Unhappy -- kinda -- childhood

I see I have had autobiographical notes here and there in this blog, but not about my childhood.  Interesting.  I use to count the days of my life from age twenty, thinking that if I were now fifty, and I lived beyond ninety,, then I had lived less than half my life.  The years of childhood didn't even count.

And I guess they don't.  I have few childhood memories, and the ones I do are morose or bitter or empty or meaningless or plodding, certainly not happy.  Of course this is not relevant, we can overcome such dull upbringing, but I think I need to write a bit more.

My mom was a little over-protective, and told us over and over to the point that she drove us nuts, how much she loved it, but then she would go into a temper and hysterics over trivialities and I at least thought it was all words.  I now know she had serious medical problems involving a woman's organs and that this involves emotions, and while she seemed horrid she was also loving.  At any rate while I endured a lot of verbal abuse, there was never anything physical and I had not fear.

My father loved my mom and I always had the suspicion he had us to please her, because she wanted babies, but we didn't stay babies.

Being gay I was always a bit effeminate, but my dad, wise in this by intuition I'm sure, gently steered me away from that and I generally acted normal.  Yes, I was "sis" during my junior high schools, but I also excelled in school and this was envied, so I managed and wrote down the slurs as envy.  I was also physically big, and for an effeminate kid that is a huge offset.

What I always had was my intellectual "smarts"-- the kind that gets good grades -- straight A grades.  I never got elected to anything but was still valedictorian and got all kinds of scholarships and all that junk, and a big deal was made it at graduation and my class gave me a standing ovation.  Afterward I remember so clear I was milling about getting congrats and things and my dad walks up and says, time to go, you had enough of this.  I guess my ego was a bit out of line an it was showing so my dad did what he had to do, but did he have to do it that way?

Anyway that summer I took the train for Harvard and only went back a few times over the years.  It is interesting that for various reasons I never went to either of my parents' funerals.

Communist legitimacy

Communism and Fascism are "opposing" ideologies that hate each other, but their behavior in power seems a lot alike. Kinda like Christians and Muslims that way -- they both try to use legal criminal methods to enforce how they think people should behave and what people should do and both are capable of producing fanatics.

What I see happening in the two "Communist" countries that seem likely to remain so for awhile (China and Vietnam) is the evolution of an elite who run the country, not selected as in the past from ideological purity and corruption and nepotism, but selected from among those who finish college and/or military duty successfully or with honors. Some ideological "purity" will probably be needed, but more along Leninist lines, not Marxist and certainly not Stalinist or Maoist. In short most of the party members will be a genuine elite. This will avoid the problems of politics and the corruption and money and stupid voters who ruin Western democracy. The danger of course is that party members will always want to somehow get their children also in, and this will be an ongoing issue.

Then, again, the Party stays legitimate in most local eyes now because it has produced prosperity, but this has largely been sheer luck, as the party leadership is arbitrary and changes policy too often and too stupidly. However, the world has been doing well (in spite of all the complaints) and so they have been able to ride the rising tide. They need more professional, less political and certainly less corrupt people in power. They no longer have any legitimacy out of ideology (the rising of the proletariat and all that), so they need a better source of legitimacy than one that could vanish in any world turn down. I think the idea of a fairly selected, competent elite might work, if they actually do it.

 

Doing what is right

We want to do what is right because it is right, not because it will gain us a reward, such as others treating us better.  To some extent this does happen but in the real world there are those who take and never give.

This brings to mind the concept of karma, not a magical cloud of good and bad energy we accumulate but the fact that to a large extent evil people end up in places like jail or worse and good people do get treated better.  It is not guaranteed, as I just said, but it does happen.  More important, when we do what is right it changes us for the better and vice-versa.  The more evil we do, the easier evil becomes, the more good we do the more natural it becomes.  In short, we make what we are by what we do.

Free will is fun to think about but pointless to argue

I am sitting at a red light in the middle of the night with no traffic anywhere, and consider running the light in spite of the law.  Maybe I will, maybe I won't.  If I do I can assert this is my free will, but it may be just that my bladder is sending me signals to get home.  If I don't, I can assert too that this is my free will, but it may be that this time my bladder was silent.  We can always find causes for whatever we choose to do.  The assertion that free will is free cannot be decided that way as far as I can imagine.  

