No Container for Truth

The truth is too corrosive for the foibles of any human institution for that institution and its allied institutions to repeat let alone preserve. Evolution can and has produced individuals, would-be saviors, who can semiotically model the truth, but the model will not transport. It's like the physicist's plasma: we can (theoretically) make it (in very small quantities) but we can't hold it. Like plasma, the truth has no container: except art, and art can always be interpreted away.

Freedom

Knatz.com (and its ancestor, and its spin-offs) had a zillion modules on freedom, thus far none of them reposted to pk blogs. Before I get to it I have a series of things to add that I don't remember yet saying at K. I'll sketch a few reminders to myself, teasers for you, here.

Freedom

You can't be more free in this universe, on this earth, than CroMagnon man was. Did he talk about freedom? Or do we just start obsessing about it after we've lost nearly all that we ever had?

These days, to me, freedom is what comes with "nature": that is, a biosphere not mucked about with by several (and more) billion humans, all talking, talking, talking.

The aborning United States used "freedom of religion" as a sibboleth. The framers meant that the deists wouldn't put the Presbyterians in jail, or the Baptists, or the Methodists once they came along. They certainly did not mean that anyone could think or say anything they wanted about cosmology, theology ... this or that god ... Imagine Hawking set in front of Benjamin Franklin, two great "scientists," but from different eras. I can't imagine either letting the other get a word in (of course I'm first imagining Hawking as actually able to talk, without all that machinery, without that whole infrastructure of computers and programmers ...)

My son tells me that in France they care far more about freedom from religion than any freedom of religion. The Church has a visible presence in France, but is quite without power: would a contemporary Frenchman tolerate the Church if it started reassaming power? (Only if the Frenchman retained to power he now has: to dissent, to mock ...)

What I want is freedom from government.

Freedom of Speech

What good is it if no one understands what you say? if the institutions that manage our lives from birth (and before birth, before conception!) are illiterate? without imagination? are incapable of listening? and too full of themselves to realize that they are ... all of the above?

Maybe actually Franklin and Hawking would get along just dandy. Both were extraordinary men. But: Swift shows us Gulliver helpless among the Lilliputians, then later, just as helpless back in London, trying to explain Lilliput to Englishmen. The Gulliver of the narrative just went along with everything; the Gulliver trying to be a messenger gave up and went and lived, miserable, in the stable. At least in our Christian story we put Jesus out of his misery while he was still in his prime, before he had to waste any more words on us?

Prayer

Humans imagine that they can talk competently with gods, that gods came communicate with them: us, the humans.

Why don't religious meetings begin with a prayer:Oh, God:
If we are in any way misrepresenting you, send us a sign, right now. Burn me, claiming to be your priest, for example, right now.
Burn the congregation, right now, if they are making me say and do things against my will.
...

Divine Love

Should Jesus on the cross love those who are crucifying him?
The Christian answer is that he does: because he's not human,
he's superhuman, divine.
He's God! and God is Love. God, because of the crucifixion, forgives us!

Don't try to understand it: it's a mystery.

OK. I believed all that as a kid, even as a young man,
at least I tried to believe it.
I sometimes try to believe it at seventy, after being betrayed all my life, defrauded, blackballed, denied the rights claimed to be common across the culture ...

But there's one thing I refuse to respect this sort of Christian divinity for:Should Jesus love and forgive the Christians, no matter how many times they claim they love Jesus, no matter how many candles they burn, no matter how many doorbells they ring, no matter how much money they donate,
if they're still torturing and silencing and interrupting and misrepresenting God(-and Jesus)'s subsequent messages and messengers?There's Jesus on the cross. He loves and forgives the soldiers tormenting him. He loves and forgives the soldier who stuck a spear in his side: so the Jews wouldn't have to be embarrassed to be torturing their Messiah after their Sabbath commenced with sundown. Fine.
Now:Should Jesus forgive the Pope who puts a contract out on Martin Luther?
should Jesus forgive the Pope (or the professors) who threatened Galileo with torture for jeopardizing their (the Church's and Universities' ridiculous ignorant contradicted-by-observation model of the universe?
should Jesus forgive the Church for defrocking Ivan Illich, its greatest priest?

Should Jesus forgive the United States for censoring pk when it was Jesus-Illich's convivial humanity pk was working for?
should Jesus forgive the United States for telling children compelled to attend school that they have free speech while filling the jails with the silenced? such as pk?One last question:Should Jesus forgive the churches who keep no record of claims made by the congregation that God "spoke" to them?I think Jesus should forgive the churches exactly as much as he forgives the schools for allowing no notice, keeping no records, of non-standard ideas that emerge from the non-tenured portion of the school: the instructors, the students.

Proof

I'm moving all my Thinking Tools posts to pkTools.

Stotting in Civilized Man

The gazelle on the savanna senses a predator. The gazelle is built for speed, and for leaping obstacles. So is the predator: both pray and predator co-evolve together, there's no such thing as one species, independent of others, independent of an ecology. The behaviors relate by a complex "tree" that only science can begin to simplify while mapping with any accuracy. Anyway, what does the gazelle do? The gazelle stops munching, pricks its ears, sniffs the wind ...

