I don’t know what I’m doing really I’ve spent alot of time doing alot of things tonight, most of which I’d rather not be.
I’m having issues with the loan company still and trying to get through to talk with anyone is a royal pain in the arse. Theirs a lesson to be learnt in this and that is..
I’ve also been thinking about the group project while phoning home and everyone else. Its all a little nuts but theirs only one more day till the weekend! which means a break from the most hectic of all weeks. That said I just had some rethinking of my time spent in Peru and how things have affected m
y thinking. I spent the everning also talking to a guy called Ardel.. a first year in the student village and I don’t really know what he studies but we talked from 7 till 10. What about? Well.. life.. the universe and everything really, he’s a pretty hardcore christian and to be honest sorta puts me to shame. I know the talk but after studying any number of humanties which have told me I’m a tool for believing it kinda put a muffler on things. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am indeed a tool.. its just a question of to what end.. and how far I push it.. I could just satisfy Marx, Durkheim and end up being rather stereotypical but ideally I’d like to justify the works of people like Gramsci and Tolstoy in the long run and mess things up a bit. Theirs the problem of psychologically releasing myself from the world I’ve grown up in.. which never really did me any favours but simply becuase everyone else is in it I’ve had difficulties in breaking out. I believed in Marx with a passion long before I ever believed in God really, then Weber an interactionist.. finally somewhere in Neo-Marxism or atleast New Left Realism. I can’t really explain it how I ended up like this but.. it is genuinely liberating.
Thinking back to Peru.. I just figured it’d be good to get this written down. For 3 Months I used to live in a Potato shed and we had running water on and off since we were in the mountains. In that time I got pretty bad burns due to not covering up.. especially on my lips and my neck when my hair was shorter. Though for all that time I used to get up at 5 o’clock in the morn and sit and watch the sun come up or write how I felt my time was going while I watched the rain if it did rain that day. I never really got ill out there but I knew each day all that I had before me was a day’s worth of digging ditches interrupted by a lunch break followed by a few hours of teaching 11-16 year olds.
That said it was moving to think thats what life could be broken down to, in the space of those days I formed relationships and learnt incredible amounts about.. well what life could be boiled down to. Sure we can argue about social conditioning and feral children about human nature but.. well it just seemed natural to be part of a community which knew nothing but hard work and companionship. It was all touching and I was sad to leave my class behind when I left. It really didn’t sink in though till one of the girls in my class came down into the nearby town I was staying in a hostel at to give me a little doll with my name stuck on the front.. after that I did the Inca Trail for four days to Machu Picchu and every day of it I could only really think back to the time I spent in that village.
I first saw the Motorcycle Diarys when I was in Peru too.. Che’s portrayed in a way as such an idealist via the media but all I know from history was the conflicts he was involved in. It’s funny I had been to alot of the places he had been and I could to a extent.. and in my own way understand how he came to feel how he did.
N’ I guess after all the rest of my travelling I came back to England.. and it rained.. but not only that it was this grey concrete jungle I’d never really noticed before.. it was mostly brown in Peru.. but at sunset it became a bright orange that just made something inside you want to reach out, lie down and take it all in. It was cold at night in the UK, it was colder in Peru mind.. but all I remember of it was when the kids in my class used to knock on the Potato Shed door and ask if I wanted to come out and sit by them next to the bonfire. In the storms we used to watch sheet lightning light up the sky and wonder if things would ever really go back to normal.
They always do.. but I like to think its things like that which change us, I’d love to travel some more.. I just love throwing everything away and being a part of something or somebodys life. The year before I went to India and one girl I was with cried over missing her boyfriend and her hair-straighteners. Thats all she could take from the experiance.. I’m not saying I don’t miss things back home but.. to just give to someone and go to a place so far removed from what you know. Its the poor which can teach us the most about how we should live our own lives in the western world. They might be shorter than you, they might not be as smart it could seem.. but they know how to live and they’ll always be stronger than you.
