Burqas (Burkas) and monk robes

I find wearing special clothes or doing other special things to say "I am of this or that religion" somewhat distasteful and certainly arrogant and probably hypocritical.  If it is truly a free choice (not demanded by husbands and so on as a part of suppression of women) then it should just simply be ignored.  I treat the local monks that way, and have had some acrimony with a few about it, but at least in this case the special clothes and shaved heads are for the enforcement of poverty and humility, but I still find it not unlike praying loudly in public, and I know monks on whom it has this effect (making them think themselves superior to others).

There is an itch in the small of my back
A back scratcher is nearby
But I don't scratch it; I lay there in bliss concentrating on the amazing sensation as it ebbs and falls.

On or near a planet's surface, or in an accelerating box

Up and down oppose each other

In space there is no difference

Some monks came out and blessed my house today
So did a lot of the neighbors, I think maybe as a way to get a look-see
I didn't understand any of it, but I suppose my house now is blessed.

Religion as ideology

Religions all encourage fanciful and false ways of thinking and then reinforce it through fear and guilt and indoctrination, and, when they are in control, through law.  That doesn't automatically make them evil, since all ideologies do as much, and sometimes they do good things.  I think for the most part subjective reality is better than any belief system, though it is hard in a world so superstitious and ignorant to find one's way through the weeds.  

The Buddha identified one of the four sources of suffering as delusion, and he had it right.

It's almost lunchtime
and I'm not hungry
I guess I will again frustrate my cook

Is God evil?

I suppose a solution of suffering is to say God is evil.  I am more inclined to think we suffer because natural selection unfortunately works that way, by constantly weeding out the unfit, often in unpleasant ways, since natural processes like natural selection have no sense of good and bad, but just function automatically.  The incoming tide may drown the child, but the tide and the moon causing this knows nothing about it.

I have a pillow

I have a pillow
And a soft blanket
But I must sleep on the floor
I will ache tomorrow

A plea for free trade

A country that selfishly protects itself, regardless of the welfare of others, deserves the fate it will receive, since of course others will treat it accordingly, and make its exports unafforable, destroying jobs.  This is called a trade war and hurts everyone  -- it was just the sort of thinking I see above that led to the Great Depression.

  

If I can buy a shirt of higher quality and less expensively (including the value of my time) rather than make it myself, then it is stupid for me not to buy it.  If an industry can out-source some product or service it needs cheaper and better than if it does it in house, then it is stupid for that company not to do so.

What protectionism and tariffs and trade quotas do is coddle inefficient local industries.  Capitalism that works well depends on all businesses being under constant pressure to do things cheaper, more efficiently, and better, and managers and workers who don't understand this and who are not willing to constantly reinvent themselves are soon poor or bankrupt.  Countries are the same -- high protective tariffs merely reduce the standard of living of the general population by allowing local industries to produce goods not up to international standards and prices.  In the end those countries who protect local business least are the countries that do best.

I think the real patriot is not the person waving the flag around shouting about foreign competition but the person who works hard to meet the challenges of foreign competition -- and does not stupidly insist one's country not buy from other countries those things other countries can produce better, but instead concentrates on those things one can do better locally and outsources other things.

soft air

soft air
a few white clouds
here and there butterflies

A female US President

I remember the flack Nancy Reagan got when it seemed she had opinions and dared express them.  The popular First Ladies have always been those who stuck to their knitting -- some trivial project like beautifying highways or whatnot.

Mrs. Clinton of course was like Nancy Reagan, and I think this is where the irrational hatred for her comes from, as there is no rational basis for the attacks; she has her political baggage, but it is minor, almost trivial, and blown way out of proportion.  There  are some people who demonstrate a visceral hatred for her and irrationally persist with criticisms that have no reasonable basis, such as that she didn't divorce him or that she was responsible for Benghazi.  She was not.

I don't think a lot of people, including some women, are ready for a female President.  They are still sexist that way and don't think one would do a good job,  Of course they don't realize this about themselves -- they explain it away with all the vile and negativity -- but that is where it comes from sure enough, and they need to take a good look at their motives.  

Developing political morality

We all think our views are right.  That means nothing.  What matters is how we reach our views, and if they are just seat-of-the-pants without mindful consideration of our motives and prejudices, then our views are worse than nothing.

The most important consideration, it seems to me, is morality.  Do we support or oppose someone because of our pocket book or our prejudices?  These should always be suspect as simple selfishness or bigotry, and thus immoral.  This is the message I am getting.

Another consideration, related to morals, is what is best overall, not just for us or our region or our nation but for mankind as a whole.  Do Americans give this any thought at all?  It doesn't mean being economically stupid, as Clinton's Democratic primary opponent seems have been -- thinking that one can repeal the laws of economics and human behavior (a Marxist way of thinking), but it also means being compassionate about the poor -- the truly poor around the world, compared to most of whom the poor in America are rich.

What is right and wrong is not determined by our "conscience" (which is just our childhood cultural indoctrination) nor by what we convince ourselves is good for the nation because it is good for us.  What is right and wrong must be mindfully worked out from basic principles such as compassion, fidelity, honesty, mindfulness, reasonableness, carefulness, the well-being of others regardless of who they are.

The two basic political types of person

Politically I would say roughly there are two kinds of people.  One are liberal, open, friendly to foreigners, see mankind as one entity sharing one planet, tolerant, concerned more about others than themselves, compassionate to refugees and the poor.  The other are nationalistic, somewhat selfish, tending to parochialism, thinking their people or language or culture (or all of these) superior,  seeing each nation and culture as separate and competing with the rest of humanity, and sometimes outright bigoted, although usually more polite about it, it still shows through.

Eliminating Islam

Eliminating Islam would not eliminate terrorism; the West has produced its own share.  I blame the human ego -- none of us amount to much but there are some who think they should, and resort to this sort of thing as the only way they are going to be "important."

Mass destruction of the Middle East, or wherever, is a thing I could predict if nations there resort to mass destruction elsewhere, but it is not something I would want.  The West is too weak and divided and has too many people who just simply don't think rationally (and so generate political problems for those advocating a clear-headed policy) to be able to effectively carry out the long-term, expensive (in lives and money), sustained program that is going to be needed to protect humanity from Islam's extremes -- which, unfortunately, I have to say are buried deep in the religion even though most Muslims rise above it, to the extent they see beyond Islam.

