Consider the following quote from Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time":
"Every question is a seeking. Every seeking takes it's directions beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness. The knowing search can become an "investigation", as the revealing determination of what the question aims at. As questioning about.....questioning has what it asks about. All asking about....is in some way an inquiring of...Besides what is asked, what is interrogated also belongs to questioning. What is questioned is to be defined and conceptualized in the investigating, that is, the specifically theoretical, question. As what is really intended, what is to be ascertained lies in what is questioned; here questioning arrives at it's goal. As an attitude adopted by a being, the questioner, questioning has it's own character of being. Questioning can come about as "just asking around" or as an explicitly formulated question. What is peculiar to the latter is the fact that questioning first becomes lucid in advance with regard to all the above named constituitive characteristics of the question."
I often spend a considerable amount of time contemplating a working definition for what I mean by God and this clip from Heidegger often comes to mind when I make that attempt. As a result I’m always stopped dead in my tracks; would I try to end the inquiry?
Questioning has a certain eternal character to it, and likewise so does God. Where there are questions, there are answers; it seems the answers to those questions always make the questions absurd, yet questions remain. God, in this sense, is THE eternal question, one which is pondered generation after generation as not simply a seeking after [T]ruth, but a seeking after the [G]ood, after [V]irtue, after [J]ustice. This pursuit and eternal questioning seems to me to be as good a definition of God as any, and I’m happy to keep it that way for now.
I can’t help but see this as applying (Matthew Chapter 7):
7 Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you. 8 For every one that asketh, receiveth: and he that seeketh, findeth: and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened. 9 Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? 10 Or if he shall ask him a fish, will he reach him a serpent? 11 If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?
Are we asking the right questions? Are we asking questions at all? When we choose to live our lives within the limits of reason, are we not simply putting a limit to our questions? If an answer to a question is not rational, does it make the question absurd? How can a question really be absurd?
Showing posts with label WORDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WORDS. Show all posts
Friday, November 28, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
What I mean by "Dogma"
This is a response to another discussion I’m in, so it’s going to be me regurgitating many thoughts and ideas I’ve already laid down here, but in another way.
A couple things first:
- It’s always been my aim to expose the dogmatic nature of reason to show that the same level of faith people have towards religious language, people likewise have regarding reason.
The following statement was made to me regarding the above point, as if it's what I'm trying to suggest: (Which of course I’m not):
“In other words, the fact that you're writing about something means you've presupposed the validity of the definitions of the words you're using. And this is just as dogmatic as religious beliefs are.”
‘Of course, it's complete twaddle. Belief in the validity of the words in a dictionary presupposes only that empirical definitions are required in order to communicate. It certainly doesn't require faith in the unseen...”
The first task is; what is Dogma? Or in the very least, what do I mean by it?
Let me first quote two Buddhist sayings, as this will help set the stage:
- “You can use your finger to point at the moon, but don’t mistake the finger for the moon.”
- "The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you have the meaning you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a few words with him?"
What is Dogma:
Let me address directly the comment which was made above (in GREEN) by saying the following: There is no presupposing of the validity of definitions, but a presupposing that those definitions mirror a given phenomenon to an extent that they are somehow intertwined and/or inseparable from it; this is often looked at in an atemporal way, and as such becomes dogmatic…..
Dogma arises (I’ll argue) due to an ontological divide which exists between language and it’s referent, but where one refuses to recognize this divide; in other words, one mistakes the finger for the moon. I constantly use the example of gravity and ask the question, “Did gravity exist prior to Newton?” My answer is always a strict no; however the rational atheist always responds, “Of course it did.” This stance is an obvious dogmatic one, and arises because one is reluctant to separate the word gravity, and its underlying principles, from the phenomenon we attribute to it.
It must be seen that prior to Newton, the word gravity and it’s underlying principles did not exist, they were not in anybodies mind because there was no such thing yet; there simply wasn’t such a language. The rational atheist takes me as saying that apples didn’t fall from trees, which is hardly the case. What I’m suggesting is; no doubt apples did fall from trees, but it wasn’t because of gravity. Taking the dogmatic stance that it was, is not seeing the ontological gap between the word and the referent, it’s looking at the two as if they were somehow inseparable. Surely hundreds of years from now new science will evolve that not only makes Newtonian physics completely obsolete, but also makes it look quite silly at the same time – in much the same way we see the ancients description of the universe as silly. So what does that mean? Does it mean we were wrong? Of course it doesn’t, a pragmatic stance would see that gravity and its’ underlying principles were merely a mode of communicating about a particular phenomenon such that we could not only communicate about and understand the world, but more importantly understand ourselves. If we look at the past 2000 years of humanity we can see that (relative to what science says) the universe hasn’t changed all that much, however the way we talk about it has changed drastically and we’re constantly updating old forms of thought with new ones. So what’s happening here? Is the universe changing? Or is it simply that we’re talking about it in different ways?
Gravity, again, along with the underlying mathematics is nothing more then language, it is not a mirror to nature; the disembodied words of Newton were not just floating around in empty space since the beginning of time. As well, we cannot make the claim that it’s consistent with the way the universe operates in and of itself, because we can never know this; at best we can say that it’s consistent with a mode of thinking that we call rational. It’s consistent with an underlying mathematic, and we attribute that language of mathematic to a given referent and call it gravity, BUT THEY ARE NOT ONE IN THE SAME.
