Philosophy – Page 23 – Auxiliary Memory

Accepting Reality

For most of the history of mankind, gods or God, explained reality. God made us, the plants and animals. Any event in nature, whether good or bad, was caused by gods or God. Then science came along and explained rain, thunderstorms, earthquakes, eclipses, droughts, stars, planets, and so on. When science explained the origin of animals and people, some religious people rebelled.

We now have people that reject science because they want to keep God. They feel science is explaining away God. I’m afraid they are right. But instead of accepting reality and letting God fade away, like the gods before monotheism, they are rejecting reality. When I was very young I rejected God and accepted science mainly because of the size of reality. Reality seemed too immense to have been created by one being, especially one in our image. Take a look at this video to see what I mean.

God was a great concept when our awareness of reality was small but once you realize the size of reality, age and scope, even at the limits of what we know now, that knowledge changes everything philosophically. Humans can’t be the crown of creation. We can’t be the center of the universe and the focus of God’s attention. We can’t be special if we’re so small and insignificant.

So what is our place in the reality? Years ago I would have asked, what is our place in the universe, but it appears our universe might be one of an infinity of universes, and this round of 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang, only a single bubble in a foam of universes. Science now talk of the multiverse, but I prefer the term reality to encompass it all.

Humans are here in this vast reality by an accident of randomness. We won’t always be here. Reality existed before us, and it will exist after us. Being here is the biggest miracle we’ve yet discovered. It’s a miracle that outshines any miracle ever recorded in all of the religions of the world.

I think its time we reject the theory of God and start accepting reality for what it is. Start asking questions about what existing in this vast reality means. Becoming self-aware in this immense reality is a great opportunity. Instead of destroying the Earth and committing species suicide we need to think about what we could become. Don’t ask what is our purpose. Under religion our purpose was to obey God. Reality doesn’t work that way. We each have to find our own purpose if we want one, but reality expects nothing of us. We can’t have a personal relationship with reality. Each of us is an awareness of reality, but most of us pretend we’re not here.

Erase all the past thoughts of religion and philosophy. You just woke up in an unknown place. Take stock in your surroundings. You know that old saying, think global but act local – do the same for reality. Our philosophy should be based on our best picture of reality. Start with cosmology and work your way down. Most people define reality by their very small personal delusions. I say, any philosophy that doesn’t account for the size of reality dooms itself to a cockroach mentality. A cockroach scurries about satisfying its personal urges unaware of its environment. A cockroach does not know it’s in your kitchen because it doesn’t see the big picture.

There is only one human endeavor that tells us about reality, and that’s science. I suggest starting at the top, and work down. NOVA presented a wonderful four part series called The Fabric of the Cosmos hosted by Brian Greene based on his book of the same name.

Fabric of the Cosmos 1: What is Space?

Fabric of the Cosmos 2: The Illusion of Time

Fabric of the Cosmos 3: Quantum Leap

Fabric of the Cosmos 4: University or Multiverse

Maybe there’s still room for religion in reality, I don’t know. But any religion that ignores what we know about reality is delusional.

JWH – 2/11/12

Who Are the Abolitionists of Our Times?

What peculiar institutions do we embrace today that modern abolitionists see as evil?

Humans are an evolving social species and in every era some people see further than others. They understand that common assumptions are wrong. 19th century abolitionists could see that slavery was a vile institution where most were blind to its cruelty. They wanted to abolish a long held practice that other people embraced dearly. This brought about the war of America against itself that was so violent that no other enemy has ever come close to hurting us so much. And even though the war came to an end in 1865 some people are still fighting it today. It’s very hard for people to change.

What I ask: What evil do we embrace that is invisible to the society at large that a few people rightly want to abolish today?

The list could be quite long and it might take a century or two before the issues become obvious to everyone. Evil is not invisible. Evil doesn’t take a century of social evolution to see. Evil is ignored. Everyone in the 19th century should have seen that slavery was evil. Southern states embraced slavery because it benefitted them economically. They had to rationalize the practice. The framers of the Constitution had to carefully dance around the issue in words. Our forefathers accepted a level of cruelty in life that we can’t rationalize, but instead of feeling enlighten, we have to ask: What cruelty do we rationalize so easily? What vile practices do we embrace because we don’t want to see its evil because it profits us?