This is an ongoing problem for democracies.  They are never strong and consistent, but shift policy and behavior with the political wind.  

Jehovah, Yaweh, and the Tetragrammaton

JHVH or JHWH is the "Tetratramagatton," often rendered "Yaweh" in English and appearing in the KJ Bible as LORD or GOD (in ALL CAPS) as opposed to the "God" or "Lord" when the titles appear in the Hebrew text.  This is by far the most commonly appearing name of God in the OT).  In four places in the KJV it is rendered "Jehovah," usually considered an error since it incorporates the vowels of the Greek "Adonai" or God.

As the name of God, "Jehovah" has far better English credentials than "Yahweh" or anything of that sort, the latter being a modern invention trying to reproduce the original sound (and probably getting close).  However, the English translation, as far as the literature of the language is concerned, should be Jehovah.  It is kind of funny that this is the only word in Hebrew where scholars think they have to try to reproduce the original sounds and probably derives from bias against Jehovah's Witnesses.

Interestingly, the word does not appear in the New Testament, nor, to my knowledge, in any early Christian writing, and Jesus is portrayed as completely ignorant of it -- not affirming or denouncing its use, but unaware it exists.  The same applies to all early Christians, including, of course, Paul.

This indicates, to me at least, that the earliest Christians were not very familiar with Judaism, where at this point in time a superstition against saying the name was in place.  Readers of the OT would, when reading aloud, substitute various other words.  Why doesn't Jesus address this?

The thing is, the early Christians were not reading from the Hebrew Bible but from the Greek LXX (the then current Greek translation of the OT) where the Tetratramagatton was also substituted, usually with Adonai (God).  At a minimum, if Jesus approved of the superstition, he should have endorsed it, and its avoidance should have been included in Acts in the Apostolic Decree.  But they are not even aware of the issue.  Given Jesus' more normal antipathy to Jewish superstition, one wonders that he didn't explicitly disapprove of it, since it is obvious the pronunciation of the name had been common in earlier Jewish practice and the avoidance had arisen only in Hellenistic times.

This is but one of a number of lines of evidence cluing us in that the earliest Christians only had a superficial knowledge of Judaism and that they drew this from the LXX.  Of course Paul claims to be a Pharisee, but he is from Asia Minor and claims Roman Citizenship too.  Not impossible but odd indeed, and difficult to credit.

That he seems to know nothing of either the Tetragrammaton nor of the later-evolved Jesus-on-Earth myths tells us that Christianity began in ways very difficult from what we are usually led to think.

Extra-terrestrial potential

From what I've learned of recent discoveries, an "RNA world"(since RNA can both carry information and catalyze reactions) under early Earth conditions is almost inevitable, and it seems a DNA world would eventually ensue via natural selection. 

Life didn't get much further than that for a couple billions of years, when eucaryotic life appeared, and then again for a couple billions more for multicellular life to appear, and since then it seems to have taken its own sweet time evolving into sentience let alone consciousness.  Indeed, it took major extinction events to shove things along.  These events therefore seem perhaps to be rare and highly unlikely steps -- steps that may make us close to unique.

Since we don't know how often worlds like the what the Earth was when life first appeared might be (mass, temperature, tectonic activity, oceans) we cannot even assume the most primitive life will be common, but that does seem likely.  Other than that the signs are that the evolution of a technological society that survives for any length of time is going to be really rare.

Of course we only have our own history to go by, and we may have been real slow-pokes and these things may happen more often than what our history might indicate.

Drinking friends

I discourage the consumption of alcohol -- any alcohol -- on the basis that there is an established association between its consumption and a variety of cancers, as well as other problems like cirrhosis.  I figure if that is the case the best course, especially here where (in spite of the wine industry's obfuscation of the resveratrol issue), is abstinence.  I have the same view of fructose loaded soft drinks and fruit juices, and all sorts of other unhealthy things.

I also think freedom is important, and the issue is not something where I would call for banning it (indeed I would vote against such measures), nor would I even disparage it when others imbibe.  It goes without comment from me (we must assume they are making an informed choice).

Alcoholism and the social and violence problems associated with it are another issue, and I do sometimes insert encouragements for moderation when I see someone plainly getting drunk.  Of course my words often get rejected, and I may even lose a friend, but there comes a time when someone who has the ability to do whatever is possible to prevent harm has a moral obligation to do so.  (Usually I don't actually say anything but instead resort to various sorts of redirection away from the bar).

This is a balancing act (between doing and saying nothing and active intervention to prevent harm).  This sort of dilemma arises all the time in all sorts of contexts, and we each have to try to think through what is the right course using objective reasoning, and then act accordingly, and not be critical if someone else reaches a different conclusion.

Trump scares me to death

I've been thinking a lot about the present American political situation, and would like to express some thoughts in as sensible and complete way as I can in a reasonably short message, although I suspect I will come under considerable abuse.

That the American political system doesn't work very well (few do) is evidenced by the two candidates who rose to the top, and I think the main reason is closed primaries.  They should have a series of primaries where all candidates are on the same list, regardless of party, and the bottom twenty percent or so are dropped and another primary is held, and repeated until someone gets a majority.  That way the extremists of both parties cannot call the agenda.

Still, the results this time have been particularly disappointing.  Mrs. Clinton demonstrated considerable incompetence with the email business, and I still don't understand, and will probably never understand, Benghazi, but clearly something went badly wrong and she and Obama were at the helm.

  

Disappointing as she is, her opponent really scares me, as I read him loud and clear as mainly an egoistic, unprincipled bigot, and the fact that he seems to appeal to so many gives me pause about the human race.

What is a bigot?  Well of course we have racism, which is a little confused as we don't clearly break the species into races.  What is more common in most countries is prejudice against minority cultures, which is partially racial (Chinese and Vietnamese, for example, are both Asian race, but there are differences one can notice).  There is a lot of prejudice in the Vietnamese population against the Chinese, partly for historical reasons but mainly just because they are a different culture and a lot of people automatically dislike those of different cultures.

