://www.slate.com/id/2131014/

* * * * * * *

From USA Today:

String theory is on the ropes. After decades of prominence as the key to physics' elusive "theory of everything," challengers say the hypothesis is unraveling. Why? Because there haven't been experiments to prove it — and there don't seem to be any on the horizon.

“The interplay with experiments is essential, and string theory just doesn't have that," says physicist Lee Smolin, author of ‘The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of Science, and What Comes Next’.

Other detractors, including physicists Lawrence Krauss, and mathematician Peter Woit, argue that string theory is dragging physics down a rabbit hole, producing endless theorizing and no payoff.
http://www.usatoday.com/advertising/orb ... nldPop.htm

* * * * * * *

From the NY Times:

…recently theorists have estimated that there could be at least (10 x 100) different solutions to the string equations, corresponding to different ways of folding up the extra dimensions and filling them with fields - gazillions of different possible universes.

Some theorists, including Dr. Witten, hold fast to the Einsteinian dream, hoping that a unique answer to the string equations will emerge when they finally figure out what all this 21st-century physics is trying to tell them about the world. But that day is still far away.

Dr. Witten said. "Whether we are getting closer to the deep principle, I don't know."
As he put it in a talk in October, "It's plausible that we will someday understand string theory."


Tangled in Strings:

Critics of string theory, meanwhile, have been keeping their own scorecard. The most glaring omission is the lack of any experimental evidence for strings or even a single experimental prediction that could prove string theory wrong - the acid test of the scientific process.

Dr. Harvey of Chicago said he sometimes woke up thinking, What am I doing spending my whole career on something that can't be tested experimentally?
This disparity between theoretical speculation and testable reality has led some critics to suggest that string theory is as much philosophy as science, and that it has diverted the attention and energy of a generation of physicists from other perhaps more worthy pursuits. Others say the theory itself is still too vague and that some promising ideas have not been proved rigorously enough yet.

Dr. Krauss said, "We bemoan the fact that Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life on a fruitless quest, but we think it's fine if a thousand theorists spend 30 years of their prime on the same quest."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/scien ... 1165986000

* * * * * * *

Now I’ve chosen the sharpest criticism from the Web. The proponents of String Theories say what they’ve been saying for twenty years or more; that next year we may have physical evidence to support our theory. They look to the retrofitting of the super-collider (CERN) to its highest ever level of energy to be operating in 2007, or the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) to be launched the same year. Or some seek hope in LIGO, a ‘gravity wave sensor’ (yet to detect a gravity wave) as an experimental savior.

But in none of these cases is String Theory going to be proven right or wrong – just a few more clues to savor.

No, I would not use the phrase ‘done deal’ in describing String Theory. In fact, I think this theory is treading on some very thin ice. The edifice is starting to fracture. A better descriptive phrase at this point might be

- the Emperor - has no clothes! : )

- NoMan
String theory, has been cutting edge science in physics, the hardest of the sciences as I listed them. But it is under attack for being unscientific.

I talked to a scientist in this forum that said that science is whatever science can get funding for. It was a statement I objected to. And so we debated a bit.

And yet, for all the fuzziness of science I’ve listed, you know everything about science and I hear you complain that Dr. – excuse me – Mr. John Gray is not being scientific.
Also, he claims that all men are “from Mars” and all women are “from Venus.” So, he’s making generalized claims, which are the essence of science. So, he’s the one claiming to be a scientist and therefore opening himself up to being measured with (and falling short by) science’s standards.

- SomeHopes
I wonder if he sees himself as a scientist. I think he would say he’s a marriage counselor. I also think he would admit that there is a variation within each sex but that these stereotypes are still useful.
Another problem I see is many people’s ignorance about their ignorance. Is that always a characteristic of ignorance that it doesn’t recognize itself or are there other people out there who go, hey, I know next to nothing about this, but one simply can’t know everything and at least I’m aware of the limits of my knowledge? Maybe that’s the difference between humility and ignorance, the former is self-aware and the latter isn’t.
I’ve seen cleverness in many forms, show-offy, trying to make other people feel inferior, hunting for approval, things like that. I hope that my cleverness isn’t any of those things, but that it instead is merely preparing a path for true wisdom.

- SomeHopes
I don’t know SomeHopes. I can only say you are one of the most interesting people I’ve met on the Web, (or anywhere else for that matter) and I’ll be first in line to buy your book when you get it published.
I hope that someday, I’ll see you on one of these shows telling people how to live and get the most out of life, plugging her books and tapes. In my very humble opinion, you certainly have the talent for it. You’re smart, a lot smarter than me, for what it’s worth. And you have a very aggressive, outgoing, extroverted style. You certainly believe in your ideas. I think your personality will sell.

But I tell ya, I’ve never been so exasperated playing this game of equivocation. (And I can just see Clemsy smirking with delight - ‘a taste of your own medicine, eh, NoMan?')

But I really do enjoy your ideas and conversation, and I intend to comment on your two schemes, of four modes of thinking and of eight approaches to life. And to answer your questions about Buddhism and Atheism, and where medicine fits in to my hierarchy of subjects. And to say something about the memory studies you mentioned and their social impact.

I’m in no position to advise you on anything – least of all writing. But just a suggestion on posting – RELAX! The Forum isn’t going anywhere. Take some time to savor an issue. Consider the angles of an argument. Conversations here can be resurrected at any time.


Best wishes

- NoMan

Evinnra
Associate
Posts: 2102
Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:12 pm
Location: Melbourne

Post by Evinnra »

somehopesnoregrets wrote:

Being raised in a very rational culture, I sometimes find it challenging to distinguish my thoughts from my feelings. "Angry" is a feeling. "Oh, that darn person has taken my spot in line" is not a feeling but a thought that rests on a number of assumptions (a certain definition of "person," for example, as well as a concept of "my" and "self"). Of course thoughts and feelings interact. Feelings trigger thoughts and vice versa. So, I'm wondering if when you talk about "that WHAT thing we feel that makes us human," you might possibly be, without realizing, talking about thoughts rather than feelings. It's a very common misunderstanding that can only be cleared up through cautious and non-judgmental self-observation (as done, for example, in some forms of sitting meditation). Marshall Rosenberg's "Non-Violent Communication" actually makes learning to skillfully distinguish feelings from thoughts one of the core concepts of his method:
Feeling: When we notice things around us, we inevitably experience varying emotions and physical sensations in each particular moment. Here, distinguishing feelings from thoughts is an essential step to the NVC process.
From: http://www.cnvc.org/en/learn-nvc/nvc-in ... tion-guide
It is an excellent point, Julia, the distinguishing of emotion from thought is not quite so easy. Or is it?

If I look at each of my impressions – like one picture cut out of a movie – it does not seem obvious that this particular picture should have an emotional content attached to it. On the other hand, time does flow onward, which provides direction to each of the single little frames. But let us assume that we can stop time for a moment, switch off our ‘feelings’ and look at a frame of perception as it is. Would this frame of reference to the perceived outside have an emotional momentum of its own? Hume said it would, hence we are inductively arriving at the next frame by the momentum of our own innate ‘emotional’ reference.

The Stoics held that all of our ideas are BELIEFS. We consent or not consent to an image that arrives at our mind. So, if we perceive something, we are actually consenting to the valid existence of this thing – for that thing exists at least in our minds. But we do perceive such scary ideas sometimes that we wonder how on earth we managed to come up with that particularly attrocious idea. So it seems, Hume was right, we do add our own ‘momentum’ to each of our perceptions, often from some deeply held aversion/attraction to something we not quite aware of consciously. Therefore, it is not right to state that we can completely remove emotion from our perception, not even from a single-frame of an idea. To put this sentence into positive: all of our ideas/perceptions hold emotional content as far as I recon.

I agree, we could quiet our mind and avoid feeling jitters of emotions to make our cognitive process – which is a continuous action – more reliable, but we cannot state that any single one of our impressions is without emotional momentum of its own.

However, we are off topic with this discussion regarding the validity of our experiences, so lets cut the Venusian chitchat and return to the main topic here. Is there a way to earn a good living while remaining true to one’s calling? Can one remain a serious scientist/philosopher/politician/artist/religious leader etc. by simply relating the high ideals one managed to gather throughout his/her life, or is it better to become commercially profitable in order to spread the message?

I sometimes toy with the idea of writing a book about dream analysis, or science fiction – speckled with philosophy. :oops: What holds me back is my lack of language skills AND the fear that what I’ve got to say is not terribly interesting to hear for anyone other than my nearest and dearest. It is indeed true, people read those authors they actually like as a person. Yet, it is also true that people are drawn to the honesty and integrity of an author, even if his/her personality is not the ‘adorable’ type. For instance, if I read an honest and forthright philosophical argument, I will like the philosopher, even if I utterly disagree with what s/he has to say. If I read an indecipherable philosophical argument, no matter how much I happen to like the author, I will avoid reading his/her ideas again. A good balance between clarity and depth of substance seems to be what really sells. No? Perhaps the marketing gurus went too far by asking authors to reduce the content of their message in favour of accessibility to the widest clientele. :roll:

What do you think, Julia?