I think the worlds lucky to have such people, what gets at me is the state of people in the west. We’re so far detached from reality in our ivory towers that we’ll never really get to the point where were not simply breathing but actually living the lives we were meant to live. Instead we focus artificial goals and studies which allow us to invent some purpose or land marks in our lifetime which could suggest progression. If the Humanist believes purely in guiding light of human being, would the human race still continue without the west? without me, John Smith or you? Is technology (hm..) our tower of Babel? the ultimate point in human standing? Would we still be then human? The most human ‘beings’ I’ve seen are those while backpacking.
I personally feel we’ll never reach the distant stars.. if their was a means we’re not educated or wise enough to attain it. What if this little clod of dirt is all the existence humans will ever know? I’m not sure who said it but I know he was old and he said ‘If I knew I’d end up this old I’d have taken better care of myself’ ..well we’re not getting any younger and history has only served to tell us that the stupid and the strongest will prevail. (Thats what irks me about Darwin.) Ultimately though will this serve to blight any future us or future generations might have? People completely unrelated to global warming are paying the price now.. how will others do so in the future?
There is a means, but if anythings to happen its got to found in a sincere and loving change of heart.. and to be honest today that isn’t fashionable. Its sad that its cool to shrink our ecological footprint whilst we wouldn’t be seen dead spending time with the homeless. I dunno why I write but I realise I’ve had over 400 views on this page and I hope anyone who’s read this.. atleast in some small way begins to change an attitude or atleast encourage a further change in the world they know. If it was easy.. we would never have any problems.. thing is it’s easier to invest in self interest and even if you don’t
pay the price of such actions by others one day you will and people will continue to do so unless they begin to truely love (its about giving not taking) their life. Otherwise.. well a pretty convincing case that we really are just biological autonoma. But you know love to any measure, all I’m asking is to think about living a life which makes that love open to everyone and everything.. but stuff like thats never easy, or never popular if its ever seen to be genuine. You can choose.
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There is a school of evolutionary theory which sprang up from the rather complicated task of building a robotic arm which could accurately throw and catch a tennis ball.
The complexity of judging the physics (things like trajectories, wind shear, so on, things we dont even consciously think about) involved in accuratly throwing or catching an object and then the added processing task of coordinating the whole body to react to those physical calculations is mind boggling. It took them more than 5 years with cutting edge computers to get a single robotic arm capable of this same act that comes naturally to humans.
The theory i mentioned basically runs that humans evolutionary niche was this ability to accuratly throw objects. As far as I know, there is no other animal which is capable of the kind of accuracy humans are. Our oversized brains and everything that this intelligence has brought with it is purely the unexpected side effect of the brain power needed to throw stones and spears at larger animals which power and accuracy, civilisation is the fluke byproduct of an overpowered physics calculator.
Now I dont know if thats true, but it makes a lot of sense to me, and in a way it makes me understand why we are as fucked up as a species as we are.
It seems pretty simplistic but in many ways is like alot of explanations how things could have come to be as they are. Perhaps it’s dumbing things though if I went on to use some of the ideas suggested in the novel/film ‘I Robot’.
In it the Founder addresses the fact that despite their intentions and the process which was carried out, theirs still anomilies which appear in any artificial semblence of life. Black sheep, he uses the term ‘Ghosts in the machine’ (though the saying has a number of different applications when talking about mind/body). We don’t know why questionable enigma’s appear in the gene pool but, it could something as per biological process or something suggesting something more.
Another point would be to look at some of the stuff Richard Dawkins, David Hume or other similiar characters having noted after examining ‘nature’. Hume unfortunately made the same mistake the church did when they thought the world was flat when he believed we existed in a world of unbreakable natural laws. What was worse was he claimed empirical fact nullified subjective belief particularly in religion.
