Philosophical Message – Page 3

Consequences of Critical Thinking

Chapter 2 of David Levy’s popular text book warns us that concepts must be judged by their consequences, rather than trying to fit them in to a rigid pigeonhole of true or false.

Sadly, the Republicans have made full use of this theory, but without paying attention to the other tenets of critical thinking: ensuring a relevant and comprehensive frame of reference.

While a few Republicans have started saying “Life” must refer to more than the fetal stage of humanity, Democrats have failed to make hundreds of points about the damage that Trump and Friends have done to the environment and industrial safety, to name just two subjects. Science is only of interest to Trump if it’s related to enhancing the military.

But that isn’t how science works. The whole reason for the strength and power of science is that it gives humans an epistemologically robust way to understand and influence the world.

Science has had beneficial and detrimental effects on humanity over the years. If we include the early technological achievements of humanity, domestication of plants and animals, then civilization, we got complexity, choice, and more chances for expression of our individual potential. But at the cost of the creation of a huge social underclass, deprived, to varying degrees, over the last 10,000 years, of many of the sweet fruits the upper tip of this complex hierarchy enjoy.

Education, and particularly science education, is the basic foundation for any remedy to humanity’s ills.

Teaching illogical faith based “facts” to young children rots the structure to which any future knowledge will be fastened. If Mary was a literal physical virgin when she gave birth to Jesus, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant. If 3=1, then no facts that we can discover or verify for ourselves are ever necessarily relevant.

Illogical faith based facts corrode any potential for developing knowledge in the absence of a group of similarly brainwashed people.

If God is individually protecting people from CoVid19, why bother with masks? The lessons of the great plagues of 600+ years ago, that even the cardinals were not immune to the bacteria, seem to be lost on the evangelical right. It’s medical science, a PORTION of the web of scientific progress, that has, over many centuries, allowed us to regain the lifespan of our “primitive” ancestors.

Science, more than literature, religion, history, allows humanity to double, and triple (etc.) check, our theories and ideas.

Neils Bohr, the great physicist, taught that the opposite of a fact is a lie, but the opposite of a GREAT TRUTH is ANOTHER GREAT TRUTH.

Values are great truths. But the society that doesn’t base its values on a factual foundation is eventually in for rough going.

I hope that those people who are aligned with a fact based reality can find a way to help the rest of the world clean their glasses. That includes me. It’s been very depressing to hear people saying that they are voting based on their 401k or their friend’s jobs making military equipment so we can sell it to the Saudis to kill starving baby Yeminis. That sure is Pro Life. (The last sentence is sarcastic, for those who are challenged in those matters.)

A Little Dose of Wisdom

The days with the pall of CoVid19 hanging over us Americans are stretching on far longer than most of us hoped or expected back in April, when we saw the Chinese beat back the spread of the dangerous disease in Wuhan in less than two months.

I certainly do not agree with our president’s approach to managing (mis-managing) the situation, but he is correct to point to China for the source of the disease. China has long been the outstanding source of communicable diseases in the modern world, due to the intimate mixing of human waste in the human food production network, aided and abetted by migrating birds who stop in the fish farm ponds, etc. It’s time that China stop these practices, as well as the live wild animal meat markets that appear to have been the direct source of this particular disease. That said, as David Levy implies (in his book Tools for Critical Thinking: Meta-thougths for Psychology), when we are discussing human affairs, it is incumbent to consider the effects of our actions, rather than trying to fit ideas into boxes labeled true or false. So just because almost all new infectious diseases (not Ebola) start in China, it’s not a reason to call it the Chinese Virus. Because the consequences of doing that are, on American soil anyway, increases in discrimination and violence and hate crimes toward Chinese people, or people who look Chinese.

How do we gain the discernment, the wisdom, to know how to sort out the shit from the Shinola, as the old saying went. The spin from the facts. The lies from the reality. How do we gain that discernment?

We start out by acknowledging that we, as humans, take a lot of short cuts when we fill our brains with knowledge, and that some of what we think we know must have been incorporated into our beliefs before it was properly understood.

Then, we move on to take action to correct the false information.

Tom Lombardo, who is now running the Center for Future Consciousness, has written a very clearly articulated and concise description of why and how we need to embrace the wisdom of looking to the future. Tom’s prescription for a better world calls for rejection (to my happiness) of the New Age concept of what he calls “Presentism.”