So, the bottom line:
One must learn to separate what he says from what it refers to. One must understand (refer to the second Buddhist quote above) that the words themselves are not the phenomenon itself, but a description of our experience which adds a certain meaning to it; once we have this, Newton can be discarded.
The next question that will be asked of me is, “So what, that doesn’t mean that God exists!” and I’ll respond with, “Well, not any more then gravity.” Then someone will further say that they can prove gravity by taking me to a bridge and dropping a rock and proclaim, “Look, gravity!” As if what I’m witness to at that moment is Newtonian physics, what could be more self evident? (I’m witness to words, hooray!) I don’t deny the validity of physics in talking about fallings rocks, but I also don’t deny the validity of religion in talking about the human spirit. Religion, whether Christianity or Buddhism, is a language and one should not mistake it for talking about stone or flash or old men in white robes; to understand it, one must not look to differentiate its words from an underlying reality, to connect it somehow by means of making it specific. One must dissolve the dogma into an experience of life that is not hindered by definitions. When one learns to separate words from referents, I truly believe (almost dogmatically so ; ) ) that a real experience of the divine is possible.
A couple things first:
- It’s always been my aim to expose the dogmatic nature of reason to show that the same level of faith people have towards religious language, people likewise have regarding reason.
The following statement was made to me regarding the above point, as if it's what I'm trying to suggest: (Which of course I’m not):
“In other words, the fact that you're writing about something means you've presupposed the validity of the definitions of the words you're using. And this is just as dogmatic as religious beliefs are.”
‘Of course, it's complete twaddle. Belief in the validity of the words in a dictionary presupposes only that empirical definitions are required in order to communicate. It certainly doesn't require faith in the unseen...”
The first task is; what is Dogma? Or in the very least, what do I mean by it?
Let me first quote two Buddhist sayings, as this will help set the stage:
- “You can use your finger to point at the moon, but don’t mistake the finger for the moon.”
- "The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you have the meaning you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a few words with him?"
What is Dogma:
Let me address directly the comment which was made above (in GREEN) by saying the following: There is no presupposing of the validity of definitions, but a presupposing that those definitions mirror a given phenomenon to an extent that they are somehow intertwined and/or inseparable from it; this is often looked at in an atemporal way, and as such becomes dogmatic…..
Dogma arises (I’ll argue) due to an ontological divide which exists between language and it’s referent, but where one refuses to recognize this divide; in other words, one mistakes the finger for the moon. I constantly use the example of gravity and ask the question, “Did gravity exist prior to Newton?” My answer is always a strict no; however the rational atheist always responds, “Of course it did.” This stance is an obvious dogmatic one, and arises because one is reluctant to separate the word gravity, and its underlying principles, from the phenomenon we attribute to it.
It must be seen that prior to Newton, the word gravity and it’s underlying principles did not exist, they were not in anybodies mind because there was no such thing yet; there simply wasn’t such a language. The rational atheist takes me as saying that apples didn’t fall from trees, which is hardly the case. What I’m suggesting is; no doubt apples did fall from trees, but it wasn’t because of gravity. Taking the dogmatic stance that it was, is not seeing the ontological gap between the word and the referent, it’s looking at the two as if they were somehow inseparable. Surely hundreds of years from now new science will evolve that not only makes Newtonian physics completely obsolete, but also makes it look quite silly at the same time – in much the same way we see the ancients description of the universe as silly. So what does that mean? Does it mean we were wrong? Of course it doesn’t, a pragmatic stance would see that gravity and its’ underlying principles were merely a mode of communicating about a particular phenomenon such that we could not only communicate about and understand the world, but more importantly understand ourselves. If we look at the past 2000 years of humanity we can see that (relative to what science says) the universe hasn’t changed all that much, however the way we talk about it has changed drastically and we’re constantly updating old forms of thought with new ones. So what’s happening here? Is the universe changing? Or is it simply that we’re talking about it in different ways?
Gravity, again, along with the underlying mathematics is nothing more then language, it is not a mirror to nature; the disembodied words of Newton were not just floating around in empty space since the beginning of time. As well, we cannot make the claim that it’s consistent with the way the universe operates in and of itself, because we can never know this; at best we can say that it’s consistent with a mode of thinking that we call rational. It’s consistent with an underlying mathematic, and we attribute that language of mathematic to a given referent and call it gravity, BUT THEY ARE NOT ONE IN THE SAME.
So, the bottom line:
One must learn to separate what he says from what it refers to. One must understand (refer to the second Buddhist quote above) that the words themselves are not the phenomenon itself, but a description of our experience which adds a certain meaning to it; once we have this, Newton can be discarded.