I think it was Kuhn (a post-modernist(!) sociologist) who made the observation that.. Scientists arn’t objective as the topic they study suggests.. therefore science as a study itself cannot be a science as its ultimately impossible to remain objective in this. A example of which would be the evangelical preaching of figures like Dawkins and earlier Hume express. Einstien disproved Hume with his theory of relativity, theres a number of criticisms even among other oxford professors over Dawkins approach to his work from a whole number of fields ranging from mathematicians to molecular bio-physics (which Dawkins infact bases his work on).
Evolution has also been promoted to justify communism, capatalism.. racism? and a whole other number of isms. I know Joe commented on how ‘philsophy can get stuck so far up its own arse’ but the fact is regardless we all seem to adhere to particular philosophical trains of thought if we have any sort of opinion on these issues. The subjectivity in all of this however has been evident ever since Darwin wrote the Origin of Species.
I once questioned a girl I knew about the exact same angle.. except obvious my conclusion was ‘isn’t this too slim to be chance? How can dust go to slime which ended with me and you?’ she said it was just the only option open to her. It highlighted the point to me that.. well its true we are fucked up, everything we touch seems to turn to gold in our own point of view.. especially when it comes to nature. Though it changed for me when I read that people even 2000 years commented on the fact that theres some pretty fucked up stuff going around about the nature of our existence (or even just your place in the world at the time).
For me the only answer is found in faith really.. I didn’t choose what I believed in, otherwise it’d ultimately never be bigger than my comfort zone or my perception of the world.. becuase I know thats how screwed up stuff starts rolling. The Bible has some pretty difficult stuff to swallow but at the same time you see these people are/were human just like you n me. If I wanted to live comftably and explain everything I’d just tune out and watch my thusfar non-existent TV set.. probably. Thing is regardless I think theirs problem with the way the world is and.. their just isn’t an alternative with me.. the fact I feel strongly things need to change and people need to change lead to me having a faith over time.
People are screwed up and ultimately not too good at anything but I have in something other than that.. which can change people. It’s a shame examples are never spoken of by the Media in todays world.
I recommend reading the Dawkins Delusion if you ever get the chance.. that and read up on characters like Henry Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy and Archbishop Oscar Romero. It’s probably not for you.. but I wouldn’t know but what clinched me was a book I got my hands on detailing a series of storys of the last days of martyrs from everypart of the world and every sort of background. Thing is its changed me in a way that to think of being any other kind of person just isn’t an option.
Theres that and a guy called Douglas Coupland, he’s not a christian per se but wrote a series of books dealing with the topic and peoples different perceptions and experiances of it all. I got a few of his books at uni and if your ever curious.. just say man.
But cheers for the comment
I always appreciate your input mate!
Asimov’s work is always fantastic. I remember one particualr passage from one of the last in the Foundation series where upon discovering Earth as a radioactive ruin, they discuss how this could have come to be. The mention is made of atomic weapons, and then it is so quickly dismissed with a phrase that goes something along the lines of “no civilisation could ever be so barbaric and foolish as to use atomic energy as weapons. It would be madness.”
A slight off topic deviation, but anyways.
You speak of belief as something you cant help having, personally I have the opposite thing going on. I would ratehr like to believe in something, but true belief, or faith, isnt something you conosciously choose. To me thats the whole point, its like physical attraction, or fear. It should be something that you cant just turn on or off. It is obviously based on what we experience consciously, but we dont choose what we believe.
Personally on the “its too slim to be chance” frontier, my belief that nothing is too far fetched to happen comes in a large part from that picture taken by Hubble which focuses on a minute portion of the sky and upon magnification shows hundreds of galaxies. Thats just within such a tiny arc of space, hundreds of galaxies. The universe is so incredibly vast, so immense. It is actually beyond our scope of imagination. Yes, it was insanely improbable that life happened here. But, the universe is so insanely huge, it was bound to happen somewhere eventually. Its only natural that we find it hard to believe in the cooincidence that it happened here. But then, if it hadnt happened we wouldnt be around to question that “cooincidence”.