Cheers,
Evinnra
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

Evinnra
Associate
Posts: 2102
Joined: Tue Feb 24, 2004 4:12 pm
Location: Melbourne

Post by Evinnra »

noman wrote:

I’ve never focused my attention before on someone’s personality in web conversations. But you are very outgoing, extroverted, and a psychologist. And you don’t seem to mind talking about yourself. I’m just the opposite. Myself is my least favorite subject. So if you think my opinion of you is too much just shoot me a private message and I can erase this. I really do think your character is interesting. I had to look back to all the people I’ve met on the web to decide that no one comes close to being like you.

You take me back to my college days. There’s a certain type of young man that will stay up all night drinking and arguing philosophy with his buddies – ever anxious to prove they know more, or that they can outwit their opponent. If someone says black is black and white is white the other says, ‘that’s not necessarily true’. There’s no real harm in it. It’s an exercise, a mental exercise, or perhaps more of an exorcism.

------------------------

But I really do enjoy your ideas and conversation, and I intend to comment on your two schemes, of four modes of thinking and of eight approaches to life. And to answer your questions about Buddhism and Atheism, and where medicine fits in to my hierarchy of subjects. And to say something about the memory studies you mentioned and their social impact.

I’m in no position to advise you on anything – least of all writing. But just a suggestion on posting – RELAX! The Forum isn’t going anywhere. Take some time to savor an issue. Consider the angles of an argument. Conversations here can be resurrected at any time.


Best wishes

- NoMan
:roll: Now I’m jealous … c’mon you two, get a room! :lol: 8)

On a more serious note, how would you go about popularising the most meaningful ideas relevant to our age, NoMan? For this topic is very relevant to our species, Mythology, Art and Religion does need a helping hand in popularising the latest realisations. For instance, Mythology does relate relevant truth to the common people, so does Religion, but our age seems to doubt everything other than empirical facts.

I tend to agree that Science has an unfair advantage in our times simply by the popularity of new technological discoveries that are commercialised. It seems quite a contradiction in it self that the twentieth century managed to undermine our general belief in objectively verifiable Truths, yet at the very same time science produced such leaps of technological developments that we must have known some facts to advance so well.

Meanwhile, the social structure of our global community is on shaky foundations, since we all tend to believe the latest catch-phrase that everything is relative. Richard Dawkins was right about at least one thing, humans are prone to propagate Meme, as long as it has temporary advantages for their survival. Since any toddler can claim: ‘I don’t know, everything is relative’ no self-respecting academic would risk their career by having an opinion. But, what is communication there for, if not for stating an opinion and then revising one’s own?

For instance, I was holding an opinion that religious people can’t make adjustments to their beliefs, since the entire structure of their morality stems from their particular religious foundation. Yet, recent events and discussions on this forum made me drop this opinion and form a new one – for now – that people are in fact capable of adjustments in their moral thinking. It’s just, … I don’t quite know what made me change my mind. (Very embarrassing to admit, but it is the truth.)

Any ideas? [ And please don’t claim that you don’t know me well enough! I think you do.]

Cheers,
Evinnra :P
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

It is an excellent point, Julia, the distinguishing of emotion from thought is not quite so easy. Or is it?
No, not at all. I personally find it to take great and on-going effort, but I do feel it's worth it. To me that is also the answer to a very old question, I kept carrying with me in my heart over years. How can I cope with emotions, when both forcefully suppressing it and hurtfully lashing out towards others are obviously not healthy? It seems to me now that clearly noticing the emotion and distinguishing it from the thoughts that overlay and partly obscure might be a possible solution. If I clearly recognize that I feel angry, sad, hurt, or anything else in the spectrum of feelings, then I can be with that emotion, giving it caring attention without pretending it isn't there or having it blow up in somebody else's face. But that recognition doesn't come automatically. It is work, on-going work. But, again, as I say above, it is so worth it, because such work opens us up to a genuine relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world.

And, ooops, you are right, we again strayed off the (even if widely drawn) boundaries of our topic.
Now I’m jealous … c’mon you two, get a room!
:D LOL... No need for jealousy. NoMan is just kindly providing a bit of sugar to let the medicine (of accusing me of [GASP!] "certaninty") go down more smoothly... I'm still chewing on my response, trying to both integrate the insightful feedback that you provided, dear NoMan, while still being clear about the areas in which I feel you might have simply misunderstood what I was trying to say... all of that ideally without writing a novel... a herculean task, if there's ever been one... :wink: But, no, NoMan, no need to edit your post or take anything out. I still find it within the bounds of good taste and don't have a problem with it at all. I'm starting to work through a little bit of that in this post, further below. More detail (and hopefully clarification) will follow in a later, separate post, I promise.
On a more serious note, how would you go about popularising the most meaningful ideas relevant to our age, NoMan? For this topic is very relevant to our species, Mythology, Art and Religion does need a helping hand in popularising the latest realisations. For instance, Mythology does relate relevant truth to the common people, so does Religion, but our age seems to doubt everything other than empirical facts.
If you take a group of randomly selected people, give them "The Hero With A 1000 Faces," start a mythological discussion group to follow up, and encourage them to journal about their experiences, as well as fill out a number of well designed surveys at previously determined times of the experiment, then, you could in fact gather "empirical facts" about what happens. The behavioral sciences have it harder than the natural sciences such as physics, because it is in fact harder to measure something elusive as "life-quality" or "self-improvement." Harder but not impossible.

We could, for example, use established scales for measuring depression and anxiety, as well as participants' self-reports of well-being at the beginning of the experiment, throughout it, and afterwards (ideally both immediately afterwards and with a later follow-up) as "dependent variables" (what I measure to gauge results or outcomes). The group would have to be big enough to include a good mix of ethnicities, socio-economic levels, personalities, ages, and educational backgrounds. Half of my group (again, randomly selected, so that I, as the researcher, wouldn't accidentally skew the results by, without even realizing, picking a certain type of person) would be our control group, which means they wouldn't get to read Campbell and discuss mythology but would instead read John Gray or something else that would be non-mythology-related and make a fine placebo. :P We could also divide our initial group up in three, with one control group not reading or discussing anything, so we can potentially gauge how much of the resulting effects are due to the community experience of discussing anything and how much is due to the topic of mythology. The difficulty there is that the more different groups I sample, the larger the number of people I need in order to get anything close to meaningful results. You then look at the resulting data. Did the average measurement of depression decrease with greater statistical significance in the Campbell group? Did people there report a significantly greater increase in perceived happiness? What if we interview the mates of those people? Were increases in happiness accompanied by decreases in happiness of the spouses (in married persons) or were those win-win-situations?

If you look at mythology in such ways, using the methods of psychological research which I attempted to describe in some of my previous posts, then you in fact do have empirical facts, by which to go, rather than simple personal opinions. This is very different from the unfounded claims made in much of the self-help literature that we were talking about in previous posts (which tends to, in most cases, use introspection rather than empiricism). The better self-help books use actual research and try to break it down to simple, "how-to" concepts. The worst ones just make things up or perpetuate commonplace myths and prejudices without bothering to look at the research that examines those ideas' actual validity or applicability, thus making money by telling people what they want to hear and merely creating the appearance of change.

It is the job of science to find general tendencies that increase our understanding about the world. It is the job of applied science to take those findings and use them for improving individual lives. I didn't make that up. This is how most scientists see their work in context of the larger world. Am I certain about that? Yes, so far, until you show me strong evidence to the contrary. If you take a survey amongst scientists that reveals that most of them define "science" to be including philosophical introspection, then I will certainly reevaluate my definition, too. Definitions do two things: (1.) they sharpen our thinking and (2.) they help facilitate communication. An optimally functional definition of a word does both. If I find that I am the only one who defines "science" as I do, my definition might indeed not be very functional. But I am in fact rather confident that most scientists share my definition, while most non-scientists might have other ideas. But then, who, for example would be a better person to help you define what it means to cook than a cook, what it means to be cobbler than a cobbler, what it means to do art than an artist, what it means to be scientist than a scientist? Yes, if you ask a humanist philosopher, you might be getting a slightly different perspective. But wouldn't that be similar to asking a cobbler what it means to be cook and, when there' s a difference in opinion, valuing the cobbler's opinion over the cook's as to what is the "true" meaning of cooking.