The next question that will be asked of me is, “So what, that doesn’t mean that God exists!” and I’ll respond with, “Well, not any more then gravity.” Then someone will further say that they can prove gravity by taking me to a bridge and dropping a rock and proclaim, “Look, gravity!” As if what I’m witness to at that moment is Newtonian physics, what could be more self evident? (I’m witness to words, hooray!) I don’t deny the validity of physics in talking about fallings rocks, but I also don’t deny the validity of religion in talking about the human spirit. Religion, whether Christianity or Buddhism, is a language and one should not mistake it for talking about stone or flash or old men in white robes; to understand it, one must not look to differentiate its words from an underlying reality, to connect it somehow by means of making it specific. One must dissolve the dogma into an experience of life that is not hindered by definitions. When one learns to separate words from referents, I truly believe (almost dogmatically so ; ) ) that a real experience of the divine is possible.
Monday, November 24, 2008
On "Being Wrong"
I’ve run into a bit of a wall with my thoughts on religious language, they’ve become scattered and tangential. I feel that part of the problem is I have so many concepts which need shoring up I’m not even certain where to begin cleaning the beach; and then something came to mind.One topic that has always left me in a funk is the nature of debate, more importantly, someone being wrong. The more I engage in debates on various blogs, the more I see people simply squatting, taking sides on a given issue and not budging; myself included. So I’ve changed my attitude a bit as this taking of sides seems to miss the point of why a handful of people came together in the first place.
For Example:I tend to frequent blogs that debate Atheism vs. Theism, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution. Regarding the debates on these blogs I’m baffled by a couple things; in the event that the blog owner happens to be a theist, why is the blog full of atheist individuals trying to stir up trouble and all around being contentious? If you don’t agree with the Theist, why trouble yourself with the debate? I tend to assume, somewhat solipsitically, that either the atheist just wants to satisfy his ego by using what he would consider his superior powers of logic, or perhaps he really does have an interest in religion that he is unwilling to admit to. I think about it this way, when it comes to friends and coworkers, we tend to gravitate towards people who we share common ideals and/or, people who we find we can make connections with. Or in a more general sense, in face to face life people tend to steer towards making a connection before making a divide, that is, people have a natural desire to be understood by others and this cannot be achieved by being contentious with everyone you first meet. We humans don’t meet people on the street and immediately start arguing with them, we engage in small talk about the weather, we talk sports and news, we stick to themes where we know immediately there’s a commonality. Yet go to a Theistic blog and at any moment some stranger jumps in and starts calling people idiots; it troubles me….
What I’d like to talk about here are two things; what does it mean to be wrong? And secondly, Davidson’s Principle of Charity.
First, what is the principle of charity?
The principle of charity asks; what are the conditions under which on conversation can take place or can actually happen? What Davidson would suggest, is that in order to interpret a person we must assume up front that what they say, the beliefs they convey, are mostly true about the world, and furthermore they have mostly the same beliefs about the world as you do. This works for the following reason; the more falsehoods and/or error you attribute to someone in conversation, the less evidence you have that your interpretation is a correct one. To simply discard someone’s beliefs or thoughts entirely, drains your case that you’re interpreting this person at all, or that this person even has beliefs.
In other words, in the case of a debate between theist and atheist; if the atheist simply makes the claim that the theist is entirely wrong about the world, about God, so on, he now has no idea whether or not he’s even interpreted this person at all. He may as well be talking to some evil blog demon who’s simply spiting out nonsense; and yet he sticks around for more. I find it vary infrequent that the atheist (or the theist for that matter) tries to reach out and find some common ground on which to stand.
On being wrong:
Let me sidestep for a moment and talk about being wrong, then I’ll come back to the principle of charity. Being wrong, I tend to believe, is nothing more than falling into contextual error; in other words it’s not so much that we’re deceived about sensory input as much as we speak about that sensory input in a way that’s contradictory to our cultural language game. For example, let’s suppose you put 3 rocks in the hand of some individual and ask the question, “How many rocks are you holding?” and they respond, “5 rocks.” Now, of course, you’re going to immediately interpret them as being incorrect, and rightly so in one sense as they’re holding only 3 rocks.
Hold the show though; certainly we don’t want to say that this persons experience has deceived them do we? In other words I think we’d all agree that this person is in the very least experiencing (seeing, feeling) what we would generally consider a quantity of 3 rocks. However what they report to you is not consistent with your expectations; which of course are based on a language game that you’ve learned to play. So in other words, the person is wrong relative to the way they conveyed they’re experience linguistically. However the way we speak to each other immediately assumes (on the surface) that we’re attributing to them false beliefs about the world, when (unless they’re insane or hallucinating) how could this ever be so?
Is this person an idiot then? Perhaps they simply don’t understand numbers, or perhaps the way they think about numbers is different then yours? We’ll never understand this by simply calling the person wrong and correcting them, we’ll only understand by asking them what they mean by 5, or if they even understood the question at all. If we go with the principle of charity and assume they are correct, our natural next move will be to make specific inquiries about the meaning of the answer “5 rocks”. We should assume that their experience is genuine, that they see the same thing we see; in this sense we’ll find that the confusion over rightness and wrongness was not about the world at large, but about the way we talk about the world at large.