When it comes to the idea of Man being propagated by some sort of “creator” the question then begs to be asked “who created the creator?” surely if its improbale that something as complex as man could occur naturally, its even more absurd to assert that a being capable of creating us could occur naturally. And the standard christian “answer” of “he always was” just doesnt cut the mustard. When faced with the choice of having to try and understand the origin of man without a creator and the origin of man with a creator, without is a far less complex question, if that makes sense. Believing in divine creation doesnt simplify the question of our origin for me, it makes it so much more complex and therefore unlikely.
Well actually this touches on alot of other topics but in my philosophy classes touched on a guy called Leibniz who was a advocate of the ontological arguement.
It goes.. all in existence is temporal. Therefore existence will continue to experiance recession and.. well could not exist really. Unless theres an uncaused causer. This touches on Einstiens theory of relativity and the followup work he did on the initial theory. The universe itself can’t sustain itself without some sort of outside force effectively pulling its strings.. thing is in the means required for this to do so it has to be exact and constant anything slightly out means the universe will either expand dramatically (explode as we can’t create more matter) or instead simply implode. Space and time as they go on expand out like a cone. We can reverse the initial creation and ask how did the universe come to be ‘ex nihilo’?
‘The problem of the origin involves a certain metaphysical aspect which may be either appealing or revolting’
Now obviously we know we can’t create matter.. so this does raise some big questions. Thing is we live in a world which seems split on the issue and this again refers to the topic of faith. Richard Dawkins examined this when he investigated the temporal lobe of the brain how some people respond differently to this topic.
Now what seems acceptable to great deal of people is at the moment t (time) = 0 is that something triggered the existence of the universe (the naturalist response is the idea.. generally of a recessive series of universes.. but this just avoids the question as we go back to Leibniz). What people don’t like to hear is that the word something could easily be replaced with teh word God. Now.. to suggest we instead go with the steady state theory of creation? That idea relies purely on metaphysics yet was promoted initially by naturalists?
The fact that theory after the theory has been produced only for major holes later to appear means that the stereotypical response ‘The univerise is just there, thats all there is’(Bertrand Russel) really doesn’t cut the cheese anymore, its a ritualistic slogan which naturalists opt for when in reality something needs to be spoken for. Theres more academically accepted theories to the existence of the universe than you can count on a hand.
The point is it goes back to the point of faith.. its argueable with the scrutiny of ‘I’d like to but it doesn’t cut the mustard.. it just can’t be willed into being’ that christians have to had to deal with these facts and we find it is at a point where the individual has to go on a leap of faith.. the majority never find it easy for whatever reason myself included. That said, naturalists or atheists rarely on a personnel level seem to convincingly confront the idea of faith they just accept the skin deep surface of its apparent nature.
Post Modernism does accurately describe the traits of peoples views of the world.. and we’re so locked up in our own typically we’re unwilling to push the boat out. Being a christian though is never easy, and it means going places which would otherwise simply spell bad news.. and they often do but its the long term rammifications of such actions and the belief which accompanies it which makes it worth while.
We question the point to anything.. and if there really is no point to anything other than biomechanical process then I’m really not loosing out on anything by believing.. and if it gives me something by entering a new means of perception it can only be a good thing if I’m sincere about it, considering Wittgenstiens ‘world views’ its perhaps one of the better ones to have. If you are sincere though its only then it really seems to trascend the normal.. where a world of I-It’s become I-thou’s.
Its a long winded way of addressing the basic underpinnings with anything like this.
Well certainly the logical solution is to believe. Think about it, if there is no point to life then after death you cease to exist and everything has been in vain anyway, so by believing you have lost nothing. But if there is some sort of biblical afterlife then by not believing you have lost out on it. I can see the logic, but that logical argument doesn’t compel me to believe in any kind of spirituality.
Like you say, sincerity is the key, and as I said, there is no choice about what we sincerely believe. We see the argument, and the evidence and testimony supporting each perspective, and based upon that our mind chooses the one that makes the most sense, quite independantly from anything as fickle as conscious choice. Of course what many people say they believe and what they truly believe are often different.