Pertaining to America, Africans, Latins, Homosexuals, Muslims, and of course foreigners in general seems to be targets of a lot of prejudice -- something that Trump uses, cleverly I must admit.  But then he is a sociopath con man, so this is not surprising.  His speech, where he totally distorted the United States -- the greatest country on the earth -- into a crime-ridden, poverty-stricken, run-down cesspool, shocked me, and he got away with it -- not even his critics called him on it.  Americans must be really isolated from the rest of the world to accept that crap.  Just his excuses for not releasing his taxes and all the failed businesses he has started, which he got away from and others lost millions, say this is an accomplished con artist, but not a competent executive -- a flim-flam man.

Frankly I realize Clinton will probably win, and so the US will have a reasonably good government -- she seems fairly centrist although to keep her party happy she had to veer left for now.  Still, who knows what lies in the woodwork or that might be alleged (without proof but who needs proof when using The Big Lie) and she could lose.  I am terrified.

Free will experiments

Warning: what follows is personal experience and therefore not probative:

I would imagine I have experimented with free will over a thousand times, both while meditating and otherwise, and think it really exists, but is generally neglected (not utilized) unless there is mindful (paying attention to what our conscious mind is up to) effort.

A simple thing like ordering your big toe to move provides an example.  You can sit and think, "I want my big toe to move," and after a few moments it does.  More complicated, you can think, "Sometime in the next ten seconds I want my big toe to move." This is more problematic -- you are not exactly deciding when, but just "soon." Sure enough, soon enough it moves, but in this case without a conscious thought -- more like a general directive.

Is the first case free will?  Maybe the subconscious has already decided to move and sends the thought to the conscious as it is moving it.  Certainly, to move, the particular commands to the muscles involved do not involve anything at the conscious level (some claim the ability to actually do that, but I am skeptical).

It may be that we make too much of a demand on our ability to reason when we argue free will, since we seem to insist on proof, while for most behavioral matters just good evidence is enough to be persuasive.  It strikes me that those who absolutely insist on a completely mechanical, reductionist, mind miss the point and demand something that is not and never will be available -- proof.

At the same time, the idea of free will does contradict scientific notions about how things work in the universe and does seem to demand the introduction of "something" beyond the physical.  But maybe not -- maybe we just haven't thought it through completely and must wait for the necessary genius to come along with the appropriate insights.

In the meantime, I treat it like other things that are possible but that we cannot prove, such as that an external world exists (solipsism is wrong), that truth is unitary, that properly proved mathematics is valid, that the rules of logic apply universally.  These are things (axioms I suppose) that at the moment I have to take for granted.

First causes and how the idea of God messes up science

There is no need for a God hypothesis.  It only serves to clutter science with theology.  That a God  is possible is beyond question, but there being no need for it in a scientific view of how the universe came into being, it should be left out, just as we leave out Santa -- besides, the reason God is put in such discussions is not scientific but  emotional and often based on a desire to convert people to a religion.

Why do I say there is no need for a God hypothesis?  People seem to think the universe could not have come from nothing -- that this is impossible -- but it isn't, and we have to realize that it is only an assumption, with no logical necessity behind it.  We grow up in a world where everything that happens is thought to have a prior causation -- the police find a dead man they ask for an autopsy to see what "caused" the death.   Still, we do know that deaths do happen that go entirely unexplained, or the mortician says something about "probable" causes, meaning of course he is not sure.

I am persuaded that causality is an illusion.  We live in a world where all events are the result of the behavior of gazillion of atoms, and probabilities can be assigned to what each atom will do, and, since there are gazillions of them involved, the most likely probabilities are what almost always happens -- but not necessarily always.  The billiard balls hitting each other create overwhelming probabilities that the result will be as classical mechanics predicts, since there are so many individual atoms involved it would be eons before an exception happened.  This is called cause and effect, but that is a bit magical and the reality is probability.  We perform the same experiment a thousand times and get the same result a thousand times and conclude there is a "causal" relationship, while I would say it remains possible the next time the outcome will be different -- that inference is only a matter of finding what is most probable, not what is written in the stars.

I had to work at it but now I can envision a situation where nothing exists, no time or space.  This would not be eons and eons of nothingness, since there would be no time.  Who is to say what the probability of something happening, such as a quantum variation that sets in motion a chain of events that results in our universe?  Scenarios of this sort of thing have in fact been worked out with a good deal of rigor.

Youth and the political left and selfish voters

Young people have always tended to the left, and then as they mature their politics matures, not necessarily to the right (young right-wingers are another group who tend to be extremists) but more toward the center.

One unfortunate thing about young people and politics -- they tend to be just as greedy and "what's in it for me" as older people, and in their case that often has to do with financial assistance to go to college.  It's easy for a politician to promise free tuition or some such thing, and thereby, with such a lie, get a lot of college-age votes (who tend to know it's a lie but vote for them anyway, just in case).

This has long been identified as a problem with all democracies -- the vast majority "vote their pocketbooks" rather than what is best for the country, and even rationalize things to think that what is best for them is best for the country.  People are selfish and when you point it out they find ways to convince themselves they are good people in spite of their selfishness.

Trump's massive misinformation

"Misinformation" is, of course, a lie, but a particularly dangerous and malicious form of lie.  It is usually in the form of a degrading assertion about a person or movement that may have a kernel of truth or may be invented out of whole cloth.

The purpose is not to win an argument, and if challenged the assertion is dropped and the  challenge ignored or given some sort of hand wave.
What happens is the reader may forget the exact accusation, but is unavoidably left with a negative or uncomfortable sense about the person attacked.

This is the way Trump got the Republican nomination and it seems now this is the way he and his operatives plan to get the Presidency.  Unfortunately the internet works well for this sort of thing, although misinformation has been around a lot longer than the internet and seems to work elsewhere too.

We need to remember that because someone says some is "weak" at this or "selfish" at that or "dishonest" or whatever and either provides no evidence or only provides evidence that in no way demonstrates the accusation, what is being done is you are being manipulated.

