The illusion of illusion, or go kick a stone

The Vedas inform us that all that is around us is maya, illusion, if you will. That's a huge pill for many to swallow. We resort to Dr. Johnson's infamous refutation of Bishop Berkeley's immaterialist philosophy -- the first argumentum ad lapidem -- in which he kicked a rather large stone and exclaimed, "I refute it thus." That has settled the case for most of us, I suppose for the ensuing almost 300 years. But maybe it really hasn't resolved the issue at all.

For adherents of that latter-day religion known as Materialism, it absolutely conclusive, but like the zealous adherents of most religions, it is easier to ignore what doesn't fit into one's belief system than it is to accept what challenges it. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. What's worse, even within that unrepresentative 5%, modern physics has shown us that atoms are not all that solid and consist mostly of empty space. Yes, there are explanations for the solidity, but they are, at the moment, our best guesses as to how things work. And that is fine.

There is nothing wrong with best guesses as long as we don't forget that's what they are: guesses. Too often, though, we simply forget, or we convince ourselves that what we experience as reality is reality as it really is. On the one hand, that helps get us through the day without major inconveniences and injuries, but on the other hand, it gets in the way as soon as we have no more stones to kick. At least this is the case with our experience of natural phenomena. Our experience of reality, in other words, works just fine and it only becomes problematic when we think that our experience is the only valid experience. Quite often it is not only helpful, but illuminating, to seriously exchange experiences with others. More often than not, we end up realizing that we have more in common than separates us.

What works for natural phenomena becomes more difficult when we're dealing with human phenomena; that is things that people do and say. Just this morning I read that Trump's newly fired campaign manager laundered his ill-gotten (or not properly reported) gains through a Washington lobbying firm with close ties to Clinton. And though underreported at the time, it is now fairly clear that Trump and Bill Clinton had a nice chat very shortly before the Donald decided to make his presidential bid. It would seem there's more empty space in a hydrogen atom than there is between the two separate parties vying for the world's allegedly most powerful office. The dismay I expressed a couple weeks ago seems somehow justified.

This isn't the only example of things not really being the way we are led to believe they are. In fact, it would seem that most of what we're being told, at least on mainstream and quasi-mainstream media is less news than it is ... well, for lack of a better word, propaganda. Personally, I'm not at all pleased with this development, and I'll be the first to admit that trying to find "real" news, or the "true" story (by which I mean the one that simply corresponds most completely to all known facts, or sometimes even "fairly reliable news" or an "insightful" story demands more time, energy, and effort than most of us can reasonably be expected to expend. It shouldn't have to be so hard to figure out life in this day and age, even if most of what I'm forced to hear about day in and day out is rather far-removed from my everyday reality.

The above is simply an example. I'm not condoning nor condemning. I'm convinced that everyone involved in every single aspect of this latest political mess believed that they were doing what needed to be done and that they believed their reasons were both reasonable and worthwhile. Once you take a step back from it all, however, it all looks pretty sleazy and messy, and, ultimately, extraordinarily dangerous and deadly, but I'm not convinced there's a secret cabal (the notoriously infamous "they") who are out to get us. By the same token, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that Clinton and Trump have much more in common with each other than either (or both) of them have with me, and I don't think it would difficult to make the case that their interests are very different from mine.

Now, don't get me wrong: it's not that I think that either of them, or any of those inside our outside the spotlight of political activity is reasonable or even respectable. I have -- for as long as I can remember -- had an intense suspicion of anyone who maintained, directly or indirectly, that s/he knew better what was good for me than I did myself. Those who on occasion did -- my parents, for example -- just didn't tell me that they knew, they demonstrated that knowledge, they kicked stones. And so, now in my old age, if you're just telling me, not showing me, well, then you're just spouting hot air, and I needed take that too seriously, unless you're spewing so much of it that it's contributing to global warming and then I'm forced to get involved.

Who knows, perhaps some of those humanitarian interventions we hear about all the time aren't really so humanitarian after all? Could it be that national and foreign policies are more often driven by desire for profit than a desire to help? Is it possible that some of that providing support for democratic forces elsewhere is a mere distraction from the destruction of democratic inclinations at home? Could it be that most of what we're being told simply doesn't square with most of what is actually being done? I have a rapidly growing suspicion that there is increasing disconnect between words and deeds ... not just in America, not just in Germany, not just in the corporate world, but everywhere I turn. There is a whole lot of illusion out there, that's for sure. It could even be that when we're dealing with human phenomena, illusion is the best we can hope for. I don't necessarily want to think that, and I'm pretty sure that isn't the case, and one thing is certain: that's not necessarily a comforting thought.

And so, once again, I find myself in a situation in which, like I argued a few posts ago, you just have to let go. When dealing with human phenomena, it could very well be that taking the old adage, actions speak louder than words, seriously may be the human equivalent of kicking stones. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to turn off the TV. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to put down that newsprint bludgeon you like to beat others over the head with. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to just let the yappers go on yapping and the screamers go on screaming. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to take a closer look at what the yappers and screamers are doing, and not just listen to what they're saying.

Maybe, just maybe, it's time to take a deep breath and a step back from all of that and allow a little common sense and actual experience back into your life. Kick a few stones, or maybe, just maybe, start thinking for yourself.

Religion's not the problem, zealotry is

As I said the last time, human beings are neither inherently good nor evil, and the world is in the shape it is because we have allowed it to be as it is. We have a say in how the world is. We don't take our own voice seriously, and more often than not, we believe things to be a certain way, when maybe they're not that way at all.

Our debate on terrorism, to take but one example, has turned into one of religious bigotry, and as is so often the case, those screaming the loudest know least about why they're screaming. We humans like to think we know a lot of things, but in the end, we know very little. We believe much more than we know and when we believe long and hard enough, we make religions out of things when and where we least expect it.

Sometimes it's more than worth the effort to stop believing for a moment, to take a step back and think, but even more importantly, reflect on why you think the world is a particular way. Serious reflection never hurt anybody.

Religion, believe it or not, is a good example, because it is the one subject the world over that you're never supposed to talk about in polite company. Why? Because it is very fundamental to how we understand the world to be, whether we are aware of what we believe or not. There's an old saying, "Feelings tell us what to think." And what we believe most often drives what we feel.

Since I'm going to be using the world "religion" a lot in this post, I think it only fair that you know what I mean when I use the term. Now, you can think what you want about Wikipedia, but given that I'm looking for a fitting description, not an authoritative statement, I think it's perfectly legitimate to draw on it in this case. The first paragraph on the relevant page reads:

Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organization that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence".[1] Different religions may or may not contain various elements, ranging from the "divine",[2] "sacred things",[3] "faith",[4] a "supernatural being or supernatural beings"[5] or "... some sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life."[6]

The key is that religion is "designed", if you will, to help us understand why things are the way they are and why life is the way it is. The "system" side of it includes behaviors, practices, special texts, and societal organizations, among others, though we can agree that these are probably the most important aspects overall.

The nice thing about having such a comprehensive description is that you can apply it to any number of observed phenomena and ask yourself whether what you're dealing with could be considered, in this case, a religion or not. The results can be quite surprising.

Let's take something that's on a lot of people's minds these days: capitalism. Is it just a economic theory, or has it become more than that? Let's see:

It is certainly a "cultural system" (we love to distinguish us from them in terms of it). There are definite behaviors associated with it, such as reducing discussions to economic terms, making money the basis of all valuation, consumerism; and practices, e.g., speculation, stock-market activity, and marketing/advertising; and world views, for example, there is no such thing as society (cf. Thatcher on this one), or simply, there is no alternative. It has sacred texts: Smith's Wealth of Nations is comparable to the Old Testament; Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, perhaps the New, if we compare it to Christianity. It has special, particularly revered places like Wall Street, the City (in London), and Frankfurt. It has a notion of divinity (the Almighty Dollar), sacred things (stocks, speculative instruments of all kinds not meant for the masses), and while it is silent on the topic of supernatural beings, it does like to think its principles describe the natural order of things. It most certainly, as attested to by its most ardent devotees, a "sort of ultimacy and transcendence that will provide norms and power for the rest of life". Capitalism has become, for all intents and purposes, a driving basis for all our lives.

