Morality without religion

I think religion makes people more inclined to follow the precepts of that religion's teaching.  Whether this is more moral or not depends on the details of that teaching.  A religion can bring about, instead, extremely immoral behavior.

The person without religion has to make up their own minds and assume personal responsibility for what they do.

Here is a view of the founders of the US -- I think maybe more objective than what one usually gets.  Every country seems to want to deify its founders.  The American Founding Fathers were, except for Franklin, white male aristocratic wealthy landowners (Franklin was probably America's first millionaire and was a self-made entrepreneur).  They were fairly spread over the political spectrum, from the extreme right (Hamilton) to the center right (Washington and Adams) to the extreme left (Paine and, slightly less extreme, Jefferson).  The actual constitution was written mainly by folk in Washington's camp, the Bill of Rights by folk in Jefferson's (Jefferson opposed the original Constitution).

They were of course all well educated gentlemen, with but a couple of exceptions not Christian but Deists, although except for Adams they didn't ever express much antipathy to Christianity in public.

Many of them owned slaves and to my knowledge only Adams ever expressed any dislike of this -- being from Massachusetts that would not be surprising.  Jefferson appears we now know from DNA evidence to have been a hypocrite on that subject, having had a slave woman for his mistress (this was about then but he adamantly denied it), and not freeing any of them until his death (such manumissions for slaves close to the master were common).

The political system they created was in my opinion not very good, and has not been among the reasons the US has been so successful.  Presidential systems are inherently subject to gridlock -- something that at one point led to the Civil War and which has always, except in a few periods of one-party rule (reconstruction), hindered American political action.  After the Founders passed, very few men of distinction made it up, and then by accident -- Lincoln, TR Roosevelt -- because the political election system and general franchise fosters non-intellectual and emotional and -- well politicians rather than statesmen.

Reincarnation (rebirth)

I have had experiences that I could interpret as traces of a past life, but if one lives in a culture where it is taken for granted -- much as many Americans take Heaven for granted -- such experiences cannot be trusted entirely, but are nevertheless suggestive.  I think people around the world have such things happen to them but unless their expectations are clued, they dismiss them.

The claims just can't be tested scientifically any way I can think of.  Therefore a rational person has to withhold belief, and leave it as an opinion that it seems likely, and no more.

I will say though that a universe where sentience is like electric charge or energy -- preserved but constantly changing -- the idea sure makes sense.  It is way too easy, though, to go overboard here -- this is speculation since no one knows what sentience might be or where it might came from (although actually much the same can be said of electric charge or of energy).

More belief mockery

Believers should not get away with putting their beliefs or their faith outside the limits of rational attack by arguing that each person has freedom to believe what they want (or with any other tactic, for that matter).  They don't want to question their beliefs and don't want any one else to bring up things that are uncomfortable to them and raise doubts.  Attacking such beliefs on rational grounds is not a personal insult unless one uses invective.

Faith is one of those things.  The meme called "Christianity" has this teaching -- that God gives you faith.  It is really clever.  If you don't believe, then God has overlooked you, so you believe and attribute it to God while in reality it is a cop-out for believing what you have been indoctrinated with and want to believe.

I've seen the testimonials of people who have "come back" and their testimony of the joy and relief they felt.  Breaking with indoctrination is hard -- one feels guilt and fear -- and giving in and going back to the indoctrination gives you relief from that plus a good dose of serotonin to boot.  Thus most of those who have been indoctrinated into rigid beliefs in childhood either stubbornly stick with them in spite of reason, or they become hostile (sometimes extremely so) to those who "did that to me" and hate their prior religion.  Neither is healthy.  Rational skepticism in the absence of "belief" or faith -- with just reasoned opinions -- is the best.

Some rules of English grammar that should be dropped.

1.  Eliminate the insistence on "complete sentences."  Sometimes sentence fragments are just fine and in fact effective.

2.  Stop fussing about correct use of pronoun case.  "Me want a cookie!"  is wonderful.  Of course in that case humor is intended, but a sentence like, "She gave pencils to Mary and I" has the benefit of avoiding the alliteration and is not usually misunderstood, sounds natural, and even if it is a case of being "over-correct," so what.

3.  In that vein, the language should eliminate "whom" except as object of a preposition (where "who" still is distractive).

4.  Ban "shall" from legal documents.

5.  In fact, only allow "shall" in the polite request, "shall we" to keep the distinction between it and the question "will we?"

6.  Stop being so fussy about agreement between subject and verb.  All kinds of subtleties would become possible if the rules weren't so rigid.

7.  Change the punctuation rules at the end of the sentence to be logical by stopping the insistence that closing quotes must be outside the end-of-sentence mark.

8.  Drop the fussing about comma splice and other uses of the comma and make its use optional depending on need for clarity and style.

9.  Agree that a period is optional after common abbreviations such as "Mr".

10. Don't worry about dangling participles.  So what if someone can read it in a ludicrous way -- they won't, and if they do that's their problem (or maybe gain in pleasure). 

11. Allow use of a period rather than a question mark except for sentences intended to be questions but are not grammatical questions.  "Are you happy."  "You are happy?"  Rhetorical questions should also not need a question mark.  (Basically that would mean the question mark would indicate up-tone).

Evidence of God

I would like to respond to the argument that atheists would not accept any evidence that God exists short of personal revelation.


It is not correct.  There is evidence I would accept, such as an asterism in the form of the Tetragrammaton.  I would probably accept the clear occurrence of a miracle done under controlled conditions, but religionists have an excuse for why this doesn't work similar to the one psychics use -- it goes away when you control the conditions.

Or, perhaps, the Bible were really the spiritual book people say it is, and the history of religions were not so bloody and hypocritical, or if religion really did have an uplifting effect on its adherents.  This would not be as persuasive as an asterism, but it would be good evidence.

If you want to claim something so important and so extraordinary as God, you have to realize with intellectually mature adults the default is going to be skepticism.

I should stipulate -- theistic religions.

I must say, also, that personal revelation is probably the last thing I would accept.  I don't have so much ego as to think such a thing would be real instead of my own mind.

Where is Mozart?

One of the problems I perceive with traditional Buddhist (and Hindu) rebirth (mislabeled "reincarnation") teaching is where is Mozart?  He should have been reborn several times now.