That doesn't mean I don't think we have free choices we can make, but mostly what we do is predetermined by our nature -- our genes, our past experiences, our karma, if you will.  The argument that the will must be free or else all is pointless is I think persuasive, but not logically.  It is like many other questions, such as solipsism, whether there is a reality, whether or not there really is causality or it is just an illusion.  We choose to act as though these things are either true or false because we don't like the consequences of the alternative answer -- that is, that all is meaningless.  But maybe all is meaningless anyway.

In short these are questions it is fun to think about, but pointless to argue.

Icons versus idols

I never understood the Western fear of idolatry.  Now banning the worship of money or family or a country or a leader, those things I understand, but banning rituals that involve statues is silly.  Everyone knows it is just a statue, not a god or something.  The Catholics and the Buddhists get it about right -- they are icons, not idols -- a huge difference.  I also don't understand why depictions are prohibited but geometric figures are not.  Who is to say that God isn't a triangle?

The world has always had assassins and terrorists and will always have them.  It is a mental phenomenon I don't pretend to understand, except I think it involves a huge ego combined with an understanding that most of us don't matter in the world.  Among religions, many Muslims demonstrate a religious ego that is astounding if it weren't such a stupid set of beliefs.

Now a comment about the theme, "something from nothing."  I think the biggest problem those who object to the universe somehow coming into existence from nothing is that they have an intuitive notion of what "nothing" might be, but nothing rigorous.  It is just an intuitive concept we evolved as we grew up but really have no idea what we might be talking about when we use the word.

A true nothingness, without space or time, would not have time.  It would not go on forever and ever because there would be no time for it to go on in.  I think this is quite a mouthful to try to chew, and some people cannot get their minds out of the box they have that is to them "common sense" and conceive a no-time situation.

What is possible in a true nothingness?  Well it seems the question is without meaning. 

Now is it possible to say that nothingness cannot exist?  There is a sense this sentence is true, since saying something cannot exist contradicts the concept of nothingness.  Nothing is defined as lack of existence, so nothing cannot exist.  How can something that cannot exist, exist?

Maybe that is just a language game and we could rearrange the definition of "exist" to include the null set by special exception.  

True belief and science

True believers always can't learn science if it doesn't support the belief. This is part of belief. One breaks belief only slowly by introducing cognitive dissonance, the slow realization that what is believed does not fit reality. Unfortunately the human mind is good at rationalization, and even when we can't think up a rationalization there are churches and other organizations ready to provide them.

I think a rational person will seek out beliefs and rip them out of their minds. They are put there through indoctrination, not learning, and do not belong and cause immense harm in the end. The most we should allow ourselves is opinion -- sometimes strongly held, usually not -- with an ongoing willingness to change our minds and not to rationalize.

Most of the beliefs we have came to us as children before our rational facilities were mature (with some they never mature) and we hold onto them because of instincts we all have to hold onto what we were taught as children. Sometimes beliefs come other ways, as through propaganda (the use of emotion to convince -- not just hate and disgust but also love and awe and beauty). The only valid reason for accepting something as true is that the preponderance of the valid evidence supports it and any evidence that doesn't is invalid in some way.

Queer baiters

I'm sure every member of every minority group sometimes wonders what it would be like if they were not Even south-paws. But we are what we are. That others are bigoted and only seem to want to make our lives more difficult and want to hurt us is what they are.

Mindfulness

Being mindful is nothing complicated; it is really just another word for being aware, being conscious, with the added idea of being aware that you are aware.  It takes constant practice, but not hard practice, and I use it to keep from getting in other people's way.  Being conscious that I am blocking someone's way and getting out of their way is a good place to start.

It is useful in staying out of trouble -- knowing where your feet are, where your head is and what is in front of you, knowing how others hear what you are saying.  It also helps in dealing with things.  You know it is hot; mindfulness about it (knowing you know how hot it is) somehow make the heat easier to deal with).