Oh sure, there are branches and denominations here as elsewhere: different central banks can be seen analogously to the Papal See or prime archdioceses. Stock exchanges and bank headquarters take on the role of temples and churches, and stock-holder meetings rival the spectacle of old-time big-tent evangelists. I don't think it's all that far-fetched to maintain that capitalism has become a religion for many people, and probably more people than are willing to admit to it. That doesn't change the reality of the situation.

The things believed in are not any more substantial or "real", to use the everyday word to describe them, than anything any of the major religions have to offer. Buddhism has no supreme being and neither does capitalism.

The similarities go on: all major religions have "founders"; that is personages, mostly historically verified, to whom believers trace their roots, even though those individuals themselves are not adherents to the faith (i.e., Moses wasn't a Jew; Christ wasn't a Christian; Mohammed wasn't a Muslim, Buddha wasn't a Buddhist). And they have a variety of special figures (often termed "holy", though the Hebrew root of this word, QDSh, means, more or less, "set apart") who may be considered minor prophets, saints, or mere holy persons, like Smith (whom we mentioned), Ricardo, Malthus, Say, Marx (comparable to Lucifer elsewhere), Hayek, von Mises, and others. These are "authorities" in the ecclesiastical sense, not just in the literal sense, of the word. Depending on the flavor of your own belief they carry more or less authority of course.

I think I've made my point: We can think of capitalism as a religion. It is possible to frame the discussion such that we can expand our religiously based discussion of "terrorism" in a very unexpected direction, and one that would not be all that absurd. But, that's not where I want to go with this, nor is that where I need to go.

Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Capitalism ... in and of themselves, they just are. They are a set of beliefs, worldviews and practices, etc. that attempt to help us make sense of our lives and the world around us. They are -- and here I'll put it in very mundane, secular terms -- explanatory models of reality.

What is so fascinating about thought experiments like this one is that the deeper you delve, the more fascinating it all becomes. As long as I don't come up with the crazy idea that my way of believing and seeing the world is the only valid way of believing and seeing the world, we don't have a problem. All of these ways are seen for what they are: ways of believing and seeing the world, and in that moment, I can not only recognize and acknowledge that other way of believing and seeing, I have the wonderful opportunity to learn from that different perspective.

Unfortunately, that's not how we seem to function as human beings. Once we find a way that makes sense to us, we start thinking that this is the only valid way of seeing things, of understanding things. That step to exclusivity, to "only my way" is what utterly dumbfounds me. The borderline between a believer and a zealot is a very thin one, to be sure, and what I see is an increasing number of zealots. I think we need to be a bit more careful with our beliefs. Granted, someone who benefits -- or who believes they benefit -- from a particular way of seeing will be inclined to favor that view, but the fear that they have that perhaps taking another view would disadvantage them in some way can only be accepted if one plays through the possible scenarios in order to find out if the fear is justified. That, of course, takes time, energy, and effort, and who is really willing to sacrifice much of any of those these days.

It's not that ignoring them and falling back into one's own belief of correctness can't be accomplished without expending lots of time, energy, and effort. It's hard work defending one's views against others. Unless, that is, you happen to align yourself with a large group of other folks who have bought into the same exclusivity that you have. And that's where we are today. And, when push comes to shove -- and that's unfortunately what happens all to often: we start literally pushing and shoving ... then injuring ... then killing -- we pull out the miserable old might-makes-right stand-by, and things simply go downhill.

My point is that what we appear to be doing is driving the Devil out with Beelzebub. I purposely chose this particular approach via religion because it is religion that appears to be doing most of the driving of our thinking, and I think we're leaving a major player out of the game. In the end, we believe. We don't know, we can't prove, but we've been given the ability to think. I'd like to think we'll start using that ability more not less. And that starts when we become more reasonable, not zealous. My example with capitalism was to show that the frameworks and categories that we simply take for granted can be used to find meaningful avenues of discussion and exchange with others.

For the most part I can't help but think that we're all looking for the same things but have chosen very different words to describe them. Maybe the words aren't what really matters. Think about it.

Hunks of meat suspended in time

Recently, I had a bit of a discussion on social media (and yes, I know I'm too old for that, but I've got an extremely young grandchild and need to keep up-to-date, or some reasonable facsimile) ... well, it wasn't as much a discussion as it was an exchange. Let's face it: social media doesn't lend itself to discussions, nor was it ever intended to.

Discussions need to be done tête-à-tête, I agree, but I've been involved in the electronic medium long enough to know that it is possible to have long, deep, meaningful, debates and discussions online, but you need people who can, and are willing to, think and who are willing to persevere till Hitler (or some other Nazi reference) butts in. Exchanges are nice enough, but they are pretty meaningless in both the petty and grand scheme of things. Social media is there for people to spit out opinions, to try to impress others with one's own wit and brilliance, or to just vent. That's not really what I consider to be engaging an idea, notion, or possibility in any superficial or meaningful way, but we shouldn't expect more than a media channel can deliver.

Nevertheless, even such pithy exchanges, you can get a feeling for where the other commenters are coming from. Every time we open our mouths (or let our fingers do the talking) we tell the world where the shoe is pinching (as the Germans like to say) or what our particular problem is this week. People ain't refrigerators: they can't keep nothing. You want to know what's important to someone, what's floating their boat, tickling their fancy, or pissing them off to no end: just listen. They'll tell you. If you don't know what's bothering your partner, well, then you're not listening.

Oh, it's easy not to listen. In fact, it takes a good amount of effort. Most of us are so wrapped up in ourselves that we can't get past the monkey-chatter in our own heads to pick up on whatever it is that "they" are going on about. The old Zen saying may be that those who say, don't know and those who know won't say, but I can assure you that the vast majority of denizens of this planet don't know what they know nor are they willing to try to figure out what you might know. It's so loud in most of their heads that they would rather just turn it off than have to try and filter the worth-hearing from the noise. And let's face it, most of it's noise. There's a lot of noise, both inside and outside our heads.

But that's not the point. What struck me in my recent exchange was how few options we had. Center point of the back-and-forth was "human beings". You can love 'em, you can hate 'em, but you can't avoid 'em ... they're everywhere. For obvious reasons there are 7 billion of us on the planet these days and truth be told, most of us don't have a clue ... about anything. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining nor am I accusing: most of those 7 billion can't have a clue: they're struggling to survive today, let alone tomorrow; they're so poor they don't have dirt to rub together; they're hungry, sick, forlorn, forsaken and forgotten. But ... and it's a bit but(t): we in the West do, and we, in the West, should know better. But, we don't. And that's what hit me first. The vast majority of human beings in existence, that is, alive today, didn't even get factored into the discussion/exchange equation. What does that say about us?

The second thing, though, that hit me ... OK, it was more like a bitch-slap ... was the assertion/contention/assumption that if humans were involved, whatever the topic was, it was doomed to failure, because, well, human beings are beyond hope anyway. There was/is the implicit, though if necessary, explicit assertion that humans are incapable of anything other than stupidity, bullshit and nonsense. Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not accusing my interlocutors of anything other than short-sightedness: they appealed to history, and history -- regardless of who has written it -- documents the failure of human beings. We haven't gotten a damn thing right in the half-a-million or million years that we've been here (and I'm only referring to homo sapiens right now, for simplicity's sake, not because it's the only way to see things): violence, rape, pillage, plunder, war, death, destruction, thievery ... regardless of whomever we love to pick out and praise as being laudable, enviable, praiseworthy. They only managed to stop the destruction long enough for someone to write down how great they were. I get that. Really, I understand that, but the conclusions they draw from this is simply ... well, wrong. Let me explain.

Two forces are at work here: First, there's the factual evidence that over time, and according to whatever records we have been able to salvage, the creatures on this planet know as "human beings" tend to act more stupid than smart and are much more violent than peaceful. But ... and, again, it's a big but(t) this says nothing about how human beings actually are. Also, and closely related to this, is the deduction/assumption that human beings are simply not capable of any more/better than that. In other words, if human beings are involved, whatever you have planned is going to go south; that is, there is such a thing as "human nature" and it more or less precludes that any other outcome is possible. These are insufficient, inadequate, inappropriate conclusions to be drawn from the evidence for they are based on an incorrect assumption about human beings in general, namely that they have a "nature" and this nature is somehow defective.