The next step is, how do we make up the difference between the atheist’s and theist’s language game? There is a definite gorge existing between the two that seem unbridgeable, so much so that we’re unable to have intelligent conversation back and forth, which in turn leads to, “You’re an idiot”, “No you’re an idiot” so on and so on. In most cases (at least in the blogs I roll) the theist understands quite well the logic which is at play, and the losses for logical explanations they’re faced with. However this in no way diminishes they’re sense of a transcendental identity, feeling or faith in a God, so on. How then do you interpret that without falling into a situation where you have drained your case that a person even believes in anything at all? The atheist will say that the burden of proof is on the theist to provide “rational” evidence to support they’re positions, however A.) This evidence is really non-existent for reasons I won’t get into here, and B.) When has rationality ever comprehended the emotions?
Only by taking a personal leap of faith will the atheist ever begin to understand the theist. In Buddhism it is well understood that “The Way” is a personal experience, not something that can be spoken of. After all, when has a word or phrase (spoken rationally) ever captured your spirit? There as well, we can understand each other quite well face to face, because we can see in the eyes what the person is feeling, but words on a computer screen are always somewhat confusing and lacking of any emotion; what more evidence does one need that words are ultimately meaningless?
Sunday, November 23, 2008
On Selfishness (some further ranting)
Selfishness is one of those long standing words which I’ve always had a bit of a problem with. We all know how to use it well enough in context, but it’s exactly the context of it that makes its use, well, sort of selfish.
Choice, a general view:
In our daily life we have choices, and I’d like to here say (for the sake of rhetorical power) that in almost every circumstance there are two types of choices we can make. There is the NORMATIVE choice, and there is the SELFISH choice.
Normative choices are those that fit the category of “shoulds”. In other words the things we should do based on our cultural value system; we SHOULD follow the speed limit, we SHOULD stop at stop signs, we SHOULD not drive while intoxicated, we SHOULD meet our previously agreed to obligations, we SHOULD donate to United Way, we SHOULD not steal from our neighbors, we SHOULD help an old lady across the street.
Selfish choices then, are those that simply avoid or do not take into account the normative alternative. In other words we simply don’t take into account how our actions are going to affect our cultural value system; that is, we act according to our own values, our own wants and needs. We break the speed limit, we break our plans, we’re stingy with our money, we push over old ladies to get out of a fire safely, we “take our ball and go home.”
The problem of Object/Subject:
There’s an obvious problem here though, in the way we view normative / selfish choices, and that is we do so objectively. We all know what the normative choices are and if we see someone not making it, they are immediately selfish, but we’re completely neglecting what’s going on inside someone’s head when they make that choice. We neglect the potential fact that, when a given individual makes the normative choice to donate money to the church, he’s doing it not because it’s normative, but because it makes him feel good to know he’s helping people.
So what we have is simple, the objective judgment of the act, and the neglect of the subjective motive.
Normative Selfishness and Motive (the existential problem):
Again, when people make the normative choice, we’re neglecting the motive for that choice; why are they doing it? In an objective sense, we’d call the man who donates his money selfless, however, perhaps he’s servicing an inner desire to help people, or perhaps he servicing an inner need to do the normative and be seen in a certain light; the bottom line is, the action completed is in the service of an individual’s emotional state. One either wants to feel good by doing good, or feel good by being accepted, or feel good by taking the normative rout, or perhaps it’s the alleviation of an underlying anxiety of not doing it. No matter the reason, the normative act always has a deeply personal motive; regardless of the objective benefit or seemingly normative nature of the act, the person is servicing themselves and therefore has a sort of Normative Selfishness.
So what:
Ok, sure, so what? I suppose I think about it this way, one man gives his money and time and feels good about doing it, another refrains from giving his money and time because he doesn’t. Perhaps the one man is just plain stingy, but certainly it goes deeper then that. The psychological dispositions of the giving man and the stingy man, having both given money, are completely different. The one man feels good, the other perhaps has a growing anxiety inside over just having lost 10% of his earnings that month. So should we blame them for feeling the way they do? If someone doesn’t feel good about doing a certain thing, should it be our place to make them, or label them? Isn’t THAT a bit selfish? We use the negatively connotated word selfish to point to peoples actions, while at the same time being completely oblivious to the way the person feels, or what they’re motives are. How completely selfish is that? Essentially what we’re saying to people is, your actions should be consistent with the benefit of me and/or people at large no matter how you feel about it; how selfish is that? We could say, as an example, that homosexuals are selfish people because they’re actions are not consistent with normative choices; but are we not in this case failing to consider that they have a need for love and affection, and that the love and affection they desire is not possible from a member of the opposite sex? How selfish is that? Don’t we all have the right to love?
I say that we are all equally selfish, as, so far as I can tell, there is no such thing as altruism. We simply like those who benefit us, and don’t like those who don’t; we judge people objectively, in almost a utilitarian way. And certainly there are people whose happiness is dangerously wrapped up in activities that are grossly against the normative choice; child molestation for example, we of course need to draw the line somewhere. The bottom line is simply that, some people feel good with the normative choice, and some people don’t; I’m not convinced we have any more control over it then a homosexual has over his sexual preference. Perhaps the big issue here is that we all have certain emotional rights, and sometimes those emotional strivings butt up against what’s normative; how we get around that I don’t know, but certainly casting judgment isn’t the key. Is it?