The thing is his voice is unique.  From earliest age his compositions are recognizable as his.  This is true of many composers and artists and writers, but Mozart makes the best example.

So why haven't there been several Mozart's in history?  Is all of that lost in the rebirth process -- if so what is the point? 

All sorts of rationalizations are possible, of course, but wouldn't it be nice if there were at least one clear example of the rebirth of an identifiable talent? 

Eternal life

I read an item in one of the scientific web sites to the effect living forever is impossible.  The basis was a survey of the age of death of the very oldest, and while lifetimes have been getting longer, this maximum age has not.  Therefore no matter how good medical care and so on get, there is a maximum age.

While I agree living forever is impossible, this evidence draws the wrong conclusion.  We age for some unknown complex of reasons, but each species seems to have a different and evolving maximum age, and there is no reason for that not to apply to us.  There are biological reasons we age and die, and each species reflects these in accordance to its lifestyle and the normal age of death from disease or predation.  That humans overcome these would remove the biological reason for aging and dying, and we would expect maximum lifetimes to slowly increase -- but on evolutionary terms this would require thousands or millions of years, not the short time of the observations.

The important thing here is that the fact that maximum age varies from species to species tells us it is not inherent but evolved, and that therefore there ought to be ways to interfere with it.  

The reason living forever is impossible is simple -- one may never die but at the same time one has never reached infinite age.  One may be a million or billion or gazillion years old, but never infinite.

One day the earth will become uninhabitable, a little later the solar system.  Humans will of course know it is coming and we presume will have the ability to go elsewhere.  Even orbiting a red dwarf, long-lived as they are, would someday have to come to an end.

There is reason to think, though, that space-time has unlimited low-entropy energy available -- this is after all how our present universe got its energy.  Just separate the positive and the negative keeping the total at zero.  So humanity could go on.

Back to nearer to us in time, what might a society where there is no aging and presumably very few if any deaths (technology would also steadily improve safety) be like?  One can imagine frightening scenarios -- say a Stalin was in power and would live on and on -- and other messes, but one can also imagine things being pretty nice.  Remove death and you also remove a lot of human angst.

Don't worry about overpopulation.  That particular worry is trivial.  If it came to it children would stop happening, but I think more likely humanity would expand.  It's a big universe.

Depression and suicide

There are ways to deal with depression on one's own, but they only work if you are kinda naive about yourself, and eventually will generally stop working.  Work and staying busy, exercise, "getting away" such as taking a trip or vacation, dealing with the immediate causes of the depression, if there are any, meditation, getting counseling, music and art, reading a stomping good novel, pondering the universe -- these and other tricks help a lot.

But the fact is that only some people tend to depression (I think most of the time the tendency is inherited) so most people don't understand it and think it's only normal mood swing.  This absence of understanding and compassion and the "buck it up" disdain one gets don't help.

I have found the only real way to stave off such periods of depression is to stay on medication.  The medical system doesn't like it one bit, for a variety of reasons, so one has to be prepared to fight with insurance companies and have to go out of pocket fairly often.  That doctors often compound the problem with their arrogance about it and their failure to really hear the patient is a cross to bear, but shopping doctors doesn't work, and is less and less possible in the modern bureaucracy.

Of course, this leads to drug use (the wrong drugs -- things that are addictive and illegal, such as heroine and of course alcohol).  About alcohol -- practically guaranteed to cause an early death for the depressive.  Marijuana is better, but of limited value.  Caffeine in the form of a nice cup of espresso or just black coffee or green tea is even better here.

In the end, though anti-depressives need be taken on a lifelong basis in fairly high doses and in several forms (at least both serotonin stimulators and anti-reuptake serotonin inhibitors.  Not being a pharmacist I probably have the terms wrong -- what are needed are drugs that both produce "happiness" hormones and that slow down their removal from the body.

I know from my personal experience, which I suppose is anecdotal, but also from what I can find out talking to others and doing research.  I suspect in some cases even this is not enough, but the difficulties I had and continue to have getting minimal treatment suggests to me that the real problem, and the real cause of the continuing suicides, is that most people just do not get it.  It is so out of the range of their own experience.  That includes the medical profession and the lawmakers.

Of course it is also in the interest of insurers to not "get it".  When the patient kills himself or herself they stop having to pay for treatments.

Tirade against democracy and maybe ways to fix some of the problems.

It's elitist of me to think this, but, regardless, I do think that the main problem with elections is the voter.  There are bad things like multiple voting and ballot box stuffing or losing ballot boxes, that can be blamed on politicians and corrupt officials, but those aside a larger problem remains the voter.

In the old days only landowners, who were presumed to have a stronger interest in good government, were allowed to vote.  This was of course, nonsense.  They voted in the interest of landowners.

There are five problems I can see with voters, that they vote selfish interest, that they vote prejudice, that they vote single interest, that they vote brand name (re-elect incumbents even though they know no more than that they recognize the name), and that they are easily persuaded by what is called negative campaign ads.  The five of them feed off each other to make democracy a bad way to run a country.

Politicians, of course, not being centers of moral rectitude (those who are, are defeated by those who aren't using the above factors) cynically act and campaign and vote accordingly.

There was a certain Senator from West Virginia who was thought of as a master of the Senate and a great Senator, mainly because he kept the pork running into his state.  How disgusting: he leads the fight against line-item veto (a proposal to stem such greed) and prevailed.  This was his reason for being re-elected over and over, and he boasted of it.

One of the problems is geographical legislation, which brings about pork and the representation of the prejudices of regional cultures.  At large representative bodies are therefore one obvious solution.  This also of course would reduce the chances for chicanery as there would be fewer really close elections and eliminates gerrymandering.

Of course it doesn't deal with the brand name problem and perhaps makes it even worse.  The idea of banning incumbency therefore has a great appeal.

One thing I've noticed is that members of the legal profession tend to dominate elective positions.  People accept this since they have a vague notion that these have been trained, but what they have been trained in is the use of the law to get things and deal with problems.  There is entirely too much dependence on law and litigation, but lawyers, legislating in their class interest, continue to see laws and legalism as the way to go.  It would appear that banning members of this profession (which in fact is the only erudite profession that hurts society more than it helps) might be a good idea.