Philosophy has much to teach us. In an "ideal" (in my definition of the term) world, both philosophy and science teach each other about their respective areas of expertise, inspiring one another in the process, not fighting for dominion by declaring the other one "stupid." I must admit, I'm guilty of that, too, at times.

I have the highest respect for both Hume and the Stoics, in fact they are amongst my favorites, as far as insight into human nature and creative thinking are concerned. It amazes me that they are long gone, yet what they say is still fresh and real and very worth reading. However, their main method was introspection (plus, maybe in case of the stoics, combined with teaching experiences and comparing one's own introspection with that of students) not empiricism. Introspection has limitations, because there is individual variance in such things and what might be very true for one person could potentially not at all apply to another. It is possible to, through introspection, come up with a hugely complex cognitive house of cards that has no physical representation whatsoever. It is empiricism (of science) that takes the inspirational force of introspection (of philosophy) and makes it useful.

Empiricism is not limited to the natural sciences. It is possible to conduct behavioral science empirically, but it takes effort and self-discipline (interesting that these are the two concepts at which I arrive again and again... I wonder if my subconscious is trying to tell me something here). That's where statistics are helpful. We lose some and we gain some. Introspection provides us with greater detail than statistics usually can. However, statistics help us figure out if I am on to something that is a general tendency of human nature or if I am simply an oddball. In a way, Hume can only make statements about Hume. Since much of what he wrote resonates with enough people to still make him good reading today, it is likely that there is at least some overlap between Hume and other human beings, but we don't know how much that is, unless we break it down to smaller pieces (risking the danger of reductionism) and examine those pieces empirically.

Doubt is a good thing, but it has to be balanced out with something, lest it becomes corrosive. Many religious approaches advocate balancing doubt with faith. Many scientists would consider a balance between doubt and faith inadequate, requiring instead for doubt to be balanced with reason. In my understanding it isn't an either-or. Without faith, my reason lacks guidance. Without reason my faith is blind. With both, there is both a direction and a sound methodology as to move towards that direction.

Now, the big question, how to teach this? That's actually what originally got me into visual communication/graphic design (a field in which I was trained and in which I worked for more than a decade). Over the years I noticed though that, no matter what level of caution and discretion I used in regards to my work, I was simply adding to the overall noise confusing people that is making them more vulnerable to manipulation and often scared into forms of dogma. My personal conclusion: Currently I spend much more time working on my own stuff than teaching others. I do talk to like-minded people, as we find here on this forum, but, at least for now, I put mass education on hold, because it almost invariably seems to lead to dangerous oversimplifications when we are trying to make any message digestible for many people at once.
Since any toddler can claim: ‘I don’t know, everything is relative’ no self-respecting academic would risk their career by having an opinion. But, what is communication there for, if not for stating an opinion and then revising one’s own?
Scientific relativity is not absolute. It merely means that any opinion has to be qualified by sharing the method that helped one arrive at one's conclusion and being mindful that generalizations are not always possible or, if possible, have to be approached with caution. It does NOT mean that having an opinion risks one's career, but simply that any opinion is considered potentially temporary and subject to change if more empirical facts become apparent. So, it is neither the relativity of the moral relativist, who says "I am ok, you are ok, everything goes," nor the relativity of the solipsist, who passionately negates that there could be any objective facts at all.

Sorry, NoMan, about again sounding so certain about this. This is a consensus definition that I, as all scientists in training, have been taught. There is a level of certainty, which is semantic rather than factual. There are different methods for finding out more about the nature of the universe, introspection and empiricism merely being two of them. All I've been doing and am continuing to do here is to say that any definition of the word "science" beyond a description of the empirical method is currently not how the vast majority of scientists views the term "science." They do so with good reason, because if we soften the term by including too much, a too large slice of our experience, and too many different methods, then the term becomes worthless, very similar to money losing value during inflation, actually. The existence or non-existence of a term that means almost everything no longer makes any difference to the world. It is the narrow, precise, sharp, and functional definitions that make a term or concept helpful.

I am very uncertain about the nature of truth, to the point that I feel we can at best approximate it. I am very certain about how I define certain words, such as "science." That is not hubris, I feel, but merely a form of self-discipline, to refuse using words fuzzily (even though many other people of course do, which is ultimately none of my business, since I'm not the word police, but about which I am still entitled to my own opinion). Just as I brush my teeth two times a day and am taking regular showers when possible, I am attempting to maintain clear, distinct, and functional definitions of such (to me) important terms as "science." Linguistic hygiene, I suppose.

Back to Evinnra:
For instance, I was holding an opinion that religious people can’t make adjustments to their beliefs, since the entire structure of their morality stems from their particular religious foundation. Yet, recent events and discussions on this forum made me drop this opinion and form a new one – for now – that people are in fact capable of adjustments in their moral thinking. It’s just, … I don’t quite know what made me change my mind. (Very embarrassing to admit, but it is the truth.)
You amaze me, Evinnra. I was just about to write you off as permanently locked into one mode of thinking, and there you turn around and simply grow. You rock! I passionately believe that there is nothing wrong with opinions, as long as we are able to change them whenever necessary. That doesn't mean we are like a flag in the wind that waves one direction Monday and another on Thursday. But ideally, we find a balance between being true to certain, less easily changed (but still not completely unshakable) core values and the (more easily changed) opinions surrounding them. Since we never know all the facts and our knowledge keeps growing (ideally, leaving aside such tragic developments as ignorance, arrogance, amnesia, or Alzheimer's disease), ideally our opinions keep changing over time. We might grow more open in some areas or more conservative in others. Ideally, that is. Most people I meet are permanently locked into one view of the world and its phenomena. Such cognitive inflexibility is dangerous, because such people sometimes start (without even realizing they're doing it) neurotically distorting their perception of the world to match it to their expectations. For example, somebody who feels the world is basically "good" will see lots of goodness and will consider what contradicts that view to be exceptions. Somebody who feels the world is a cesspool of sin will look at it the opposite way.

It saddens me to see what wonderful minds we have been given and how little they are commonly being used. It fills my heart with joy to witness your growing and opening your mind, heart, soul, and spirit up further (gradually, as it feels healthy and just right, to still maintain a cohesive sense of who you are). I am grateful and honored to be witnessing your process of learning and growing. Thank you so much for that, dearest friend.
I don’t quite know what made me change my mind. (Very embarrassing to admit, but it is the truth.)
That's ok. No need for embarrassment. In my experience, change is always multi-factorial. An experience here that doesn't exactly match a previous opinion. A word spoken or written there, that resonates and keeps swinging in the back of your mind. A concept that touches your heart and keeps percolating and interacting with your perceptive experiences. The Grace of God. Who knows what ends up tipping the scale? To me such shifts are truly miraculous and can't ever be completely explained.

With much love,
and deepest respect,
:-) Julia

P.S. to NoMan: Still-trying-to-relax-but-still-kind-of-sucking-at-it... Oh, well... I'll keep working on it... Yoda says that "there is no try" but I have not yet figured out out to "not try" (beyond those microscopically small moments during Zazen, during which I truly just am -- but the moment I write the tension comes back, the feeling that time is short and we are fragile and I need to share what I find now, now, now; don't know if that's a pathology that can be cured or simply part of my personality and temperament, tempered through practice, causes, and conditions, but ever-present in the background). :?:

noman
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Post by noman »

No need for jealousy. NoMan is just kindly providing a bit of sugar…

- SomeHopes
But how much sweetening is real honey and how much is NutraSweet?

I’m glad you took it well SomeHopes. I never know what to expect with the personalities I meet on the web. I don’t mind how relationships go – but I really am here for the depth of conversation and not to worry too much about relationships. Right now, I’m facing the prospect of having to dig my way out of the avalanche of ideas brought up in this thread.

Many years ago, in the eighties, I overheard a conversation at a public pool. Within a small group of people a young woman was complaining about someone and said, “…and so, I told him off, in a nice way and…”.

One of the guys she was talking to interrupted her saying, “wait a minute, wait a minute… How do tell a person off – in a nice way?”

I never forgot those lines. I knew there was something profound in that exchange. Many, many years later I was listening to Joseph Campbell describe Thomas Mann’s aesthetic theory. Since the nineteenth century the artist, the shaman, the bohemian, stands in opposition to society. He or she knows more than the average bloke. He or she gets frustrated in the fact that the commoners aren’t interested in the same things that she and her bohemian friends are interested in. As the character Tonio Kroger said in one of Mann’s stories, ‘these people wouldn’t care if I wrote nine symphonies and painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.’

But in Mann's story the bohemian writer, Tonio Kroger, had to face the fact, that he really honestly loved these people, the simple folks, with simple minds, and simple ideas. And why is that when he thinks so lowly of them, and wants so badly to make them aware of how lowly they are and how majestic he is? So Mann comes up with this expression, ‘erotic irony’. It’s an extremely clever metaphor for a profound idea. As Campbell put it: ‘one delivers the message, with love.’