This is a common, widely spread, and simply wrong conclusion. It assumes too much, and it has to. Why? Because those who believe that "this is how things really are" start with two incorrect assumptions: (1) past actions of human beings are accurate predictors of future behavior and, the one I like to call the materialist fallacy, (2) we're just big hunks of meat who are the unfortunate product of chance. If matter is all there is, well, you can't -- no, shouldn't -- expect too much of others. After all, they are, at best, products of chance who have no clue why they're here or what they're up to. But, this is going to far too fast.

Now it's your turn. Think about it: who are we creatures we call 'human beings'? Is there a reason for our presence on this planet or are we mere products of chance? Does life -- no matter what we think it is -- have some meaning or is this all just a big coincidence? Do we have some fundamental, basic "nature", some way of being that when you get right down to it just can't be changed? Do notions such as "good" and "evil" really exist or are they just illusions? Do the ideas of "right" and "wrong" actually exist or are they merely conventions we've accepted so that we can get through whatever the hell this is we are experiencing until tomorrow? Do we have any say (in any sense of the word) in our lives or is everything simply determined, if not predetermined, by the accidental interaction of forces, events, whatever beyond our knowledge?

OK, I know these are what is often referred to as "heavy" questions. When you get down to it, though, each and every one of us has to have some idea, some story, some explanation that we like to tell ourselves that helps us get through the darkness of unknowing as to why we're here. But, hey, maybe there's no reason at all. I'm not claiming there is, I'm only asking you to think about what you think the answer to "the question" is.

So, where does this leave me with my "discussants"? To me, it's relatively clear: they are what we know in this day and age as "materialists" and they don't know, to be kind, any better. And here, too, you shouldn't misunderstand me: I'm not criticizing or condemning these folks in any way, shape or form. They simply believe that all there is to life, the world, the universe, to all that is is, well, matter. I know: it all sounds so simple. At some time, a long time ago, an explosion -- to be precise and scientific, a Big Bang -- occurred and the ball started rolling who knows how and who knows where and here we are. One of the products of this "bang" was matter ... stuff ... the shit we knock our knees against when we're not paying attention. Somewhere along the line, we -- that is, you, me and every other human being on the planet or who ever existed -- showed up, as a, well, coincidental by-product of this "bang". Though we don't know for sure, we still "know" that matter is all there is. And here we are.

Well, this is where my discussants are at any rate. We've got a lot of people now, just as there have been a lot of people before us, but all of them are more or less fortunate or unfortunate accidents of a huge fart that took place billions of years ago. (To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't trust these accidents with much of anything either, but I started from a different assumption, and that makes all the difference in the world.) We're (and by that I mean we human beings, allegedly with consciousness and free will) are freaks of nature, and I use the word "freaks" in the most well-meaning sense of the word: it was just an accident that we are as we are; there's not a damn thing we can do about it, and if we consider the laws of statistics and probability, we shouldn't be here anyway. Unfortunately, we are. Funny how that works.

Well, what disturbed my discussants, I believe, is the fact that the fate of our planet should be placed in the hands of these freaks. Oh, I understand their shock and dismay. After all the failures we have to show for ourselves, I am the last person who would jump up and yell, "Hey, let the failures take charge!", but the truth of the matter is that there is only us. We have it in our hands -- and here I've got a lot of good science on my side -- to destroy the planet or to at least eliminate ourselves (and probably a whole lot else, including thousands, if not millions, of other species) in the process, and these folks -- my discussants -- are the ones that potentially are going to save us from ultimate demise. I agree, the chances are slim, but -- truthfully -- if not us, who? Yeah, we're pretty screwed up as a species, but we're also the only ones who have even the slightest chance of pulling ourselves, and everything else, back from the brink of extinction.

Yes, I exaggerate. My hero of heroes, George Carlin, accurately, and I believe appropriately, declared that human beings are to the planet nothing more than a bad case of fleas: the planet can shake us off and go on as if we never existed. And for as right as he was/is, that's a whole other issue and not relevant here.

So, here's the point: what happens to the earth and all of its inhabitants is nothing we can worry or not worry about. It doesn't matter. What happens to us, human beings, as a species, is, nevertheless, in our hands. We can participate in the further development of planet earth or we can decide to opt out. And this is where things start getting both serious and interesting: it's up to us. We can change our behavior and play along in the Big Game of Chance, but we can also opt to just spite ourselves ensure that not a one of us survives. This is what my fellow discussants didn't get, or didn't want to acknowledge: we have a choice in the matter, and the mere fact that we have a choice makes us different than any other species of living thing on this planet ... for better or for worse. We may -- and probably will -- choose the path of death and destruction. We seem to like that. But ... whether we like it or not ... we, and only we human beings, have the option to choose Life over Death.

What you believe isn't the problem, but how you believe it is

Recently, I had a bit of a discussion with a couple of folks on Facebook. They were slamming religion in general and, as they thought (erroneously, it turned out) Christianity in particular. I was trying to point out that they were simply ranting about things they knew nothing about, which didn't stop them, but it did get me thinking.

These guys were claiming, in their own way, that "religion" is responsible for the world's ills. This is obviously ludicrous on any number of levels, but ludicrousness never stopped anybody from making fools of themselves. That we have large, multinational corporations and businesses raping the environment, heating up the planet, exploiting and oppressing those too weak and poor to defend themselves seems to have escaped them, as has the blind belief in rapacious capitalism that "justifies" those corporations' actions. The fact that we have national governments (some of which claim to be democratic) which are autocratic, dictatorial and oppressive, which will use any means at their disposal to suppress dissent, curtail freedom and, for all intents and purposes, brainwash and enslave their populations seems to have escaped their attention, too. But, to them, religion's the problem. And I got to thinking that for all the delusion in their arguments, maybe they have something of a point.

The first question we have to ask, of course, is "What is (a) religion?" and our first task here is to come to some kind of consensus as to what we mean when we use the term. In simplest terms, a religion is some kind of cultural system, or set of beliefs, that includes behaviors and practices (many formalized as liturgy and ritual), which are based on mythologies (or highly revered stories) that may or may not be contained in what they consider to be sacred texts, which provide some kind of societal, organizational guidance. I know that's a mouthful, but if you go through there carefully, it becomes a bit clearer why, say, Christianity is generally accepted to be a religion, but why the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or a periodic Star Wars or Star Trek conference aren't. Some religions try to make clear to us how we got here, almost all try to explain how we should be, and all of them are based on faith; that is, a blind, if not unquestioned belief in certain tenets of the given religion. It is estimated that around 85% of the world's population ascribe to one of the five major, and perhaps 10,000 folk religions; the rest are free agents, if you will, though I would maintain that many of them, particularly those in the West, belong to what I would call quasi-religions, a topic I'll come back to in a moment.

Religions (and I include the quasi-religions here as well) serve two basic functions: they give people hope and in their own ways, they provide their adherents with a sense of belonging. Let's face it, life's tough, and when everybody around you sort of sees the world the way you do, you get the feeling you're not necessarily alone and that somehow, given enough communal effort, things just might get better. What is more, religions, some more clearly than others, provide us some kind of meaning in our lives, whether it is stories about how others overcame adversity, or that there is simply some reason why we're all here in the first place. Also important is the fact that all the major and most of the better-known minor religions have what I like to call a "", some variation of the Golden Rule that admonishes you to, well, just not be an asshole. This particular tenet, of course, is the one that is forgotten and ignored most often. If most people are lucky, they'll apply it to those who belong to their immediate sub-group, but beyond that, well, it starts getting lost.