God as a scientific matter

Whether or not there is a God is not a scientific matter, and trying to make it one is kinda useless.  All science can tell us is there is no reason to think there is one, not a shred of reason.  It's kind of like trying to use science to proves there are no unicorns.  The fact that we cannot find one doesn't prove they don't exist -- excuses can be thought up -- but it is not a  basis for belief.

The point is you can't prove a negative -- it is never possible to use science to prove something does not exist.  People who base a belief in Gods and such on the fact that there is no proof they don't exist can only be pitied, as they are obviously entrapped by their childhood indoctrination.

That doesn't mean there is nothing we can do.  Given a claimed God with this or that claimed property, such as infinite power or infinite beneficence, as we hear all the time, it is not difficult to point to things that demonstrate such claims are logically and necessarily false.  The existence of suffering is an example, and there are many others.  Here, again, all that can be offered are excuses, and this is not basis for belief. 

Police brutality and bigotry

People who become police officers very often (although of course not always) have their own set of problems with authority, are "into" uniforms and guns and night sticks and sirens and so on, and generally have an exaggerated self-righteousness (they are serving the public so how dare anyone talk back or disobey or throw them the finger)!.  Lots of them are plain racists and homophobes and bigots of other various sorts.  Vetting and training can help, but it is not widespread nor anywhere near complete enough.  

The public of course doesn't help.  For the most part they are underpaid and certainly not appreciated, and generally ignored, but this they have to expect.  It goes with the territory.  After all, they chose to become cops.

"A policeman's lot is not a happy one,"  and, "We should have thought of that before we joined the force." 

By the way, this is not a uniquely American problem.  It is the case everywhere, and in America at least demands for bribes are not normal routine.

Cliché time about aging

Cliché time:  We have no choice but to live in the present, so make the best of it.  Also, I like being older and more mature and, in fact, wiser.  We do learn as we experience life.

I had a doctor and we were sitting together going over some test results, and he kept saying, "For your age, that's normal." Sheesh!  I found another doctor who will treat me, not just blame my age.  So what if I have a problem that is common in people my age -- that does not mean I have to have it if there are things to be done. 

Right now I'm prospering.  Reflux and hay fever work together to produce a problematic cough that interferes with sleep, and the drugs that deal with these are less than optimal (one raises blood pressure and another presents threats of pneumonia and kidney problems), so I cough a lot.  No aches and pains though, and lots of stamina, and I no longer use glasses except for very small print.

One other thing -- in the old days I had to get up every day and go to work.  Now I get up when I want to (ironically even earlier than I use to -- but I don't have to).  I thought I enjoyed my work; I enjoy gardening and  puttering and the internet a lot more.

Constitutional monarchs

I find it a happy thing that some of the happiest countries in the world have constitutional monarchs connected to historic but not longer widely believed religions.  It forms a basis for the ceremonial and past cultures of their nations.  A house-broken monarch is a good thing to have, and I always find anti-monarchical types a bore.

Afterlife speculation

I like a lot of others have reasons to think that there is an afterlife, however, there is no way to show any mechanism for how this works nor any unbiased way to test the various claims.  Therefore it is just speculation.  I have no problem with this sort of thing so long as it is clearly labeled as speculation and not as a teaching.  I have to say though that I, and a lot of others, have little patience with people who have claims that have no objective basis and still people get in a huff if they are ridiculed or otherwise questioned.

Alzheimer's is not the fault of the patient

There are so many people who have done everything "right" and still get Alzheimer's (Reagan comes to mind) that I doubt much can be done to prevent it if it is in the cards.  That doesn't mean one shouldn't be active, both mentally and physically, but those who are unlucky here are not to blame for it.  I suppose maybe a small percent of cases can be prevented, but it will take medical interventions we now do not have to make a major dent.  That of course is no reason not to do all those things -- they help in all sorts of ways.

Self-selected police

I have to say I really do have a problem with the self-selection that seems unavoidable, as who wants to be a cop, who wants to be a lawyer, who wants to hold political office, and a lot of similar things.  Anyone who actually wants to be these things should automatically be disqualified.  

As I understand it, the ancient Athenians had a solution, although it wouldn't work and didn't work, maybe it might with some tweaking.  Officeholders were chosen at random (except those in charge of the waterworks, where expertise was needed), people had to bring their own lawsuits and represent themselves in court, and the police consisted of slaves who were told to do a good job and observe the law or go to the mines.  Laws were passed by the assembly of all male citizens -- not a wise idea as it lead to a series of decisions that resulted in loss of the Peloponnesian War and conquest by Sparta.  It also meant effective orators, like Pericles or Demosthenes, had inordinate and inappropriate and ultimately disastrous influence.

Thinking about death

As we age we of course think about death, as well as about dementia and loss of independence and so on.   I've had a string of illnesses within the last decade or so, and in each case have recovered, it seems, almost completely, and I find no reduction in my mental ability.  I think it's like physical exercise, you have to use your brain to keep it functioning, and learning languages is my forte so now I'm learning one -- and one that turns out to be more difficult than I expected (like other Austronesian languages it is free of Indo-European case and tense and gender and number nonsense, but the vocabulary and pronunciation are a b****).

(As English has evolved it has lost a lot of this stuff too, and replaced it with scads of prepositions and verb helpers, which leads to the possibility of unbelievably subtle distinctions -- in this context I should also mention its supply of suffixes and prefixes -- not available to Asian languages -- which is where the massive vocabulary really comes from.)  Austronesian languages are direct and succinct and verbosity is almost impossible.  So is subtlety and ambiguity.  I don't know which is better.  At least Khmer lacks the tones that complicate Vietnamese pronunciation -- tones that came from Chinese influence (contamination).

Of course if you get something like Alzheimer's, then all this comes to naught, so I hope I will be lucky.  There is such a thing as good and bad luck, and as the cliché goes, we have to play the cards we are dealt.

Being an intellectual type, I am of course by nature disorganized, but fortunately I have the money to hire a secretary, and he keeps me marvelously organized.  My word what a stress reducer that is to know where things are!