Of course, elected officials need to win elections, and for this they need support and money.  At large elections would demand even more money, and although there really do exist un-bought politicians, and maybe most of them think they are, it is much easier to get someone to see your point of view if you have contributed money to him, and all businesses and special interest groups know this.

So if you must have elections to make the system seem legitimate, make the campaign paid for by the state and seriously restrict campaigns, violating free-speech and free-press out its ear.  It is not true that truth ultimately will out, and we all know it.  Even rules such as banning music in the background, or even non-mutual campaign appearances, suggest themselves.

You still have the basic problem of the prejudices of the voter and the ensuing danger of the dictatorship of the majority.  There is no way to get around this that I can think of short of severely limiting the franchise to those who demonstrate knowledge and unbiased approaches to things, in a vetting process that itself obviously would be exposed to corruption and so on.  Still, that might be better than allowing every idiot to have his or her vote.

Churchill has been quoted as saying that democracy is the worst possible system, except for the alternatives, or something like that.  One wonders if this is really true.  It seems to me a lot of possible setups simply have never been tried, and the propaganda for democratic systems nowadays would seem to rule out even a debate.  Even the autocratic systems call themselves democracies.

Judgmentalism

We must avoid being judgmental.  It does no good and often ties us to attitudes and behavior that restrict us a lot.  But, of course, people do judge, and with some it is the automatic response.  This causes the judge unhappiness and stress, but I don't think it has much effect on those judged.  In other words disobeying the command only hurts ourselves.

I was recently conned out of a substantial amount of money -- more than I really could afford -- and all during the scam people told me what it was, but I felt I would give this person such a sum if asked, anyway, so I didn't worry.

I trusted them, and they were my friend.  It really hurts when trust is violated like that, but I will not be bitter and I will (do already) forgive.  I want them back as a friend and I suspect only their shame prevents it.  It is not the loss of the money, but the loss of the friendship and the betrayal.

Others, of course tell me I should abandon the contacts and the person is not worth it and I know others who know about what happened who have done as much, even thought they were not personally hurt.

I guess I'm foolish.  Forgiving doesn't help: I'm still unhappy, just in a different way -- sad rather than angry. 

Medicine sans prescription

One of the things I like about Vietnam (and most third-world countries) is the ability to obtain most medications without a prescription.  To be sure, you are supposed to have one, but its absence seems to bother no one.

I think vested interests in other countries causes this serious limit on freedom.  Drug companies and doctors want people to have to incur the additional expense of getting medical approval.  They use the argument of protecting the public, and I suppose they are protecting the stupid and uninformed, and these types continue to agitate in Vietnam for restrictions.

What you do instead is limit advertising.  I would prefer they even eliminated brand names.  A trained pharmacist can deal with almost any set of symptoms the customer describes, and the government can impose rules about this to boot.  Bulk competitive buying by the state (or local manufacture if the foreigners persist in being too greedy) can do a wonder for prices too.

Today I read how metformin could extend everyone's lifespan several years.   It is a low-cost drug supposedly for type-2 diabetics and prediabetics, but it appears everyone would benefit from taking it routinely.  Of course with such mass use some side-effects would probably appear, especially with long-term use (mainly allergies), so alertness would be called for, although reading the posted comments that went with the article, I can see how some people blame anything that happens on whatever they are taking.  Such people should be allowed to die early.

There are, as I see it, two extremes in this pill-popping debate -- those who think taking medicine for what ails us is dangerous or even sinful, and those who pop whatever new nostrum shows its head making wonderful claims.  A middle path is called for.

There are of course drugs that I suppose have to be surrounded by legal safeguards -- things that can kill you and things that are addictive and things useful in suicides come to mind (although this last might be overkill since there are plenty of ordinary products that can do the job).  So safety before a product can even be marketed should be necessary.

Also, I think going through a pharmacist, who, regardless gives you what you want, but also gives you personal advice and warning, is  advisable.  And of course the doctor needs to be told.  No point in hiding things, even if he is going to lose his temper, from a professional you are paying good money to for advice.

Afterlife (or not dying)

We don't want to die (become extinct when our body terminates), although this does seem likely and we can't, with medicine as it is now, do anything about it.  I think at some point this will no longer be the case, but that seems a ways off.

There are of course alternatives on offer, although some of them don't seem much better than dying and a few are fearsome.  I see no point in joining some cosmic ocean, or being reborn with few, if any memories of a previous existence.  These may as well be personal extinction.

And then of course there is a Heaven or some variation.  My personal heaven would be an outdoor life on horseback and fishing, living in a tent and making fish and eggs and coffee on a fire.  However, the work parts of this, such as chopping wood or grooming the horse, as well as the unpleasant parts, such as bad weather and insects, would not be part of it.  I and others would also sit around at night before bed and sing and talk philosophy and psychiatry and religion and tell jokes and have sex.

In an earlier blog I talked about why I think the mind is a process, not thing, so the question is how does this gust of wind or flickering flame survive the brain's death?  That would seem to depend on what it is, what "mind" is, and we don't know.  We don't even know what sentience is or where it comes from.

Maybe it is something "mystical," or at least as yet undiscovered by science.  Frankly, I suspect its discovery will have to await the passing of modern scientific physical materialism and the insistence on experimental evidence to a time when scientists work with inference and reason without physical confirmation.

As process it may be like other processes we observe, and have both "wave" (process) and "particle" (matter, etc.) properties (this is misleading derived from our ways of thinking and requires a lot of mental work to really conceive, but I put it as best I can to be understood).  In that case sentience or mind, probably just forms of the same thing, could be conserved much as mass/energy and charge and momentum are conserved.

Of course that wouldn't prove much.  Energy is conserved, but degrades in a way (entropy increases) and readily changes form.  It does to my mind, though, hold a conceptual way in which rebirth might work.  A lot depends on the nature of sentience, and, if, as we infer, sentience has a tendency to persist as it is, then you would have it.

Another possibility, and one I would not be at all surprised at, would be that our life is some sort of dream or entertainment or punishment or education or even reward and when we die we also wake up to the reality above us, assuming it too is a simulation.

Motorcycle helmets as a cultural artifact

Having been trained as a cultural anthropologist, even though I never actually did any anthropology afterward, I still find cultural changes that I notice in Vietnam of some interest.