If we just recognized and understood that much, we'd be a long ways toward reducing the amount of ill in the world, but there are two tendencies that religions have that thwart this: the first is the notion of "exclusivity" and the second is "fundamentalism". Exclusivity -- the idea that my way is the only way -- ruins everything. I don't know how people come up with this, but it's particularly, but not exclusively, prevalent among the so-called Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). In a way it's related to the second tendency, fundamentalism. By this I mean that there is some tenet, law, rule, belief, article of faith, or whatever that an adherent believes is literally and universally true. It could be that any given fundamentalist has more than one, but there's at least one. It might be the literalism of the Bible (though very few people can read it in its original language), it might be the belief in the Trinity or the divinity of Jesus, it might be the inviolability of the person of the religion's founder, it might be anything really, but it is this one thing, this one belief, this one statement that the "true believer" hangs all his or her faith on. If this one little part turns out to be not "true", everything literally falls apart. Believers will die for this and are too often more than willing to kill others (thereby violating the don't-be-an-asshole clause) if it is challenged seriously in any way. And though I've not done a valid study to find out, I would strongly suspect that the more fundamentalist a believer or group of believers is, the more rabid their defense of their belief's exclusivity. What's so unnerving about these tendencies, however, is that they are accepted on pure, blind faith; they cannot be proven, there is no real evidence to support them ... they are basically assumptions upon which everything else is based.

What I've just said about religions applies, mutatis mutandis, for quasi-religions as well. A quasi-religion is a system of cultural beliefs, just like a religion, but one that is not generally recognized as one. Examples include capitalism and scientific materialism. Both of these belief systems include all the elements we identified in our general definition of "religion" above. They include beliefs, behaviors and practices that provide insight into why we exist and how we should live our lives. And the tendencies just described apply as well. Thatcher, one of the "patron saints" of a particularly aggressive form of fundamentalist capitalism, most often known as neoliberalism, stated flatly that "there is no alternative" (to this economic system of belief). Its fundamentalist tenets include low taxes for the rich and austerity for the poor, both of which are the golden path to economic salvation ... even if there is not a shred of evidence for them; and if you don't want to believe me, as the Chileans, the Argentinians, or the Greeks. Or take the particularly rabid form of scientistic belief that this making itself known: Richard Dawkins, a "holy figure" in this last camp will tell you in no uncertain terms that spirit and consciousness don't even exist, though it is life, an unidentifiable and unquantifiable force, that animates him and his own consciousness that allows him to make his silly claims, even though he'll be one of the first to tell you that this consciousness doesn't exist, it is a mere illusion. These quasi-religions, just like the "real" ones we considered above, are based as well on some fundamental , literal "fact" that turns out upon closer examination to be just an assumption, and their exclusivity is tied very closely to that assumption. The reason they only qualify as quasi-religions is that neither of these two examples includes a don't-be-an-asshole clause. All the worse for us all.

We are all on their earth and are in the same boat. It lies in our nature as human beings to want to know where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going. Most of the world's religions, large or small, try to provide answers to these questions. Their answers cannot be proven nor disproven, but the additional interpretations and claims made by specific adherents and groups of adherents may complicate the matter as they go above and beyond those generally acknowledged as being part of the religion in general. (For example, there are an estimated 2.2 billion Christians in the world; almost 60% of those are Roman Catholics and around 40,000 different "Christian churches" share the remainder among themselves.) What I am advocating is that perhaps we need to be a bit more open for and tolerant of religions. Good and bad has been done in religion's name, but if you are going to condemn something you should at least know what you're talking about and tailor your criticism appropriately. Prejudice is prejudice regardless of whether it is regard to race, religion, creed or whatever. Religion per sé is not the problem, fundamentalism and false notions of exclusivity are. It's not what you believe that matters as much as how you believe and what you do with that belief.

Meaningless or meaningful: the choice is yours

The astute observer may have noticed, and the wary reader may have suspected, that the last of couple of blog threads were rather oddly intertwined. I say oddly merely because these themes are not often brought into close proximity with each other. Science, religion, a Christian holiday, paradox, politics and business are not often thought about together. We moderns -- especially the more rationally inclined among us -- love to separate, classify, keep apart and compartmentalize. (And if you can believe Bob Altemeyer, which I do, it would seem the authoritarian-minded amongst us are better at this than everyone else. Go figure. But that's another post for another day.) I'm convinced that's one of the reasons I have so much trouble getting anyone to pay attention or listen to what I'm saying: I'm often confusing the issue with the facts, or I'm talking about the other side of a given coin, or ... well, whatever.

Personally, I don't care if you're a hard-over materialist, militant atheist, fundamentalist or evangelical Christian, or simply a go-with-the-crowd-because-if-I-don't-show-up-for-church-on-Sunday-I-won't-have-any-friends believer. Really, it doesn't matter (or, as they used to phrase it where I grew up: it don't make me no nevermind). What you say you believe means very little to me. I'm an action-speaks-louder-than-words type, and what you do (including what you post on Facebook or other social media, whether you participate in demonstrations or boycotts, how you vote or the number of actual notches in your six-gun tell me most of what I need to know.

Yes, the world is full of theories, but we have developed good, sound, reliable, processes and rules for deciding which ones are the ones worth considering. Some call it the scientific method, some call it good-old common sense ... it doesn't matter. In the end, at bottom, when all is said and done, most things simply make sense, or they don't. Lord knows there are lots of people who can live without it, apparently, but I don't happen to be one of them.

There is a difference between whether something makes sense (generally) or whether something makes sense (to me .. and those who think like me). Take Easter, for example: there are those who believe that the Resurrection makes sense. To others, it is a mere myth. As I have never tired of saying, though, myth is more real than most of us like to think and whether a tortured and murdered Jewish rabbi rose from the dead 2,000 years ago is really not the issue. It's what we think it means that makes all the difference in the world. Or, take evolution: there are those who believe it is a fact, others who believe it is a theory, and still others who believe it is a bunch of crap. Theories are not truth, but they can be, and most often are -- good ones, at least -- helpful ways of thinking about things. But, here too, it's what we think it means that makes all the difference. There is, however, just a slight problem here, but it's an important one.

One of those unavoidable paradoxes of life is this one: does our (both personal and collective) existence have any meaning, or is it meaningless? You can't have it both ways. There are consequences -- far-reaching and existential -- to our decision on this matter. If life has meaning, then we have to say why and find a way to explain how things can be as screwed up as they are in this world. If life has no meaning, we can easily explain why the world is as screwed up as it is, but we're going to have a bit of trouble trying to justify why we just don't do whatever we want whenever we want, because in the end, it doesn't matter anyway.

That's the problem. The issue, however, is that if you choose "sense", then you must make clear to me what there is so much nonsense in our world. Are you putting it in, or are you cleaning it up? I have my suspicions, but ...

The root of paradox

To be sure, I'm the last person to claim we live in an either-or world. That's a mistake a lot of people make, though. For too many people these days, if you are not for A, you are automatically -- at least in their minds -- for B. That's ignorance in one of its simplest forms.

In general, between any two extremes, there is an infinite number of shades of gray, so to speak, just as there are an infinite number of numbers beween 0 and 1. Our computer geek wizard friends never tire of their digitality, but it is so limited and artificial, but too many ignorant souls like to think they also have something to say about life in general, but they don't. Not all opposites are digital. For example:

The opposite of "love" is "hate". We have two distinct words for these two notions and I think we all agree that they can be considered complementary; that is, there is some kind of scale along which you can go from one to the other. We characterisze the one as positive and the other as negative, which is a methaphorical way of describing them. Then we have single words that describe differences, like "temperature". To make clear what we mean, we use adjectives, like "hot" or or "warm" or "cool" or "cold" to describe just what we mean. There is a difference between, say, hot and cold, but it is not as extreme as are "love" and "hate". It's nice having a cold drink on a hot day, for instance. And then, we have what the Swiss-German cultural philosopher Jean Gebser characterizes as Ur-Wörter (that is, literally, "primal words"); that is a single word to identify a notion and its opposite all in one. For example, the Latin word altus (from which comes our English word "altitude) means both "high" and "low" or sacer (from which we get our English word "sacred") meands both "blessed" and "cursed"; or the Hebrew word GAL, a verb which can mean "to redeem" and "to defile". (In English, we only have one such word left: "cleave" which can mean "to cut apart" and "to meld together".) In the case of such primal words, of course, it is the context that gives the meaning away.