Stress

Stress is far more harmful to our health than we imagine, and, worse, its effects accumulate.  Included in the term are anger, worry, fear, irritation, disease, inflammation, dehydration, insufficient sleep, etc. -- one notices that not all the sources of stress are mental.

I am not persuaded that meditation is the only solution, nor that it necessarily works for everyone, but, at a minimum we should learn at least a little about it and try it out.  Anger management and worry management (learning to see things in many perspectives) also help, but so do things like good hygiene and getting medical help for depression and other mental problems (yes, taking medication when indicated).  Just being organized does wonders.  So of course is being active.

I have gone to some extremes now to put stress out of my life.  I live in a quiet, peaceful farm surrounded by children and animals and people eager to teach me Khmer.  I have a garden, a special meditation room (just bigger than a closet with a cot and some family pictures and a couple icons), several pets, a completely dark bedroom used for nothing but sleep, a chestful of approved medicines for anything that bothers me (aches, reflux, sneezing, etc.), a near vegetarian diet (fish and field mice and shellfish and eggs are allowed) and a spectacular view of rice fields with woodlands in the far distance.  I also have the Internet and now a huge music collection.

Still, one does not escape stress.  It rained yesterday -- tropical rain, wonderful, unbelievably heavy, warm, muddy, and a blessing to the farmers, but also a signal to some sort of ant or termite to send out their males by the uncountable billions, and now my house and all the floors and everywhere are buried in their corpses.  It will be hours before we get back to normal.  The thing to do is find it funny, not find it a chore, and to wonder at nature.  

Well, that's my two cents worth on the subject.

Fascism in America and Europe

That nations will and should form alliances is just so basic I have to completely discount the mental ability of anyone who thinks otherwise.

There is present in all countries and within all segments of every population certain segments who are bigots -- against and generally hating anything different from what they happen to be -- misogynist if male, anti-male if female; racist if any race except their own, homophobic if straight and against "breeders" if gay; always anti-foreigner and anti-immigration; extremely patriotic (actually the word is jingoist since patriotism is a noble emotion); even thinking (without knowing others) that their particular language is the most beautiful and expressive in the world.  

These are the people you find voting for demagogues like Trump and much of the Brexit support.  These are the ones who insist o their "right" to have a gun and who are homophobic and racist and anti-immigration and "true" Christians or Muslim terrorists.  In short, these are the people who carry out things like the Holocaust -- they are Fascists.  

I speak of this from a Cambodia/American, and I fear it is coming to America and Europe.  In fact I am terrified.

Need to believe

Some people seem to have a need to believe, and can't leave their views in the realm of just opinion.  I don't understand it.  It seems to me whenever someone claims something odd, the natural expectation should be skepticism and it is foolish to be otherwise.
I imagine that there exists a personality trait ranging from cynicism through skepticism and ending up in gullibility (if not schizophrenia).  What I don't understand is how cynical those who want to believe something can be when presented with counter-evidence, or even just good hard questions.

Jehovah's Witnesses and others expecting the end of the world soon

A few observations.
First, most new religious movements are apocalyptic.  We see it in both Paul and in the stories about Jesus.  Luther claimed the then-reigning Pope was the anti-Christ.  Seventh-day Adventists and Mormons both show this.
Second, with JWs, I think the hold on them is emotional, not rational.  They are given a vision of an eternal paradise they will live in forever (not heavenly but much more down to earth, with things like lions for pets).  Second, they are given the notion, over and over, that they must remain loyal or they will lose out forever.  This is all playing on wishful thinking and on fear.  Also, they quote the Bible constantly, although as a general rule the Bible text quoted does little if anything to support their point and when it does there are many other possible interpretations.  They are, of course, selective, as are all fundamentalists, as to the passages they prefer.
This is the sad consequence of the Protestant doctrine that the Bible is God's Word, which any reasoning and unindoctrinated person can easily see it is not.  However, the approach does work with some people already indoctrinated that way.
Finally, the idea that we are living in the last days has a certain logic -- a lot of people think we are doomed since technology has changed the world so rapidly and mass communication makes all the world's problems so visible.  There is also the egoistic notion, "I am important, so the times I live in must be important.

Greed, racism, immigration and Brexit

The way I see it America is a nation composed almost entirely of illegal immigrants.  None of the original European population went there legally and they stole the land for the most part.  Even later immigrants for the most part just arrived.  It wasn't until the twentieth century that restrictions were imposed (at first on a racist basis against Chinese).
There is nothing really unusual about the American story.  Vietnam stole most of its territory from the Chom and the Khmer.  One wonders who they stole it from back in prehistory.  The Indo-European speakers stole most of their land from earlier inhabitants.  It goes on and on -- even the Native Americans constantly fought and periodically wiped out one of their tribes.
What is really behind resistance to immigration is a combination of fear (of Muslims mainly) and greed (I got mine, and I don't want to share).  The plain fact is that mixing peoples of different types almost always leads to difficulties of one sort or another -- mankind is evil that way.  There are some however who rise above these primitive instincts.  As we just saw in Britain, they tend to be a minority.

Non-god gods

I Comment again on pantheism and Taoism and transcendentalism and Spinoza's god and deism and all these things that to me are much the same as they see the existence of some sort of force in the universe but not a purposeful God, or at least with odd purposes from our point of view.
The problem I have with them is that they create the problems created by theism and offer no better solution.  The problem of suffering being the main one.  If you assert the existence of any of these forces, how do you explain suffering (evil is another issue --- one can have suffering, and there is plenty of it -- without postulating evil).  The only escape is to assert that the force doesn't care or has some longer range intention -- and that is the essence of the theist escape from this issue.
They also strike me as ways of concealing what is in effect another invocation of the god of the gaps.  The theists at least are honest here -- they say God did it -- and we know the problems of this and how unacceptable this it is, in the end, but isn't all these other approaches much the same thing, except putting the entity at a greater distance and calling it something else?
Again, the issues of absence of apparent purpose in the world or of an ethical authority -- these theories (if I may call them that) have the same problems that outright theism has.  If purpose comes from God, then there is no purpose but God's purpose, and what happens when he achieves it?  If right and wrong come from some force why not call it God, and why follow it anyway?  What if it tells you to do something wrong?    We much generate our own purpose and reason out our own ethics as best we can, disregarding authority, culture, and so on and depend entirely on philosophical reasoning (the Utilitarians, Kant and Socrates [Plato] are good helps here, as is basic Buddhist teaching, none of which are based on any claim to any sort of external being or force and which are based only on thinking the good and the bad of things in as much detail as possible, without a claim to either special knowledge nor to assurance that one will always be right.