But I had that idea, almost, on my own, from remembering that line I’d heard so many years ago, about telling a person off, in a nice way. But that’s not always easy. And it is especially difficult when it comes to profound questions. With profound questions, everyone thinks they’re an expert.
Mythology, Art and Religion does need a helping hand in popularizing the latest realizations

….how would you go about popularizing the most meaningful ideas relevant to our age, NoMan?

- Evinnra
If I could change one thing in our culture, it would be to turn off or at least turn down the ‘white noise’; the background music, the television and radio ads, the billboards and magazines, the consumer and ‘win’ culture we live in.

This idea fits in with my opening post in this thread. Just to add another ‘way’ to the potpourri may help a few people. But what people most need to know in our culture is that ‘less is more’. Or the slogan I use is: ‘Fewer, and of higher quality’. Eat less food, but of higher quality. Read fewer books, but books of higher quality. Listen to less music, but higher quality music. Watch fewer movies and television shows, but only the best films.

But our consumer culture works in the opposite direction. The higher the volume of a manufactured good, the higher the profit, and the cheaper the price. The cheaper the price the more prosperous we become. They say the American economy is 70% consumer driven. And religion, through the psycho-spiritual movement of which I speak, has become part of that consumerism. When in fact, it is religion that should be the quiet and stable center of one’s life, around which turmoil and choices turn. At least that seems to be the function of religion to me.

That’s why, Evinnra, I think you said ‘religious people can’t make adjustments’. I think there is some truth to that, but it depends on the person. Some folks, like Joe Campbell and most of the folks you meet here, like to jump around from tradition to tradition. But it’s not for everyone. But I think you’re being influenced by the eclectic religious tastes of the people you meet here. Some very good and wise folks encourage less rigidity. And don’t ask me if that is a good or bad influence. I can’t say.

* * * * * * *

Okay, one of the many tangents I wanted to talk about but didn’t have time - Cats: the meaning of cats.

At another website someone said they were having lunch with their six year old daughter and she looked him with a smile and said, “Why do cats exist?” So he presented the question to a panel of experts at a forum like this. Here is what I said.
Why do cats exist?

Gee – I hate to be so critical. But I don’t think you’all are taking this question seriously. It’s as though you throw it in the same category as ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ Or more philosophically you’all see it as the question, ‘Why does anything exist?’.

But that’s a whole nuther issue. The child asked why CATS exist. And the foremost question is this: Why did she ask why ‘CATS’ exist and not something else. A very interesting question indeed.

If you look at Egyptian trinkets at an Egyptian trinkets store what will you see? Pyramids, obelisks, sphinxes, and cats – yes – lots of cats. Or sphinxes with the body of a lion and the head of a man. Or Sekhmet with the body of a woman and the head of a cat. And if you visit the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo you will find in an obscure corner, a 4000 year old mummified cat.

The Egyptian religion evokes a sense of mystery. And the icon of the cat is very much a part of that mystery.

In the 13th century, in Southern France, there was an episode we call the Albigensians Heresy. The Catholic Church crushed this very mystical movement. It was the very beginning of the inquisition. They were derogatorily called Cathars. In Peter O’Shea’s book ‘The Perfect Heresy’ about the Catholic purges of the Albigensians of southern France he says:
P13 “Cathar, once thought to mean pure, is really a play on words meaning ‘Cat worshiper’”

- The Perfect Heresy, Peter O’Shea, (1998)
He also says:
P80 “Gnostics were the classical ancestors of the Cathars. John's gospel has Gnostic elements. Mary Magdalene was first to see the resurrected Jesus. For the Gnostics she out ranked Peter. Women could be leaders, not just breeders.”

- The Perfect Heresy, Peter O’Shea, (1998)
But why do we see this connection between a mystery religion or Gnostic religion and the cat?

Jonvon mentioned Schrodinger’s cat. But did Jonvon ever consider why Schrodinger used a cat in his thought experiment rather than any other creature. A scientist, it seems to me, would be more inclined to use a rat. From a scientist’s point of view, the rat is man’s best friend. But even a scientist like Schrodinger knows the mythical iconography of the cat.

And consider T.S. Eliot’s famous poem:

Macavity the Mystery Cat

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!



Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, or one or two to spare:
And whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!

- T.S. Eliot (1939)
And then consider the black cat of Halloween. No self-respecting witch would be without one. Why? What is it about the cat that evokes feelings of mystery or evil? One has only to understand where science and mythology meet. The answer is that there is a relationship between cats and schizophrenia. You laugh? Just type cats and schizophrenia into Google. Or taxoplasmosis. The medical researchers take this very seriously. Pregnant women, they say, should avoid cats.

So while we ponder the mysteries of the mind, consciousness, and mental illness - and consider how it all relates to religion, to mysticism and all the mysteries of the universe - the very essence of our lives - a six year old - has the wisdom - and the intuition - to ask the penultimate question – the question whose answer has the potential to unite science with religion and mysticism – the question that will once and for all lift us from the shackles of the old mythologies to brave new world where science and mysticism can live in peace and harmony - yes – certainly the most important question of our age. The question of why – cats – exist.

– sigh –

I’m speechless.

- NoMan

* * * * * * *

nprentice wrote:
"Ah, come-on!" -- this is just too much "from the head" analyzing and
intellectual-izing of this glorious creature which we humans have
felt necessary to name/classify as feline. Read what ever you want
into a child's question about "why cat's exist" --- it doesn't matter
one bit to our cats what we "think" (about them) with our human
brains!
- nprentice


* * * * * * *


NoMan wrote:

Welcome nprentice,

I didn't analyze anything. I just connected the dots and drew a
conclusion that's intuitively obvious to the casual observer.

Cats – mystery – ancient Egypt – mystery – Cathars/Gnostics –
mystery – witch's cat – mystery - T.S. Eliot – mystery cat –
Schrodinger's cat - mystery – modern physics – mystery–
schizophrenia – mystery -– shamanism – mystery - religion – mystery…

And for all this evidence you question her intuition. When it's clear
to me civilization cannot move forward until we address the mystique
of the cat.

- NoMan
As surely as there is something about Mary, there is something about cats IMHO.

- NoMan

noman
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Post by noman »

On Schemes
I guess part of the contradiction may come from a persistent human tendency to get our levels of experience and thinking mixed up.

1.) Pure experience
2.) Pure thinking
3.) Meta-thinking (reflecting on thought itself)
4.) Applied-thinking (Practical use)

- SomeHopes


Something I noticed from many of your ideas is the tendency to interject practicality. I would never think to separate thinking into a category of practical use. To do so would be to interject values. Something can’t be practical unless it is valued for some reason. If thinking is going to be broken up into categories, I would say all categories are practical in some sense. They serve some purpose. But to cut a line through particular purposes is to place values on thinking. And I don’t know how that can be done.


1.A) All sciences ("hard" or "soft") conducted with self-transcendent motivation (love for wisdom, wanting to further enlightenment, easing suffering)
1.B) All sciences ("hard" or "soft") conducted with selfish motivation (profit, ego-gratification, fame)

2.A) Art/politics/philosophy/spirituality/religion conducted with self-transcendent motivation (see above)
2.B) Art/politics/philosophy/spirituality/religion conducted with selfish motivation (see above)

3.A) Tricksters, shamans, true bridge people, natural mystics, mythological master-minds and -hearts
3.B) Snake-oil sales people, merchants in the temple and other frauds

4.A) Confused yet well-meaning cannon fodder
4.B) Confused yet ill-meaning perpetrators

- SomeHopes

I see a Zarathustrian judgment happening here. There are (1) pure hearted scientists, (2) pure hearted artists, (3) pure hearted shamans, (4) not sure what to make of this category

Here again, you are placing a value on what people do. But this time it has nothing to do with practicality. It has to do with the quality of their heart and motivations. For categories (1) and (2) I can only say that some of the greatest work comes from some of the most despicable people. I don’t know how to interpret the disciplines of science and art in terms of the quality of the person. It’s the quality of the finished product that most people are interested in.

* * * * * * * *
A smooth transition would look something like this:

1.) Physics
2.) Chemistry
3.) Biology (including psychophysiology)
4.) Mathematics
5.) Economics
6.) Research Psychology
7.) Sociology
8.) Political science
9.) Cultural anthropology
10.) Applied/Clinical Psychology
11.) History
12.) Literature
13.) Fine Arts
14.) Philosophy
15.) Religion and spirituality.

- NoHopes :grin:

O.K. (with the proposed amendments, in bold). Where would you place the discipline of medicine on this continuum?

