Category Archives: Philosophy

Nice Nihilism

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I recently read James Steinhoff‘s review of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions (2011) by Alex Rosenberg and it got me thinking. I consider myself a form of nihilist and I’ve noticed that many people are shocked by the notion. It seems like our culture has a phobia about nihilism. So to temper those fears, Rosenberg puts forward the idea of “nice nihilism”.

I don’t see why we need an apology for nihilism. Think through history about the people who have been killed or injured in the name of Nothing. Now think of the people killed in the name of some belief. Let the believers apologize if they want. Nihilism gives me no anxiety.

I consider myself a nihilist because I make a conscious effort to hold no fixed beliefs. I can watch the sun rise six days in a row and “believe” that it will rise on the seventh. But this isn’t a fixed belief, it’s just memory and understanding. I definitely do not hold the fixed belief that the sun will rise forever. As a matter of fact, I know this is impossible.

Many people assume nihilists are automatically immoral. They have no grounds to do so. I recently read a moronic tweet asking an atheist why he doesn’t just kill and rape anyone he wants? The atheist responded, “I do.” Of course he does, and so do I, because normal people don’t kill or rape. Let’s disambiguate the term nihilist from “asshole” forever. A better synonym for “asshole” would be “fanatic believer”.

Rosenberg takes a staunch materialist view of everything, it seems. He thinks that matter and energy and strict causality created all of reality, and that absolutely everything can be answered by physical facts. I find this ridiculous on a few levels. At exactly what point in history did science gain all the answers? It is a perfectly true fact that science has never had all the answers.

In the early days of the Newtonian revolution, everyone thought his system was The System. Of course Einstein proved that he was completely wrong. Sure, Newton’s theories were a huge jump forward owing to their usefulness, but let me just reiterate, he was wrong. The idea that there is some absolute space and absolute time is pure fiction, false to the facts of the universe. To assume physics will ever have all the answers is to disregard history with a faulty intellectual hubris. Not surprising since Rosenberg believes history is meaningless.

Everything that science has illuminated, it has done so through the human nervous system. There are no cold, hard facts sitting out there in a vacuum. Everything we understand about reality happens as a result of some nervous system interacting with the universe, of which that nervous system is a part. We can talk about the material basis for thoughts and feelings, but in order to express the uniqueness of each individual, we need something more.

Every one of us lives in our own unbelievably complex semantic environment. We interact with symbols, languages and feelings all the time, and all of these experiences become uniquely related to the observer. Even contemporary material science recognizes the effect of the observer on an observed physical system. Of course life loses meaning and purpose when you only consider the material side of reality. The semantic side is full of meaning, and inextricably linked to everything we know or can know about the universe.

Somehow Mr. Rosenberg thinks he can speak for the universe by eliminating the human experience. Then again, I haven’t read his book. I’ve only read the review. Anyway, it’s what I’ve been thinking about this week.

I liked the bullet point Q & A that outlines Rosenberg’s position, so I’ll just give a quick rundown with my first reactions for your reading pleasure. Naturally snappy answers to big questions are oversimplified.

Is there a God? No.

“Yes” or “No” doesn’t matter much to me without any attempt to define God.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

Physics itself says nothing. Physics is the name human beings have given to our own scientific observation of the universe. But even physicists don’t agree. There is still no fully developed model of our universe that doesn’t contain huge contradictions. Loop quantum gravity, string theory, etc., are not compatible. Even the Big Bang is just a theory, and one that no monolithic scientific community can get behind. To assume our current science is on the right track to discover everything is ridiculous. As our powers of perception continue to increase there will be always be more unknowns in the universe.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

The question is a teleological error. Teleology, the doctrine that final causes exists, is nonsense to most modern philosophers, so the question is a silly one. The answer is correct though.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

I dare Rosenberg to define the word “meaning”. If he chooses to define his words with other words, and to define those words with still more words, he will eventually come to either a circular definition or ambiguous nonsense. Meaning is a function of the semantic structure of some human experience.

The term meaning is related to the level of abstraction taken into consciousness. Rosenberg wouldn’t admit that his book is meaningless, while most people should agree that a kitchen sink has no ‘meaning’. Meaning involves a cohesive structure of symbols, interpreted through a nervous system, reason, emotion, intuition, etc. As a writer, I consciously create meaning through the manipulation of symbols. Meaning is what we make it.

Of course if he’s talking about some objective meaning for all of life, I agree there’s no master plan at work here outside of our own.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Yes. Good call.

Does prayer work? Of course not.

On this point he is actually wrong. There have been numerous studies that show results from prayer and meditation. Even if prayer only serves to focus one’s attention on certain concerns, it has had an effect. This type of answer reeks of dogmatic atheism, a fanatical belief which I have no time for.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

Are you kidding? Once again, asking ambiguous questions, making no attempt to define the topics, and writing them off. Forgivable in this short-form index.

Is there free will? Not a chance!

Hmm. It’s tough to define consciousness, but among its criteria is the ability to apply different responses to stimuli. The more responses an organism can have to a given stimulus, the more conscious it is. This is a very reduced and ambiguous definition, but broadly acceptable to my mind. Strict determinism makes a lot of questionable assumptions about why different reactions would be given to the same stimuli. Chaos Theory and quantum effects might form a material basis for an answer, but that level of reality is effected by observation.

It’s very easy to feel from daily experience that the decisions we make come from thinking and not because of material, deterministic factors. To say that thoughts are only the results of electronic impulses is to completely disregard the human experience, to disregard quality over quantity.

What happens when we die? Everything pretty much goes on before, except us.