As a person with a very low level of cheerfulness hormones (my pen name, Shona Moonbeam, is tongue-in-cheek) I really don’t care for advice that tells me to focus on the present. The present is mostly boring and tedious, if not outright painful. But by making an effort to remember my whole life, past up to now, and hopes and dreams for the future, I feel more significant. Maybe I shouldn’t care about that, but so much of life feels dreary and difficult, that I do care to make my own edited version of my life for frequent playback. And I do hope that my struggles will ease those of some future people down the road.

What’s Wrong about the Concept of Make American Great Again?

Check out Tom’s new essay, entitled Make America Great Again? Yes, that is a question mark. The article hits home on a lot of relevant and important topics.

The Yin and Yang of Anxiety and Longing

Waiting. I am always waiting. Blame Pandora, if you have a need to blame. As the Buddha taught, humans in our inherently socialized condition always have to live with an undercurrent of anxiety and it’s mirror image, longing. So I wait. Waiting is what gives direction to my life.

Waiting is the arrow of time. The length of the shaft may be visualized as the strength of the longing. The arrow’s mirror image? The desire to avoid the anxiety associated with the lack of the object of longing.

Writing this way, in an impersonalized manner, allows any reader to fill in their own blanks. Seeing the arrow of longing speeding towards a desire, or, perhaps by its own heaviness, losing speed and falling to the earth, allows us the opportunity to see ourselves as one of the entities caught up in the human condition.

Once we can see that we are so caught up, and that our desires and fears make arrows, maybe we will be more careful about the type of arrows we craft. Are we making an arrow that will pierce someone else? Is this desirable or undesirable?

Why Yin and Yang? See how one defines the other, even if you don’t realize it at first.

Here’s another version that my writing group said sounded like a professor, less lively. BUT it provides some actionable information on ways to try to escape the pain of longing and anxiety.

The process of waiting draws the arrow of time. Time is inherent in waiting. Do tigers wait for their next meal? I am not sure. Probably they are focused on doing what it takes to get the next meal when hunger tells them it’s time to do so. Humans wait. And our domesticated animals.

Back to the arrow of time crafted by waiting. The length of the shaft may be visualized as the strength of the longing. The arrow’s mirror image? The desire to avoid the anxiety associated with the lack of the object of longing.

Or, once we can see that we are fashioning arrows with our waiting for certain things, we’ll take the Buddha’s advice, and start to learn to wait, rather than waiting for a particular thing. Once we see that waiting for a particular thing inherently brings anxiety, we might be open to seeing the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha in a new way. Suffering is universal. The cause of suffering is craving. Letting go of attachments to specific outcomes leads toward liberation from suffering. There is a path that can end suffering.

Here is what I wrote from a different prompt, having to do with stars.

The stars. All the stars? No. A particular set of stars draws her attention. She had waited for years for this moment. The training to sit patiently. The training to direct the arrow of attention with the flashlight of consciousness. Illuminating just what was important. Cygnus, the Great Swan, slowly approached the position that would allow the leap from earth to heaven.

The Great Swan was merely the skeleton that marked the more important subject, the Mother Goddess herself. That was the true tens of thousands of years ago and it was true on the day that Zinnia waited. Cygnus no longer had to work as the pole star, doing the hard labor of turning the universe. That was the task of the Little Bear these days. Zinnia’s heart pointed her eyes toward Cygus.

This little piece refers to the emerging modern understanding that humans way back 30,000 years ago had an advanced religion based on finding our place in the universe. One of the major stars of the constellation of Cygnus marks the exit of the birth canal of the great female figure that is formed by our sideways view of the Milky Way. This star was pole star way back when, not our currently named Polaris. So the mythology of the day had our spirits longing to return to the Great Mother through the star portal. It had to be at a particular time of year. See the writings of Andrew Collins and others.

Well, I might be shocked if someone actually reads this far and shares the results of their subsequent researches!

The Moons of Jupiter, and, well, Spiders

Or How to SEE the world

Last weekend, for the 4th of July holiday, I visited my friends from my new church. The 4th of July is actually the center of the “Holy Week” for this new, semi-atheist church. The Alpha and Omega Celebration is intended to help people cement their new view of life, relatively unencumbered by what they now see as an overly limiting world view imposed by their parents before they were able to think for themselves.