- SomeHopes
My scheme was of subjects of study. None of them have anything to do with practical application as such. But every one of them can be practically applied once a value for practical application is established. Medicine would be the practical application of the biological sciences. The practical application of physics may be engineering. The practical application of Political Science is the practice of law. The practical application of studying economics is making money (or making a more efficient economic system). The practical application of fine arts may be the creation of beautiful things to make people happy. And the practical application of Religion and spirituality may be to become enlightened or to help other people to enlightenment. But as I said, as soon as you begin to apply knowledge gained in the study of any of these subjects, you have to make some value decisions. In my scheme, no one subject is of higher value than any other.


I cut our society up into three groups:
1.) Traditionalists
2.) Atheists
3.) New Agers

-NoMan

* * * * * * *

But then, I do know mystical atheists. Maybe they call themselves "secular humanists" rather than "mystics," but they live self-transcendent lives, which to me is what matters. So, I would rather draw the line between

(a) self-transcendent atheists and self-transcendent spiritual types, whatever terminology they may use, and

(b) selfishly dualistically moralizing atheists and spiritual types, and

(c) pragmatic types who are realistic about the limits of human nature without losing their optimism over it (come in both atheist and spiritual types, too)

The true difference, I feel is not the spiritual orientation (towards God versus towards life) but the direction of practice (towards something transcendent and/or practical rather than towards ego). Does that make any sense whatsoever, or am I getting really cryptic here? In my experience, a self-transcendent atheist has a whole lot more in common with a self-transcendent spiritual person than a self-transcendent spiritual person would have in common with either a superstitious spiritual person or a non-self-transcendent, moralizing atheist. Where, by the way, do you place Buddhists, who don't believe in a personalized deity that has to be appeased through prayer or action but in practice for practice's sake? Are they atheists or spiritual folks in your system? Just curious...

- SomeHopes
Here again, you create a scheme in which there is a Zoroastrian type of judgment. Category (b) in your scheme seems to me to be valued lowest. And category (c) seem to me to be somewhere in value between the heaven of category (a) and the hell of category (b).

But in my scheme there is no order of value as far as society is concerned. I have my personal preference but that’s irrelevant to my scheme. It is about describing society (trying to be an objective observer as a sociologist). There are going to be good and bad folks in each category.

I consider Buddhism a religion. It’s been around longer than Christianity making it very traditional. However, there’s a catch. In America, I’ve been told, we practice a peculiar form of ‘Protestant Buddhism’. And since Buddhism is fairly new to us Westerners that makes it part of the New Age tradition – sort of. You know much more about this than I do. We had an American here in these forums that was heavy into Japanese Buddhism, had practiced it most of his life, had taught Buddhism courses at the college level, and was trying to get a book published on Buddhism. He was totally disgusted with the direction Buddhism, especially Japanese Buddhism had taken in this country.

Though I’ve just peeked through the window on this subject of Buddhism and its history I gather that the American manifestation of it is something new arrived at through synchronicity. But in my mind, it is still traditional, based on thousands of years of tradition. But it certainly does not fall into the category of atheism.

Atheism (in my definition) is anti-spiritualism. In my MythNow Blog I talk about Richard Dawkins and his ‘delusion of Atheism’.

But now I have to make a distinction. Playing the role of the dispassionate sociologist, no category is better than any other.

1.) Traditionalists
2.) Atheists
3.) New Agers

But a member of each category has a tendency to dislike the other two. I have my personal preference. I don’t like the idea of atheism. I like traditional religion a little. And I really love New Age.

On Fundamentalism

My heart hurts, when I read Campbell write the following in his "Myths to Live by": "It seems impossible today, but people actually believed all that until as recently as half a century or so ago: clergymen, philosophers, government officers, and all. Today we know--and know quite well--that there was never anything of the kind: No Garden of Eden anywhere on this earth, no time when the serpent could talk, no prehistoric "Fall," no exclusion from the garden, no universal Flood, no Noah's Ark. The entire history on which our leading Occidental religions have been founded is an anthology of fictions. (The Emergence of Mankind, pg. 25)." or "However, today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education (The Impact of Science on Myth, pg. 10).

Campbell said those words in 1966 and 1961. Would he write the same thing today, forty-some years later? In a today that has a U.S. president who was and is seriously courting fundamentalist Christians in order to get elected and stay in power?

- SomeHopes
Unfortunately, Campbell could say the same today were he alive. People do believe in the Bible literally. And people do believe in the Koran literally. Fundamentalism in both religions rose up in the 70s. And they rose up for a reason. There was an absolute disintegration of the culture forms in the late 60s. It’s the horror of nihilism as described by Kierkegaard over 100 years earlier. I think of Keirkegaard as the father of modern fundamentalism. Marx might be thought of as the father of modern atheism and Nietzsche the father of the New Age. I say this about Nietzsche because he understood the need for a radically new mythology and offered one with ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’. Just as with Marx, Nietzsche’s vision of a new society didn’t quite work out the way he had planned. But just the fact that he was willing to try amazes me.


But I don’t see any use in complaining about Fundamentalism until such time as there is a acceptable alternative. There may be an acceptable alternative for you and I and other people at this forum. But I mean an acceptable alternative for Fundamentalists. Most of the Fundamentalists I know were so shocked and horrified by what happened in the late 60s and early 70s that they aren’t the least bit interested in new ideas, or new ways of doing things. The 70s is the only decade that in looking back on it, one is impressed by the nostalgia of a previous decade – the decade of the 50s. After the horror of the 60s people were looking to those ‘Happy Days’ of the 50s. Of course, everyone knows the 50s weren’t all that happy. But the yearning for that optimism, just in a mythical sense, in the face of the horror that Campbell witnessed in the late 60s drove many people into the Fundamentalist camp. And that is why we have such a strong religious influence in our politics. I’m not saying it’s right, a good thing, or that I like it. But I understand why it is there.

- NoMan

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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

On Value

I'm still working on a reply on the topics of "science" and "certainty," trying to find a way of editing it down from its current, rather obscene length to something more manageable. But this seems more compelling right now, especially since it looks from my vantage point as if there is a gaping discrepancy between how both you and I think about the idea of "value" and since it might be very well possible that what I write about other topics will be rather useless to you (again, one of those dreaded value judgments!) unless I take the time to better explain my take on this. My intention is not to "convert" or "missionarize" you into using the exact distinction that I use between "absolute value" and "pragmatic value" (See further below for what I mean with that...). It is rather to share with you where I am coming from, so you can better understand what I'm trying to say, now and in the future. This is a core issue, I feel, one that holds the potential for both great misunderstanding and great helpfulness (Oh, no, golly! Another one! Away, away, you judgments! Are there different kinds of judgments, some help- and some hurtful? Or am I merely being a hypocrite here, telling others to not judge but judging away with unbridled fervor myself? See further below for what I mean...). All that said, whatever conclusions you draw from what you are about to read are fine by me. You might suddenly go "Aha!" and realize that this was a missing puzzle piece in your life. You might decide I am a relatively skilled writer but a complete crackpot content wise. You might decide that we can keep sharing ideas, but that we, on some core issues, simply have to agree to disagree. Whatever the outcome, it's all good (Was that a value judgment now or was it not?).

Once again, it seems to me as if my particular perspective in this case is backed by a number of other mystics and teachers (which I wasn't truly aware of when discovering it for myself, so I'm not just parroting somebody else's ideas here but am sharing something with you that I regularly put to the test of my own practice). Once again, there is this obnoxious air of certainty that seems to surround many of my posts. So, it looks as if both of these topics (value and certainty) might be at least somewhat interrelated. But this is a departure from what I was going to write. Well, the "certainty" draft is sitting in a Word file, and it most likely won't go anywhere, so here it goes, to the topic of "value" instead.

For real, now, and with less typographic whimsy, 'cause these are serious matters:
Julia categorized:
I guess part of the contradiction may come from a persistent human tendency to get our levels of experience and thinking mixed up.

1.) Pure experience
2.) Pure thinking
3.) Meta-thinking (reflecting on thought itself)
4.) Applied-thinking (Practical use)
NoMan commented: Something I noticed from many of your ideas is the tendency to interject practicality. I would never think to separate thinking into a category of practical use. To do so would be to interject values. Something can’t be practical unless it is valued for some reason. If thinking is going to be broken up into categories, I would say all categories are practical in some sense. They serve some purpose. But to cut a line through particular purposes is to place values on thinking. And I don’t know how that can be done.
What is the problem you have with values? I can see how values get people in trouble, when they are considered absolute guidelines, to which anybody has to adhere, no matter the circumstance, situation, background, etc., under threat of hell, brimstone, or permanent ignorant suffering. We humans seem to have a pesky tendency to create dead dogma from living experiences and wisdom and to force what we thus find onto others. Smart and insightful people like you and me quickly realize that this is a set-up for disaster. But the opposite, pretending that there is no value at all, in nothing, ever, is just as problematic. The moral relativism such attitude would propose tends to hurt people.

