Woowoo musing and the giant disclaimer
Jun. 10th, 2008 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pasitheaA brief note on this topic: Vonnegut's short "Unready to Wear" was very much preaching-to-the-choir for me. I'd almost hoped he had some rationale against the amphibians because I 100% agree with the amphibious point of view and would join them in a second if I could. Though, since I don't believe in such things, it just makes me envy them and wish it were true, when I should instead be working on fixing my attitude towards my non-amphibious nature.
I have a difficult time talking about my spiritual self. Particularly in person but even in text, it's difficult for me to communicate about. I feel very guarded on multiple levels. There are a lot of things that mix into this. Probably highest is the disconnect in my own head where I both believe and don't believe the things I think about myself. My emotional self believes them. My rational self tells me that the spiritual stuff is all silly. Further complicating this relationship is the fact that I like my rational self and wouldn't give it up. Magical thinking doesn't accomplish anything. Work and creativity do.
The last thing I'd ever want to do is be one of those people who's always buying lottery tickets and absolutely sure the next one is going to make them rich. That, in a nutshell, is how I see religion. To me, enlightenment doesn't exist. It is a goal. It is something to reach for but one cannot actually attain enlightenment because as soon as you did, you'd stop learning and growing. The road to enlightenment is about the journey, not the destination.
Another issue I have with discussing things in person is that I am quite avoidant of conflict in person. Often online too, though decidedly less so. I don't like the idea of telling people about my mystical thought's/experiences because if they're the sort of person who's about giving answers, I'm likely to nod my head to them but internally reject what they say and then our relationship ever afterward has a strange taint to me because they see me through their lens and I secretly reject that lens but won't say that out loud. It's like when you're a child and have a unicorn poster on your wall and everyone assumes you like unicorns so they keep giving you unicorn-themed stuff for years and years to come, even though you've mostly outgrown unicorns. You can't tell them you don't like unicorns any more because maybe you do, just not as much. They aren't part of your internal identity.
Last in my list of problems is ego. Internally, I'm an egomaniac, but it's quite a different thing to think you're a god in your internal frame and actually tell someone else with certainty that you are a god. What if they laugh? On a related issue: What if I come up with something that is fully credible which supports my magical thinking on some level, and I tell someone, and they like the idea enough they tell other people, and next thing you know, _lousy_ poorly meditated spiritualities are using your private contemplative as a rationalization for their being bastards to other people. ... This is, of course, fully egotistical and irrational on my part. First in the belief that I'd come up with something that no one in the history of thinking has ever come up with before, and second that I'm somehow influential enough that word would get around of my 'great' thoughts..
As a for-instance, a while back, I encountered a blind man on the sidewalk. I tend to move very quietly, and though he was feeling around with his cane, he didn't see or hear me. I know this because he started shouting obscenities into his cell-phone though he was standing only a foot or two from me. It's a very interesting situation to contemplate. By neither his own senses nor his tools did he detect me. My rational mind becomes my spiritual mind here because I have to consider that it IS possible a spiritual world exists and that I'm blind to it and none or our tools are good enough to detect it. It is something I have to contemplate and it's why I love my rational mind. If I were set in a particular spiritual view, I would want to reject inputs that didn't fit my notion of the world. My experience with the blind man (and a few other situations) say I have to consider that there are other ways of seeing that might be as valid or more valid than my primary one. BUT they do not prove that the bible is true and that Jesus shoots fish out of his butt, and that's the part that really bothers me. People who want to justify a view that they don't think about will take a situation like that and use it as justification and not as a contemplative. This is incredibly irksome to my rational mind.
Of course, that's all silly because, as noted, I'm sure someone else has already thought that thought before and it's probably already been disseminated. There's probably also a school of thinking where it doesn't matter because the True Believers are going to cling to their dogma regardless of any outside data. Though I guess, my own dogma shows here in that as much frustration I might express towards the world, deep down inside, I believe that everyone wants to think and grow and be something more than what they are and that I would lose some part of myself if I let go of that belief and fully fell into cynicism. So I guess that's another problem for me. How do I keep rotten people from upsetting me without letting go of my optimism? Is my point of view even valid? I mean there's some very small possibility that their point of view is even _right_, and if we're just talking about their point of view for themselves and how they are able to function in the world, it's probably a lot more likely it's right for them. Though I suppose I have difficulty accepting that because what if their internal view requires they push it on others and beat it into their children? Then my tolerance becomes conflicted and gets conflated with my personal issues with my family to boot. :/
Too much stuff to think about... This post was meant to be about something else entirely but I got so busy writing the disclaimer that I never got to the real post. I guess I'll keep this and reference it in future woo-related posts to keep me from using it as a dodge in the future. On the bright side, there's nothing particularly revealing or vulnerable in this, so I can post it publicly. If some nitwit choses to see this as an atheist having doubts, I really feel sorry for them because even if they never buy a single ticket, they'll waste a fortune on the lottery. :/
I have a difficult time talking about my spiritual self. Particularly in person but even in text, it's difficult for me to communicate about. I feel very guarded on multiple levels. There are a lot of things that mix into this. Probably highest is the disconnect in my own head where I both believe and don't believe the things I think about myself. My emotional self believes them. My rational self tells me that the spiritual stuff is all silly. Further complicating this relationship is the fact that I like my rational self and wouldn't give it up. Magical thinking doesn't accomplish anything. Work and creativity do.