To be fair and literal, nothing ever just goes on as before.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.

This may sound controversial, but I agree. I do not believe in moral absolutes, and as there is no such thing as a teleological expert, all moral systems are of equal value. Obviously going around killing people isn’t helpful to oneself or anyone else, and so is simply stupid. I do agree with his assumption that people are naturally inclined to be good and nice.

Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.

I more or less agree here. I think personal happiness is a good goal for life, and everyone’s personal happiness is connected with mine.

Is abortion, euthanasia, suicide, paying taxes, foreign aid, or anything else you don’t like forbidden, permissible, or sometimes obligatory? Anything goes.

To quote the creed of Hassan-i Sabbah “Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.” Sabbah was the founder of the Assassins…so he’s probably not a great example for “nice nihilism”.

What is love and how can I find it? Love is the solution to a strategic interaction problem. Don’t look for it; it will find you when you need it.

Huh?

Does history have any meaning or purpose? It’s full of sound and fury, but signifies nothing.

History is a collection of data on the experiences and interaction of organisms similar to myself. If I can glean anything about what motivates people to act, I can apply this knowledge to my own decision-making process.

Does the human past have any lessons for our future? Fewer and fewer, if it ever had any to begin with (2-3).

I have no reaction to this one.

 

P.S. I was reminded of a scene from The Big Lebowski that highlights the absurdity of this phobia towards nihilism. Three extortionists threaten to cut The Dude’s nuts off. Walter refers to them as Nazis but he is corrected by The Dude – they’re nihilists. Walter gets serious and says, “Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, but at least it’s an ethos.”

Inside, Outside, and “The Real”

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Atheism is on the rise thanks to progress in empirical sciences and reason. This movement of un-belief is popular in our social media due to the satirical efforts of atheists like Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais. Unfortunately it seems that these outspoken atheists cannot argue against the devoutly religious using reason, and so resort to a campaign of constant ridicule. Besides being generally distasteful and disrespectful, their comments have the effect of polarizing people, getting laughs from like-minded people while causing believers to dig in their heels. They generally do not promote dialogue.

When confronting this disrespect of religion it’s helpful to remember that religions maintained their power for centuries by the systematic persecution of all those who disagreed with them. This is much worse than ridicule, and entrenched power structures still pull this nonsense today. It’s only now that U.S. politicians are taking a second look at the religiously-inspired intolerance of homosexuality. (And just this weekend, BBC reported that a 60-year-old woman was tortured for alleged witchcraft in Nepal, which assault was apparently sanctioned by the local village council. Last year a different woman was burnt alive for the same reason.)

The problem seems to be that everyone is so sure of themselves. I recently saw an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher that mocked a Newsweek article called “Heaven Is Real”, in which a comatose neurosurgeon claims to have visited the afterlife. Bill and his panelists scoffed in their usual manner, claiming the account was unscientific and unreal. While the account was definitely unscientific, its reality is debatable.

The scientific empiricist laughs the experience off as a hallucination, as unreal because it is not verifiable in a laboratory. They say that such an article is harmful to science, and therefore to society, because it promotes belief in the supernatural. They would argue rightly that belief in the supernatural leads away from belief in empirically-testable phenomena and hence towards insanity.

Of course there is no doubt that Dr. Eben Alexander’s experience was real to him. It reordered his conception of reality and was a transformative experience with obvious subjective value. He is not wrong to write about his experience, though he is wrong to call it scientific. The whole method of science is to root out those variables that are purely subjective.

This debate brings me to one of my favorite topics: The Real. I get a lot of personal joy from the fuzzy definitions of the word “real”. Individually the definitions of the word are unbearably limiting because they fail to acknowledge the multi-ordinality of the word (to borrow a term from Alfred Korzybski). The definition of the word “real” depends entirely on its context and the structure of the argument in which it is used.

Through our entire lives experience is the primary datum. We can’t even properly speak of the universe without reference to our experience of it. Scientific advancements are valuable to us because they can make the macroscopic, microscopic, or sub-microscopic realms intelligible to our experience, just as a telescope is merely a technological extension of our sense of sight. A telescope does not measure the reality of far away places; it is the empiricist who proclaims “I see it, therefore it is real.”

“The empiricist…thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.” – G. Santayana

I am comfortable in proclaiming the reality of subjective experience. However, subjective experience has the insidious tendency to colour our perceptions of the outside world. William James says the mystic has every right to his or her visions, and that no outsider can refute this. However the corollary to this is that mystical realities are valid only to the one experiencing them and do not extend beyond the subjective realm. The connection between the inside and the outside cannot be perfect.

This is where I can get on board with Bill Maher: theism and atheism aside, when purely subjective experiences leak out into the objective world, the objective world is made insane. When religious metaphysics shape our social policies, the politicians are out of touch with the external reality they ought to be governing. It is only when subjective experiences are true to the facts of the external world that they should be used to dictate external laws. To do otherwise is a confusion of planes; what is real externally may not be real internally and vice versa.

Zeno’s paradox of dichotomy, which states we can never make it to our destination because we have to first travel half way there, then half of the remaining distance, and so on ad infinitum, is silly and insane because it disregards the external fact that we don’t travel according to logarithmic principles. I simply walk to my destination and arrive without noticing when I’m half or three-quarters of the way there. Zeno puts mathematics before experience, but mathematics is a priori and doesn’t refer to nature.

When empirical policies must be formed, empirical laws must be obeyed. When we decide our own personal code of beliefs and ethics, the subjective experiences of our life will be determinative. To regulate belief from without would also be a mistake. As for religion, if a subjective, personal connection to the divine becomes good enough for everyone, I bet these atheists won’t have much to say about it. It’s mainly belligerent evangelism they’re trying to tear down.