It depends now on your momentary perspective, if hurting people is a good thing (positive value judgment) or a bad thing (negative value judgment) or if it simply doesn't make a difference either way in the grand scheme of things (no value judgment at all).

In this context, a discussion that Evinnra and I are currently having might be helpful. You find Evinnra's post at the link below and my answer right behind it:

http://www.jcf.org/new/forum/viewtopic. ... 6403#46403

In that discussion, we look at the two different perspectives that come up at some point for most anybody who seriously studies meditation and many other mind-body practices, the perspective of transcendence (also called non-dualism by many) and the perspective of dualism. The perspective of dualism is not hard to find. It is the conventional perspective, and most people you meet are in that one almost all of the time. It's not a bad place to be, because dualism gives you an illusion of control in an uncontrollably mysterious world. However, if you take on a spiritual practice, or you happen to be constitutionally prone to mystical experiences, you might occasionally run across another, second perspective, that of transcendence.

When you are looking through the lens of transcendence, there are indeed no value judgments at all. Everything is worth just as much as everything else, and all works together with everything else in a beautiful dance. There is suffering, but even that suffering is part of a larger plan, in a gorgeous balance with all that is. Nothing is unimportant. Nothing is important. It all simply is. There is light. There is shadow. Both spin around, in an eternal Yin-Yang-y tango, producing phenomena that arise and cease, arise and cease, arise and cease... our own impermanent minds and bodies included, their joys and their sadnesses simply more phenomena that keep arising and ceasing.

When you are looking through the lens of dualism, then you can see that certain practices cause more suffering and others cause less suffering. Some things are more helpful and others are more hurtful. There is medicine and then there is poison. So, there is a sense of small, individual self that is either encouraged to thrive and bloom or clobbered into submission. There is judgment or, if you prefer the term, a sense of discrimination. However, in contrast to the judgment of dogmatic fanatics, a simple, functional (again, a judgment!), dualistic sense of discrimination does not try to make up one-size-fits-all rules but is looking at each situation in the moment at which it is happening, on its own terms and merits. There are times when hitting a person is unnecessarily hurtful, for example, when I am in a relationship and my partner annoys me, to bop them on the head usual isn't all that constructive. There are times when hitting a person is helpful, for example when we are in a situation of great danger and somebody is losing it and screaming hysterically, a quick slap in the face might be just the right amount of intense, sudden stimulation to get them back toward being in the moment rather than caught in their paralyzing, frantic, overwhelming fear. So, there is no one-size-fits-all rule as to if hitting is "right" or "wrong" or when hitting is "right" or "wrong." General guidelines can sometimes make things a tad easier, but there is always the potential for exceptions from any of such rules. There are times when I want to be charitable and help a person if I can. There are times when my charity simply enables a destructive habit and stepping back and letting that person hit rock bottom is, albeit painful, more helpful. Again, any "Thou shalt do this" or "Thou shalt do that" might get the general gist of most situations but misses the mark in some cases.

When you read through the above quoted discussion between Evinnra and me, you can see that both of us agree with both the transcendent and the dualistic perspective going hand in hand rather than being opposites that have to fight one another.

If I get permanently stuck in transcendence, I get something one of my teacher called "Zen madness," a callous disregard for other people's suffering. I might sit on a mountain in lotus pose, while wars rage rage below, blood spatters up to me, but, due to simply being one with all that is (and being lucky enough to have a compassionate soul come by and bring me food, when my body needs sustenance, since such states tend to not be very self-sustaining), my heart remains at peace. The same may be true for the occasional "dispassionate sociologist."

The other extreme would be being stuck in dualism. I find myself so enamored with a particular idea of helpful versus hurtful that I suddenly think the world would be such a great place, if everybody would only feel that way. So, the idea turns from a simple thought into a reified thought, something, to which I ascribe a certain level of substance and existence. What was originally "helpful" in a particular circumstance turns into "good" in all circumstances, and what was originally "hurtful" in a particular circumstance turns into "evil." I suddenly might also notice that I feel attached to the thought, that thinking it or meeting others who think it makes me happy. Last but not least, I identify with the thought, and start feeling threatened whenever I meet somebody whose thinking differs from mine. That is the mindset that makes people kill for ideas. That is what I mean above, when I talk of ABSOLUTE VALUE.

The solution is to find awareness of both perspectives (depending on the way your mind works, at the same time or oscillating back and forth in a pattern that works for you). This way, you get both, the discrimination of the dualistic perspective and the One-ness experience of the transcendent perspective. As a result, compassion and wisdom arise. Compassion and wisdom use dualistic value "judgments," but they do so within a larger context. Instead of simply judging everything as "friendly" or "hostile" towards your own limited self, you look at the larger Self, which you can call God, or Life, or Sangha, depending on what tradition you come from. Instead of insisting that one thought should cover all bases, you practice to be open to the requirements of the situation, to be willing to respond according to the situation's needs rather than your own, and to be willing to make mistakes and learn from them, since our understanding of the situation's needs is naturally limited by our inability to know all the pertinent facts. There will always be facts we don't know and there will always be times when we (from our dualistic perspective) mess up royally, but (from our transcendent perspective) that is just fine since our heart was in the right place.

The balance that this last paragraph describes can be found in Campbell's description of the hero journey (in the return of the hero to his or her community bringing gifts), in Mahayana Buddhism's idea of the bodhisattva being the ferry(wo)man between the yonder shore (paramita) and this one, in Hermann Hesse's Siddharta's last part of the book when Siddharta recognizes that the gift of transcendence is worth nothing unless it's shared with the dualistic world, in Jesus' unifying and at the same time transcending mysticism and the Old Testament's commands with his assertion that "Love" is the greatest commandment of all and that essentially all others follow from it, as well as in Jesus' recommendation that "by their fruit" shall you tell rightful teachers from sham artists and our rightful actions from their selfish and confused imitations.

With Jesus, the Mahayana Buddhists, and Campbell, I do believe that the fruits of our actions provide guidance as to the "value" of what we do. Yes, this is a judgment, but it is not the Old Testament's (or the Zoroastrian, for that matter) all-or-nothing "Though Shalt..." but has an almost utilitarian slant. We look at the consequences of our actions, the fruits, and decide, based on what we see, if what we do is helpful or requires adjustments. So, yes, you are right in that I have the "tendency to interject practicality." Because without that practicality, without taking the lofty ideas that I find in my head and putting them to the test in the nitty-gritty, dualistic daily life with all of its muddiness and challenges, those ideas are nothing but head-farts. Only if there is some form of useful practical applicability are they worth anything. That is the above mentioned PRAGMATIC VALUE. And, yes, again, this is spoken from the dualistic point of view. From a transcendent point of view, they are simply because they are and not other justification is needed.
I see a Zarathustrian judgment happening here. [...] Here again, you are placing a value on what people do. But this time it has nothing to do with practicality. It has to do with the quality of their heart and motivations. For categories (1) and (2) I can only say that some of the greatest work comes from some of the most despicable people. I don’t know how to interpret the disciplines of science and art in terms of the quality of the person. It’s the quality of the finished product that most people are interested in.
But the quality of the "product," the fruit of our actions is the only thing I am truly interested in, too. Hence, practicality. I don't think the prophet Zarathustra would necessarily agree with my take (since he seemed to have had a rather absolute slant). But it's possible that I misread him, because I only know the little about Zoroastrianism that I learned in a comparative "World Religions" class I took a few years ago. The fact that I don't think this is a good comparison might be due to my lack of comprehensive knowledge of this tradition.

With all due respect, it seems to me as if you were misunderstanding what I was trying to say. I was not talking about people's heart and motivations but about the fruits of their actions. Most of the time, I'm not even sure of my own motivations. I can see that my wording lent itself to being misunderstood. Instead of separating the world into pure-hearted and despicable scientists, artists, shamans, and consumers/sheep, I was attempting to give a map of attitudes between which we seamlessly switch back and forth. The selfish scientist is caught in dualism. She may very well have, just like our aforementioned Mary, have a sudden, transcendent experience, which catapults her either into being now caught and stuck in transcendence, the other extreme, or leads her towards and emotionally mature balance between dualism and transcendence. Based on that, I am actually missing one category in the areas 1-3, because each, the scientist, artist, and shaman, should have one that is (a) stuck in dualism, (b) stuck in transcendence, and (c) found balance between dualism and transcendence (which can manifest itself quite different from person to person, so the simple "good" and "bad" of Zoroastrianism just doesn't ring true to me in that context). But to me, the question is not what is in that person's heart or mind (even though an experience of transcendence tends to come with mental effects that an outside observer might classify as "pure-hearted," but what are the consequences of that person's actions. So, again, it boils back down to practicality and pragmatism. And, yes, like any model, this is a horrible oversimplification. Hitler brought the unemployment rates in Germany down. There are delightful people who, without meaning to do so, bring great suffering to the people they are trying to help. But, in my experience, such things happen less, when we have a healthy (for us, whatever that may mean in each case) balance between transcendence and dualism in our life.
My scheme was of subjects of study. None of them have anything to do with practical application as such. But every one of them can be practically applied once a value for practical application is established.
But to figure out how to skillfully practically apply something is in itself a subject of study -- and not an easy one, I might add.