The last thing I'd ever want to do is be one of those people who's always buying lottery tickets and absolutely sure the next one is going to make them rich. That, in a nutshell, is how I see religion. To me, enlightenment doesn't exist. It is a goal. It is something to reach for but one cannot actually attain enlightenment because as soon as you did, you'd stop learning and growing. The road to enlightenment is about the journey, not the destination.
Another issue I have with discussing things in person is that I am quite avoidant of conflict in person. Often online too, though decidedly less so. I don't like the idea of telling people about my mystical thought's/experiences because if they're the sort of person who's about giving answers, I'm likely to nod my head to them but internally reject what they say and then our relationship ever afterward has a strange taint to me because they see me through their lens and I secretly reject that lens but won't say that out loud. It's like when you're a child and have a unicorn poster on your wall and everyone assumes you like unicorns so they keep giving you unicorn-themed stuff for years and years to come, even though you've mostly outgrown unicorns. You can't tell them you don't like unicorns any more because maybe you do, just not as much. They aren't part of your internal identity.
Last in my list of problems is ego. Internally, I'm an egomaniac, but it's quite a different thing to think you're a god in your internal frame and actually tell someone else with certainty that you are a god. What if they laugh? On a related issue: What if I come up with something that is fully credible which supports my magical thinking on some level, and I tell someone, and they like the idea enough they tell other people, and next thing you know, _lousy_ poorly meditated spiritualities are using your private contemplative as a rationalization for their being bastards to other people. ... This is, of course, fully egotistical and irrational on my part. First in the belief that I'd come up with something that no one in the history of thinking has ever come up with before, and second that I'm somehow influential enough that word would get around of my 'great' thoughts..
As a for-instance, a while back, I encountered a blind man on the sidewalk. I tend to move very quietly, and though he was feeling around with his cane, he didn't see or hear me. I know this because he started shouting obscenities into his cell-phone though he was standing only a foot or two from me. It's a very interesting situation to contemplate. By neither his own senses nor his tools did he detect me. My rational mind becomes my spiritual mind here because I have to consider that it IS possible a spiritual world exists and that I'm blind to it and none or our tools are good enough to detect it. It is something I have to contemplate and it's why I love my rational mind. If I were set in a particular spiritual view, I would want to reject inputs that didn't fit my notion of the world. My experience with the blind man (and a few other situations) say I have to consider that there are other ways of seeing that might be as valid or more valid than my primary one. BUT they do not prove that the bible is true and that Jesus shoots fish out of his butt, and that's the part that really bothers me. People who want to justify a view that they don't think about will take a situation like that and use it as justification and not as a contemplative. This is incredibly irksome to my rational mind.
Of course, that's all silly because, as noted, I'm sure someone else has already thought that thought before and it's probably already been disseminated. There's probably also a school of thinking where it doesn't matter because the True Believers are going to cling to their dogma regardless of any outside data. Though I guess, my own dogma shows here in that as much frustration I might express towards the world, deep down inside, I believe that everyone wants to think and grow and be something more than what they are and that I would lose some part of myself if I let go of that belief and fully fell into cynicism. So I guess that's another problem for me. How do I keep rotten people from upsetting me without letting go of my optimism? Is my point of view even valid? I mean there's some very small possibility that their point of view is even _right_, and if we're just talking about their point of view for themselves and how they are able to function in the world, it's probably a lot more likely it's right for them. Though I suppose I have difficulty accepting that because what if their internal view requires they push it on others and beat it into their children? Then my tolerance becomes conflicted and gets conflated with my personal issues with my family to boot. :/
Too much stuff to think about... This post was meant to be about something else entirely but I got so busy writing the disclaimer that I never got to the real post. I guess I'll keep this and reference it in future woo-related posts to keep me from using it as a dodge in the future. On the bright side, there's nothing particularly revealing or vulnerable in this, so I can post it publicly. If some nitwit choses to see this as an atheist having doubts, I really feel sorry for them because even if they never buy a single ticket, they'll waste a fortune on the lottery. :/
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-11 01:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-11 04:01 am (UTC)Though again, as I said, even if the possibility of a magical world were probable, it doesn't in any way mean that Jesus rose from the dead and danced around. Most modern religions are pretty stupid when you get down to it because they suggest that if you don't live some special way, God is going to break your kneecaps for all eternity; which seems pretty small and petty for the creator of the entire universe. Not to mention, WHICH religion is the RIGHT one? And even if any of those was the RIGHT God, why would you want to spent eternity with an asshole who's going to torture everyone who didn't pass his arbitrary allegiance test? Better to die on your feet than live on your knees or something like that.