Change Your Brain – Pt. 2

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One of the earliest influential philosophers is Thales from ancient Greece. Since him there has been a continuous succession of thinkers who built upon their predecessors, criticizing what they don’t like, correcting what they can, and emphasizing what makes the most sense. Since Thales we can trace the path of Western thought through to today, mapping the brain change of the world, and it’s all pretty interesting, minus the Dark Ages.

The classical Greek philosophers (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato) set the stage for world philosophy, and many other cultures absorbed their ideas before the formation of distinct philosophies of their own. Some would claim the Greeks were the fathers of philosophy, who made an art of thinking that benefited the rest of humanity. Others would argue that the Greek philosophers stunted the growth of future free-thinkers, limiting would-be revolutionaries with their categories and strict methods.

A goal of many intellectuals is to surpass their formative history and offer something new to the world, whether it be an invention, a way of thinking, or a new analysis of something we’ve taken for granted. It can be hard to break away from tradition and offer something new, but one thing I’ve learned is that the broader the net we cast for information, the bigger the potential catch. Even opposing opinions offer us a chance to compare and contrast and flex our own intellectual and intuitive genius.

I think reading is one of the best uses of time. The following books helped me to think in new ways.

Critical PathCritical Path by R. Buckminster Fuller

Bucky Fuller is an autodidact, inventor, engineer, and revolutionary thinker. His goal is simple: to make things easier for human beings by thinking about a problem and coming up with a novel solution. It doesn’t seem like he made a fortune, but his perspective has influenced a couple generations of scientists, philosophers and entrepreneurs. A major thrust in this work is the idea of ephemeralization (a term he coined), which describes our technological development trend of being able to do more work, more efficiently, in less time, with less material. Think of what a computer looked like in the 1970s and compare it to your smartphone. The brilliance of this book is that Fuller is truly a systems-thinker, and always has the big picture in mind. And best of all, he’s a little kooky. I recommend this book for the socially conscious.

 

Quantum PsychologyQuantum Psychology by Robert Anton Wilson

Written with humour, erudition, and infectious optimism, this handy little manual offers us a new look at our selves. This book is a guided tour to opening new ways of thinking and acting. It asks us to look at what we know of the world, then to look at how we know these things and why. In 200 pages this book challenges every belief, every behavior, and every excuse to avoid being who we want to be. This is a manual about writing your own life script but it is far from being New Age. Wilson’s voice is authoritative, wise and hilarious throughout, and every chapter offers practical exercises for the reader to begin opening new horizons. Recommended for everyone.

 

StoryStory by Robert McKee

This book, and its author, are a little bit legendary in the film industry for a variety of reasons. McKee attacks the construction of a screenplay using big, fundamental ideas that shed light on what stories have to offer to the human experience and what makes a story satisfying. His aggressive writing style almost challenges the reader to prove him wrong when he explains why character is story, why story must be told through conflict, and why there must be a major emotional value change in every scene, sequence, act, and movie. When I first got the book I assumed, since I like so-called art films, that I would disagree with a lot of what he had to say. After all, Eraserhead doesn’t have much in common with, say, Paul Blart: Mall Cop. But most of the points McKee makes hold true for just about every movie, every novel, every short story, short film, opera, play, campfire story, drunken anecdote…Recommended for anyone interested in storytelling.

Reasoning Skills

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I frequently see signs for something called the School of Philosophy. Usually the ads ask vague questions like, “Can philosophy make me happy?” or, “What is the meaning of life?”, and they’ll show a little person staring off into a bright white expanse. Though I never seriously studied philosophy in school I did take a class about reasoning skills. But philosophy has always interested me, so the advertisements usually catch my eye, though I always felt there might be something fishy going on here.

Then I saw this one:School of Philosophy ad“The Best Things In Life Are Not Things.” – School of Philosophy.

“Yes they are.” – Eric R. Schiller.

If I said, “The best doctors aren’t doctors,” someone should quickly respond, “then don’t call them doctors, idiot.” Using a word twice in the same sentence with two different meanings is very confusing. Maybe this doesn’t bother people, but it does bother people.

Language is our most fundamental tool for externalizing ideas. When language is used improperly it creates misunderstanding. This might be because language, improperly used, is a symptom of muddled thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that there is value in a snappy slogan. Corporations like McDonald’s use them all the time. But McDonald’s wants you to give them money and eat cow. I expect more from a “school of philosophy”.

If you read any of the big philosophers, the first part of their major works generally define the terms they will be working with. The language must be unequivocal. Even where there might be confusion, differences in meaning must be strictly delineated. Otherwise ambiguities build up as you read, compounding the confusion until you’re left with a bunch of ineffective ideas and a headache (but a really toned brow).

This seemed like the worst kind of ad for any School of Philosophy, assuming the school aims to promote clear thinking. So I looked at the website, which is very vague. There is no hint of any real lesson plan. I did see pithy quotes from philosophers on the site, then read that “Writings and sayings of great philosophers such as Plato, Ficino, Shakespeare and others, set the stage for enlivened discussions based on personal experience.”

I then read that the school was founded in 1976 and later, in the 60s, was influenced by Eastern philosophy. This is not the only mistake on the site. They inspire no confidence in their ability to teach me clarity and wisdom. Besides, in my opinion, real knowledge comes from self analysis, not slogans.