NOTE: I've always liked the following anecdote, and it sort of fits the occasion; some people step to the open door of a plane, prone to jump and dopamine is released from the brain, an intense rush is upon them. On the other hand a completely different person in the same position gets a release of serotonin from the brain, and he’s scared out of his mind. Should we judge / label either of these two individuals in a negative way?
---------
We should love people for who they are, and not for how they may or may not benefit us. Perhaps in showing a “selfish” person love, they’ll learn to reciprocate? Perhaps people wouldn’t be so stingy if they knew that people in general were not so stingy? But we are.
Choice, a general view:
In our daily life we have choices, and I’d like to here say (for the sake of rhetorical power) that in almost every circumstance there are two types of choices we can make. There is the NORMATIVE choice, and there is the SELFISH choice.
Normative choices are those that fit the category of “shoulds”. In other words the things we should do based on our cultural value system; we SHOULD follow the speed limit, we SHOULD stop at stop signs, we SHOULD not drive while intoxicated, we SHOULD meet our previously agreed to obligations, we SHOULD donate to United Way, we SHOULD not steal from our neighbors, we SHOULD help an old lady across the street.
Selfish choices then, are those that simply avoid or do not take into account the normative alternative. In other words we simply don’t take into account how our actions are going to affect our cultural value system; that is, we act according to our own values, our own wants and needs. We break the speed limit, we break our plans, we’re stingy with our money, we push over old ladies to get out of a fire safely, we “take our ball and go home.”
The problem of Object/Subject:
There’s an obvious problem here though, in the way we view normative / selfish choices, and that is we do so objectively. We all know what the normative choices are and if we see someone not making it, they are immediately selfish, but we’re completely neglecting what’s going on inside someone’s head when they make that choice. We neglect the potential fact that, when a given individual makes the normative choice to donate money to the church, he’s doing it not because it’s normative, but because it makes him feel good to know he’s helping people.
So what we have is simple, the objective judgment of the act, and the neglect of the subjective motive.
Normative Selfishness and Motive (the existential problem):
Again, when people make the normative choice, we’re neglecting the motive for that choice; why are they doing it? In an objective sense, we’d call the man who donates his money selfless, however, perhaps he’s servicing an inner desire to help people, or perhaps he servicing an inner need to do the normative and be seen in a certain light; the bottom line is, the action completed is in the service of an individual’s emotional state. One either wants to feel good by doing good, or feel good by being accepted, or feel good by taking the normative rout, or perhaps it’s the alleviation of an underlying anxiety of not doing it. No matter the reason, the normative act always has a deeply personal motive; regardless of the objective benefit or seemingly normative nature of the act, the person is servicing themselves and therefore has a sort of Normative Selfishness.
So what:
Ok, sure, so what? I suppose I think about it this way, one man gives his money and time and feels good about doing it, another refrains from giving his money and time because he doesn’t. Perhaps the one man is just plain stingy, but certainly it goes deeper then that. The psychological dispositions of the giving man and the stingy man, having both given money, are completely different. The one man feels good, the other perhaps has a growing anxiety inside over just having lost 10% of his earnings that month. So should we blame them for feeling the way they do? If someone doesn’t feel good about doing a certain thing, should it be our place to make them, or label them? Isn’t THAT a bit selfish? We use the negatively connotated word selfish to point to peoples actions, while at the same time being completely oblivious to the way the person feels, or what they’re motives are. How completely selfish is that? Essentially what we’re saying to people is, your actions should be consistent with the benefit of me and/or people at large no matter how you feel about it; how selfish is that? We could say, as an example, that homosexuals are selfish people because they’re actions are not consistent with normative choices; but are we not in this case failing to consider that they have a need for love and affection, and that the love and affection they desire is not possible from a member of the opposite sex? How selfish is that? Don’t we all have the right to love?
I say that we are all equally selfish, as, so far as I can tell, there is no such thing as altruism. We simply like those who benefit us, and don’t like those who don’t; we judge people objectively, in almost a utilitarian way. And certainly there are people whose happiness is dangerously wrapped up in activities that are grossly against the normative choice; child molestation for example, we of course need to draw the line somewhere. The bottom line is simply that, some people feel good with the normative choice, and some people don’t; I’m not convinced we have any more control over it then a homosexual has over his sexual preference. Perhaps the big issue here is that we all have certain emotional rights, and sometimes those emotional strivings butt up against what’s normative; how we get around that I don’t know, but certainly casting judgment isn’t the key. Is it?
NOTE: I've always liked the following anecdote, and it sort of fits the occasion; some people step to the open door of a plane, prone to jump and dopamine is released from the brain, an intense rush is upon them. On the other hand a completely different person in the same position gets a release of serotonin from the brain, and he’s scared out of his mind. Should we judge / label either of these two individuals in a negative way?
---------
We should love people for who they are, and not for how they may or may not benefit us. Perhaps in showing a “selfish” person love, they’ll learn to reciprocate? Perhaps people wouldn’t be so stingy if they knew that people in general were not so stingy? But we are.