They don’t believe in, as the founder says, “a Big G god.” I feel like many of them (well, the group is quite tiny…so many is relative) have embraced reductionist atheism. But the “dogma,” or “scripture,” now limited to a document entitled “The Distinctions,” allows for belief in spirituality.

I volunteered to help the founder, Dan, in whatever way I can, based on my longtime study of the world’s (and history’s, and pre-history’s for that matter) religions. I may be ordained as the first “Curate,” as soon as we sort out the fact that I finally paid dues to join another church that I have attended for over 20 years, and don’t believe I should have to renounce one in order to join the other. However, I may soon care less, as the leadership of that church is refusing to have any formal soul searching about civil rights in this nation that is now hosting our spirits’ “vehicles.”

Anyway, the moons of Jupiter. Yes, so we had our Alpha and Omega celebration at Harper Lake last weekend. I actually got in the water and swam a bit. Then I got in a kayak and tried to kayak around a bit. My shoulders were ok, which was a surprise. Concern about the shoulders had kept me from believing I’d ever be able to get in a canoe or kayak again, even as I had fond memories of these activities in my youth. Sadly, I was not able to deal with the waves from the power boats sharing the lake, and it had been so long since I had used this skill set, I needed more room than usual to steer. After the second time that I found myself heading for or being headed at by a large vessel, I went back to shore. But it still felt like an independence.

Later, Dan got out the two telescopes he had bought for the occasion. Freedom from the religious ties that bind allows us to center ourselves in the cosmos revealed by science, and call it a religious practice. After the telescope purchase motivating non-event of the partial penumbral eclipse of the moon, we turned the scope to Jupiter. Finally, I saw it. A disk, not a point, and a series of pinpricks from 1 to 7 o’clock. I realized that those were the moons of Jupiter. WOW.

I say finally, because while the optics of the telescope were beyond any hopes I might have had, the features used to control the position and direction of tube were poor quality at best. Granted, it’s still a crime against humanity that they were so good for the supposed price of $60.00. That price and its implied consequences might have gone unnoticed in the past, but not now.

I feel so different to have seen the moons of Jupiter with my own eyes. And while the eclipse was a non-event, the detailed features of the moon were more amazing than any image I remember seeing. There are fine cracks in the surface, and super bright pinpricks that are reflections from I don’t know what.

My respect for those who had to make and aim their own telescopes 400 years ago has drastically increased. My personal thanks to the workers who made the one I used, allowing me a new window on the universe, before my cataracts deteriorate my visual processing further.

The full moon is a strong anchor of my first sighting of the Dead Sea, but the stronger anchor is the memory of the nuns sharing the beach the next morning, whose eyes I felt on my wet tee shirt. I had forgotten my bathing suit. The salt water made the wet tee shirt even more revealing than it would have been in fresh water.

The full moon will be a strong anchor of my first Alpha and Omega celebration, but the stronger anchor will be the moons of Jupiter. Of course, had I not known they were there, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Ten days later, I am still amazed by the optical quality of what was most likely a Chinese telescope. A $60 National Geographic branded window to a bigger world.

I am grateful for the Alpha and Omega experience of being positioned at the body of the spider, while my technologically enhanced senses reach out in all the directions that a spider’s legs do. We can see the world as a network of spiders with a new spider body at the point of every spider’s toe. Some of the legs reach back to more central spiders, until there’s no center, because everywhere is the center.

LauTzuTu and The Wind

I just ran across this little flash fiction I wrote back in 2015. Maybe it is more appropriate than ever. Even though I made up the monk’s name. :>)

This might be a Buddhist monk and not a Daoist monk as I envisioned when I wrote this…. So much for the selection in my clip art software.

LaoTzuTu set the pails of fresh stream water down and unbent his lean frame to look up at the darkening sky. The grey streaks were rapidly being obliterated in favor of an overall dark grey. He turned to glance back at the yard surrounding his stone hut. The branches of the trees were strongly swaying. They didn’t have the word doozie back in the year 300, but if they had, it would have entered his mind. The hut was sturdy. He had built it himself, stone by stone. It had a cellar. The old monk had laughed at him when he started digging. But LauTsuTu now, fifteen years later, felt vindicated. Yes, he had taken a vow of poverty. But that was related to money. The Taoists had no compulsion to punish the body or deny the senses. LauTzuTu had also planted some peaches and plums. Dried, they’d be safe in the cellar. A treat if bad times came. Something to break the monotony of disaster food, or no food, for that matter.