To pick apart plenty of dead bodies and figure out their anatomy, finding out more about both general tendencies and individual differences, is a form of study, of scientific research.

To measure concentrations of different hormones, neurotransmitters, and other substances and try to reference them with certain states of body, thus examining the world of physiology, is a form of study, of scientific research.

To look at pathology and healing, and to see how I can apply what I learned through my studies of anatomy and physiology in order to help imbalances and support healing, to add what is missing or to take away what is available in excess, to recommend certain life style choices, to vaccinate against diseases, to prescribe an antibiotic or antiviral agent, to recommend certain forms of psychotherapy for mental or behavioral imbalances, or to give psychoactive medications in order to facilitate greater life quality and functionality all involve forms of study, of scientific research. Painstakingly, in form of double-blinded, placebo-controlled studies, wherever possible, we find out what translates from the petri dish into an animal model and from there into the human body in all its variations. Those aren't forms of study in your eyes? That is not research? That is not science?
And the practical application of Religion and spirituality may be to become enlightened or to help other people to enlightenment. But as I said, as soon as you begin to apply knowledge gained in the study of any of these subjects, you have to make some value decisions. In my scheme, no one subject is of higher value than any other.
I wonder if this might mean that you are caught in the transcendent perspective here. Because, without an attempt at being helpful and easing suffering, why do anything at all? To conduct research for research's sake doesn't make sense to me. Yes, in the process, there are transcendent moments, during which we simply watch the beauty of something new and fresh that we found unfold. But without finding a way of reconciling those findings with the needs of all, with alleviating suffering, I wonder if the scientist would be merely a parasite, following a narcissistic quest. Of course, sometimes application is far away, so I don't think this warrants curtailing the freedom of research and forcing all scientists to only look at stuff whose applications are right around the corner. But there should be at least a striving towards practical applicability (sometime, maybe decades or even centuries down the road). If there isn't, then it simply seems selfish. I find that even more true when it comes to religions and spirituality. To celebrate narcissism, as many New Agers are prone to doing, to find out yet another thing about me, me, me, in my eyes completely contradicts the idea of religion, which (in whatever form it arises) I feel is designed to shift our value system, from selfish greed towards something larger and more spacious. If it isn't, then I don't consider it religion but superstition, so we might have a problem with differing definitions of terms here again, this time in regards to the term "religion." To me any religion that embodies selfishness is a sad misinterpretation of something larger and more beautiful.

Is that a value judgment? You bet it is!
Here again, you create a scheme in which there is a Zoroastrian type of judgment.
Again, I don't think I do. Again, I am not talking about ABSOLUTE VALUE but about PRAGMATIC VALUE. From a transcendent perspective, I value all three categories (the transcendent, the narrow-mindedly stuck dualistic, and the pragmatic that balances both transcendence and dualism in utilitarian yet not selfish manner). We can learn from all of them. It might be more pleasant to live in a world full of balanced people, but a world full of imbalanced people can be a great inspiration to one's practice, so there's value there, too.
Category (b) in your scheme seems to me to be valued lowest. And category (c) seem to me to be somewhere in value between the heaven of category (a) and the hell of category (b).
I'm sure that's how most Zoroastrians would look at it. But I don't consider "heaven" "good" and "hell" "bad." "Pleasant" and "unpleasant," maybe, but as you say so well, "I have my personal preference but that’s irrelevant to my scheme." To me, the dualistic separation that Zoroastrians and many other fundamentalist belief systems make into "heaven" and "hell," "good" and "bad," "righteous" and "sinful" itself is a problem if it is stuck dualism (as opposed to relative dualism that is situational and balanced with transcendence). But again, to get stuck in transcendence and to think there are no value differences at all, is not a very functional attitude either. The dualistic separation that each of us can observe in our own mind, if we just take the time and sit down quietly to watch for a while (a short while for some of us, a long while for others) is only one part. The transcendent union between our little ego and All That Is, in heart, mind, and spirit, is the other part. To only have dualism or to only have transcendence is like hopping on one leg and never using the other. We won't get very far, if we do that, and we fall on our face a lot. To have both, dualism AND transcendence is like using both legs. Suddenly we can walk, run, even dance.
There are going to be good and bad folks in each category.
I don't believe in good and bad folks but simply in imperfect humans making good (in relation to a certain reference system) and bad (in relation to a certain reference system) choices that lead to hurtful or helpful outcomes. Usually both, actually. Whatever we do hurts some and helps others. At best we can maximize help and minimize hurt as much as possible. But there are no treasures without sacrifices and there is no pain without teaching. People who radically separate everybody they meet into "good" and "bad" (sometimes with ideas in their heads as to what ritual can make a "bad" person "good" and what dastardly deeds can make a "good" person "bad") have forgotten this very basic fact about Life and the Universe. It's very natural and understanding to forget. I myself forget that a lot, too, that's why I generally try to be cautious in my judging of others. Usually, when I talk of judgment, I am talking about my own attitudes and behaviors, not about others. Even in such schemes as the ones that we are talking about here, I'm talking about my own different attitudes towards life rather than about all of society (even though most of this of course works macroscopically just as well as microscopically if I use it in such ways -- the fractal nature of the world in which we live sees to that).
I consider Buddhism a religion.
Me too.
In America, I’ve been told, we practice a peculiar form of ‘Protestant Buddhism’.
I'm not too fond of your usage of "we" in this context. I live in San Francisco. We have Soto Zen Buddhists, Rinzai Zen Buddhists, Tibetan Buddhists, Vipassana Buddhists, as well as Theravada practitioners from Vietnam and other areas in South-East Asia. Each of those different traditions interpret practice and react to the Protestant, capitalist, and multi-cultural influences around them in very different ways. Even when you take the tradition with which I chose to practice, Soto Zen, you find that different teacher have very different approaches. The Buddha's advice was to never simply believe what a teacher tells you but to explore and examine any ideas that are presented to you in the context of your own life. The results differ from person to person, even though there are of course overlaps ("impermanence" being one biggie that keeps coming up a lot).