Friday, August 15, 2008
A Response to "God as a Metaphor"
(NOTE: This is a cut and paste respone of mine from another blog regarding "proving God" and God as metaphor. It's a "lunch time" idea in that, I threw it out in haste, but somewhere in it theres some meat happening. I'm throwing it out here so I can spend some time thinking about it.)
Regarding the post: “You Just Can’t Do It”
my point is really, what isn't metaphorical? Is anything at all?
Let me spin it this way:
whats the difference between the world today, and the world 2000 years ago? What I would like to suggest is, nothing; everything “out there” is the same. The only difference is the way we talk about it. Whether angels push the planets around or gravity pushes the planets around, our experience of the planets moving is the same. Gravity in this case, is every bit as much a “ghost” as angels are. 1000 years ago, we couldn’t *test* for angels, the idea to do so was likely not even there. Then Newton came along with calculus, (just another way of speaking about the world) and defined the motion of the planets as a set of relationships. The only thing that changed [again], is the words, not reality. There is no right and wrong way of talking about reality, there is what works in talking about reality.
What I’m saying is that, Christianity is nothing more then a way of talking about reality. It isn’t right and it isn’t wrong, you judge it according to it’s usefulness. Of course relative to scientific language it’s “greek”. But that doesn’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong, because it’s two different ways of talking about things. The problem is however, science uses it’s techniques to critique religion; religion in turn sees this as an attack, then proceeds to defend itself on the same ground that it was attacked on (that being scientific grounds). In this case it’s transforming religious language into something it isn’t, in other words, it’s not scientific.
It’s not scientific to suggest that the world was created as it was in the genesis account. On the other hand, to people 2000 years ago it was perfectly plausible that creation happened in just this way. But, and this is a big but for me, is that even the point of the genesis account? Because again the only thing that changes is the way we talk about reality, so what’s important is the meaning of the account. In other words, the wise men that scrolled the bible (just as the wise men that scrolled Buddhism or any other religious text), were not conveying a scientific message, they were conveying a HUMAN message. What they wrote pertains to the human condition, it pertains to our relationships with each other, and with that which is unknown. Whether one would like to believe it or not, the bible speaks pretty accurately about human nature, from Moses, all the way down to Christ. The real test of Christianity is not whether or not any of these things are real in some objective sense, but whether they speak to the subjective nature of mankind in all is imperfections and whether or not being “Christ-like” has value to that condition. Or for that matter emulating Buddha, or Mohamed, or any other figure. Belief in Christ in this way, is not belief in objectivity, but belief in the idea that Christ represents and the idea of what he did and what that represents; whether real or not, what does it mean?
Christianity, as it is becoming in Rays [Comfort] eyes, is a complete abomination to be sure. I feel he misses the point entirely and because of this and his sort of defense, it creates an obvious turn towards atheism. That’s not to say there is a God per se’, I feel on occasions that atheists believe in “nothing” just as much as theists do. The difference is, the theist has a binding tradition, but tend to have a dogmatic view of it… But that’s another topic entirely.
Regarding the post: “You Just Can’t Do It”
my point is really, what isn't metaphorical? Is anything at all?
Let me spin it this way:
whats the difference between the world today, and the world 2000 years ago? What I would like to suggest is, nothing; everything “out there” is the same. The only difference is the way we talk about it. Whether angels push the planets around or gravity pushes the planets around, our experience of the planets moving is the same. Gravity in this case, is every bit as much a “ghost” as angels are. 1000 years ago, we couldn’t *test* for angels, the idea to do so was likely not even there. Then Newton came along with calculus, (just another way of speaking about the world) and defined the motion of the planets as a set of relationships. The only thing that changed [again], is the words, not reality. There is no right and wrong way of talking about reality, there is what works in talking about reality.
What I’m saying is that, Christianity is nothing more then a way of talking about reality. It isn’t right and it isn’t wrong, you judge it according to it’s usefulness. Of course relative to scientific language it’s “greek”. But that doesn’t mean that one is right and the other is wrong, because it’s two different ways of talking about things. The problem is however, science uses it’s techniques to critique religion; religion in turn sees this as an attack, then proceeds to defend itself on the same ground that it was attacked on (that being scientific grounds). In this case it’s transforming religious language into something it isn’t, in other words, it’s not scientific.
It’s not scientific to suggest that the world was created as it was in the genesis account. On the other hand, to people 2000 years ago it was perfectly plausible that creation happened in just this way. But, and this is a big but for me, is that even the point of the genesis account? Because again the only thing that changes is the way we talk about reality, so what’s important is the meaning of the account. In other words, the wise men that scrolled the bible (just as the wise men that scrolled Buddhism or any other religious text), were not conveying a scientific message, they were conveying a HUMAN message. What they wrote pertains to the human condition, it pertains to our relationships with each other, and with that which is unknown. Whether one would like to believe it or not, the bible speaks pretty accurately about human nature, from Moses, all the way down to Christ. The real test of Christianity is not whether or not any of these things are real in some objective sense, but whether they speak to the subjective nature of mankind in all is imperfections and whether or not being “Christ-like” has value to that condition. Or for that matter emulating Buddha, or Mohamed, or any other figure. Belief in Christ in this way, is not belief in objectivity, but belief in the idea that Christ represents and the idea of what he did and what that represents; whether real or not, what does it mean?