One of these has been the universal adoption of a helmet when riding a motorbike.  Vietnam is a motorbike culture, and when cheaper motorbikes from China appeared several years ago, it was a day of liberation for the rural population.  I dare say the main form of entertainment in the big cities for young people is tooling around all over the place after work or school for a few hours.

At least it was until the coming of computer games: they now give its major competition.  Motorbikes are, in my view a much better way to organize transport in a big city that hasn't been paved over with freeways than our cars.  A couple of cars and a bus conspire and block traffic for hours; the motorbike riders maneuver in and around them and are hardly at all even delayed.

But motorbikes are deadly.  Helmets are an essential minimum, along with traffic enforcement and getting off the road the drunks and the idiots who carry more than imaginable on the bike.  (I once saw six guys, all utterly smashed, on one small Japanese bike, weaving around trying to stay up.  Fortunately, they only made it a few meters before upending.)

I remember the first time I rode as a passenger on the back of one.  I sat there and chanted, "Please let this be over" over and over, wanting to close my eyes but not daring.  Now it doesn't phase me.  Amazing what one can get used to -- but from day one I always wore a helmet -- they could be bought in Vietnam because the government was encouraging them, but no one except a few frightened foreigners used them.  It's a tropical country and helmets are a bother and hot.

But they really aren't so hot once you are moving, and they help in a population determined to keep their skin from the sun so as to be as white as possible.  Women can wear scarves and so on but men can only wear caps, and they blow off.  There was a business of recovering and selling such hats.

Now that the police seriously enforced the law and everyone is in helmets, no doubt deaths have dropped, and a lot of men no longer have in their budget buying a new hat once a week.

Why I'm a poor Buddhist

There is a sense in which we can say we are all Buddhists, as they say, we have "Buddha nature," if we want what is right and true, except maybe sociopaths.  Many who even do what we see as evil are motivated by their Buddha nature, deluded though it may be.

When Gautama sat under his Bodhi tree and persisted in meditation until he hit upon it (became Enlightened), what came of it is what is called the Four Noble Truths, which, to summarize crudely, consists of the assertions that to live is to suffer, the cause of this suffering are our desires, especially our grasping desire to continue living, that this causes the cycle of rebirths (reincarnations as it is miscalled in the West) and so we continue to be born again and again in life after life of suffering, and the solution is to break the desire to live and hence avoid rebirth.

I must interject that this is by no means a summary of Buddhist teaching, as there is much more to it.

Up to the point where the teaching gets into being reborn, most people readily accept the idea that we suffer because we have desires.  After all, we either get what we want, in which case we have to hold onto it, and that is not possible, and sooner or later we will suffer loss, or we don't get what we want, in which case we suffer frustration.  I have to say this insight is profound and important and useful, but also is common sense and hardly unique to Buddhist thinking in history.

Does that mean that by accepting it and acting accordingly (watching our desires that they don't get control over us) that we are Enlightened.  It would not seem so since at the time the Buddha became enlightened all sorts of miraculous things happened, including a visit by Brahma himself.

This is often the case with myths -- things are out of proportion.  The story of how the teaching came into the world, with the meditation and miracles and so on, is out of proportion to what it is.

Still, the insight is helpful and important.  We suffer because we want things and have other desires.  We of course want sex and food and so on, and we also want to be admired by others, to be loved, to be successful and have a lot of face, to have comforts and luxuries, to be secure and safe and healthy, to have friends and family and a place in the world, to be entertained and able to learn new and interesting things, and so on.

The thing is the pursuit of these things sometimes leads to trouble or our doing things that are wrong, and often leads to frustration, since we obviously cannot have everything, and of course sometimes we necessarily must as a result experience grief and other times experience pain.

However, and here is where I think maybe I make a poor Buddhist.  There is the other side of all this -- that we also experience satisfactions and pleasures and even from time to time are able to help someone else and inevitably experience the gratification of that, even if that was not our intent. 

So while the truth of the Bodhi Hill insight is useful and undeniable, there is a further truth that it is not the entire story.  When we experience frustration, we have to remind ourselves we probably are over-reaching: when we experience true pain we remind ourselves to do something medical about it and if that is not possible then it is not possible.  When we die, well, then we die, and I don't see the point of making this fact the basis of an entire life philosophy.  To be sure death plays a role in how we approach things, but while we are alive it is less important than that we are alive.

An American in Vietnam

It's been almost fifteen years now since I first visited Vietnam, then for just a month, but since I've been stretching out the visits and now I spend most of my time here; to the extent that if my partner would hear of it I would love to sell our property in the States and only go there for visits.  He is probably right though that we are better off keeping the American link.

I have many times tried to figure out what it was about Vietnam and I guess still is that attracted me.  Part of it is of course I see the States as decaying, but that can be attributed to my own decay and probably the US has a good deal of steam left.  Still the infrastructure and culture and especially the politics of the States seem be be getting more and more "dysfunctional" (I put the word in ticks because I realize what a cliche the word has become).

One thing for sure: living in the states is a hassle.  Living overseas doesn't really help much as I still have to fill out US tax forms and maintain credit cards and US bank accounts and a drivers' license and insurance of all sorts and on and on, but I do escape most of it as my partner handles things more and more and Vietnam is a cash society, so the only real hassles are getting money here, getting steadily easier, and keeping a valid visa (a real pain in the neck).

I think, contrary to all American opinion, that Vietnam is a much freer country than the States.  All the rules in the States one has to observe, all no doubt enacted for good reasons but that persist because of vested interests, such as those about schools and about pharmaceuticals and about employing people and about simple things like who can give you a haircut and a shave -- yea -- I'm able to afford a barber's shave here -- are just either not here or not enforced (not being a lawyer I'm not quite sure).

Of course the country isn't "free" in the form that it is a one party state, but having been here and seeing first hand the implications in terms of reasonably effective governance without a self-appointed political class, I begin to see advantages.  Voter participation rates in the States tell a tale -- people there don't think the right to vote means anything anyway for a variety of reasons, including corruption, bought elections, and the fact that close elections seem to come out in favor of the party controlling the voting bureaucracy.  But that is a subject for another post -- this one is about why I live here.