Of course maybe the most important consequence is being mindful of one's emotional feelings.  Being aware that you are angry -- saying to yourself, "My I am angry" will dissipate the anger.  

Armies of Christ

It is sometimes said that Christianity conquered the world by the sword.  I would say that is not technically accurate. It used the sword and other things, like burning people alive, to suppress dissent, but the actual conquest was more subtle and less violent.

Basically you have two religious groups, the "pagans," and the Christians, and the latter are associated with a past great civilization and a complicated and superstitious plan of salvation (but they were superstitious people already believing in the value of sacrifice in lifting curses). The new religion, because of its history, has more prestige.

What they would do was get the king baptized, sometimes by force, sometimes by persuasion, and maybe everybody else. That was the foot in the door -- the old beliefs persisted -- but they would then get control of what education there may be, and safely send in missionaries, and slowly the old beliefs would fade out (it generally took a couple centuries, and was never completely complete).

The Muslim "conquest" of North Africa and the initial Christian "conquest" of Rome happened in similar ways. That is, nominal Christian at first, but the children and the grand-children become less and less nominal and more and more orthodox.

One should also remember that when the people in power are a certain religion, the ambitious and those who want to get along tend to go along.

Pornography and political philosophy

Pornography doesn't much bother me, but pandering does. I think if a man or a woman wants to walk around in the nude, that should be permitted. Few will do it and they will tend to only be the pretty ones, so much the better. It is to my mind far better than some drunken fat slob wearing pants that when he bends over you get a huge view of butt crack.

I think porn does serve a social purpose of enabling people who can't find partners to relieve themselves rather than visit prostitutes, and there are some fetishes that are far better done in the imagination that really acted out. I would love to see it decrease prostitution, which is dangerous and stupid and spreads disease and criminality. I notice that those denouncing the increasing acceptance of what they think is pornography don't seem to notice how common prostitution is and has always been.

There are a group of "political philosophers" (mostly prominent in the sixties) who have repeatedly declared the decline of the West. These are serious men and their writings are carefully studied, but I am skeptical. I think they are just aging and therefore don't like the newer generation's disrespect for the old rules (which is an ongoing never-ending tale).

The child taboo is a good one, but it should really be children here. The hysteria accompanying a love affair between a fifteen year old and a teacher is just a sign of society being sick. The relationship needs keeping and dealing with privately by parents and school authorities Now of course a seven year old is another matter and clearly the child needs every form of protection society can provide.

Jehovah

Aramaic was the lingua franka of the Levant and Mesopotamia, just as Greek was of much of the East and Latin of the West.

This is one of the problems with the New Testament.  It was written in Greek, some parts better Greek than others, and when it quoted the OT it used the Greek LXX, not the Hebrew original that real Jews were raised on.  That is why the writers of the NT seem to have no hint that the Tetragrammaton even existed.  (A real Hebrew of the time and period would have known about it and would not dare use the LXX substitution "Adonai." )  So the NT was written by Greeks, who do seem to know about the existence of Aramaic but not much, and seem to see Jesus speaking Greek.  Indeed, when an Aramaic expression is introduced, it is prefaced by things like "as is said.""

Jehovah's Witnesses, in their version of the New Testament, put in "Jehovah" in the quotes from the OT where it belongs, but this is their invention, and is not found in any of the old MSS of the NT.  This at least is better than most Christians, who try to forget the "name" ever existed -- it is a bit of an embarrassment that even Jesus appears in the NT as ignorant of the Name of God used thousands of times in the original OT.  He never even addresses the superstition of the time and of Jews today that the name should not be pronounced out loud (a bit like Valdemort).  As anti-superstitious as Jesus is supposed to have been, this is indeed strange (unless of course one realizes there was no Jesus and the movement was a Greek invention patterned after their other mystery cults).

Are Lesbians gay?

Homosexuals are both men and women attracted to the same sex. Gay is an unoffensive word one can use to refer to homosexuals in more casual contexts.

The word "lesbian" is fine for female homosexuals. We seem to have no equivalent for male homosexuals.