Christianity, as it is becoming in Rays [Comfort] eyes, is a complete abomination to be sure. I feel he misses the point entirely and because of this and his sort of defense, it creates an obvious turn towards atheism. That’s not to say there is a God per se’, I feel on occasions that atheists believe in “nothing” just as much as theists do. The difference is, the theist has a binding tradition, but tend to have a dogmatic view of it… But that’s another topic entirely.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
I Love the F*** Word
“Grammatically, “f**k” can be anything. It can be a noun (“That was one screaming f**k I got last night!”); or a verb (“I f**ked the shit out of that bitch all night long!”); it can be an adjective (“She says he’s a virtual f**king machine!”); it can be an adverb (“That’s one f**king bad haircut you got today at the mall.); it need not even have sexual connotation (“That’s a lot of f**king crap you’ve got there!”). It can mean something good (“I really got f**ked last night!”); or, it can mean something bad (“I really got f**ked last night!”); it makes for a great interjection (“F**k! I can’t find my keys!). It also functions well as an interruption (“Outf**kingrageous!” or “I underf**kingestimated what an ass-hole you can be!”). This tells us nothing about the etymology of the word; it is just a commentary on the impressive range of usages the word has acquired over time. To cover all the theories on the history of this word would be to write its own book, which I’m sure has been done, and probably done badly. It would be hard—if even possible—to do it well.
The Dictionary of American Slang (1960) gives as the primary meaning of the word: “[taboo] To Cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive, or treat someone unfairly.” It goes on to offer this as an explanation of the relationships between fraud and sex: “All slang meanings of ‘f**k’ and all ‘f**k’ expressions, of course, derive consciously or unconsciously from the old and standard but taboo ‘f**k’ = sexual intercourse. All slang meanings and expressions were widely used in W.W. II military units, became part of the slang vocabulary of many veterans, and spread from them to students and friends. This coupling with the lessening of moral standards and taboos, including linguistic taboos, during and after the war, has contributed to…” blah, blah, blah. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what any of that just meant!
From the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (2005) we learn that “f**k” came into the English language by slipping through the Indo-European back door and surfacing as the Germanic word fuk. It goes on to explain that the word took its derivation from the classical Latin root pug, from the verb pugnare, which means “to fight”—generally with one’s fists, scrapping it out in the dirt, as it were (which can’t help but put one in mind of the old Lennon/McCartney song Why Don’t We Do It in the Road). This is an interesting theory, and we might give it some (though cautious) credence. At the very least, they are correct in that the root of the word “f**k” is classical, but it’s not Latin, nor pugnacious in any way.
The simple truth is that “f**k”—obviously one of the oldest words in the language—if not the world—dates back to nearly the birth of writing, back when our ancestors were barely up on their feet, still hunting and gathering. It comes from the Greek verb φυω (say: “foo-owe”), and its Greek root is phu. It’s an agricultural term. It means, literally, to plant seeds—what a farmer does—dropping seeds into a furrow of soil. When adopted by the Romans, its Latin root changed from phu to fu, and the noun fututio soon became part of Roman vernacular.”
The “Old In Out”
Fututio is an example of what linguists refer to as a “frequentative.” That is, a word that describes repeated action—which is the nature of dropping seeds into a furrow, one after another, after another. It’s also a big part of the act of “f**king”—if you’re doing it right! It takes often considerable repetition to get those seeds to spurt out. Soon, the Roman elegiac poets got hold of the word at a time when erotic love poetry was all the rage in Rome, and fututio became a metaphor for planting a “particular” kind of “seed” in a “specific” kind of “furrow.” This literary debauchery—what the American Dictionary of Slang calls “linguistic tabooism”—began with Catullus in the first century b.c. and then was taken up by his successors, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. When it came to elegy, Ovid was king. Among the many books of poetry that Ovid wrote was one called the Ars Amatoria or the Art of Love, a poem whose main theme is how to pick up chicks in ancient Rome. It’s really a scream, but it, and others like it that came from Ovid’s stylus, were considered too vulgar and ultimately offensive to the emperor Augustus (who was certainly not one to preach about promiscuity given his own reputation!), so he had poor Ovid—who at the time was already in his mid fifties—exiled to an army camp on the southern Steppes of Russia by the shores of the Black Sea, where he would spend the rest of his life. You could say this about Augustus—he really f**ked Ovid!
The Dictionary of American Slang (1960) gives as the primary meaning of the word: “[taboo] To Cheat, trick, take advantage of, deceive, or treat someone unfairly.” It goes on to offer this as an explanation of the relationships between fraud and sex: “All slang meanings of ‘f**k’ and all ‘f**k’ expressions, of course, derive consciously or unconsciously from the old and standard but taboo ‘f**k’ = sexual intercourse. All slang meanings and expressions were widely used in W.W. II military units, became part of the slang vocabulary of many veterans, and spread from them to students and friends. This coupling with the lessening of moral standards and taboos, including linguistic taboos, during and after the war, has contributed to…” blah, blah, blah. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what any of that just meant!