What this all tells us is that human beings haven't always had today's oh, so beloved if-you-not-with-us-your're-against-us mentality. There was certainly a time when the experiential situation brought forth the distinction; and there are times even now when we have to describe to which degree we want to express something, and we all know that the distance from love to hate can be no more than an exceedingly fine line. For the Ancients, all Life played out between 0 and 1 (cf. the Egyptians, the Pythagoreans, etc.), but around the time of the Renaissance, we finally made the split (we -- literally -- divided our thinking and became "rational", which we have imbued with positive connotations, even though the root of the word is division: ratio, as in a/b. Yes, we turned this notion on its head as well.

The point is that if you pursue a notion or a thought deeply enough, you come to a point at which is becomes paradoxical. This is, in fact, one of the primary methods for determining if you are getting to the root or wellspring of a concept, an idea, a notion. In other words, either-or, 0 or 1, is completely meaningless at the level of superficiality of everyday, modern life, regardless of what our geeky friends would have us believe. To delve into the depths, however, takes time, energy, willpower, fortitude, and a good dose of courage, which explains why most people never ever make the effort. It is so much easier to accuse another of not being for you, so obviously they're against you. But it is so only in your own mind.

Sometimes either-or is all you're left with

There is a tension between science and religion, which is, as we saw last time, more imaginary than real.

As most of you know, I'm not a big fan of religion per sé; that is, how those institutions that declare to represent a particular faith go about their business. By the same token, I've made it clear from time to time that I'm no big fan of science either, whereby I mean "science" in the same sense as "religion": how it is practiced by whomever declares themselves representatives of this non-spiritual form of faith.

Fundamentalism -- the most negative and least useful form of belief -- is not restricted to religions, as we commonly understand the term, rather it applies to any way of thinking that insists on belief in spite of facts and which restricts all methods and means of interpretation to those which they are willing to accept or sanction. We have religious fundamentalists that all of us more or less recognize and agree upon, but we have scientistic fundamentalists as well. Most often they make themselves known as militant atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, or revered figures of science who are taken to speak with authority on issues of which they know nothing and are eminently unqualified to pass judgement upon, like Stephen Hawking. Don't get me wrong: I think that both Dawkins and Hawking (who are merely examples, not personifications in any way) are very bright and intelligent people, but being bright is hardly qualification for anything.

There are a lot of bright people in the world. And I would bet that we all know someone every bit as bright or intelligent as Mr. Dawkins or Mr. Hawking, but for some reason, we don't accredit them with much authority at all, which is how it should be. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, or the Dali Lama, for example, are both exceedingly bright and intelligent individuals. Both of them are capable of communicating deep insights into matters of a spiritual nature. But I don't know anyone who would go to either of them to find out whether reality may be a matter of wave-function collapse or for thoughts on whether there is validity to the multiple-universes hypothesis. And rightfully so. What doesn't make sense to me is why individuals like Dawkins and Hawking are allowed to make extra-subject-matter pronouncements that should be taken seriously while individuals like Sacks and the Dali Lama are not (though oddly enough, they don't, for they recognize limits to their own "authority), boils down to a simple fact: at the moment, there is a dominant belief system, and if you don't subscribe to it, you siply have nothing important to say.

Science-as-we-know-it assumes that matter is primary and everything else that we know to be the universe, or any part of it, derives from this basic starting points; this is the fundamental premise of materialism. Anyone coming from the religious or spiritual side of things assumes that G-d or something spiritual/non-physical is primary and everything else that we know to be the universe, or any part of it, derives from this basic starting point. And, the real issue involved is this: both are assumptions; neither can be proved; there is no way that we can know for sure which assumption is true.

In other words, when it comes right down to it ... literally ... we're left with an either-or situation: you can either believe the route to where we are and where we find ourselves is from matter-to-spirit, or you can believe it is from spirit-to-matter. At the moment, we're not aware of a third possibility (whereby, I, personally, don't believe we'll find a third one either).

At first glance, it may appear not to matter what we believe, but it does. Every action we perform, every statement we make, every decision we make can be traced back to this most fundamental distinction. More importantly, what we think, do or say all has unavoidable consequences for all our futures, and for that reason alone, we should get clear with our own selves, just where we're coming from.

Science and religion share more than you think

Recently, I've been reading a fascinating little book, namely Bernardo Kastrup's Brief Peeks Beyond: Critical Essays on Metaphysics, Neuroscience, Free Will, Skepticism, and Culture (iff Books, 2015). I know, some of you have already jumped ships and the rest are looking for any remaining lifeboats, but it's not what you think. Yes, the Enlightenment proclivity for book titles as long as the texts seems to be returning, but Kastrup's "essays" are reworked blogs and interviews for the most part, and are written in an engaging and easy-to-read way; that is, for the rest of us, not the professional philosopher or neuroscientist. Anyone with a little openness and willingness would find them both understandable and thought-provoking.

While reading, one of the essays on the theory of evolution and what Neo-Darwinists have unfortunately done with it, I was struck by an idea. Part of the striking goes back to a post I made not long ago on how so many classic authors are seriously, if not maliciously, misquoted, as the victim this time is not Adam Smith but Charles Darwin. Now there's a really nice guy that got a bum deal.

To almost everyone, Mr. Darwin is known for his evolutionary principle of the "survival of the fittest". As you might have guessed, though, Charles never said, nor wrote that. Truth be told, he adamantly opposed the notion which was actually put forth and promoted by Herbert Spencer, not unsurprisingly an economist (because we saw in that other post what happens apparently when economists read, or something like that). Of course, these days, economists are quick to quote this non-Darwinian "truth". No, Darwin himself promoted the idea of "cooperation" as the most favorable factor in evolutionary survival and benefit. He spent years hoping to find a genetic link to it, of course, without success.

This blarney about the fittest (meaning in most instances the so-called strongest) surviving is a one of those ideas that appear intuitively obvious and brilliant, until you think about them. The strongest is the one that has to constantly prove his strength, so he's the one that fights the most and has, as a matter of simple consequence, the greatest chance of gettting killed. While all the tough guys were out and about getting their genes eliminated from the gene pool, the more reflective (and I'll readily admit, cowardly), but certainly more cooperative types were adapting our plans to get through this life and our genes into succeeding generations. And what the overwhelming evidence that we have for the notion of evolution is that we cooperative types were simply more successful, as is the case in every other species on earth.

Put another way, those who are willing to share -- quite simply, adjust their behavior positively toward others -- be it food, shelter, knowledge, comfort, and love, live longer in this life and through the lives of their offspring.

Similarly, Stan Tenen at the Meru Foundation has pointed out that not only is the so-called Golden Rule the most widely spread principle common to all the world's religions, he reminds us that the science writer Michael Shermer has argued that the Golden Rule "does not rest on any underlying religious belief, but rather is simply the most logical and reasonable way for a human to behave". That is, doing to others as you'd like them to do unto you is, well, the essence of sharing, isn't it?

Those who think the world is too huge and complex for us to understand are simply avoiding the obvious. In the end, at bottom, life is really rather simple. For as complex as evolution may seem to be, it works best for those who share. For as much as we like to insist on how different the different religions are, they share the most fundamental tenent in common. And for those who think that science and religion are incompatible, well, apparently you never really stopped to look at or think about either.

Quite often, life is only as tough as we make it.

What are you giving up?

Yes, it's Lent ... the 40-day fast leading up to Easter. It's the time of fasting, of preparation, of ... well, my Christian friends should know what I'm talking about. Truth be told, it's them I think about most at such times.

Yes, I have quite a number of friends and acquantances who have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior and who have been washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb and are ... according to them ... guaranteed a place in Heaven. Just like the guy who shot up those people at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado.

I know, I know ... I shouldn't be so cynical. You're right. I shouldn't be, but unfortunately, I can't help but be when confronted with ideas like that.

I have other friends, you know. Yep, friends who are intelligent, enlightened, awakened, who know that all that religion stuff if mumbo-jumbo and only science holds the keys to truth. Yes, these self-proclaimed Enlightened Ones also missed the quantum-physical revolution in which it became clear that matter is scientifically verified to be an illusion and something other than matter and alleged laws drive the universe. There is more than one form of superstition alive and well in the world.