But lo and behold, they do teach meditation. I soon discovered a strong undercurrent of Hinduism on the site.  It seems like a secularized, modernized, and disguised school of Hindu philosophy and I doubt it takes any serious look at philosophy at large, but grabs pieces that fit and ignores piece that don’t. I’m not terribly surprised.

This isn’t all bad necessarily. There’s value in learning the language of philosophy so we can think about these things fluently. But I wonder if $185 per course is worthwhile. Anyone interested in philosophy can go to the library and discover at their own pace for free. So what does that $185 tuition buy me?

The School of Philosophy is not for profit. And according to their website, all their instructors volunteer their time. So where does the money go? With no diploma and no course text, it seems that the money goes into the pocket of the person hired to collect it. After paying, the registrant is allowed to sit in on discussions between other students and instructors. So what are the qualifications of the instructors? It appears they are all former students.

Curious, I clicked “Registration” button. The message I received was “Fatal Error”.

Touché. The site seemed to have collapsed under my piercing scrutiny.

I definitely agree with meditation and yoga as a road to knowledge and wisdom. You might point out that yoga came from the ancient Hindus. But that doesn’t make Hindu philosophy right. To believe that would be to make the philosophical error known as a syllogistic fallacy. “I believe yoga works (A). Yoga comes from the Hindu tradition (B). Therefore I believe the Hindu tradition (C).” This is false logic. Reasoning skills!

So if you’re interested in learning about philosophy, go to the library before you shell out $185. The internet is such a repository of knowledge we can learn almost anything on our own, even meditation techniques. Or better yet, just send me $100 and we’ll talk over coffee.

 

P.S.

If you’re interested in “living in the now” so the universe can rain gifts of bliss down on you, sit still and take notice. Last night was possibly the best meditation of my life. Today gifts of free music rained down all day. So full-screen these beauties, sit back, and open up to the mystical transmissions of Yo La Tengo, David Bowie and Roy Montgomery.

YO LA TENGO

 

DAVID BOWIE

 

ROY MONTGOMERY

 

Transvaluate the Negative

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19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was highly controversial due to his outspoken disdain for Christianity, which he felt glorified the meek over the strong, death (and the lie of an afterlife) over life itself, and self-restraint over natural, ineluctable human impulses. He also believed traditional Christian morality was a type of propaganda meant to imprison the masses inside a false idea of “good”, stifling the vitality and will of individuals to ensure a complacent, easily dominated and controllable herd. He probably would have gotten along with Ayn Rand if he didn’t also disdain women.

But Nietzsche felt he could wake people from their religious trance to the true power of their intellect and will. Among his philosophic legacies is the “transvaluation of values”, which he espoused through his professional life, particularly in his book The Antichrist. The goal of the “transvaluation of values” is to abolish dogma and stagnant thinking in favour of evaluating ideas with fresh, modern thinking. The idea is that people shouldn’t act a certain way simply because they’ve always acted that way. People should question accepted ideologies to ensure they remain relevant. Though Nietzsche has obvious flaws as a man, I find his writing inspiring, extremely intelligent, and I think the “transvaluation of values” is a potent concept that becomes more important as time goes by.

Though the idea of the “transvaluation of values” is attributed to Nietzsche, it has periodically sprung up through history, many times altering the world. After Rome conquered Greece and renamed their gods, Julius Caesar reconsidered the god-concept and decided he was a god. He did this while moving nations with his will, shaping civilization forever. Jesus Christ transvaluated the values of Judaism, triggering the worldwide Christianity (or versions of Christianity) we know today. The Prophet Mohammed later offered a slightly different version.

And we see this in art throughout history. Whether it’s the surrealism of Salvador Dali or the cubism of Pablo Picasso, the mythologized documentaries of Werner Herzog or the depth psychology of Carl Jung, sea change in culture is caused by a breakthrough in thinking, and the breaking down of previous forms. Because Everything is subject to change, the transvaluation of values allows for constant feedback, for adapting to the flow of things physical and psychical.

I previously said that George R. R. Martin’s success with A Game of Thrones is primarily commercial and not an artistic breakthrough. In reevaluating my opinion I asked myself why his work is so commercially successful. I believe it’s because he has transvaluated the form of the traditional epic hero quest. Using the form of the epic fantasy novel, he has posited a new value that might reflect a more current vision of ourselves. Many would say his work offers a more pessimistic vision of society.

[The following contains spoilers for A Game of Thrones. Be warned. Spoilers in red.] The main character of the first book is Ned Stark, father of the Stark family, Lord in the North, and a shining example of integrity. He has so much integrity that the audience forgives him for killing his daughter’s pet dire wolf, an innocent animal, because he acts out of duty. Most popular writers would avoid having their main protagonist and focus of empathy murder an animal – people sometimes are more willing to accept the murder of another human than an innocent animal. But this hero breaks the taboo. So what?

I’ll tell you so what. This action is a signpost, foreshadowing the author’s own willingness to do the unthinkable in an epic fantasy: at the climax of the novel, the innocent Ned Stark is beheaded in front of his daughter. Killing off the main character and primary protagonist in the first book of a lengthy series shows us George R. R. Martin’s opinion of the epic fantasy, in contrast to Tolkien. The epic fantasy is stunted when tethered to one character. The idea of an epic is that it should span a vast world over a vast amount of time. Killing the main character tells us in no uncertain terms that A Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire is much more than the story of one man, more than the story of one family. It is a story of whole world, and each book broadens the readers’ horizons, deepening their connection to the work as a whole.