Brain and subjective experience

I can imagine a number of ways there might be an afterlife.  Perhaps sentience is a property of existence we haven't identified and it behaves like a normal electromagnetic wave, propagating itself, and when it finds a good live unoccupied brain (in the fetus one supposes) it goes in and parasitizes it (actually the relationship is probably more symbiotic), and then goes elsewhere when that brain dies.  More likely when the brain dies it also dies, as otherwise we have to find a way for it to leave the sinking ship and find another baby.

I do agree with those who say sentience is unexplained, and it seems unexplainable.  As with a lot of things, this does not give me the right to insert the supernatural.  It could, as I just said, be nothing more than an undiscovered aspect of nature.  The brain has chemicals that can be associated with certain emotions and subjective experiences, but they are not those emotions and experiences but just an association, and this explains little.  Still, mind can go while brain remains, but when this happens it seems to be associated with brain malfunction -- to me a pretty big clue that sentience depends on brain.

More about afterlives

As I have posted before, an afterlife depends on the details.  The Christian'/Muslim afterlife sounds terrible.  Either you are in Hell to start with or you are in Heaven, but still have free will but have cashed in the Jesus-Sacrifice card, so the slightest misstep or bad thought and pop its to Hell with you.

Then there is rebirth, which as the Buddha taught us is a horrible trap of nature forcing us to live life after life after life in a world of suffering and death.  Even pleasures in this world are self-limiting and temporary.

We are wired by natural selection to have a desire to live, and like all desires it causes us to grasp after life, and this just adds to the suffering.

Still, I don't want to die, and I think I have reasons that go beyond instinct.  My pet theory at the moment is that we all live in a huge simulation and when we die we just get up and pull the plug -- a sort of entertainment or maybe education.  This is not solipsistic -- as I see it we all participate in the same simulation at different places and times.

Of course why?  Well it seems to me an advanced society would put in place such things much as we put in place carnival rides, and the probability that we are in such a thing, when you sit down and do the arithmetic, becomes overwhelming.  No doubt humans in the future will do as much, creating another level of simulation.

Clarifying or restating the case for atheism

If you don't allow a definition of "God," then the conversation is a waste of time, just as any philosophy is a waste of time if one of the participants refuses a definition.
My view is that there might be "superman" types out there in space, who can work wonders and who would seem gods to us -- not unlike the Greek pantheon, but they are not "God."
I also think there might be a force or presence in the universe that makes sentience and so on possible, but forces and presences are not God either.  This is just avoiding admitting that you don't really believe in God either.  Some honesty in the discussion is necessary.
The deity in question does not have to be the Abrahamic God -- heaven help us if he is as this God seems rather evil -- he could be Brahma or Zeus as many of the ancient philosophers perceived him -- the key is the word "omnipotent."  The thing is if he is not omnipotent he is not God, but superman, if he is God he is irrational because omnipotence, as even the Scholastics understood, leads to self-referential logical contradictions -- otherwise known as reductio ad absurdum proofs that the premise is false.
Now the "standard" resolution offered for this is the assertion that God is omnipotent -- he can do anything -- except things which he cannot do.  The problem with this is that this limitation applies to every motivated being.  Indeed, I am omnipotent if you allow such an exception -- I can do anything except what I cannot do.
This is what is behind the assertion that God is irrational.  There is also the clear evidence we live on an earth where life is dominated by the principle of natural selection, and natural selection implies constant fear and suffering and disease and death.  To me this is the "problem of suffering" and rules out any deity with good intentions.  A de fiat creation would have been kinder than God using this method to create life.
It is fairly obvious to me that these arguments are not understood by some of the participants here, since the responses are not to the point.  All I can say is that if you don't understand the arguments about God, you have no business having opinions on the subject.  
Regarding Buddhism, the Buddha was (if he existed historically) pretty much an atheist in the sense that he did not think there was a god, but he didn't care much -- he said our problems are the same as those of the gods if they exist -- the problems of existence and karma and suffering -- so gods are not relevant.  As Buddhism evolved it accepted existing rituals and deities of the areas it entered, as part of its generalized notion of tolerance that goes beyond just getting along but includes allowing "worship" of extraneous deities in temple by those so inclined and the withholding of criticism or question by the monks, who are trained better, of what those untrained may do.  I think this historical practice has been wise, but it does have its problems.

Reductionism was a fad of the 1920s and few nowadays think it more than sophomoric and a line of maybe teenagers who just now had it occur to them.  Materialism is impossible since what you would have to have now is something sometimes called "physicality-ism", as we now know matter is only a form of energy and energy is pretty much hard to pin down, and may end up being an illusion of vibrations of fundamental strings or some sort of gyrations of space-time and space-time seems to be doing outrageous things. 

Basically atheism has little to say about existence except there is small evidence of a purpose-driven, history involved deity -- certainly not enough to justify it.  The old materialism is "there is only matter and the void." We now know that is untenable.

I watched a fascinating lecture yesterday from Australia which ended with a cartoon she drew showing the scientists on one end showing neurons and neurochemicals and so on doing marvelous things and on the other end showing mind and economics and society and literature and law and music and so on, separated by a big question mark.

That is the difference between an atheist and a theist -- not that the atheist has answers but that they are willing to say they don't know and see no need or reason to insert a divinity into the issues.

Personal afterlife

I tend to suspect the Hindus and Buddhists are closer to reality when it comes to an afterlife than the Western teachings.   My main problem with the western view is that it is all or nothing -- one fewer sin and it's heaven; one less and its hell -- forever.  Makes no sense at all.

Of course being reborn doesn't do one much good either -- you are dead -- the new baby has to deal with your bad karma or is lucky if it is good.