If you think I'm picking on either of these groups, you would be sorely mistaken. I'm not. Why should I? As long as they believe what they believe and don't try to make others accept their own personal delusions and are not harming anyone, why should it bother me. At heart, they're all really nice people: friendly, generous in their own ways, and wanting nothing more that the world be less violent, unjust, and surreal than it is. Good luck.

Whether you think Easter is anything worth celebrating, it is, like Christmas (though under under names) a festival that has been celebrated since time immemorial. Yes, animistic, mythic, pagan, Christian ... it doesn't matter. At this time of year, somebody somewhere had some reason to celebrate and it's still around today. The "reasons" may be different, but we celebrate all the same. In times passed, people prepared for their celebrations. Today, well, we have no need to do anything we don't want to or don't feel like doing. We're free and liberated human beings -- or so we like to think -- and besides, we're going to Heaven anyway: after all, we said the right words in the right way at the right time in the right place. What could possibly go wrong?

There was (and still is) something of a reason for Lent, and an even more important reason for observing it. Even as obscure as it is, Lent is (yet another) opportunity to get in touch with your real you, the you inside, the you you've been avoiding as long as you've been alive, the you that's brought the world to the eve of destruction (to paraphrase and capitalize on a well-known oldie-but-goodie).

OK, giving something up for Lent won't save the world. I don't think it will even save just you alone. But giving things up, denying yourself something you really like, even if just for a short period of time, if done seriously, can help you get a different view of the world in which you find yourself. It doesn't hurt, and who knows what good might come of it.

Of course, if you already have a get-out-of-hell-free card it doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter that you believe nothing at all. The real world, though, is still somewhere in-between, where the rest of us mere humans live.

What about February's not to love

February's longer than usual this year. OK, OK ... it's longer than usual every four years. But, in my mind, leap years are nothing special: they're just a way to organize our precious calanders so that the appear to function. The sun revolves around the earth as it always has and how we mark those revolutions has changed throughout the millennia, but who cares about that? Certainly not many people I know. Hell, most people don't know why we count time the way we do, or how we decide what the "correct" time is (as if there were such a thing), or why Christmas is celebrated when it is (and I'm talking to my holier-than-thou Christian readers) or why we celebrate New Year's when we do, but all of that doesn't matter to the everyday, trying-to-keep-my-head-above-water workaholic that most of us have become.

Let's be honest, regardless of our alleged religious beliefs, we spend a whole lot of time just muddling through, trying to ensure we can pay the bills, and, if all goes well, have a bit or relaxation in-between. Let me let you in on a little secret: that's mere existence, it has nothing to do with living at all.

But, be that as it may ... in just a few days, the "Mad Season" will end. Of what do I speak? Allow me a little pointer toward another way to mark the days:

Way back in November, when Anglophones were pretending to care about those who died to bring us the freedom we never had, a simultaneous, mostly-unknown-outside-Germany event took place, but one much more to my liking: on the 11th day of the 11th month, at 11 minutes after the 11th hour, Karneval (as it's known in the Cologne region) or Fasching (as it's known most other places) begins. It runs from 11 November though Ash Wednesday, culminating of course on Rose Monday (the Monday before Ash Wednesday). Fasching is the season of fools, jesters, and all the critical insight that goes with them. (If you don't believe that fools are wise, read a couple of Shakespeare's tragedies, or do a bit of googling on "Till Eulenspiegel".) As for the States, it's called Mardi Gras, but unless you're from New Orleans, you probably don't know much about it anyway.

Though I'm not a big Fasching celebrator myself (it's much more popular in Catholic regions, since Ash Wednesday is a big day for Catholics, but not for Protestants), I'm glad it's still celebrated -- in all senses of the word -- here. There's a lot of silliness, and revelry, good, biting political cabaret, and music, and parades, and costumes, and the driving off of evil spirits, and things blatantly pagan masquerading within the bounds of good old Church tradition. We Americans, in particular, with our predilection to all things Puritanical and Calvinist miss out on all the fun. We like to think of ourselves a free spirits, but until you've been to Cologne on Rose Monday, you really don't know what you're talking about.

Of course, this year it will be different, but elucidating the reasons would detract from all the fun, and wouldn't most of us just prefer to have fun, regardless of what else is going on around us?

The case of mistaken identity

We need to get a couple of things straight.

In the world in which I live there are religious, not-so-religious, and non-religious people. There are those who abhor the label "religious" and prefer to refer to themselves as "spiritual", which I accept, and there are also non-spiritual people as well. In the world in which I live, there are capitalists, free-market advocates (if not, devotees), socialists, anarchists, humanists, and just about every other kind of "-ist" you can imagine. Some people are fervent in what they believe and advocate and others are lukewarm. Hell, I even know quite a few individuals who could give a care one way or the other about anything. There is, in other words, a merry, colorful patchwork of thoughts, ideas, ideologies, views, Weltanschauungen, feelings and desires that make up the world in which I live. And I would have it no other way.

Having said that, I am, above all else, prior to anything else, deep down inside, at heart, a human being who loves my fellow human beings, all of us as imperfect as we are. My most fundamental belief (which I believe, with a little bit of effort, I could "prove") is that all of us human beings have much more in common that what makes us different. At least that which we have in common, makes us human. Everything else is, well, irrelevant details.

It is against this backdrop that I look out into the world and react to whatever comes my way. These days, there are so many different "things" that people believe and hold to be true that I have trouble following them. What is more, I am (literally, and honestly) shocked at how much how many people are willing to invest in what they "believe". (I put that last word in quotation marks intentionally. There is very little in this world that we actually know, but there is one helluva lot in it that we believe.)

There are so many people who believe that what they believe is right. That's fine as far as it goes, but in that moment when you encounter another who may not, who most likely does not, believe (and "know") what you believe, well, you have to decide whether you are willing to engage this person or not. I say, let's explore; let's exchange ideas, thoughts, notions, beliefs; let's talk about, discuss and, if necessary, debate, those things; let's understand why you believe the world is one way and I believe it's another. Why? For the simple reason that my experience has shown me that given half a chance, I can learn something that I didn't know before, that I can grow in some way that I had never even imagined, that I might become, given the right set of circumstances, a better person -- and we might even (hopefully) agree on what "better" means in this context.

But, I will be honest, I'm having trouble finding anyone who is willing to engage.

What I -- and so many others, I am sure -- am left with is a whole bunch of know-it-alls, people who think they know what's what. Unfortunately, they don't. They only think they know, but they are damn sure about it nevertheless. Too bad. There's a world of difference between knowing and believing and those yacking the loudest don't know there's a difference at all.

The case of the unchecked clerk

Some things simply boggle my simple mind. OK, I spend more time on Facebook than I should, but it's like driving past a nasty road accident: you know you shouldn't look, you might even have to throw up, but you just can't turn away. Yeah. I know. _mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_.

But ... lately I've seen so many things, especially comments, that almost leave me speechless. The most vitriolic, nonsensical, uninformed, hateful, spiteful, vociferous, and, well, ignorant ones have had to do with the county clerk down in ol' Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because it violated her religious beliefs.

Now, for those of you who have lost your watches or calendar, we're writing the 2015. You'd think we might have learned a thing or two by now, but apparently not. It just so happens that the Supreme Court of the United States, of all institutions, recently ruled that same-sex marriages are allowable and that laws forbidding them are unconstitutional. That's their job, which -- I'll be the first to admit -- they don't often do very well, but that's what they decided. When they say you can't forbid something, that's all it is: what you did wasn't right so it doesn't count. That's not legislating, that's judging, and that's what why they are there whether we like it or not. What's more, it's a completely secular institution, as are the legislative and executive branches of government, not just in the United States but pretty much worldwide these days.

Our not-so-friendly county clerk refused to issue the licenses by arguing that it violated her personal, religious beliefs. Now, in case you didn't know, I'm a big fan of personal, religious beliefs, even if they are bothersome, and even though some folks are favored in theirs over others. (That's a topic for another time, so forgive me if that's all I have to say about that here.) However, However, she is (apparently) an elected public servant and she gives personal reasons for not being able to do her job. After all the back-and-forth, a judge, who had directed her to fulfill the public responsibilities associated with her job, finally decided that since she still refused, she had to go to jail. That is, as far as I can tell, the so-called "facts of the case" (described, I hope as neutrally as possible).

