Kidney Infection and thoughts of death, part 2

Continued from previous post

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

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

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

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

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

Kidney infection and thoughts of death

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

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

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

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

We believe in causation

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

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

 

The city-state or polis as the ideal form of government

I've been meaning to post something about political philosophy (defined as speculation on what makes for the best government).  Today I would like to promote the city-state.

A city-state, or "polis" from the Greek, but I would like to use a regular English plural (polises) constitutes a central city, close-by other cities and suburbs, and the surrounding countryside.

There are two problems with this form of organization, neither of which would exist if designed right.  The first is that they constantly war with each other (actually not so -- history records the wars and so presents a distorted view of almost continuous warfare, but actually the polis is generally not aggressive.

The other problem is more serious -- empire builders and egoistic Napoleons come along and ruin it.  This is why they are so few.

But look at Singapore and Hong Kong (although sadly in the second case the imperialists are slowly destroying it).

If the whole world were to consist of nothing but such entities, and if they were all set up as functional republics (who almost never go to war with each other -- it is the tyrants of the world where you see invasions and so on), the governments, being far closer to the public, and being such that practically everyone knows the leaders, is just bound to result in better government.

Of course institutions are needed to keep tyrants out of power (legitimate power-sharing checks and balances) and somehow the existing nations need to be broken into smaller units.  That last one is a mouthful -- getting the cities set up as independent and then keeping them so.

I suppose (of course I do it occurs to me) that states like Sparta must be prevented, so some sort of international body chosen by the cities and maintaining basic laws and with resources to enforce them, would therefore be unavoidable.

Freedom of religion

I think the promotion of freedom of religion is a good thing in general, but with laws preventing any disturbance of the peace, any violence, and preventing child indoctrination, which is, from my own experience I know, one of the worst forms of child abuse. It puts young people with smarts and the ability to see the real world as it is through many years of fear and doubt and guilt until they either throw if all off or give in and become milk toast for the preacher's income.

Religion, however, should also not have special protection. It should be wrapped up with freedom of opinion and belief as only one aspect of this broader ideal.

Free prostitution and the Golden Rule

That the Golden Rule and things like that came from men is okay with me. It is less than perfect, but good enough for a guide 99 percent of the time. It also has a practicality to it, in that doing good things for people tends to lead to their doing good things for us.

I don't think for a moment these things come from God, as if they did we would have to follow them much more closely than anyone does in reality. Think about it -- if we must do to others what we would like them to do to us, we would give away or merchandise if we were a merchant, lend to anyone without interest if we were a bank, never send anyone to prison or even arrest them if we were a policeman, and even give our services freely if we were a prostitute.

God's laws (which for this reason don't exist) require strict adherence. We can bend man's laws to fit with reality.

 

The best religion

The best religion of course does not exist. The rest is ego and the beliefs are based almost entirely on how we were raised.

That said, in my fantasy (not that I think it is real), the best religion would incorporate these notions"

1. There would be God or a god. We need this out of our submission instincts, and much better than submitting to some idol or ideology or leader or whatever (representation of this god with icons is even better). We leave to the theologians the debates about infinity and so on.

2. For the most part this god does not interfere via stuff like miracles. This shows favoritism, or whim or something silly, and is a noose for the superstitious to hang themselves. True there is suffering, but we must have problems or we would not have problems to solve.

3. This is not, however, a god of suffering. He needs and wants nothing from us except our well being. Martyrs and killing for him is not wanted and counter to his nature. Neither does he need monks and priests and others who separate themselves off from the rest of us as somehow more holy. Nor does he give special messages to special people. That would be a travesty of his universality.

4. He neither needs nor wants glory or worship or service. He is above that sort of petty human thinking. The way to serve this god, if one must, is to do good things and help others and create beauty (music, buildings, gardens, etc.).

5. In the end we can trust our souls or spirits are well cared for, but speculation as to how is, at this level of our existence, only something we can speculate about.

 

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.