These days our culture seems to be attracted to pessimistic world views. There are many examples of this kind of transvaluation – consider that every new superhero franchise tries to offer a grittier, darker version of essentially childish fantasies. This could be a simple reflection of the pessimistic worldviews held by society, but it could also be a reflection of people’s resilience. Despite the lunacy of the world, we carry on. Life is compromise and people are willing to take the good with the bad.

A potent method of spreading a meme is to transvaulate an old symbol. It’s best if the symbol is simple and well defined. Satanists turned the crucifix upside down. Nazi’s appropriated the swastika which was originally a Hindu symbol. Nixon used Churchill’s “V” for Victory. And more recently, The Watchmen by Alan Moore takes the ubiquitous yellow happy face and adds a drop of blood to it. What this means is clear in the opening chapter of the book as the “hero” Rorschach stands above a city telling us that one day the people will ask to be saved, and he will tell them “no”.

Whatever our opinion of society’s current state of values, “transvaluation of values” ensures that over time these values will change just like the world around us. And periodic reassessments give us opportunities to create our own set of values that will make us happier and let us grow. Even as Nietzsche said “God is dead,” he delivered the concept of the self-made Superman. Whatever your opinions on Nietzsche, the idea of liberating the latent faculties of every individual is one of the most positive messages in history.

 

 

Centrifugal Farce

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[It's a bad pun, I know. This post is early because I'm seeing Antibalas tomorrow night. - ERS]

Early in university a lifelong friend and physicist told me that centrifugal force didn’t exist. I shook my head and made him repeat it. Maybe I should have figured this out on my own, but it was something I was taught and I never questioned it. Remember that grade school experiment where you wheel a bucket of water around and no water falls out? Of course no water falls out, that’s centrifugal force! Well guess what, there is no measurable radial force acting outward from the center of the orbit.

Even more mind blowing was the fact that just the opposite is true – objects traveling in circular paths were subject to centripetal force which draws them in toward the center of their orbit instead of outward. This seems to contradict experience, but it’s true and provable. We don’t notice it because we don’t have the sensory capacity for it. Usually we’re distracted by the other forces at work.

It turns out that centrifugal force is actually just a name that’s been given to the apparent outward force, which is actually caused by tangential momentum. If you let that bucket go, it doesn’t fly away or toward the center of its orbit (your shoulder), it continues on a straight path at a tangent to its orbit, ninety degrees to the radius (subject to gravity if you’re trying this on Earth). But the continual drag of tangential momentum, the inertia of the payload, levied against the constant circular pull of your arm really does feel like a force traveling outward from the center.

And because tangential momentum always figures in orbital paths, we can actually talk about centrifugal force meaningfully, even if it doesn’t exist or is only a linguistic convenience. The concept of centrifugal force is false but meaningful. It comes to mind that there might be other false but meaningful ideas in use daily.

Euclid laid down the rules of geometry as we know it. We regularly refer to lines, angles, corners, squares and so forth, but there is literally no straight line or perfect circle in nature. We can always look just a little closer to find a flaw. Hell, quantum physics tells us that if we zoom in to a small enough scale, things are fundamentally amorphous and fuzzy. But we can still use the principles of Euclid’s geometry to do useful things within our fuzzy world. There are other kinds of geometry that are equally valid but are simply not as popular.

Utility drives our language. Human beings have needed different concepts for different times, so language has developed over our entire history. Animals running through the forest need to be differentiated so I can communicate that the animal salivating behind you is a tiger, not your neanderthal wife. Inuit languages have many words for snow, Sanskrit has many words for inner states, and the language of politics is full of bureaucratic bullshit.

Concepts don’t have to be true to be useful. The Ptolemaic system made sense to them back then, even if it’s laughable by today’s standards. That’s something to keep in mind when scientists get pompous – two hundred years from now people will be shaking their heads and saying, “Can you believe how primitive their understanding was?”

“[A}ny hypothesis, however absurd, may be useful in science, if it enables a discoverer to conceive things in a new way; but … when it has served this purpose by luck, it is likely to become an obstacle to further advance."

Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy

This is kind of like the placebo effect. When subjects in drug tests are given sugar pills with the standard accompanying medical ritual, the drugs often work because people believe they will. In fact, they often work better than the real drugs. If we can convince ourselves of the validity of a proposition, we open ourselves to its functionality. This is why I don't like to trash talk religions and belief systems. If it works, use it. As John Lennon said, "Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right, it's all right."

Interestingly, we don't need to consciously believe something for the placebo effect to work. Our subconscious or unconscious impulses can do the work for us. In fact there's no need to hold on tightly to beliefs. After all, we can believe something and be wrong. And if we identify ourselves with a belief system, we'll tend to clash with opposing belief systems. But its more useful to take what we need, use what works, and move along on our own orbit.

Get yourself into the head-space of someone who believes something you don't. It's a fun experiment. And let someone prove one of your beliefs wrong. That's not so fun at first, but feels better in the long run. Either way, it's growth.