And if the gazelle sniffs lion , or sees so much as a claw, or a paw, or a haunch of lion, why it runs like hell in another direction, right? No. Not quite. Commonly, just before running, the gazelle will hop up and down a couple of times: then run like hell.

What? It is crazy? A human male will jump off a cliff to impress his buddies, though the behavior, as any biologist can explain to us, is actually intended to impress the female: to get her to lie down and open her legs: so that the guy can get off: that is, mix his genes with hers, make a new guy who will jump off cliffs, or a girl that will still convey his courage to a subsequent male offspring. And so on. But ruminants have no investment in courage — courage is for social predators: they, ruminants, survive, or try to, by running away, by being quick, fast, alert, agile ... What could possibly "cause" crazy, wasteful jumping in place to allow a whole class of species to still be doing it and still be alive?

Jared Diamond explains: combining his brilliance with the wisdom of his disciplines: biology, zoology, physiology:Ruminant species have learned over eons that wasting a moment or two can actually gain in survival chances. The lion sees the gazelle, sees that the gazelle sees the lion, sees the gazelle waste time, energy, movement, not running away ... and the gazelle may "cause" the lion to pause, and think, Well, if that gazelle is so confident it can escape me that it wastes time showing off, maybe it can escape me and I'm wasting my time chasing it.

Some gazelles will get caught, become lion-lunch, but enough other gazelles discourage the lion that the species benefits: all ruminants benefit: for now.(Never assume that what aided survival yesterday will aid survival tomorrow.) OK, that's stotting, also known as pronking: in ruminants: as explained by contemporary zoological sciences (and paraphrased by pk). I mention it not only because I think it's neat, but because I find all sorts of analogies in it beyond the one that Jared Diamond mentioned it to develop: specifically, Diamond introduced stotting and its scientific "explanation" additionally to explain human behaviors that at first glance seem wasteful, stupid, dangerous: such as substance abuse — drugs, alcohol ... (Apparently paleo-evidence supports a theory that humans have been drug-chewing drunks for a very long time now.) But back to the gazelles: the stotting gazelle is telling the predator, Don't waste your time, I'm too fast for you; the human is telling her candidate bed-partner, Look at me: I'm such a great specimen of Homo sapiens that I can drink myself stupid and still have men buy me furs, a Mercedes, and send my kid to Exeter, while the male is trying to convey analogous advertising lies.

The strategy obviously has pitfalls. A lot of gazelles have become hors d'oeuvres for a lot of predators; a lot of human drunks and junkies have wrapped themselves around a tree whether or not they impressed the girl.

OK. Jared Diamond's extension of stotting as an explanation for substance abuse is brilliant, profound: but pk says it doesn't stop there. It may not explain everything, but it sure can be used to shed light on other otherwise incomprehensible behaviors: like why civilized man has devoted 99 calories to ignoring over-population, global warming ... any number of concepts intended to make us wake up and take stock to every one calorie devoted to understanding and responding to the danger.

How about civilized man making life impossible for anyone who doesn't go along with the idea of a God who'll bail us out no matter how drunk, stupid, or depraved we become ... All we have to do is say, "I believe," and light a cheap candle, the quarter going not to God, but to some priest? Isn't that like stotting? Isn't that a way of saying, Existence so favors us humans, the cream of life, the point of everything, that we don't have to be alert, or agile, or truthful, or speedy ... and mostly, we don't have to be honest: with ourselves ... about anything.God is such a sap: he'll buy any horse-shit we feed him, he loves us so. (And if he weren't, we'd get ourselves a different god: pronto!What other explanation could there possibly be for civilized many tolerating a governmental hand in its pocket to fund thugs with guns called cops, illiterates displacing thinkers in pens called schools ... If anyone tries to point it out, as I did, his university can interrupt him, postpone his advancement, make it impossible for make a living (without jettisoning all plans, hopes, investments) ... Finally I was arrested, given a kangaroo trial ... censored, wanted off restoring destroyed information to the internet: stolen from me, Illich (... Jesus) in the first place!

Is civilization a form of stotting?

Look God, We don't have to be smart. We can dance on the edge. You'll bail us out, you won't let us fall. (And if you do, the US will bail our ass!)

Free Will

I want to develop a piece on free will in which I largely ignore the question of whether man has free will, concentrating instead on whether religious man would allow God free will.

The Bible presents a series of obligations for God. The story of the Flood has God saying that he won't do it again. Really, no matter what we do, if everyone smokes crack and has a crack baby, God still won't get pissed off and drown us all as he did in Noah's day, or turn us all into pilars of salt as he did for Lot's wife?

The Jews' Bible tells the Jews that God will judge the nations, after which God will enslave everybody except the Jews, all for the sake of the Jews. The Bible promised that God will do this for the Jews No Matter What the Jews Do In The Meantime!!!

Christians say that the Bible promises this and that: so many Jehavah's Witnesses in heaven. At Judgment will God have any say in the matter?

I won't respect any god until the religious would shit a brick rather than allow him to get a word in edgewise.

But you know what? I don't think my god is going to say anything at Judgment. I don't think any humans are going to say anything either. I think we're all going to be dead, and that god won't need any speech.