I did in fact believe once upon a time, albeit as the result of educational indoctrination, but the more I thought about the world and the reasons for my belief in the first place, the more it made my belief waver and eventually fade. I had questions that no one could give me good enough answers for. Sometimes I still see flickers of it, but it never quite reignites.
The thing is as I see it, a lack of spirituality doesn’t make life pointless, but rather it makes it the whole point. Every second of existence should be celebrated and cherished, because it could be your last ever, which does perhaps open the door on self-centredness. From the point of view of humanity as a whole, faith and belief in some kind of spirituality is what binds people together and stops them from being wholly self centred. But from the point of view of the human individual, it is a mechanism of restraint, stopping you from living for yourself.
Humanity suffers at the hands of individuals, but without individuals, is humanity worth having?
Its a interesting question but one that seems rather unrelated. Considering said persons perception on the issue you really just don’t know. Its upto you to decide the answer to that.
I heard a talk given by someone growing up in the Cold War when they used to test the claxons to signal a 4 minute warning over when a nuclear missile might hit (during the cuban missile crisis). You’d be sitting in class and you’d hear the claxon.. what’d you do? People respond differently.. some continue with ritualistic behaviour.. perhaps even going to line up outside.. some would just go nuts. If it was real you could expect burning and looting. Right or wrong behaviour goes out the window when faced with a undeniable cold hard issue regarding existence wether its the fact you’ve got four minutes till its over or the fact you somehow existed in the first place.
The topic is fiercly subjective on both our experiances of indoctrination throughout the years. Its the stereotypical answer but if there was a way spelt out in the stars everyone would abide by it.. but there isn’t so people make there own.. and others follow it over time. We don’t know whats wrong or wether ones right but your point on the lack of spirituality takes me back to the point I made on the old guy who lived beyond what he thought he would. For some theres a way which transcends others.
I grew up in a environment were faith was spoken and yet lived out in hypocrisy. It waned and died predictably especially as I took my own place in society as we all do, I got caught up in doing what people do to get loose.. I played in a band and as me and my friends got older began to lean increasingly on the idea of sex, drugs n rock n roll. I don’t know how but I realised how constricting that lifestyle was on my mind and spent the next year saving up money to do charity work in india.
In that year I encounted the works of a guy who called himself the antichrist (yet a son of a priest). He hit the nail on exactly how I felt with issues, why do we live in a society existing in the shadow of a dead god? Why are we raped and caged by these laws which are no longer relavent? We explain the world away with science but at the end of the day people don’t care, it comes to hearts and minds and you live with a passion which ultimately any expression of mercy to your neighbour was not only bringing them down, but also yourself and your species. Life should be a riot.. ‘carpe diem’.
You see that guy for me sounded amazing and the best thing since sliced bread yet I realised this guy spent his life living in a cave and was rejected by the only person he ever truely loved.. he went insane after the syphalis (sp?) he contracted afted he slept with a whore affected his neural system and he died.. his works later ressurected in Hitlers view for the Aryan race. (It sounded controversial but.. ideologically it was a sound move).
What I also noted was that Nietzsche ignored perhaps the fact that people can’t exist alone or on a life of focused self interest and drive. In his lifetime Nietzsche was an outcast who only became popular after his death.. yet no one really lived as Nietzsche did initially. Now it can be waffled out in postivist ethics or post modernist balderdash why this didn’t work and we require this shadow of god yet take a look at the actions of people in Nazi germany.. people.. like Nietzsche himself follow a herd ethic yet there was a minority who paid a heavy price who sheltered those who believed otherwise.. be they Jews, Communists, Christians, Homosexuals or Union workers which poured alot of fire on this idea that people can change.