I have a suspicion that the female homosexual population has women in it who do not want to be associated with male homosexuals. The behaviors are very different, as is the society. Still, when the two groups join hands and admit they are all in the same boat, they do so much better.

I remember a "lesbian" party my partner and I were invited to by our lesbian neighbor, and we were the only men there, but we were well treated and accepted.(It was remarked to me afterward that one particularly "anti-male" woman who was there commented later that we weren't typical gay men at all. Maybe not, I guess.

Converting Christians

You should know by now that I am an atheist of a general Buddhist philosophy (but without the rebirth and Nirvana and all that). Most Buddhists, by Christian standards, would be considered atheists since even those who think there are gods are using a word that shouldn't be translated "god" but only "tremendously good people who have attained exalted state temporarily".

I appreciate Christians when they are good Christians and find them disgusting when they use their religion for prejudice and discrimination and so on. I think as a group they are indoctrinated, and therefore can't often see through the rank absurdity of what their religion teaches. Hence I try to be gentle. There is no need to convert them -- if they die Christian they are no better or worse off than the rest of us.

Politics and global warming

That carbon dioxide is good for plants is well known --- at least they grow faster -- up to a point, but with unknown consequences, that vary from species to species. This is not at all relevant and that it keeps getting repeated just shows how absent of real evidence the deniers have. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

The earth will eventually warm enough that what it radiates is back in line with incoming energy -- at a higher temperature. Our society will have to adjust, if it can, because of the stupidity of people giving stupid politicians political cover from what the scientific community knows.

I see an attack on the "scientific consensus." To a large extent the specialists in any given field have been trained by the previous generation's specialists, as well as carrying out years of their own research (known as the graduate student and then the "publish or perish" route to tenure or a fellowship. There are generally, then, in any given specialty, maybe a hundred or so people specializing and experts in a given field. It ain't an easy thing to get into. 

Nowadays, to succeed in this, one must not let ideological (religious or political or whatever) preconceptions in the door -- one finds one soon exist it if one does. One must be interested only in demonstrable truth. It is okay, and in fact great, to propose wild-ass notions, even when they contradict known truths, but it's kinda subtle on how hard one pushes them, hard enough to stimulate approximate tests, but not so hard as to be a wild card.

Take for example the acceleration of the expansion of the universe, which no one predicted or expected in the least, yet it was universally accepted almost immediately after the evidence had been produced. So mental flexibility is needed. Again, there is continental drift, which had been percolating a generation, but not able to gain acceptance because of the obvious facts that whole continents, no matter how slowly, do not have any way or mechanism to move around. That is until one was found (sea bottom spreading). All at once things that had been problematic to the geologists and paleontologists because clear, and the consensus shifted within months.

When it comes to global warming, the theory and mechanism are in place and well demonstrated, the data is going largely as expected (a big volcano could put it off), global average temperatures are increasing, the ocean is expanding, the glaciers are in many places in trouble. Unfortunately the weather is a chaotic system so sometimes counter-events happen. One must watch overall trends, and they ain't good.

Political philosophy part one

OK, time for number one on my earlier political philosophy list, "How should politicians and office holders behave."

Well, of course, they should behave honorably, which Shakespeare made clear is not what we saw in Caesar's assassins, in spite of their talking about honor almost nonstop.

Honor would it seem excludes assassination.  Really?  Was Caesar a danger to the Roman state because he was "ambitious?" Well, yes he was, but his ambition was to stop the centuries-old power of an ingrained aristocracy called the Senate.  His plan was to extract its teeth, and that is the real reason they did him in.  The Roman constitution as it was had evolved via compromises for centuries, was way out of line with the fact of Empire, and would soon have fallen had Augustus not come along.  While there were things he did that make me wince, he at least set affairs in pretty good order.

So that is one thing a politician (henceforth this includes office holders) should never do and that is trust enemies, nor thrust themselves into public places.  There is no need for it nowadays, with TV and the Internet and so on.  Which should the politician be -- brave or stupid?  The handshaking and so on is just to get on TV anyway, and these things, while traditional, have no effect, except maybe on the person who gets their hand shaken, which can never add up to winning an election.  It is a waste of the politician's energy and hard on their hands (unless they give sloppy, weak, handshakes that are understandable but not impressive).  People important to a society are too important to put themselves at risk.