One thing I noticed right away is the absence of guns and the relative safety in even the biggest cities this and a no-nonsense law enforcement and judicial system seem to provide.  Oh there is crime, and there is prostitution, and common sense is called for, but it doesn't thrust itself on you as in other places.  There is also poverty; after all Vietnam is a developing country and the culture and structure of poverty in a society take generations to mitigate, but in the time I've been observing the progress, especially in the countryside, has been palpable.  The long and short of it is I feel much safer here.

I set out to talk about why I like Vietnam, not politics, so I will get to it.  It's mainly the people, but also the land and the cuisine and a whole list of intangibles.  It is tropical and I don't like cold.  OK that is easy enough, but there are lots of tropical countries.  It comes down to the friendliness of the inhabitants.  Only Scandinavia and the Netherlands are friendlier, and in many countries I've visited I've experienced serious unpleasantness.  I suppose there are those here who don't like foreigners either, as that is part of a "bigot" personality trait that I suppose is present in a minority everywhere, but here I think maybe they tend to just avoid you, end of story.

Vietnam doesn't have the "rules" either like not showing your feet or not looking at someone or not smiling or talking to a stranger or not touching someone you are talking to or not hugging a good friend.  There is something of a code for what to wear for business, and one can be pretentious in one's clothes if one likes, but being Western I am forgiven all that and can dress simply the way I like, which means knee-shorts and pull-on and comfortable slip-on shoes.

Did I mention smiling?  In Vietnam it is the thing to do.  Smiling is not as in some countries seen as a sign of untrustworthiness.  It is seen as a sign of friendliness and the Vietnamese are friendly.  If I get up on the wrong side of bed, everyone in the household notices and asks if something is wrong, to the point that I cannot indulge myself in being miserable but have to cheer up.

Right and wrong exist independently of human opinion

Any truly eternal ethical laws would be independent of God.  What is right is right and what is wrong is wrong, and this applies to any divinities as well as to people.

This of course assumes that right and wrong exist as objective, real "things."  One is tempted to say they are analogous to ideas of beauty and ugliness, entirely in the eye of the beholder.  But beauty is not entirely in the eye of the beholder (while superficially this is so we have to recognize that beauty does have a deeper quality that outlasts cultures and fashions).

A better analogy might be right and wrong are analogous to truth and falsehood.  Even though people have varying ideas of what is true and what is not, we tend in the end to agree that truth and falsehood exist on their own independent of our opinions.

Don't confuse human ideas of right and wrong with real right and wrong.  Human ideas change and indeed seem to progress (slavery is not condemned as wrong), but in the end mankind has always known slavery was wrong, and just buried its head.  At least those who stopped to think objectively about it reached that conclusion.

Persistent religious belief

The number of serious Christians in China is estimated to be between 20 and 90 million.  Sorry for the imprecision in the number but that sort of thing in a country like China is hard to measure.  The actual number is probably on the higher side of this range (remember that China is a seriously big country).

These are mostly people in rural areas that have been Christian for generations and their descendants now moving to cities as part of China's overall planned urbanization, where they become more visible.  How have they persisted in spite of official condemnation and all sorts of discriminations?  The answer is easy: they indoctrinate their children, and no government in the world can defeat that short of breaking up families.

What you were taught as a child by your parents is almost certainly what you will believe, especially if it is done lovingly without brute force and consistently and with the parents setting a non-hypocritical example.  Those who do flirt with other belief systems in the vast majority of cases become lost sheep who experience the joy and peace of returning to the flock a decade or so later, all the time they experienced fear and guilt.

Those who don't return to the flock tend to develop hate for whatever they were indoctrinated into, and serious resentment over what was "done to them" as a child and the suffering this put them through until they were finally able to make a clean break. 

Thus religions and superstitions persist in spite of modern knowledge and rational thought.  It has to do with the way human beings are wired.

Indoctrinated belief vs. learned opinion

I like to make a distinction between "belief" and "opinion."  This kinda reflects ordinary usage but is also a bit technical.  One obtains a belief by being indoctrinated, generally in childhood but for some people this is possible at any age, while one gets an opinion by learning about it and becoming persuaded that the evidence is good enough to say it is probably true.

We aren't really consciously aware of our beliefs; we are about our opinions.  That is to say a belief is taken for granted, like the furniture you sit on in the living room, you rarely if ever actually notice its presence.  Opinions on the other hand tend to get scrutinized more often.  Beliefs are not questions and usually have aspects designed to prevent their being questioned, such as "faith" and guilt for doubting.  Most people however don't really need these crutches -- they believe out of habit and instinct, and in fact react with shock and anger when someone doubts or challenges them.  This is especially the case when they realize they are not able to defend the belief rationally but must resort to rationalization and logical fallacies and slogans.  (Of course the "realization" I mention is not conscious, but is only felt as what is called "cognitive dissonance.")

The ability to "believe" like that seem wired into us, something we evolved as animals, probably as a group coherence mechanism, and that has been supported by the fact that failure to believe has throughout history been a dangerous course.

Beliefs can be good and give us comfort and peace and even joy, but they often are delusions held in place by childhood indoctrination that divide mankind and have created the possibility if not the likelihood of our causing our own extinction.  They need to be identified, scrutinized, and then either converted to opinions or expunged.  That so few people do this is probably because it is so against the interests of religions and ideologies and governing institutions that it tends to be discouraged and suppressed.

Skepticism

To take an old joke from Oscar Wilde, skepticism is like society; it is downplayed by those who aren't for one reason or another, usually an inability or unwillingness to think honestly.

Enlightenment

Musings About Enlightenment 06/19/05

I think that much that parades itself as "being in touch with oneself," or "being in harmony with the universe," and so on, is air-headed. The concept of enlightenment as the end product of Buddha-hood probably is the same. To have "answers" come to one sitting under the Bod-ha tree, as the myth reports, is not credible to me.

We all have moments of realization – of mental lucidity, and sitting quietly as we mull problems increases the chances we will find answers. However, a conversion on the way to Damascus is to be seriously questioned. We should never fool ourselves into thinking that we, too, do not have the ability to be carried away with ourselves.