The thing is, we are sentient -- we are minds.  The mind is not the brain or any other part of our body, but somehow a product of our life -- largely our brain.  This is something science cannot answer.  They can point out that certain regions of the brain or certain chemicals lead to certain mental experiences, but what is the link?  That is the "hard problem." 

So the universe is space/time, energy, mind.  Not much mind in whatever manifestation of existence we are in, as far as we can tell with today's knowledge, but just as we really cannot pin down the nature of space/time nor the nature of energy (we can measure them and make predictions a lot of the time, but we have no hint of their essence) I would say as much about mind.

There is little in this speculation, though, that would lead us to think there is a personal afterlife.

Pantheism

I have pretty much the same problems with a pantheistic concept of God as with any other, and really don't see much difference.  The ideas of omniscience and omnipotence to my mind already imply a sort of pantheism -- God is everywhere as the book of Jonah tried to show.  My complaints about suffering remain the same.

Now if what is being talked about is not a god (the word pantheism implies a god but words don't have to mean what they are derived from) but instead a generalized force of ethics and sentience and awareness that we partake of, and maybe rejoin at some point as the Transcendentalists had it, then pantheism is a flavor of atheism.   Forces are not gods -- gods are beings with personality and objectives and emotions and all that.  As I have said, this reminds me of Taoism, except there no attempt is made to understand it all.

Pantheism as a theist notion carries the same problems as other theist notions such as the need for evidence that is not produced, the problem of suffering, the absence of any discernible presence of such a being in either history or physics, and so on.

Religions persist in spite of modern knowledge

Yes mankind would be better off without religion, but that is not likely.  Religions have tricks to keep themselves going, and those with the best tricks last longest.  If only people could see the tricks involved in ideas like faith and loyalty when applied to myths, but once one has been indoctrinated (usually as a child), only some have the personality traits enabling them to escape, and indoctrination is a form of addiction, not easy to break from and very easy to find excuses for not wanting to break from.  

Why don't gays die out?

A comment on this gay business: my understanding is that at least for male homosexuals the tendency is inherited in the female line, perhaps even on the Y chromosome (although of course the idea of a gay gene is too simple).  If that is the case, even if gay men don't reproduce, it would have no effect.

I would agree that strictly gay men almost certainly don't have babies, unless they do it medically, and most won't.  That may be evidence that a "strictly" gay man is much more rare than imagined.

Another possibility is that gayness provides some unrelated survival benefit, such as better survival rates in the womb and in childhood, and maybe even in finding a wife.  For gay women, it has been so long that men dominate that they just go ahead and have babies, until recently at least.  

Sources of knowledge

I think maybe we can imagine four ways of obtaining knowledge.  First is to be born with it (evolution supplying us or something like that.  Problem is evolution is only interested in propagating our genes so the information we are born with may have survival value but not much else, and to a large extent this will be things we know but don't know we know.

Then there is standard deduction -- starting with things we already know and deducing further knowledge from it.  The problems here are well known -- the logic may be wrong or the things we "already know" may be wrong.

Then there is induction.  If we see something happen over and over with no counter-examples, we infer that it is a rule of the universe.  Of course this is what science does, but we all do it too.  It has the standard problem that it may be we just haven't yet found the counter-examples.  It is collections of such rules about a related subject that scientists call "theory."

Finally there is the way most of us get our knowledge -- by getting it from an authority on the subject.  Experts know more than we do so when we want to know something we go to them.  I think in this general category there is also getting special revelations from supernatural beings or from ancient writings.  This makes clear the problem with this method of learning -- we have to chose our experts carefully.

Is Hitler in Hell?

You don't and can't pretend to know the full story of anyone, no matter how evil, even the icon of evil, Adolph Hitler. He had a childhood, he grew up in a certain culture, he had certain genes. All these things gave him beliefs on which he acted sincerely and devotedly. He was certainly not the only anti-Semite of his times, and we are all people of our times. Sincerity and devotion often lead to great harms in the world.

It can also be argued that he was mentally disturbed in certain ways. We do not criminally punish the insane.

I am an atheist, so don't have the problem of a god dispensing justice and weighing our soul and if it is just a little too evil we go to Hell otherwise we go to Heaven (and the vast majority of people no doubt are very much on the edge).

I do, however, think we have an afterlife, or at least suspect it, given considerations of the likelihood of our being in an illusionary world rather than a real one, and when we die we go up a level to greater reality. This is a probabilistic argument recently expressed in some popular movies (where it is called virtual reality), rather stupid ones, but it seems probable, and would present a chance for what Asians call karma to do its thing -- when you do harmful things you make yourself slightly more evil, and vice versa, and this gets reflected in the more real existence to come. There is no judgment involved -- it is all rather automatic or even mechanical, and came into existence through people like us (but more advanced and probably better and smarter) creating sub-realities. Maybe it has always existed.

The good life

I think you could say I'm a philosopher.  Probably not a very good one, at least by modern notions of what this takes, and certainly not very original, since I've had the repeated experience of finding my best ideas and insights have always been thought of before.

I think it is because I'm interested most of all in what is a good life.  This is not easy -- it is not happiness, nor comfort, nor respect, nor ethical ("right") behavior.  It is none of these and it is all of these.  One can argue that each of these require all the others, that one cannot be happy nor comfortable nor respected nor doing the right things if one doesn't have the others too.

Nor of course, in these terms, is a good life possible.  It can only be approximated, or approached, maybe closely if one is a living paragon of cheerfulness, good health, high position and moral rectitude, but what do we do if we aren't?

I think we all think about these things, and when we are lacking we try to do better, or at least make excuses.  A poor man can be proud of his poverty, especially if life offers him no better chance, and a stupid person (they exist by the droves) can look down on intelligence and make himself feel better watching mindless entertainments.

Who is to say either is a better life?

Still, I think the greatest joys are of a more refined sort -- thinking about the great questions, seeing what others thought, trying to figure out what they meant by a lot of what they said (after all they are famous and great philosophers so what they said has to mean something).