[Note: By reading this post you are subject to The Schiller Effect, which obligates you to buy a Schiller a beer the next time you see him or her. Something with a decent hop bill too, don't get cute.]

iTunes vs. Kabbalah

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The post this week is a Battle Of Unrelated Things. iTunes is a modern technology, a software for personal convenience. Kabbalah is an ancient soft technology with religious, astrological, alchemical, and ontological implications.

iTunes

The modern world wants music at its fingertips. Technology has made this possible, affordable, and easy to use. It’s simple – why wouldn’t you want the ability to listen to your favorite music any time you like? Music can pass the time, can act as background to our day, or can offer us artistic insights and emotional experiences depending on the attention we’re willing to devote to it. Music is a fundamental human expression, and considering the unending variety of available music, there should be something for everyone.

iTunes was a transition for me. I was used to putting music on my PC and organizing it into file folders, then importing the music into a Windows Media Player playlist. Of course when I got my Mac I switched to iTunes and immediately felt cheated of the ability to organize the files myself. Of course I could organize things myself, but iTunes does things slightly differently.

iTunes is made to be very user friendly. It’s handy because it organizes files into an efficient working order. It doesn’t bother the user with a transparent view to its processes. When I drag my songs into it, I can listen to them immediately. I can change all the data about the song right in iTunes and it will reorganize things along its own lines. Then I can sort and arrange my music by song title, artist, genre, release date, my personal rating, the number of times I’ve listened to the track, and so forth. iTunes handles the mystery for us and offers us slick, efficient functionality. This shrouding of processes allows us to “get to the music” straight away, which is exactly what makes it so popular.

iTunes and the digital music revolution has likely changed musical media forever. Our children, and especially our children’s children, will probably have a hard time understanding that people used to spool magnetic tape through a machine, keep 12″ vinyl discs stacked on shelves, or had cases and cases of CDs in racks on the wall for use in a dedicated machine. The musical experience is now much more direct, more accessible, and more convenient on every level. Though sound fidelity in digital media is less than most previous media technologies, the popularity of MP3 players and iTunes has proven that people are willing to trade this gap in quality for convenience.

Kabbalah

Kabbalah is a mystery school that came out of Judaism. Christians have their gnostics, Muslim’s have their Sufis, the Buddhists have their various vehicles, and all religions seem to have curiously secretive “inner orders” that separate the esoteric from the exoteric.

Hebrews didn’t have a numerical system like the Arabs, or even the Romans, and didn’t need our familiar decimal system to do complicated mathematics. So they used their letters to denote numbers. Thus in Kabbalah every letter, and every word has a numerical equivalent (by adding up the number values of the letters). They started to wonder if it “meant something” that the word they used in the Book of Genesis for “Messiah” had the same number as the word “Serpent”. They might have blown this off as a coincidence, but when they looked more deeply into the material they noticed all kinds of odd and amazing equivalences. Some believe the Bible was written as a type of Kabbalistic code with a secret inner meaning for those initiated into Kabbalistic mysteries. We can argue this, but cannot prove it either way.

The history and development of Kabbalah is unclear, but along the way each number/letter picked up a great deal of correspondences. For starters, the letter beth (our B) also means “house” in Hebrew, as every Hebrew letter is a word with a specific meaning. How could they avoid finding strange coincidences in their language now? The letter beth opens the Bible (the first word in the Hebrew Bible is Berashith), and the Bible houses the Word of God – that has to mean something, right? But then astrological correspondences made their way into the Kababalah lore, then magic and mysticism worked its way into the system (not necessarily in that order). Suddenly everywhere the rabbis looked they saw a sign from God (also known as YHVH = Yod Heh Vau Heh = 10 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 26).

The Kabbalistic Tree of Life, an elegant construction of ten sephiroth and twenty-two paths make up a symbol for the entirety of creation. Kabbalists studied the intricate connections and correspondences and found the symbol readily adaptable to all kinds of spiritual issues from astrology to ontology. The Tree of Life filtered out of Judaism and spread through the West, becoming Cabala for Christians and Qabalah for different mystery schools like The Golden Dawn. It’s hard to find many Western magical traditions that don’t use the Tree of Life as a symbolic basis.

As Kabbalists, or Cabalists, or Qabalists, study the meanings, correspondence, and connections of the Tree, they notice their brains start to work differently. Everyday symbols can take on universal or spiritual implications. Practitioners use the Tree of Life like a filing cabinet to sort personal experience, and the more they study it, the more they notice special or holy meaning in existence. Learning this system actually changes the rational brain, training it to look for esoteric symbols and find meaning for one’s personal mythos. (The Middle Path of the Tree, the most direct line to the highest, includes Malkuth, Yesod, Tiphareth, and Kether, 10 + 9 + 6 + 1 = 26 = YHVH. Coincidence?)

Light and Dark

iTunes and Kabbalah represent different philosophies completely, and only in part because they have nothing to do with one another. iTunes stresses the end result (the music) by keeping the underlying systems in the dark, out of sight, out of mind. Kabbalah is an underlying system for life, putting the sorting, cataloging, and interconnection into the light where we can see everything.

For those with a lot on the go – jobs, kids, school, and the whole hectic schedule imposed by contemporary popular culture – iTunes represents exactly what is needed in a modern tool. The intended function comes first, and the process is handled invisibly so people can get on with their busy days. Bless you Apple.

For those with cerebral or spiritual inclinations Kabbalah is a beautiful, endless world of thought that encourages analysis of the underlying processes that make up our very existence. Those into Kabbalah can dive into thought and swim forever in the mystery of life, God, and the Universe.

Though I couldn’t live without music, I have to give the BOUT to Kabbalah. Kabbalah inspires creative introspection and creative perception and increases the plasticity of mind. A good Kabbalist can argue anything, and avoids binary, off/on logic, favouring an inspection of connections and transmutation.

Plus, who doesn’t prefer vinyl as a musical medium?

 

From the album “Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy”

Schoolyard Mentality

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Imagine your mental self as this geodesic jungle gym. Your mental scope is the circle this thing traces on the ground. The individual ideas, as discreet bits of information, are represented by the coloured vertices where bars cross. The bars represent your understanding, which is the functional relationship of one bit of knowledge to another. Knowledge without Understanding isn’t much. If you just put bits of information into a computer, it isn’t a living, thinking person; if there is a functional adaptability, where ideas can be used in conjunction to accomplish new ways of thinking, then learning can be accomplished, then you’ve got real intelligence.