So, here's my question: why is this such a hot-button issue? We don't have more important things to concern ourselves with (anybody happen to see the picture of the lifeless, Syrian three-year-old on a European beach)?

I know it is difficult for people with strong religious beliefs to realize that not everyone is as religious as they are. I know it is difficult for some people to realize that with us here in the West, there is some kind of separation between "church and state", or more properly the religious and the secular. I know it is hard for a lot of people to come to terms with the fact that standards and values and even what we consider to be moral -- as a society -- changes over time. I know that we humans are fallible and don't always make the best decisions when it comes to legality and morality (e.g., slavery, Jews in Nazi Germany, blacks in America prior to the civil-rights accomplishments). And, I know that it takes courage, fortitude and dignity to accept that we have to deal with what we have, not with what we would like to have as a society.

Still, that's the least we can expect of you as a citizen of today's world in this day and age. And that's why we expect it. Grow up.

When are my fellow countrypeople going to get over themselves?

The older I get, the easier my mind gets boggled. Sometimes I wonder just which planet I'm actually living on. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that it's not the same planet as my fellow countrypeople.

The most recent case? The lunacy surrounding the Obama administration reaching a nuclear deal with Iran. As one who lives outside the borders of the good ol' USA, I can tell you: all you're doing is making life difficult for the rest of us.

Just in case you don't know: there has been "trouble" (and I don't care how you define it) in the Middle East ever since the West got over-involved and decided that establishing the State of Israel and ignoring the Palestinians was a good idea. It was wrong then, and it's still wrong today.

And before all you think-you-know-it-alls start condemning me: I'm all for a State of Israel. I'm neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Jewish, but I am anti-stupidity and anti-blindness. Both characteristics you're showing everyone else. One of these days you have to grow up and realize that

1. Israel is a secular state; it is a nation, like France or China or even the USA. It's just a country.
2. Most Israelis may be Jews, but not all Jews are Israelis. There is a difference between ethnicity and citizenship and between either of those and religious affiliation.
3. There are more people who adhere to Judaism than are actually Jews. Judaism is a religion, not a nationality or even an ethnic distinction.

Now, I realize that I lost most of my readers in that list. The reason is that the phenomenon is more complex than many minds would like to accept. Be that as it may, we have to differentiate between secular, national interests and other interests.

For more than 40 years (very biblical, in and of itself), we've been agonizing over the Iranians. Those screeching the loudest now had no problems then, when their beloved St. Ronnie was illegally supplying them with both technology and weapons because we disliked Saddam even more. When we kissed Saddam and made up, it was the evil Iranians all over again. I know that most of you, in your innate and misguided sense of right and righteousness, believe that a whole people should be punished because of what their government does ... unless, of course, the rest of the world should want to punish all of the US because of what their government has done. In that case, of course, everyone would be screeching even more ... as hypocritical as that may be.

And just what, pray tell, are our "interests" in this part of the world -- other than oil, that is -- and why do we think we, as Americans, have any right to enforce them to begin with?

We now have the opportunity to "take it all down a notch", but that could possibly, conceivably, potentially mean that the USA blinked. And we all know, we can't have that. Whatever deal may have been reached, to the majority of my American friends, it was a sign of weakness, and you may never, ever show anyone, anywhere even the slightest indication of weakness. Our whole sense of self-worth would be destroyed.

Yes, that's how most adolescents think. Young people, not yet matured, not having found themselves all think just like that, and the intellectual adolescents of America are having their tantrum, again. It's time to grow up. It's time to not only think like an adult, it's time to start acting like adults.

If you all wanted to remain adolescent amongst yourselves, I'm not sure I would care, but what you do has a real impact on my life, but like most adolescents, you don't realize that your actions have big effects on others.

Happy Easter!

Just in case you were wondering, I have to admit that I'm enjoying this Easter a little more than some in the past. Oh, sure, the weather is more or less cooperating (I remember snowstorms, frost, sleet and rain on some); but I am also sort of enjoying the squirming some of the non-Orthodox Christians are going through this year. This isn't schadenfreude, it's merely an observation.

You will recall that the Roman Church and most Protestants would rather celebrate Christmas than Easter. For many of them, as is the case for many moderns regardless of persuasion, spirituality is a bit difficult to deal with. By focusing on the physical we can avoid all that messy metaphysical stuff. Up until now, the Paulites had the say: Jesus was killed for your sins; own up to it, accept it, proclaim it (preferably loudly) and you're home free (as far as the Protestants were concerned; you had to register this, so to speak, with the authorities and the Catholics considered you part of the club).

Unfortunately, this is just one view: Paul's. There are still some "weirdos" out and about, however, who think that Christianity has something to do with what Jesus said and did while he was alive, that what was important was not so much what you say, but what you actually do. The way I see it, this is precisely the approach that Papa Frank is pushing. I can't begin to imagine that he's making a lot of friends with it either. And that's why I'm feeling a little more upbeat today than usual.

So, whether you're getting ready for spring, looking for hidden eggs with the kids, having a special dinner, or simply wondering what others might be celebrating, I hope you have fun doing it, and I hope you have fun doing it with others. Easter should be, in my view, a family holiday. It's as good a reason as any to simply get everyone together and to spend some special time, eating, drinking, and being merry.

Yes, live it up. After all, that's what this particular holiday is supposed to be about.

Maundy Thursday

It is clear to me that many who read these posts regularly are bothered, if not downright offended, when I compare our current plutocratic capitalism to a religion. What is interesting, to me at least, that some of the upholders of that view are bothered as well as others of faith are bothered. That's a good thing. We should be bothered by ideas from time to time.

The advocates of "the system" like to think they are not religious, but I think it's pretty clear they are. They simply have a different set of beliefs that those who believe they are religious. The patterns are the same, the mechanisms are the same, there are rituals and professions of "true belief" involved, and -- most unfortunately -- the outcomes are pretty much the same (more death and destruction than life and growth). The religionists don't like it because they think being compared to a secular club somehow denigrates their religion. It only does if you allow it to, or if you practice what you call religion in such a way that it is hard to distinguish from its secular counterpart. That's where we are by all who believe that their religion is the true religion. This applies to fundamentalists of all stripes, but considering the real-life timing of this post, we're going to concentrate on our Christian friends.

Today marks the real beginning of the Passion of Easter. It should be, by all rights, the highest four days of devotion for all those who call themselves Christian. We need to remember: no Easter (that is, no death and resurrection) there's no Christianity. It's very existence depends on the events of these days 2,000 years ago. As it is, it is the Eastern Church, the so-called Orthodox varieties, who make this holiday the high point of the year. For the Roman Catholics and Protestants, it's Christmas; that is the celebration of the physical birth. If we look at the contention that Jesus was crucified, put to death, buried and arose again on the 3rd day, well, then what we are dealing with here is a spiritual birth. Religions, being by nature spiritual, you'd think that today would be the kick-off of the time of greatest celebration, but it isn't. We're going to spend a lot more time looking for hidden eggs and eating chocolate.

It's not exactly clear to me why, but I do have my suspicions.

Can anyone save us?

And so, it would seem we've come full circle. When we reflect back upon the last few posts, we see that none of the disciplines or institutions that we might expect to come to the rescue can or will.

Science is capable of developing deep, insightful and helpful knowledge, but if we ignore it, we do so at our own peril.

Technology can solve lots of problems, but not all problems, and it is up to us to help it decide what's worthwhile and what is not.

Politics has become beholden to special interests, but it is we, the populus who have reneged on our responsibility to get involved and keep their noses to the wheel.

It should be clear that "the market", as it is currently practiced, is simply a degenerate extension of the political sphere. Money can never be the measure of anything, but we have essentially turned it into a god in its own right.

Turning the "religious" corner, we see that Jesus showed us the way, and he admonished us to follow suit, but we've chosen to ignore that.