I think the honestly conducted press conference or just a policy statement delivered on TV (or whatever should become its equivalent in future).  By the way, a comment on journalist ethics, something that we often see ignored in the pursuit of fame -- questions at a press conference should be real questions, not traps or just statements of the opponent's position.  Otherwise the politician should be direct and put the journalist down in public with a response to the effect that you are looking for real questions.

A more important aspect of honorable behavior, though is lack of corruption, which goes way, way beyond accepting valuable bribes and favors.  It includes not exchanging political favors, not voting pork.  One of the most corrupt persons I can think of was a long term Senator from West Virginia who seemed to live for this.  I don't mention his name out of respect for the dead.

As things go today, then, it is obvious the U.S, is beset with corruption, and the consequences can be seen with bridges that go nowhere, military forts that aren't needed, and all kinds of wasted money.  I will deal with ways to construct institutions to manage these things later, but at least you would think the politician would have the honor and decency to not boast about these things and how they "bring home the bacon."

Alongside honor that the Romans were so hypocritical about, there is another thing we can call dignity.  Humor is desirable, but needs careful vetting.  Details like posture and grooming and speaking and so on are important in leadership.  More important though is the use of insults and other propaganda techniques to get elected (like patriotic music in the political commercial, or a flag, or testimonials, or patriotic symbols, or much ado about family and heritage, or anything else inclined to appeal to emotion rather than reason.  You would think the politician is selling soft drinks loaded with sugar.  The opponent needs to be criticized for what bad things they have done, and mistakes they have made, and it needs to be the truth (the whole truth), but the person of the opponent should be out of bounds.

This is of course the biggest problem with democracy -- people are influenced by this behavior.  We wouldn't see negative political advertisements if they didn't work, even though people profess to not like them.  Even if people don't believe the ad, it plants doubts.  No wonder election turnout is the States is so low.

I need to get a dig in here about lawyers.  As my blog probably makes pretty clear, I have a bad opinion of them as a class, as being the only profession for smart people to enter that has no particular reason to get into except money.  That they dominate the political class and as a result make laws where the interest of the political class remains well protected and it become almost impossible to do anything without hiring one tells me they should be banned from holding office.  They have already demonstrated their lack of honor and primary pecuniary interests, so they should not be allowed anywhere the laws they will be carrying out.  I'm sure there are a few honorable lawyers, and when one meeds one personally, they seem caring and interested, until one wants to compromise or one gets the bill and even worse if one contests it.

The sin of faith

Religion is often dumb, but people are not, even religious ones. 

I like to make a distinction between belief, which is things you accept on faith and it doesn't even occur to you to doubt and which you got via indoctrination, usually as a child -- and opinion, which is an intellectual view based on evidence and mindful consideration, which you doubt all the time (the more wild it is).

Religious people generally don't like to doubt -- they want the world and its answers handed to them, ad the religious memes encourage this by making faith a virtue and doubt a source of guilt and fear, when the reality is that doubt should be the virtue and faith should be disregarded entirely.

A side issue here is that faith in general, as is obvious in the news, does a great deal of harm. It is like people don't like Congress, but they like their particular Representative, so bad government goes on and on.

Besides, there are good things religions do, not that these good things wouldn't be done anyway, but I see no harm in cooperating with local religions when they are demonstrably doing good things.

I would define myself as skeptical, which leads to atheism, but there is no need for cynicism.

Assessing Obama

I have long thought it is pretty obvious there is no perfect candidate for office, and, being that they are politicians and generally were lawyers, this is not hard to understand. So why nit-pick every stumble and thing that goes wrong, and every lie they necessarily have to commit? It is better to ignore all that as noise and look at what the cliché calls the "big picture." As such Obama has done fine, especially when he has had to deal with Republicans in congress who have to respond to idiots like the Tea Party or lose closed primary elections. The economy is OK, as is the stock market. Inflation is nil and so are interest rates (which do hurt fixed income people but encourage investment and help the young starters-out. The country is essentially at peace, if such a think in the modern world is possible, with only a couple of inherited contests being wound down, although in some cases I think they will never end, I see no particular way to end them so it's hare to judge Obama for not doing so.