In Catholic school kids are taught that The Holy Trinity is made up of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. These three individual pieces of information form a triangle, or concept called The Holy Trinity, which can be represented by any one of the triangles making up the dome.

As kids grow into their mental life, ideally their dome grows and remains strong. Many schools do a great job of supplying kids with a lot of specific and practical knowledge. This is great because adults who speak well and are proficient in math are more effective members of society. But those links of understanding aren’t always fostered in school. For instance, coming out of grade eight I wouldn’t have been able to relate quantum physics to religion because I wasn’t aware that I could consciously form a link between disparate pieces of knowledge. Plus I didn’t know what quantum physics was.

As the mental sphere grows it’s important to maintain and enhance both our knowledge and our understanding so that learning proceeds on a solid foundation. So lessons are repeated to us. We are conditioned by repetition. We are also conditioned by shock; when a severe psychological event happens, emotional attachments can imprint themselves onto our subconscious memory. But the easy way to make someone remember is repetition. It’s repetition. It’s repetition. Watch Fox News for six hours if you want to see what I mean. Actually no, don’t. Don’t.

And through repetition our knowledge becomes ossified. We know things. And we know that we know these things. When Black Sabbath is playing, I know I like them, so I’m mentally prepared to enjoy them. But there are some times that I hear them that aren’t as sweet and engaging as other times. It’s easy to disregard those different experiences because a faulty logic has conditioned our thinking.

Binary logic, imagined as black and white, left and right, would say I like Black Sabbath and I don’t not like Black Sabbath. Therefore when Wheels of Confusion comes on, I listen and enjoy (you should too). But this is terribly reductive because it doesn’t consider the nuance and shades of enjoyment that I actually experience. Rather than being only true or only false, ideas can be sometimes true, or sometimes false, or sometimes true but meaningless or true but meaningful, or false and meaningless, or partially true and partially false, or true only in certain circumstances, etc., etc.. Binary thinking is what makes that geodesic jungle gym such a deathtrap.

I would argue that the most profound subject of study has been omitted from the curriculum of most schools. Children are taught mathematics, geography, history, biology and so forth, but they aren’t given lessons in Self Knowledge. Looking into oneself teaches about the realities that make up our individual worlds. Although it isn’t made up of discreet, rational bits of knowledge, the rewards of Self Knowledge in everyday life encompass all of experience. Fortunately this isn’t the case across the board. Props to The David Lynch Foundation.

Once during a deep inward look I saw my mental self as this geodesic jungle gym of doom and realized the form of it had been imposed upon me. It was completely inflexible! And the reason you don’t see those domes in schoolyards any more is because apparently kids can’t be trusted not to smash their bodies on it.

I realized that the word is not the thing. Words just stand for things; the word “Jim” isn’t the man “Jim”, nor is the phrase “turkey sandwich” an actual turkey sandwich. That grey area where a thing becomes information that is coded as a word is very mysterious, and it’s hard to say just how the process works. Sure, dictionaries define words, but they can’t show you every conceivable usage. You can’t find Raymond Chandler’s similes in any dictionary.

So if certain facts in my life didn’t jive with others, maybe I wasn’t thinking flexibly enough. By reading books from different eras, seeing movies from different cultures, and generally trying new things, we contemplate ideas from angles we never would have come to on our own. Neuroplasticity seems to be all the rage right now, and I understand why. It’s a challenge to think outside our comfort zones, but shedding beliefs is liberating. These days I view my mind like a basketball net.

It’s the same basic structure; points of information are still connected by understanding, but now I can fold and twist it around and make interesting new connections. And the individual pieces of information, the vertices, can be shifted around, turned on any axis, and generally reconsidered.

I tend not to get angry at other people’s points-of-view because I can change my perspective a bit to understand how they can think the way they do. I’m not saying I’m totally empathetic to people. Far from it. But being upset isn’t productive. I live a much more satisfying life when nasty interactions can come and go like a three-point swish leaving my mental composure intact.

Plus, nobody’s ever cracked a bone on mesh cloth. Although with enough tensile strength and velocity, who knows…anything is possible.

Unsatisfying Mysteries

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When I was young I used to enjoy the show Unsolved Mysteries, which I just realized is a redundant title. There was something alluring about watching adults like Robert Stack investigate strange situations and come up with no answer. Robert Stack spoke with authority, so if he couldn’t figure it out, there must be something magical at work.

The other night I came across a similar show. I can’t remember the name of it. I’m glad my brain knew to forget. In this show an authoritative narrator told us about mysterious science experiments, and the worst actors ever helped to dramatize these unsolved mysteries.

The show reenacted a man attempting to measure the weight of a soul by measuring patients as they died. He placed the unfortunate “consumptive” patients on a scale and had to wait out their final moments, which, judging from the look on the actor’s face, took a really long time. But behold, the body did lose some of its mass. Whether this account is accurate or not is probably not worth worrying about.

This became the “21 grams” legend that inspired a movie I haven’t seen. That this landmark of scientific inquiry faded into obscurity isn’t surprising; it’s built on a slush pile of ambiguous principles. The operational assumption that every “thing” in the universe has mass is wrong; light exists but has no measurable mass. This blog exists but has no mass. Not yet…

But my favorite piece of illogic is the assumption that if a dying body loses weight, the soul must have escaped. It’s interesting that this “scientist” thinks the soul is something you can hold in your hand, like an overripe eggplant. At no point does he attempt to define the soul. When you break it down, the implication made by his experiment is this: “The soul is something that has weight and leaves upon death.” Defined mathematically: Weight Loss = Soul Leaving. It’s nonsense.