So, what on earth does your former acquaintance means with "we" in this context? Hello! If you are still here on this forum, any chance you could elaborate? I'm not being facetious here, I would really love to know.
And since Buddhism is fairly new to us Westerners that makes it part of the New Age tradition – sort of.
I don't think that is correct, but I do see that the practice journeys of many people that feel drawn to New Age also include stints in Buddhist practice. Some stay. Others move on. I look at it as a general search for transcendence. In my opinion, Buddhism, when interpreted in a functional and soteriological way, holds the precious diamond of wisdom and tries to share it with anybody who comes knocking. Sometimes people get it, and sometimes it's just not a good fit, because they get distracted by something (bald heads, robes, ritual, their own fears and wishful thinking, stuff like that). But I believe there is hope for everybody. Who knows, maybe some of them even find wisdom in New Age, even though to me any New Age practice I ever looked into in a bit more detail wasn't the real thing but merely pretty, colorful marbles and glass beads. Maybe I was simply unlucky. Maybe it wasn't a good fit. But in my experience there is something valuable in the weeding and pruning of traditionalist approaches. When you have the patience to research into the past of a school or tradition, you will often find that many of them have already experienced New Age's confusion and have grown beyond that. But then there are others, that are simply calcified in a narrow-minded interpretation, mere fossils of their original glory. There are no easy answers.
He was totally disgusted with the direction Buddhism, especially Japanese Buddhism had taken in this country.
Sorry to hear that. I guess I was just lucky. I stumbled into my temple, I found a good teacher, I sat and am sitting a lot. It works for me. I meet a good number of people in my temple who seem confused and/or neurotic, and I wish them well. I don't feel disgust serves me well, but I can of course sometimes not help it to feel it, when my needs collide with another person's needs. So, boom!, disgust arises and with it another great opportunity for practice. I doubt that living in Japan and studying there would work for me. Does that make American-Japanese Buddhism better or worse than the original Japanese Buddhism? I don't think so. Again, it's simply a question of goodness of fit. Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen Buddhism, was reportedly disgusted with how Buddhism was practiced in medieval Japan. His disgust inspired his passionate practice. So, the problem seems to be an old one and not limited to the U.S.
the American manifestation of it is something new arrived at through synchronicity.
I'm not sure I know what you mean. If you think it is an important point, would you care to elaborate? If not, never mind. My specific temple didn't synchronously arise but was founded by Suzuki Roshi, a Japanese monk who came to the U.S. to tend to the spiritual needs of the Japanese-American community. He was struck by the interest in meditation that he saw in some of the hippie kids he met. So he invited them in. That's how our particular Zen center here started. Some of the people I meet here have studied in Japan. What they talk about sounds as if it's in fact a differently flavored practice. One of them had epilepsy and the abbot at the monastery in Japan that he went to for a year told him to discontinue his medication. So, throughout the year, he kept having seizures. Was that the real deal of monastic life while his medicated U.S. experience was merely a cozy imitation? Hard to tell. What is "real" after all can, again, only be determined through the fruits of our practice. Is a certain practice making me saner, more compassionate, wiser, etc.? Then, no matter how crazy it may seem to anybody else, there is something "real" about it. Again, I return to my "tendency to interject practicality."
But it certainly does not fall into the category of atheism.
Oh, yes it does, by most people's definition of the word at least.
athe·ism Pronunciation: \ˈā-thē-ˌi-zəm\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French athéisme, from athée atheist, from Greek atheos godless, from a- + theos god
Date: 1546
1archaic : ungodliness, wickedness
2 a: a disbelief in the existence of deity b: the doctrine that there is no deity
Since I keep reserving the privilege to at will personally redefine such words as "Faith" or "superstition," I, by my own standards of equality, have to give you the same right. But most Buddhists are spiritual and they are atheists. Then there are oddballs like me, who are Buddhists but theists. Even though I don't believe in a personal and/or personified God but more in a kind of God wave or force, I do take much of what the Bible tells me about God very seriously and happily integrate it into my Buddhist practice.
I don’t like the idea of atheism. I like traditional religion a little. And I really love New Age.
Interesting. I do like atheists, because I like courage, and to me it is quite courageous to know we have to die but to not come up with some fancy afterlife scheme. But then, I do define atheism in the conventional sense, as expressed in the above 2nd dictionary definition rather than the way you choose to use the word. I do like traditional religion but I dislike some of the people practicing it (especially those who don't have any respect for traditions other than their own). As you probably know by now, I consider most of New Age a money making scheme. I am trying to practice with my dislikes, because I have a hunch that they have something to do with shadow aspects of my own self that might need attention.

Hugs.
:-) Julia

somehopesnoregrets
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Post by somehopesnoregrets »

On Fundamentalism
NoMan quotes my quoting Campbell: My heart hurts, when I read Campbell write the following in his "Myths to Live by": "It seems impossible today, but people actually believed all that until as recently as half a century or so ago: clergymen, philosophers, government officers, and all. Today we know--and know quite well--that there was never anything of the kind: No Garden of Eden anywhere on this earth, no time when the serpent could talk, no prehistoric "Fall," no exclusion from the garden, no universal Flood, no Noah's Ark. The entire history on which our leading Occidental religions have been founded is an anthology of fictions. (The Emergence of Mankind, pg. 25)." or "However, today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education (The Impact of Science on Myth, pg. 10)."

Campbell said those words in 1966 and 1961. Would he write the same thing today, forty-some years later? In a today that has a U.S. president who was and is seriously courting fundamentalist Christians in order to get elected and stay in power?

- SomeHopes
It's fascinating to me that your answer sounds as if you read the Campbell quote quite differently from the way I did.
NoMan wrote: Unfortunately, Campbell could say the same today were he alive.
Actually, the way the quote reads to me (and the reason it saddens me) is that, from the sound of it, when he wrote it, literalist fundamentalism was limited to some of the fringe of the extremely uneducated and poor. See the parts I bolded above. Isn't he saying that "it seems impossible today," but 50 years ago (from his point of view, which of course would be almost a century ago from today's "today") literalist beliefs were mainstream (Past Tense!)? So, at that time, when Campbell wrote these words, it looked as if such beliefs were on the verge of fizzling out and becoming a thing of the past.

So, I don't think he would be saying the same thing today (that "clergymen, philosophers, government officers, and all" once held such literalist beliefs but now no longer do and that "today such claims can no longer be taken seriously by anyone with even a kindergarten education," because there are today obviously plenty of people with more than a kindergarten education, who are rather serious about those claims. And, just as you, I find that unfortunate.

Why did Campbell's optimism not pan out? What happened (in addition to the defiant backlash against hippe-nihilism and the philosophies powering it that you like writing about)?

Did he underestimated the staying power of literalist memes? Has there since been an active, energetic rebound of literalist thought powered by the diligent activism of ultra-conservative fundamentalists who happily ignore or dismiss all the scholarly knowledge to which he alludes and who know how to get press? Does this simply show our public schooling system failing? Did the country take a sharp turn to the conservative right as reaction to the deep fears that 9/11 triggered? Or is it all a bit media hoax as some of what Lizpete suggests in another thread might point towards?
NoMan continues: People do believe in the Bible literally. And people do believe in the Koran literally. Fundamentalism in both religions rose up in the 70s.
Yes, years after the two Campbell quotes were made. What bothers me is that I had this idealistic idea that things would get better and better and people would get smarter and smarter. And it's not happening. When Campbell made that quote, literalist fundamentalism was hanging by a thread, it seems. The "clergymen, philosophers, government officials" who were Campbell's contemporaries (as opposed those from half a century earlier) no longer used such narrow-minded interpretations to base their work and choices on. But then things shifted again. Now, we have more and more government officers who give literalist biblical interpretations the same weight as scientific studies, thus comparing and confusing apples with oranges. We have fundamentalist inspired judges, fundamentalist-influenced school boards, fundamentalist lawyers, fundamentalist journalists. Somebody like Obama, who is considered a "liberal" today would have barely qualified as a "moderate" in the 60s. The entire system has been re-calibrated, it seems, and what was the "middle" then no longer is.

And that's just here in the U.S. Look further, and it gets worse. Worldwide Islamic fundamentalism seems to get a continuous inflow of young men disillusioned with the current systems and their promises.
But I don’t see any use in complaining about Fundamentalism until such time as there is a acceptable alternative. There may be an acceptable alternative for you and I and other people at this forum. But I mean an acceptable alternative for Fundamentalists.
Well, if they would just really read their Bibles instead of blindly following charismatic preachers into xenophobic hate, that would be a really fine start. But, as you, I don't see that happening any time soon.
Most of the Fundamentalists I know were so shocked and horrified by what happened in the late 60s and early 70s that they aren’t the least bit interested in new ideas, or new ways of doing things.
As I mentioned in another post, most of the fundamentalists I met weren't even born in the late 60s and early 70s. So your line of argumentation might work for people of your and maybe my age (I was born 1966), but what about this younger, newest wave of ignorance? Or is this, as Wicker, who I quote in the moralizing thread, claims, truly a phenomenon of the older generation and we have to simply grow out of it as a society into a new secularism? Maybe my fears and worries are getting the better of me and are distortion my perception. You keep mentioning that I seem to be so sure of myself, but I would love to be wrong about this.
After the horror of the 60s people were looking to those ‘Happy Days’ of the 50s. Of course, everyone knows the 50s weren’t all that happy. But the yearning for that optimism, just in a mythical sense, in the face of the horror that Campbell witnessed in the late 60s drove many people into the Fundamentalist camp.
Again, my experience of growing up in the 70s and 80s was so different from what you describe. I remember seeing high school graduation group photos shot in the 50s, and they all looked the same. Like clones. I saw the images of perfect housewives, who channeled all their repressed sexual energy into getting their houses all sparkly, and couldn't identify with those ideas of "woman" at all. To me (and many others of my generation in Germany) those images were so much more horrifying than people starting to experiment like crazy and some of that going awry. I remember seeing movies of love-ins (at the time, to me, distant past and a faraway place). I loved the hope and the optimism in those faces. So, I wonder what inoculated Germany against this later surge of fundamentalism? Why did what you describe as "the horror of the 60s" have such localized effects? The Campbell quote still mostly applies to Germany today (a few, rare fundamentalists, the occasional incurable neo-nazi, but overall a secular, mostly well-educated society). But it no longer applies to the U.S., it seems. When looking for statistics on Evangelist Christianity the other day, I found a chart that shows that the only industrialized country less educated on matters of evolution than the U.S. is Turkey. No wonder creationists and other extremists are finding this apple ripe for the picking.

See the following link for the chart:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/ ... 38983.html
(I believe the original data was published in Science in 2006)

Hugs.
:-) Julia (courageously smiling and whistling in the woods to chase the beasts away)

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