Similarly, I now know that being healthy and vigorous and all that has a lot to do with one's joy in life, one's respect, and so on.  However I will leave it up for the most part to the doctors, just being reasonably informed and a bit skeptical is as far as I go, as well as doing what the doctor tells me to do.

There are many other joys -- art, music, and so on, and then there are circus performances.  One chooses what one enjoys, although I'm a bit of a snob and if something is boring or not really funny or just blood for its own sake, I would rather not.

Respect is an interesting thing, and we all want it.  There are a million ways to get it and a million people judging us all the time.  Some say we should ignore this -- that it is what we think of ourselves and not what others think of us that is important.  They should read Confucius.

Of course the prime mover in all this is Socrates, as we get him from Plato.  The most important thing in life is to do what is right.  The thing is Socrates did not know what is right and I won't pretend I have anything on him.  All Socrates really knew is that what most people think is right is wrong, or, at least not defensible.  We see this today too -- people who would let others suffer and die rather than let them immigrate, or even just people who don't want to let others immigrate because they are different.  Men who think men are better than women and vice versa.  People who say things like lying or stealing or an abortion or whatever, regardless of the circumstances, are wrong.  I could go on and on.

Still sometimes (fortunately usually just in theoretical scenarios), there are cases where the right and wrong of something stumps me.  I've already posted about this a few time, so just a brief summary -- first, there is never an absolute right or wrong.  Second, one must consider harms and helps.  Third, one must not use sentient beings as means to ends.  Fourth, one must apply mindful compassion (not just, "Is this compassionate," but do I understand why it is or is not compassionate, not just how I feel.

Of course no doubt I get it wrong all the time, and I then must deal with my mistakes as honestly and rightly as I can.

More about personal immortality without God

From the feedback I'm getting people must think I've gone off the deep end, and maybe I have, but it seems to me, with modern inflationary theory and so on, that the universe and all of existence must be either infinite or so damn big we will never know the difference.  Indeed, our present cosmos originating from our own personal big bang may have been infinite for all we know -- all we have access to is the part from which the light has had time to reach us, and we know what really was there was many, many orders of magnitude more, if not unending.  In all that, there are bound to be gazillions of "virtual" existences out there doing all sorts of things, so that the probability that we are in one becomes a virtual certainty.

I don't much credit claims of evidence for this sort of thing -- it's like claims for flying saucers -- if they are that smart and want to stay out of sight, subject over.

A word about the religionists response, for which, frankly, I have no respect.  This is not a last ditch conversion hidden in science jargon.  It is just common sense given what we know.  There need be no deity doing this.  Just smart people like us taking care of ourselves and our existence.  It may be true that they would seem like deities to us, but seeming like a deity doesn't make one a deity.

Good and bad of religion

It is easy for a relatively intelligent person who has not undergone indoctrination to see that all "faith" (not just religious faith) is mistaken and generally wrong and often harmful. One can have opinions if they are based on valid and repeated experience, even opinions that approach belief, but never should one allow actual belief, where one has made an emotional commitment to something.

Religions make a virtue of faith, but this is seriously wrong. It is in fact a vice -- an easy way to excuse believing things one would like to believe even though there is insufficient evidence. One should only have opinions (where one can readily change one's mind without experiencing guilt or fear) when the evidence warrants it.

All that said, I do not oppose religion completely. Many of the things religions do are good. The present Pope, for example (as opposed to some of his unfortunate predecessors) seems to have a relatively open mind and is a preacher of love and tolerance and downplays doctrine. The same can be said of the Dalai Lama. Many Muslim clerics preach the same message, although unfortunately it seems most do not and many are sources of hate and intolerance. Any religion that teaches that it alone is true is likely to be this way -- in fact such a teaching makes a religion more a force for harm than for good.

Kidney Infection and thoughts of death, part 2

Continued from previous post

I'm an atheist, and a rather dogmatic one.  There is not only no reason to believe in God or gods, but there are good reasons not to.  No proofs, of course, but when one is talking about rational, thought-out views, there is no proof.  That is for those who want to believe and use faith as an excuse.

However, I do think we survive death, as individuals.  This is but one life in a long series of lives in an uncountable number of universes.

There is and can be no evidence for this.  Recovered memories are logically either frauds or wishful thinking.  So is deja vu.  The previous lives would not be in any way connected with this universe.

It is just logical.  We have to live in layer after lawyer of false universes -- illusions that we invent for ourselves to give us life after life after life.  Of course for the most part, or maybe for many parts, we have no memory, as that is what makes them interesting and helpful.

The idea is in some ways ancient and some ways quite modern, and there are many variations on the theme. I tend to prefer to keep it simple. We live a life, gain its experiences (the whole point of living), then die, unplug the machine, and then spend some time in whatever live this is and then go off and plug ourselves into another machine. (Of course the machine bit is all metaphor). So, it is possible to be an atheist and nevertheless thing we live after death.

Kidney infection and thoughts of death

I recently had a kidney infection, involving loss of bladder control, inability to move without tremendous effort (and needing to be carried about), and a good deal of metal depression and confusion.

When one's kidneys are not doing their job, poisons they should filter out of the blood accumulate and all sorts of things manifest.

Now I'm only 72, and I don't consider that old.  It is long in the tooth, to be sure, but I don't think I even begin to look my age, except of course my beard is grey (salt and pepper).  I had figured I was good for at least another couple decades.

Well that changed my mind.  Modern medicine saved me and with a few antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and I don't know what all, I was up and about in a day.  I have however had a setback and we did it all a second time.  Makes me wonder, of course.  (Continued next post).

We believe in causation

We believe in causation -- that is, that everything that happens has a cause, or to put it the negative way, nothing that happens can happen without a cause. People this is just a belief. In our world it seems to be the case, but we can't prove it. All sorts of things happen that are mysteries to us. We assume they had a cause but maybe they didn't.

We do know, at least the scientists know and we are wise to accept their long-held consensus, that at the atomic and sub-atomic level this is not quite the case. Given a single uranium atom, we know that at some point it will decay, but without cause. It will just happen. We can't say it is random either because if we have a large collection of uranium atoms, we can predict very exactly how many will decay each second -- just not which ones.