And God, if He exists, according to His own accounting, told us all that if we don't do it, nobody else will.

This is where is all comes together. Regardless of whether we're religious or not, believers or atheists, in the end, we're all in this together. Regardless of what we may think is true and right, at bottom, we're all in this together. When all is said and done, there is no outside force, power or agency that can, or will, suddenly step in and snatch us from the jaws of destruction.

No, if anything at all is to be done or can possibly be done, we have no choice: we -- you, me, our families, everyone we know and don't know -- are the only ones who can do anything at all.

We have already raced past the crossroads, but it may be that we can backtrack far enough to take the other road. Whether we do or not doesn't depend on anyone or anything other than ourselves. As Pogo put it so aptly so long ago, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

If this enemy is to be defeated, however, only we can do it. Who's up for the challenge?

Can God save us?

This is the trickiest question of all. I mean, after all, the Big Guy (according to the legend) put us here, so he can take us out anytime He pleases (which he did once, according to the text: see the Story of Noah), and according to the believers, absolutely everything is in His hands. The atheists and non-theists among you will quickly retort, quite consistently, that He doesn't exist, so He isn't going to be doing anything. That may or may not be true. We cannot know for sure. Regardless of what you believe (there is or there is no God), it is simply a matter of belief. You can't prove it one way or the other. So, in one respect, this simply removes God from the equation.

There are a lot of people who believe in God or some kind of god or gods or the like. Truth be told, it is the majority of humanity. For that very reason, we cannot simply discard the God question out of hand. For that reason alone, it deserves to be taken seriously, regardless of how intolerant militant atheists can be. I certainly don't agree with a lot of people, but I do try to make an effort to understand why they think what they think and why they believe what they believe, and I am extremely hesitant to tell them flat out that their full of crap. (Unfortunately, this seems to be the preferred argumentation modus of our militant-atheist friends.)

Given the large sphere of influence of and my own upbringing within the Abrahamic Traditions, I'll restrict myself to that one perspective. (I believe, however, that mutatis mutandis everything I have to say applies outside this context as well, but that's another blog for another time.) We are told in the Good Book, Part I (Old Testament), right up front (1st book, Genesis, Chapters 1 & 2, in particular the latter) that we (that is, humankind) were put here to be the caretakers of this world. We might have screwed up and got kicked out of headquarters (the Garden of Eden), but we weren't fired; we still had the job, we just had to do it out here where all of us all. We're doing a pretty sorry job of it, too.

Granted, even God got fed up and washed the slate clean (literally), but He told us he wouldn't do that anymore, and from then on out -- according to the text -- he repeated sent this, that, or the other guy (or gal ... there are lots of stories in the Bible in which the female plays a decisive role) to remind us of what we actually should be doing. But, He told us flat out, He wasn't going to intervene so directly. The way I read the text and see the big picture, then, we've been passed the buck. The way I see how things have been developing, especially in the last couple of hundred years, though, we want to pretend like we don't have it ... never heard of it ... and that's why we are in the straits we are in. We've lost sight of our job description. We're not doing our job.

Can Jesus save us?

OK, OK, it's quite obvious how my Christian brethren will respond to this one: with a resounding Yes! or He already did!, but unfortunately, we have not evidence for that. They may be right, but if they are, it's a guess. I know they like to pull in the Bible (in this case, the New Testament) for "proof", but you can't declare that the Bible's the Word of God, then use the Bible to prove that it is. That's called circular reasoning. Now, if you want to tell me that this is what you believe, then I'm behind you 100%. You are free to believe it, but always keep in mind, it's a belief, not a proven truth (or Truth, for you metaphysicans out there).

Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the guy. I'm not all so keen on many of his followers, but what he had to say and the example that he set is precisely what I would expect from a guy in his position. When we look at what the Gospels (those are the first four books of the New Testament for those of you not so familiar with the source texts) have to say, I'm not sure that his death is so much more important than his life. I read it the other way around.

It was Jesus' forerunner (Wegbereiter, in German; that is, literally "path preparer"), John the Baptist, who put it best: "Metanoeite, metanoeite, the Kingdom of God is at hand." (I threw in the Greek word there, because there's no one single, best translation of the word. Coming in from the Latin, we end up with "repent". That is obviously a loaded word, especially for non-religious types (and there is no reason to think that Jesus -- or John, for that matter -- intended to exclude anyone at all). Luther translated it better, in my humble opinion: "turn around" (in German, kehr um (and this fits well with things that Jesus did say later about the Kingdom of God, namely that it was near, at hand, and well, within you). But, when we look at the Greek word itself, apart from any theological or Christological interpretation schemes, the word simply means "change your mind" or, said differently, "change the way you think".

This is consistent with everything else that Jesus said and did. He spent his time with the outcasts of society instead of condemning them and persecuting them; he spoke truth to power; he healed the sick, even when he wasn't supposed to; he fed the hungry and told us to do likewise. This was a guy who practiced precisely what he preached, much unlike just about every one of us.

It would seem that Jesus' mindset was more of I-showed-you-how-now-you-do-it, but it's not clear to me that this message got through. And, if you're not part of the Christian club, well, as far as they are concerned, he's not concerned with anyone who hasn't signed up, much to the contrary of how he actually acted when he was here.

For that reason alone, I think it's doubtful that he'll be rushing in with an angelic cavalry to save the day. And that, it seems, just leaves us with his "Dad" (as he called Him). Next time.

Can "the market" save us?

The answer here is more than obvious: of course, it's no. The market has never been in the business of saving. It's all about the money, and as we all know, money is the root of all evil. Those with enough cash to spare of capture and co-opted the politicians, and the players in the market, the global players, if you will, are all about growth at any price. The market as we understand it these days and the way it is portrayed by its loudest and most enthusiastic proponents is about gaining market share (always at the expense of others), growing (through destruction or assimilation of the competition), and attracting ever more investors; that is, attracting more and more money.

The purpose of business is business, opined Milton Friedman; and the purpose of business is the maximization of profits responded his acolytes. Yes, this is a quasi-religious rite that is played out each and every day in the global market place. I think it's obvious to even the most casual observer that if your primary raison d'être is accumulating money (or wealth, for you purists) than everything, and I mean everything else is secondary, is subordinate, to that purpose. Saving the world, securing the future of humanity . . . those may be noble and inspiring ideals, but they have absolutely nothing to do with “the market” and what goes on there. Friedman went so far to assert that business was wrong to even include social responsibility in its vocabulary. That was for others to worry about, not something that should be detracting business from its true and only purpose. No, business, “the market”, can't save us because it has said straight out that they have no interest in doing so. It's not even remotely part of their mind-set.

Well, science, technology, politics, and business – all players in this world can be counted out. And if nothing in or of this would can do it, it would seem that, in desperation at the least, we need to turn elsewhere to perhaps find our salvation. Where might that be?

Can politics save us?

This is not a trick question. I'm serious. Well, at least I'm serious that the question has to be asked. The role of politics in modern society is – or at least should be – to provide a safe and secure framework within which individuals and groups can live and prosper. Not only should politics ensure that science has the means and wherewithal to pursue knowledge, but also that technology can take the results of science and apply them in ways that benefit all of us. Unfortunately, that's not what they do.

Of late, they have been spending inordinate amounts of time and money on waging wars (both physical, such as in Afghanistan, and moral, such as the War on Drugs), spying on their own citizens (in the name of fighting terror), serving their own interests (the infamous “political revolving door”, their special salary, health care and pension benefits), and fighting amongst themselves (election campaigns, coalitions/oppositions). The little bit they do here and there for the safety, security and well-being of their citizenry is not worth mentioning. Things like a social safety net, livable wages, safe working conditions, and more should be of more concern to them. But it isn't.

Of course, in the grand scheme of things, precisely that which science is telling us and technology is doing nothing about should be high on politics' agenda – such as, setting limits on pollutions, ensuring alternative energy sources and technologies are developed, strengthening the educational system, etc. – but it isn't.

No, it would appear that their mind-set has become one of self-satisfaction and self-serving. The concerns of “the people” take a backseat to financial and economic interests. And that, of course, will be our focus next time.