The first thing that comes to mind are animals. Factory farms are nightmares of animal cruelty that slaughter billions of beings each year. We’re also destroying animal habitats worldwide and causing extinctions only slightly slower than mass extinction events. Given our trends, we’ll start surpassing some of those events soon.

The second thing that comes to mind is how we’re destroying the environment for future generations. A century from now the the people of the world will hate us far worse than we ever hated slavers, colonialists, Nazis, Communists, terrorists, serial killers or child molesters. Our excesses will make us the worst of the worst.

Most people today if confronted will go, “Huh, not me, I’m not doing anything wrong.”

And you can’t claim ignorance because we do have our own abolitionists. They are out there. They are telling us what’s wrong. We’re just not listening.

JWH – 2/5/12

God, An Imaginary Friend For Adults

“There are no atheists in foxholes” is an assumption by the faithful who feel in times of stress all people will turn to God. When I’m sick I want to talk to God too. The older I get the stronger my atheism gets, the more I feel like I’m just talking. I don’t expect a reply. When we’re alone, fearful or in pain, we realize how powerless we are. So it’s quite natural to think, “God, get me out of this!”

Who are we talking to? Ourselves, of course. But we’d like to think that someone is listening. That’s why people believe in a personal God – to have a listener, to not be alone. Lonely kids make up imaginary friends, well adults make up God. We don’t like to be alone in the universe. Nor do we like to be helpless. The desire for an all-powerful, caring, father figure is completely understandable. Even if he’s going to let us suffer and die, we want someone to talk to.

On the other hand, are we really alone in our heads? We tend to think of our thoughts as ourselves, but if you observe closely, they aren’t. Descartes, “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” is another illusion. Pay close attention to your thoughts and you’ll realize the quality you feel as Me is actually listening to your thoughts. The Me observer is so close to the thoughts that it thinks its doing the thinking. Stare at something and not think, and then watch when a thought arises. There is a separation. In other words, you aren’t alone. It’s you and your thoughts. The observer and thinker.

Animals are observers like us, but without thoughts, or a thinker.

Now here’s the kicker. It’s the thinker that needs to talk. It’s the thinker that needs to communicate with God. If you just BE and turn off your thoughts you’re just an observer, there is no God, or even desire. It’s the thinker that wants, that desires, that creates God, and all the other stuff, like mathematics, history, philosophy, justice, love, etc. It’s the observer who is aware, who is conscious, and who dies.

So, why does the thinker want to create God? Why does the thinker need this imaginary friend? Before awareness in animals there was no observers of reality. Hydrogen became stars without notice. Animals perceive reality through an infinity of senses. Animals can feel the warmth of the sun without knowing what it is, because they don’t have language to think.

Then we came along and started thinking. Thoughts see things that don’t exist in reality. Thoughts see other thoughts.

Why?

Our thinking minds are quite creative. It’s my thinking mind writing this now. And my Me-ness observes that.

Children create imaginary beings to have someone to talk to. We create God to have someone to talk to.

What we really want is another thinker to talk to.

JWH – 1/21/12

The Perils of Positive Thinking

In our society we like to believe that a positive attitude will make us a success, that positive thinking will cure our ills, and make us rich. On last week’s CBS Sunday Morning featured “Just How Powerful Is Positive Thinking” that said belief in positive thought is wrong. Of, they admitted that people with positive attitudes might get through chemo easier than depressed people, but thinking positive won’t cure cancer. Then I found “When Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work” at Secret Entourage that says positive thinking only works when you have the skills and experience to back it up. Then over at Huffington Post I found “Why Positive Thinking Just Doesn’t Work.” If all go-getters have a positive attitude and most fail, the ones that do succeed can believe their positive attitude is what made them a success, but is it true?

We all die, so no matter how positive you are, or how holy, good thoughts and prayers eventually fail – and probably never helped at all.