This wind was proving that his inner knowing had been sound. Fifteen, twenty, twenty five years of meditation practice left him feeling calm in the face of the storm. He was confident he would settle into his upper higher world soul, not his reptile brain, when the debris started hitting the hut. He also knew that his stone mason skills were good. He had learned from an old master. Still, the option of the shelter in the cellar was a comfort. And there were a few dried peaches left along with some sausage he had traded for a few weeks ago.

The wind was picking up now. Time to turn inward. He listened. What exactly is it that makes the sound of the wind, he wondered. Then he chuckled as he walked deliberately toward the hut, the pails of water swinging easily at his sides. He’d have plenty of time to think about it as he waited out the storm.

Choose Confidence over Humility

We act humble when those motivated by lower chakra energy impose their will on us. Usually, the imposers work categorically NOT for our own true good. Our own true good comes when we experience the consequences of our own decisions, and can thereby learn from them. In order to do this, we must work to overcome the “humility programming” we are given. How else may we remove the obstacles to confidence? I can find no other way to take the bushel out of the way of my shining light.

Embracing confidence over humility allows us to store up our treasures in heaven. Treasures of a spiritual nature (social capital) are no easier to earn (and maybe harder to earn) than financial treasures. But the interest accumulates automatically. We don’t have to waste our time seeking out the best 401k.

This little piece was written in E Prime. It avoids use of forms of the verb “to be.” Humility does not serve as the opposite of arrogance. Rather confidence does so. Confidence is deserved when earned through study, practice, or experience!

Don’t try too hard to understand. Just listen and enjoy the artwork. The audio is a different version that is not E-prime. I had missed 5 ises.

Pandora contemplating the now empty box. — Pandora’s Box Courtesy National Gallery of Art (USA)

Thanksgiving

Molars at the bottom of a jar — Have all my teeth fallen out????

Being somewhat of a grouch, even though recently I had several dreams about my teeth falling out, which I finally decided were not a warning to go to the dentist, but rather a message from my subconscious that I was losing my bite, and maybe some of my perceived bark, gratitude is something that I have to cultivate. I am truly filled with gratitude for being able to live a very comfortable life compared to most of the people in the world. We middle class Americans, as much as we disappear, still have it pretty good. I am really grateful that I have managed to work for my own company for 25 years. I really am grateful for not having to be in at 8 or even 7 am, as most working people do. It’s not that I am a shirker. I rarely leave before 7 pm when the work-load is normal. But I like the flexibility to pamper my night-personhood.

But grateful as I am for the privilege of living in the good old USA, it is truly depressing to watch so many people apparently veering off into a mindset so divorced from reality. What do Americans still agree on?

Well, traveling years ago in Europe, getting to know pit toilets for the first time at a fairly tender age, and then getting to study in Switzerland for a year in college, I had the opportunity to know what Europeans thought of Americans…

Americans are the people who have nice plumbing.

A Western Style toilet — Wasteful and comfortable. I am grateful for my toilet.

So here we go. Whether Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, or Alt Right of some type, we all (well almost all) wake up in the morning, pee in a nice porcelain toilet, on which we can sit comfortably if desired. We can then take a nice hot shower, brush our teeth with water that is mostly not contaminated with deadly bacteria (even if it is increasingly contaminated with harmful industrial and agricultural chemicals, and heavy metals), dry ourselves off with a nice fluffy towel, and get dressed.

So, to all of my fellow Americans, let’s remember to be grateful for the plumbing we have. We live in a country where almost everyone has a toilet in their living space. India has recently almost completed a national campaign to reach that goal, and apparently Nigeria is just starting to do something about the 4.7 million people without toilets.

Let’s be grateful, this Thanksgiving, for the basic things. Not just the food we all commonly say we are thankful for, but a place to put it when we’re done digesting it. And the fact that we don’t have to watch anyone else getting rid of theirs. And that it rarely ends back up in our drinking water.

Then, we move on to take action to correct the false information.

What’s Wrong about the Concept of Make American Great Again?

Or How to SEE the world

Seriously folks, click on the underlined Charity Navigator link above in the yellow box. Thank you.