From the New Oxford American Dictionary, 2nd Edition (2005) we learn that “f**k” came into the English language by slipping through the Indo-European back door and surfacing as the Germanic word fuk. It goes on to explain that the word took its derivation from the classical Latin root pug, from the verb pugnare, which means “to fight”—generally with one’s fists, scrapping it out in the dirt, as it were (which can’t help but put one in mind of the old Lennon/McCartney song Why Don’t We Do It in the Road). This is an interesting theory, and we might give it some (though cautious) credence. At the very least, they are correct in that the root of the word “f**k” is classical, but it’s not Latin, nor pugnacious in any way.
The simple truth is that “f**k”—obviously one of the oldest words in the language—if not the world—dates back to nearly the birth of writing, back when our ancestors were barely up on their feet, still hunting and gathering. It comes from the Greek verb φυω (say: “foo-owe”), and its Greek root is phu. It’s an agricultural term. It means, literally, to plant seeds—what a farmer does—dropping seeds into a furrow of soil. When adopted by the Romans, its Latin root changed from phu to fu, and the noun fututio soon became part of Roman vernacular.”
The “Old In Out”
Fututio is an example of what linguists refer to as a “frequentative.” That is, a word that describes repeated action—which is the nature of dropping seeds into a furrow, one after another, after another. It’s also a big part of the act of “f**king”—if you’re doing it right! It takes often considerable repetition to get those seeds to spurt out. Soon, the Roman elegiac poets got hold of the word at a time when erotic love poetry was all the rage in Rome, and fututio became a metaphor for planting a “particular” kind of “seed” in a “specific” kind of “furrow.” This literary debauchery—what the American Dictionary of Slang calls “linguistic tabooism”—began with Catullus in the first century b.c. and then was taken up by his successors, Propertius, Tibullus and Ovid. When it came to elegy, Ovid was king. Among the many books of poetry that Ovid wrote was one called the Ars Amatoria or the Art of Love, a poem whose main theme is how to pick up chicks in ancient Rome. It’s really a scream, but it, and others like it that came from Ovid’s stylus, were considered too vulgar and ultimately offensive to the emperor Augustus (who was certainly not one to preach about promiscuity given his own reputation!), so he had poor Ovid—who at the time was already in his mid fifties—exiled to an army camp on the southern Steppes of Russia by the shores of the Black Sea, where he would spend the rest of his life. You could say this about Augustus—he really f**ked Ovid!
Sunday, July 06, 2008
On Selfishness
Selfish:
There are not many words in the English language that I dislike more then this one; mostly because, I question its authenticity.
First, how is selfishness judged? I would suggest that we do so objectively. We look at a person’s acts, and if they seem to benefit only themselves in the face of others, we consider it selfish. That seems rather unfair to me. Does the object truly match what’s going on in the subject? I’m not convinced.
What about the things that we consider selfless, what are the natures of these acts? I suppose donating to charity would be considered selfless, or perhaps giving your time to another for a given reason, (this can come in many forms). Lets simply say selfless is the donating of yourself in one way shape or form to the benefit of someone or something else. I question what lies at the bottom of a self less act, for example:
One chooses to donate to charity – why? I can think of a couple reasons, 1.) it makes the person feel good, 2.) Social pressure, 3.) Moral obligation…..
If it makes you feel good to donate your time and money, how is that a selfless act? Are you not servicing your own desire to feel good inside and therefore being selfish? If you bow to social pressure are you not servicing that felt obligation in order to relieve whatever tension it causes internal, and again, is that not selfish? Many people LOVE nonprofit work, in many cases they feel good about themselves that they’re making a difference, again, selfish. Simply because someone is benefiting from your acts does not necessarily mean you aren’t servicing internal desires and pressures.
So we judge people by calling them selfish if they don’t happen to feel good about giving money and time. We say you’re selfish if you feel no need to relieve social obligations (perhaps some are more sensitive to social pressure then others, or perhaps they never learned to be sensitive to it – this doesn’t make one a bad person. The fact that one does not feel good is simply unfortunate, in the end we’re all equally selfish, and we all equally service our internal needs and emotions. One man is cheap, yet another man is giving, but I say they’re both equally selfish. As people however, we like the ones that benefit us the most, and that makes us selfish.
The bottom line, selfishness is a term we use to point out what we don’t like in other peoples actions. It’s judgmental, hypocritical and just plain wrong. Although “wrong” is another word I have a problem with.
A short anecdote from my kids:
My kids are no different then anyone else. When they’re playing with they’re toys they often times observe the other with something that they suddenly decide they want, so they take it. Immediately following this the other begins crying, so you step in and say share, and make them give the toy back for a short period of time. The funny thing is, the toy they took is often times one they just put down because they were bored with, or something they never play with anyway. I often wonder if what’s going on in they’re heads isn’t, “Hm, it looks like he’s really having fun with that, that must mean I can have fun with it too, I want it,” or perhaps, “He’s having fun with that, I’m going to ruin it.” Children don’t have that idea of social obligation, politeness, so on. They don’t have the burden of needing to service those needs, so they do what they please regardless of the crying sibling who just lost a toy – afterall, now they’re having a blast.
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