Now I don’t want this essay to bring you down. What I want us to do is think about thinking.

When people believe that thinking positive or prayer can cure disease what they are believing is thought can change reality. When they pray for someone else they believe their thought goes to God and God reaches out and heals the other person. We know, even without scientific studies that nearly all prayers fail – if prayers succeeded even one percent of the time we’d be living in heaven. And scientific studies do show that prayers have absolutely no success.

What people believe when they believe in positive thinking is that they have some kind of power to influence reality with their thoughts. That positive thinking generates healing vibes or creates an aura of success. If you think about this it’s pretty obvious that if it worked everyone would be rich, successful, happy and healthy.

Obviously altering reality takes more than thinking and wishing. If willpower could conquer disease Steve Jobs would still be with us.

After Steve Jobs died I watched a bunch of documentaries about him and on the surface you would think he’d be the poster child for positive thinking because of his amazing string of business successes. And Jobs does give us the answer. He said if you can see what’s possible you can work to make it happen.

Thinking will let you see what’s possible, but it’s work that makes it happen.

If you have a disease work the hardest you can to get the best medical treatment possible. If you want to get rich, work harder than anyone else. If you want to be an artistic success practice for 10,000 hours. If you want to make great scientific discoveries, work at it like a fiend with relentless concentration.

I’ve dreamed of writing a novel for over forty years. Finishing NaNoWriMo last month illustrated perfectly the limits of positive thinking. Working 2-4 hours a day got me finished. And I only finished a first draft. If I want to produce a novel that’s worth reading by book buyers than I need to put in 25 times as much work, or more.

Thomas Edition said “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration” – which I’ve heard my whole life. I just wished I had learned it’s meaning back when I was seven. I’d love to think I’ll finish my novel, but I know with perfect certainty that positive thought does me no good.

I’d like to think I can think my way out of my spinal stenosis – but I can’t. What helps it is physical therapy – even more than drugs. There are no magic pills either. I’d like to think I can loose weight, but I’ve been thinking about that for decades and it hasn’t work. Sometimes nothing works.

It’s not a question of positive thinking but how far can I push myself. The fascinating question is: Can I push myself further than I can imagine?

Like Clint Eastwood said as Dirty Harry, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

All of this is why I love “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany. It’s a science fiction story about wanting to go further. It’s hard in life when we see people go further than our own limitations. The reason why the belief in positive thinking is so universal is we all can see success, riches and abundant health in other people, so thinking it’s possible for ourselves is seductively easy. To seductive.

And finally, reality is relentlessly harsh. Some people work their asses off and never succeed. There’s limit to work too. There’s limits to everything in this life. We just have to keep pushing those limits.

JWH – 12/1/11

What if Our World is Their Heaven?

Let’s imagine another place, another realm of existence, where beings live in harmony and togetherness. They have no clothes, no houses, no cities, no jobs, no cars, no weather and no bodies. They live a simple existence of being. And they’ve been living that way for trillions of years. They don’t die, they don’t suffer, they don’t crave, but after an eternal time one of these beings asks, “I wonder what it would be like if our existence was different?”

So these beings started thinking about that until one of them said to the others, “Aren’t we different now?”

“What do you mean?” the others asked.

“We never imagined being different before.”

And the others understood.

After many eons these beings created many different subtle aspects to their existence and they learned to crave variety, but even after billions of years their lives were still homogenous and bland. Then one of the beings asked, “What if there is a place where things are very different? What if we could go there?”

And they thought about that for a very long time. And they named this different place Heaven. And they dreamed of Heaven not knowing what it would be like. Finally a higher being that watched over these lesser beings decided to do something, so it created Earth and sent the beings there but let them forgot who they were.

And those beings pursued a never ending evolution becoming different. Eventually some of them tired of change and dreamed of finding a place of unity and harmony.

So the beings split into two species. One wanted to go forward seeking even more new experiences, and the others ached to find a new place to live. They called this new place Heaven, not remembering that this world had once been their Heaven.

JWH 10/26/11