Ignorance is one thing. We all are ignorant about most things and unfortunately tend to hide this from ourselves. We are all children trying to figure out the thunder and thinking we know. The desire to know leads to the desire for enlightenment, but one does not achieve enlightenment without removing desire. (I don’t practice Zen. That paradox is enough for me).

I do have faith in reason. “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal.” What is there in reason not to put faith in? Where we get in trouble is not when we are rational, but when we are not. I and almost everyone I know can see the syllogism, and has no difficulty agreeing that the conclusion “follows.” Where does this ability come from?

Oh, sure, the ability does give us a certain advantage over species who cannot reason things out, so if ability to reason is available, we can understand that natural selection would favor individuals who have it. However, that doesn’t explain where it comes from. I figure it comes from our spirit.

Karma is not supernatural or mysterious

There is nothing mysterious about karma.

Doing harm to others is like gambling; you may "win" short run, but in the long run you always lose.  The world is just simply built that way.

Vietnam's government

Since this blog intended at first to be mostly about Vietnam, and since there has been precious little about Vietnam in it, I think I will try to correct that a little now.

Vietnam is a free independent republic that tries and generally has good relations with everyone.  There aren't too many countries around like that.  It is mainly socialist, but with an active private market and has shown remarkable growth and prosperity over the last few years, so that living standards and other standards, such as education, health, transport, and so on, have improved markedly.

The biggest difference between Vietnam and most Western states is that it is a single-party state, with only one political party.  Over time this has evolved more and more into a meritocracy, where party membership goes to the educated and those who served well in the military, as well as those willing to do the extra work required.

I personally think this is the closest one can reasonably get to Plato's concept of the ideal state, although the selection is not made in childhood but from among adults.  Government decisions then follow, largely through consensus building.

Jainism

Westerners are not the only ones to have discovered atheism. Here is another case, Jainism, traditionally founded by Vardhaman Mahavira (about the same time as Buddhism was traditionally founded, although in both cases the tradition may be older).

I try here to provide a few of its teachings, with comparisons to Buddhism, but please be kind and forgive errors and important things I am not aware of – to be in a position to be accurate and complete in such things requires lifetimes of study.

1. The universe is neither created nor sustained by a supernatural being. It is without beginning or end and operates in accordance with natural law (Buddhism posits an uncaused and unknowable beginning to the universe, but agrees that all operates under natural law). I have been taught this and I suppose it is true, but one has to wonder in both cases if these traditions, until recently, had any firm idea of what natural law might be, or at least if they had a Baconian or similar sense of it.

2. Existence has two categories, mind and non-mind (some Buddhism tends to the idea that non-mind is a sub-category of mind).

3. The law of karma is a law of automatic cause and effect. Karma comes by non-violence (Buddhism also posits a law of karma, but sees it as both negative and positive; also, Buddhism sees all cause and effect as examples of karma – that is to say that often Buddhists see the cause and effect of classical physics as an example of karma too).

4. Karma leaves when there is violence, detachment, anger, pride, infatuation, greed, hatred, or craving (Buddhists see such behavior leading to the accumulation of negative karma, except for detachment, which is seen as desirable). It may be that there is a difference in the meaning of words here, with one group defining detachment as absence of compassion. Buddhists emphasize compassion but applied in a detached way

5. Attachment to material objects is the main cause of bondage and leads to greed and jealousy (Jains identify the problem as bondage, Buddhists as one of suffering).

6. There is no need for the rituals of the Vedas (Hinduism tends to insist that the world will fall apart if the rituals are not sustained).

7. There is no God or gods (Buddhists make no such assertions, seeing such matters as speculative).

8. The goal of life is liberation. (Buddhists call it enlightenment).

9. Vegetarianism is necessary. (Buddhists encourage vegetarianism).

It is likely that both Buddhism and Jainism and other subcontinent traditions come from the same extremely ancient root. This may be as far back as the ancient Indus Valley (Harrappa) cultures. While both traditions may have specific beginnings with particular founders, the very physical existence of these individuals cannot be proven and I am not willing to go so far as to say their existence is likely or unlikely (many scholars will say the existence of an important religious figure is “likely,” I tend to suspect to be friendly and maybe retain access). If these “founders” were real people they may also have been kernels of myth clusters around which the actual traditions later developed, or they shaped and modified existing tradition ― if would be difficult to say they founded them, since main ideas had already been around a long time.

Hinduism shares characteristics with Indo-European religions (especially pantheons of deities specializing in different aspects of existence) and seems to be therefore derived more from the Aryan invaders. Hinduism, however, does also share with the other two traditions the ideas of karma and rebirth, so we can discern that the Hindu tradition picked them up over the ages in India.

Even more on free will

A comment if I may about mites making choices.  For that matter elevators make choices.  You push button three and it goes to the third floor.  These things are called reflexes and natural selection programs them as well as do engineers.

Evidence that we are loaded with such reflexes, some of them amazingly complex in the range of behaviors available, is not valid that we don't have free will.

We are also sentient beings, meaning that we experience much of our existence, through senses and emotions, and natural selection has also used these phenomena to arrange for possible subtleties of choice beyond what is possible with programming that nevertheless are by no means free will.  The sudden powerful anger of a parent when their child is harmed is built into us by natural selection and serves us, or at least the progeny.  Behavior in such a state is not free will either, but a demonstration of that fact would not constitute proof that free will does not exist.

Our minds are not "things" (as the Buddhist points out) but process flows and they can make choices.  They are usually determined by things like past experience and personality and habit, but not always.  I think it takes someone with a little training in mindfulness (mind being aware of mind) to see that it is indeed possible to deliberately and willfully do things of our free will, even whim, if you will.

Atheist Buddhism

I go to Temple (Buddhist) and participate in the rituals and contribute to their charities.  As George Washington (a non-Christian deist) said, "attending church is something a gentleman does."  One nice thing about Temple as opposed to Church is you don't have to listen to sermons and you can do the various rituals or not as you please (some do require physical abilities beyond me at my age and weight).

Lots of atheists feel Buddhism is in the end a good thing so long as it doesn't take too many young men and turn them into navel starers (there are some who are better off in monasteries, at least for awhile).  I don't buy most of the Buddha stories but I do think we are reborn and that there is a non-materialist aspect to existence, and I think the philosophy about the root nature of our unhappiness and unease is close to the mark. 