Christian/Jewish/Islamic myth really bugs me in that regard. Man's sin was to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. To become as gods themselves. Thinking; exploring other ideas. That is the ULTIMATE sin in those religions. How fucked up is that? You're supposed to lay in your place and grovel. Fuck that. If that god exists, I'd do everything I could to cast him out of power. I certainly wouldn't want to spend eternity sniveling and giving him blowjobs.
You've got that backward, you know
Date: 2008-06-11 04:25 am (UTC)I think the saying is properly: Better to live on your feet than die on your knees, as elucidated by St. Yossarian of Pianosa in ~1944
Re: You've got that backward, you know
Date: 2008-06-11 05:37 pm (UTC)Re: You've got that backward, you know
Date: 2008-06-11 08:29 pm (UTC)My version is a corrupted version of the same saying who's origin is, I believe, in the book Catch-22. The protagonist, Captain Yossarian, a Bombadier on a B-25 is on shore leave in Italy, spending his time in a whore house, as is his want. There he meets an ancient man who tells him that his friends have it backward, it's better to Live on your feet than to Die on your knees.
Yossarian's story takes place at the end of WWII the Luftwaffe have been destroyed, and all there is for a bombadier like him to do is risk his life flying over cities full of anti-aircraft artillery, or bomb peaceful Italian villages off the sides of hills to delay the advance of rouge Nazi tank columns, or take part in the terror bombing of major German cities.
Yossarian had already fought bravely to defeat Hitler, but by the time we catch up with him in the book his role in the Army Air Corps seems to be entirly superfluous, and he's only sacrificing his time, sanity and risking his life and soul to appease people like Colonel Cathcart and General Scheisskopf. The ancient man in the whore house is trying to impart his wisdom that there is another way to deal with conflict other than dieing on your feet or living on your knees.
The ancient man also claims that Italy won WWII, because when the pact with Germany was signed they were spared invasion. When the Allies came and liberated Italy he hailed them as liberators. And either way, the Italian fighting man was the most poorly equipped and most poorly trained in the entire war and was never sent to the front by either side, and in that way Italy won WWII.
Anyway, Catch-22 is my favorite novel ever so at every opportunity when someone says "Better to die on your feet than live on your knees," I like to whip out that witty counter-quote.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-06-11 04:54 pm (UTC)Which is basically the more orthodox forms of Buddhism in a nutshell. Once you become an arhaut, there's nowhere to go; you die, which doesn't really matter, and that's it. No more treading the cycle even as a bodhisatva.
it's quite a different thing to think you're a god in your internal frame and actually tell someone else with certainty that you are a god
See, this is one of the things I like about animism. When everyone's some sort of spirit, some more powerful than others and in different areas, then egotism becomes a lot less important. Where I sit right now is the axis mundi, I could plant a "horiboo" right here and it would be the center of the world. But that wouldn't change that where you're sitting is the center of the world and the Altai Mountains are the center of the world, and so on down the line. I dunno, it's hard to explain without going sounding like a lunatic - the usual disclaimer about "talking about your spirituality is like talking about masturbating" applies here I guess.
I believe that everyone wants to think and grow and be something more than what they are and that I would lose some part of myself if I let go of that belief and fully fell into cynicism
Since you don't get anywhere in the universe without perception, everyone creates their own little concept of divinity and what's actually going on. Not really a religious thought so much as a human one.
what if their internal view requires they push it on others and beat it into their children
Well, that's the old "your right to swing your fist stops where my nose begins" thing, right? Ultimately what makes a religious belief wrong is not the endless discussion of deities and forces you cannot, and should not feel obliged to, prove by scientific and rational means; it's the endless condemnations of hell, the threats, the forced religious indoctrination, the pogroms and so on down the line.