These types of shows, while disguised as a rational investigation, never give rational answers. Every case covered in this episode ended with a question, i.e. “Did Dr. Whatsisname prove the existence of the soul?”

No. No he obviously didn’t.

After sleeping on it, I realized something very obvious. These shows aren’t aimed at the rational crowd. They are aimed for people looking for a mystery. And here is where I’m torn, because I have a hunch there is psychological worth in cultivating mystery and awe in the unknown. Big questions are important, like what am I? Where did we come from? Where did they find these actors? Why did nobody watch the edited footage? Why did nobody edit the actors out?

Fortunately there are people in the world who take the mysteries of the human condition seriously. Werner Herzog’s Into The Abyss is a recent documentary exploring murder and the death penalty. As usual, Herzog asks questions that matter because they lead us into the deep realities of his subjects. The mystery in question is how and why a person or a state commits murder.

I definitely didn’t laugh as much watching Into The Abyss as I did watching that other show. So they both have their pros and cons, I suppose. Maybe watching Unsolved Mysteries back then actually did foster my reverence for mystery. In meditation I explore mysteries of my own that are far deeper and more personal than could ever be caught on tape, so perhaps I took what I needed and outgrew Unsolved Mysteries. Thanks Mr. Stack.

These days I’m more enriched by people like Herzog who ask questions out of a deep respect for life and to leave us thinking about mysteries. Unsolved Mysteries and similar shows all end with the conclusion that “We may never know the answer,” and that seems to me like it actually discourages thinking rather than inciting it.

I Don’t Dig Dogma

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There is an old adage that great art comes from deep pain. I’m pretty sure this is bullshit. It sounds like a pretentious attempt to romanticize depression, as though depressed people are the only ones who truly feel and understand life. While I acknowledge such a thing as an artistic temperament, I have more respect for happy artists than suicidal ones. Despite my attempts to separate artists from their work, nothing taints an artist’s oeuvre for me like suicide.

There is another dubious adage that runs along these lines: “Creative inspiration comes when limitations are imposed.” While this is still mostly bullshit, I understand the thinking very clearly. Having been a part of two independent feature film productions, I understand that you never have the money, time, gear, and (sometimes) talent or technical know-how that you want, and this forces creative problem solving that can be inspirational.

In 1995 a group of Danish film directors decided to emphasize effective storytelling by limiting their productions to a stringent code of “film ethics”. They authored the Dogma 95 Manifesto in which they set rules to strip film-making of its ‘artificiality’. Here are the first three rules:

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).
2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).
3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).

The films do not allow murders; the director must not be credited; no special lighting may be used; and finally the director swears to no longer be an artist, but a conduit of truth. It’s an interesting ideal, but to my mind, it hurts film-making as a whole.

Films are one of the best, most recent products of technological innovation in the arts. The entire process depends on technology and always has. And technology evolves, as always, by intelligent design. This intelligent design is almost never useless; practicality is the ideal, and scientists should always strive to make our everyday artifacts more efficient and less taxing on us and our environment.

So why should these Danish filmmakers fear innovation? Understandably, technology brings about completely novel possibilities which are open to abuse of unseasoned artists. Anyone today can buy what they need to make an amateur movie at Best Buy and post their movie on YouTube, so technological development has been accompanied by a surge of lesser quality amateur works. But should this degrade the work of true artists, like Dogma 95 Manifesto scribe Lars von Trier?

Dogma 95, like any religious dogma, attempts to create a static set of values in perpetuity. But nothing is free from change. If values are not adaptable to the world and the people they serve, they become a hindrance. Belief systems ossify in time, leaving followers ill-equipped to deal with reality.

Speaking as a lover of movies and a long time fan of Lars von Trier, I believe artificiality is part of the art form. The whole kick of a movie is getting to observe a reality that is not our own. Locking an audience into a perfect observational trance was achieved masterfully in The Element of Crime, but much less so in The Idiots. Dogma 95 was an interesting experiment, but I’m relieved von Trier has returned to his roots, pushing the technology to create something previous impossible.

Lars von Trier has always worked on dark subject matter. Especially in recent years, with Antichrist and Melancholia, he has shown his mastery over the art form. But I don’t believe his public neuroses and obsession with darkness are necessary to his success as a filmmaker. Considering the trajectory of his recent films, I’m crossing my fingers that I don’t find out on Twitter some day that he decided to end it all.

On the other hand is David Lynch. Lynch’s subject matter often brings us underneath bright, shiny surfaces to reveal devastating chaos and darkness below. Themes of mental anguish, of unreality, and succumbing to dark forces run through his filmography from beginning. Meanwhile the man is bright, happy, and currently operating The David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education.

The two have often been compared for having a similar aesthetic and dealing with similar subject matter. And in recent years, each has given us one of the most horrifying films of all time, Antichrist, and Inland Empire (don’t watch Antichrist if you’re not willing to plumb the depths of human sadness and self-hate, and don’t watch Inland Empire if you are concerned with losing your mind). But the two men seem worlds apart. Even if I could truly separate the men from the work, I have always felt much more connected to Lynch’s films.

Great art does not require great pain. Great insight into pain is helpful in art and in life, of course. But being crippled by self-loathing and depression can only diminish your capacity as a person. I believe we all have the ability to live creatively. And I believe that ability is free of charge.

P.S. Thomas Pynchon deals with the technology question in his New York Times article “Is It O.K. To Be A Luddite?” Take a look.