A beginning to political theory

What falls under the scope of "political philosophy"?

1.  How polilticians and officeholders should behave.

2.  What is the fairest way to select officeholders?

3.  What method of selecting officeholders is most likely to produce the best?

4.  Who should get the franchise, or whether there even should be a franchise?

5.  Are hereditary positions better or worse, under what conditions?

6.  How does a system prevent its being taken over by brutal leaders and turned into a dictatorship?

7  What forms of corruption (not just bribes but also political dealing and "bacon" voting can be allowed and how does a system prevent it?

8.  What constitutes a special insterest and how can their influence be controlled or eliminated?

9.  What to do about political parties and other forms of political alliance?

10.  Do people actually have certain "inalianable" rights and if so what are they and how does one spell out exceptions when these are needed?

11.  Is freedom a desirable thing in itself or just a useful theory or should it be igored?

12.  Much the same with justice or fairness in how governments function.

13.  Is democracy a good thing or a mistake or something in between?

I'm sure I've missed a few issues, but these are the ones I think important and I intend to address them in subsequent blogs from time to time.

Hate can be good

Hate is a perfectly natural emotion. When you experience it you may give yourself a little lecture to the effect that hate hurts only the hater -- the standard Buddhist reaction.

I don't buy it, even though everyone around me now is Buddhist. I think there are things properly worth hating, and that the emotion has good as well as bad effects, as with all emotions.

I'm glad you don't believe in the Devil. People who really do must live unfortunate lives, but when I said "the Devil" I used it as a symbol for people like Hitler or Napoleon or Attila or Stalin or Pol Pot or any of several really brutal autocrats in power today. These are all worthy of hate, and I don't think the hate has any bad effects on me, but indeed allows me to deal with the anguish their acts generate in me.

Religious emotion

Most religions, not just Christians, and, for that matter, a lot of non-religious ideologies, depend on strong emotions to maintain their meme in a person. These include hate, of course, as it unifies and blocks thinking, but also fear (of divine displeasure or of the loneliness of not having a community), guilt (of thinking "wrong" things -- we all have a natural desire to do what is right) and, believe it or not, love (look at the adoration of Mary and how Christians are supposed to love Jesus up there on the Cross sacrificing his life (temporarily) "for our sins"(although I have never been able to figure out just how that works).

Jesus and sex

Thinking about it a little bit, I can see where Christians have a sexual problem with Jesus. They can't have him having sex with fourteen year old girls, like Mohamed, he just wasn't that sort of guy -- he didn't live off brigandage and kill anyone in his way.

Still, they have to admit (as it is part of the Trinity) that he was man -- he became human -- otherwise the sacrifice magic to lift the curse doesn't work. So he had a penis and one has to assume he was sexual (otherwise he wasn't fully a man).

Nowadays a guy who knows few women and hangs around with a bunch of other guys, and even goes so far as to refer to one of them as "beloved" is just assumed to be gay, but of course Christians have to deny that (why, exactly?-- well I guess just part of the prejudices of the time). So he was non-sexual -- celibate -- and priests and nuns follow that lead, although he never made any utterance commanding it.

Did he fantasize, or masturbate, or maybe even have secret sex with local prostitutes, which would explain his tolerance in spite of the spirit of the times. Of course he was tolerant in general. Too bad about the subsequent history of his movement.

Making plagiarism a crime

It occurs to me that I don't know why religion and the press get special protection. A good Bill of Rights would guarantee freedom of opinion and the right to express yourself, and would spell out that this doesn't permit malicious slander, disturbance of the peace, spread of hate, revealing state secrets that are properly state secrets, invasion of privacy except when there is an overriding public need, copyright infringement so long as the copyright holder makes the material available to the public at reasonable cost, and plagiarism (except when appropriate credit is provided).

Religious ministers and press reporters should get no special rights or access.