I appreciate your view and I believe some questions can only be answered by the assumptions we ourselves can arrive at. I note many people don’t like Christianity forced down their throat but similiarly we live in a society where.. the hidden curriculum taught in my school, my university, my TV and Music does everything to influence my opinion. It gets to the point where I’d like to ask to stop forcing the worlds resistance to my personal lifestyle choice down my throat. The problem is it seems two way yet being in such a minority and given the nature of my faith I must tolerate the worlds way of living yet people are free to attack my way of being. A good example actually being the issue with the christian union at exeter university. People say they’re living life to the max when they go nuts but the next person.. probably me if I wasn’t a christian.. or even if I am could say ‘your a pawn to the system with a illusion of free will limited to the world you know. Born and bred to work and pay your overlords pay checks.’
Its arguing in circles, if we stack ideologies against each other.. well its giving into a way of thinking which only breeds infighting. With ideologies its possible to argue any point of view where in reality it just shows our lack of personal fibre to our character in this day and age. A byproduct of postmodernism. I can’t help but feel ideally certain tendancies to left wing thinking, at the same time I don’t see how people restrict themselves so much to the beliefs of others (ie; russian communists commiting acts against the local christian population.)
I was at point where I didn’t believe and I really didn’t have faith in anything but myself and my own strength but it was in that I realised how ultimately weak I was (and I’ve already expressed this to others with the response ‘we’re not all like you’) but I think.. contary to final point.. if all humanity is.. is individuals you’ve destroyed humanity. How I went from supporting the ideas of a self proclaimed antichrist to being a christian is one via personal experiance which I’d be happy to share.. yet otherwise people don’t seem to accept written witness from people who haven’t written some sort of book. My christian viewpoint of the world is understanably very different and I don’t believe its possible for me to make you understand or somehow come to share what I believe.. I can only try and take down the barriers of whatever forces in this world have built up in our experiances and conclusions.
I know I’ve written alot.. and in a bad way but this stuff is, in my case always been something resolved with my mind and my heart.. Nietzsche told us to live life like a riot.. and I try but given my perspective on the world its a little different in its works. Though the outward display could.. over time become just as offensive.
If you read all of that I appreciate it.
I see postmodernism keep popping up
postmodernism is also sometimes called ‘the logic of late capitalism’, and I think that’s a big clue. I also read your post Al over on your blog about deep thinking, and this may be relevant.
‘The logic of late capitalism’ is the idea that we are satisfied to be consumers – our curiosity, need for thought and stimulation is satisfied in a surface way by buying and consuming things, whether it’s goods or media products. organised religion has become, to many (not all) of those who participate, more of a sunday social club than a faith. charity is something we ‘buy’ with a monthly direct debit to expiate our conscience.
Life for many people in the west is actually pretty okay, insulated from hunger, poverty, war, so why would we not believe that really, this is as good as it gets? why would we change anything?
I think Socrates said ‘A life unexamined is a life half-lived’… personally I find a life spent engaged in thinking hard about things, instead of just consuming things, is reward enough, which is not to say that it isn’t frustrating that I can’t change the world
Been reading a bit of Nietzsche recently, Human all too Human. havent got far yet, took a while to wheedle through the preface and introduction, while i get some of what hes on about in his aphorisms, others just seem to lose me.
Anyways, I guess its like you say, its a circular argument and ultimately nothing each of us says can change the viewpoint of the other, because our opinons are born of differing experiences which are far more influential than arguments.
If we go by volume of writing though you win
(although I win if we go by grammatical correctness and spelling 
)
The Gay Science or the Antichrist are perhaps some of his more defining pieces of Nietzsche, I’ve got copies of the antichrist and twilight of the idols if you ever want to borrow them.
As I tried to express in my original blog entry, the insular, detached and ultimately empty product of our society leaves the mind to wander which puts us in such positions.
Thankfully we’re not studying English(!) but should you choose to be the critic on a present although unrelated point I’m not quite sure how to interpret this. You seemed to have some grasp of the content yet I think I was the one to mention this originally in person back when we were studying images.
I think Joe had a good point and I just wanted to say thanks for the lecture yesterday
. I found it very useful and I’m sorry I didn’t say anything there and then. I appreciated it though!