Debunkers, skeptics, cynics, and believers

A "debunker" is someone who doubts some hairy story and actually goes to the effort of checking the assertions to see if they are factual or not.  Usually of course they are not.  I can see why believers don't like them and would censor them if they could.

A "skeptic" is just someone who doesn't accept unusual or exotic claims without damn good evidence.  They tend to be of a lazier sort than the debunkers and are prone to make logical arguments but leave it at that.  I think that tends to be where I am most of the time.  The religious types who have been indoctrinated, generally as children, don't like these at all, as they like their comfortable beliefs and don't want them doubted.

A "cynic" is a step beyond the skeptic and is in fact in some ways closer to the believer, especially when it comes to "official" versions of things, and as a result is prone to accept conspiracy theories that fit with their political views.

And then there are the legions of "believers" who rely on faith rather than evidence and reason.  A skeptic only has opinions, the others believe, and when cornered inevitably depend on their right to believe whatever, or on the tremendous virtue of having faith in the face of plain sense.

Unending free will debate

Well of course there is no soul; I keep forgetting that this is what Westerners think when you assert mind and body.  Out of body arises mind, but it has its own being, not as a thing but as a process -- the proverbial "chain of consciousness."  When we sit quietly (this is in fact a popular form of meditation) and "watch" ourselves (that can be misleading because what you are looking at is very recent short-term memories), we can see how the process flows.

Where or how free will arises I don't know, but I tend to take it as an assumption necessary for almost any philosophical knowledge and for any assumption of values.  Plus I am quite sure I can ascertain when I am mindfully exercising it and when, as is most of the time done for efficiency, I am just going with the flow.


I don't disagree with how what I say "sounds," especially to a materialist ear.  It is all inferential; I am persuaded I have the ability to exercise genuine choices, but of course it is impossible to prove that what I think has been an actual mindful choice on my part is not in reality just another aspect of my personalty that I don't notice, no matter how careful I am.  I really, truly find that too much of a stretch, that I am more aware of myself than that, but it remains a possibility.

Here is the rub: if we deny free will and assume some sort of determinism either by a deity or by mechanical processes, or maybe some sort of random choice at the quantum level (which would no more be free will than a classical deterministic process), then we enter a pointless universe and there is no point in even talking about it.  It's similar to the solipsist: there is no point having a discussion with such a person since only he or she exists and is in effect talking to itself.

Three take-aways:  first, I and most people think they have free will and we construct our society and most of our philosophy on that assumption, second, it is not hard to carry out introspective tests to convince oneself the mindful use of actual choice is possible, and, third, without free will as an operating assumption we only talk in circles.

Alternative medicine for the dying

I think someone who is dying and loves life will try all sorts of things the seem to have some sense to them.  Approved medicine tends to come first, followed by religion (prayer, going to temple, etc.) followed by the traditional medicines of the culture followed by practically anything people suggest or they themselves think up.

Cost and false hope and the potential of the treatments doing additional harm are the objections to these efforts, but sheesh just the western treatments which only defer death can bankrupt a family, and I see nothing wrong with hope -- even false hopes help in other ways, and surely we don't insist that regular accepted medical treatments don't also often do their own harm via side effects.

A bit more on free will and conscious choice

We often have discernible choices, but we must be mindful to be aware of them; otherwise we act out of habit or our desires.  Therefore free will is rarely utilized and more often than not our subconscious has already decided before we act.  I can deliberately and freely make my toe move, but if instead I think to my big toe, sometime shortly, move, then my subconscious actually does it.

The conscious we think of as a thing is really a self-perpetuating process not unlike a wave, although a good deal more complicated and with more inputs than just the energy of the rock thrown in the lake.

What is right and good

We each have to decide for ourselves what is right and good.  No one else can do it for us.  That doesn't mean there aren't standards we can apply, and we need to train ourselves in non-judgmentalism, mindfulness, compassion, awareness and understanding of the needs and delusions and compulsions of others, being aware but not judging them and of course first off is compassion and personal moral rectitude.

Free will

I have no problem with free will and think it is a necessary thing if there is to be judgment, responsibility and even purpose in life.

I don't have an omniscient deity in my thinking creating paradoxes, and I don't have a mechanistic universe winding itself down with inevitability either.

I doubt we exercise our ability to make free will choices most of the time; doing so requires mindful choice, and most people never even heard of the idea.  They just do what they do in accordance with their nature, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.

Psychic reading

A good "reader" can identify things about you that it is good for you to know.  I don't think it's magic, but just a skill some people have, sometimes learned, sometimes intuitive.  Once they have your main issues, their advice can be great.

The ability unfortunately includes the ability to be a fraud, pulling cons on people who will later say, "He [or she] must be genuine -- he knew things he couldn't possibly have known."

Of course they often make guesses, and certain guesses, like a recent loss, are very likely to be correct.  Then they assess how serious the loss was to you before proceeding.  Then, again, a wrong guess can also be covered in a myriad of ways, with something like, "What I mean is. . .."

Jesus' Sacrifice

I have to say that is one of the weirdest ideas invented by people -- that one "worships" a deity with sacrifices -- by killing something, but it is so widespread an idea in so many religions, but at the same time is so illogical and, if I may say, just plain dumb, that one really wonders what in our evolution might have led to such a way of thinking.

Christianity of course took the idea to perhaps its ultimate irrationality by deciding through some mysterious magical way the death of a piece of God himself was needed, although of course it was a something of a sham since the death was not real and the particular piece of God (the Son) was very quickly brought back to life.  Something like someone giving you a gift and then taking it back three days later -- not really a gift.

Defining atheism

We need to use words as they are generally understood and be careful we don't get into the trap of having our own special meanings and hence both not understanding and not being understood.

Case in point is "atheism," which to me I find has the special meaning of "no God or gods belief."  The agnostic falls into that category, as he or she does not "believe" in a God.  I realize however that that is not what the ordinary person means.  The ordinary person hearing "atheist" thinks there is a positive assertion that there cannot be a God.  Well of course I strongly doubt that anyone would be so foolish as to think that, so in the end we are all "agnostics."

I nevertheless am in a quandary since I find "atheist" to be the more honest self-description.  I am pretty much as sure that there is no God as I am of anything.

Instinct, sentience, and intellect

If we accept evolution, then we have no choice but to accept that we are animals, and as such if we have intellect then so do animals.  It is part of our evolution.  We may have specialized in intellect where other animals specialize in other things, but they all "think" in some way or another.

It starts off the way we program computers:  If such and such happens then do so and so."  In nature we call that reflex.  If a bright light hits the eye, shrink the pupil.  These are almost entirely outside our conscious control, but not always -- while usually we breathe without thinking about it, we are able, for at least awhile, to override the body and hold our breath -- but sooner or later in this case our will is overridden by our instinct.

Somewhere in evolution the phenomenon known as "sentience" began to appear.  Animals began to experience existence and thereby modify reactions rather than just carry out programmed reflexes.  This is a mystery -- how we perceive rather than just sense; how we experience rather than just exist.  We can see from studies of brain structures and chemicals that most mammals and birds are sentient this way.  They perceive things and thereby can have more subtle instincts and even develop will and intellect.

Of course it may be that it requires language (not just symbolic communication but real language) to think philosophy, so it may be that only humans truly have intellect -- but the precursors are found in many other animals.  I watch my cats and I can see will and thought and differences in intelligence, as well, of course, as general cattiness.

Legitimate religion

There is no point having a religion if there is no evidence it has at least some validity.  Non-theist religions base their legitimacy on whether or not the teachings make sense and are good.  Theist religions base their legitimacy on revelation, which seems to me to need pretty good evidence before being legitimate.

Infinite universe or just big?

If the universe is infinite, we will never know it.  It will always be a case of the end might be just over the next rock.

Maybe the most common logical fallacy is that if something is not understood it means God or aliens or something along those lines.

That I can't understand something is my failure, and proves nothing.

Global warming and the solar cycle

It astonishes me how some people bray their ignorance of scientific things every chance they get, completely unaware of what asses they are showing themselves to be.  Local weather events are only slightly related to overall global trends, and very often go in the opposite direction.  They prove nothing.

The planet is warming; we have lots of evidence of that in melting glaciers, flora and fauna moving northward, longer growing seasons, and so on.  We also know the sun has over the last few hundred years shown an eleven year cycle in its activity, but this most recent high was much less than in the past.  There are reasons to think but no real proof that this has a small effect on climate.  We also know that levels of certain gases, known to raise global temperatures, have been increasing.  There is argument over the significance of this, with a considerable majority of climatologists telling us it presents a danger.

Now if the sun is going to decrease its activity, and we don't know that it will, this may give the world a little extra time as the warming may as a result decrease, and even for a while cool down a bit.  That would appear to be good news.  Still, efforts to reduce the emission of global warming gases would appear to be the wisest course by far.

Qualia defined

I look at "qualia" as experiences: phenomena two people can share only if they both have had the experience.  Anyone naturally sited "knows" what "blue" is but someone blind from birth has no idea and to them it is just a word sighted people use to describe one of their colors.  Now it may be that your "blue" and my "blue" are not the same; this is unimportant.

This will I think be the biggest problem we will have if it ever happens that we meet aliens.  Our experiences -- colors, tastes, internal sensations such as hunger and pain, and even our emotions -- fear, love, anxiety, jealousy -- will all be uncommunicable unless we share analogous sense and emotion systems, something that is probably not likely.

Moral free will

We all have what is thought of as free will, meaning we can make choices uncontrolled by our past or our personalities or our habits, but we rarely do as we are generally not paying attention and do things automatically.  Actually that is for the best as if we think about each choice we won't get much done.

The area of moral decisions is where this becomes important.  Our natures may incline us to selfish or otherwise harmful acts, but we can and many if not most generally do regularly overrule these natural acts to do what is right.

Dreaming about Milwaukee

I have a problem with repetitive dreams that involve property I own and collect rent on and whatnot.  It's upsetting when I realize I'm not so rich.

The same thing happens when I visit a place I've dreamed about.  For example I have several times I dreamed about Milwaukee, but only recently visit it.  The dreams had it all wrong and confused the devil out of me.

I think we are better off just forgetting our dreams; they always get it wrong.

Certainty and uncertainty

There is no "proof" or "disproof" of anything.  There are only opinions with varying levels of confidence.  "Faith" and "belief" are for those who want to have certainty but they are denied it in spite of their self-congratulatory self-deception.

I tend with a few exceptions to follow the views of the experts -- those who have spent their lives studying the subject -- more on the hard sciences (physics, etc.), less things like biology and almost not at all with religious and paranormal and political and historical "experts" who have an agenda.

Would aliens eat us?

Well we wouldn't serve as food as our chemistries would be incompatible.  For resources, that's kinda hard to imagine too since surely the same resources are all over the place closer in.  The only point I could see to visiting us is curiosity -- maybe of the tourist type but that would be too expensive; more likely the unmanned scientific probe type.

The real threat is if they send colonists, but it would be a lot easier to find uninhabited places for that (and more ethical -- we need to recognize that they probably are ethical beings or they would not have survived very long).

Frankly I don't think they are even out there.  There is no evidence and it seems to me if they've been around millions of years there would be.  Further, the luck required to produce a technological civilization that lasts millions of years or so must be overwhelmingly chancy, so odds are we are alone or so close to alone it doesn't matter.

Abortion, pragmatic law

Many base their thinking about abortion on the wrong premise.  They think if something is "wrong," it should be illegal.

Largely speaking that serves to work, but "wrongness" is a slippery concept and people will disagree based on culture and belief.  It is at heart a religious matter.  For a secular state, where religion is kept at arm's length, a different basis for deciding what should be illegal than wrongness is needed -- namely the effect of the act on society and its members.  Even when it is shown that there is a definite negative effect, the power of the law should be applied selectively and carefully, as the very act of making something illegal can make its effects even worse or create other negative effects.

I think abortions are immoral and would ever personally have one and would urge others to seek alternatives.  I do not think morality is an all or nothing thing; some immoral acts are more immoral than others (and in fact some immoral acts are overwhelmed by an ensuing immorality of not doing it -- such as lying to the Gestapo about the whereabouts of a Jew).

So the relevant questions regarding making something illegal have to do with pragmatic effects on society, not moral grounds.