To the creator, all things come

A: You have no control over what you started.

B: None at all.

A: Do you know what that means?

B: It means that I am a creator.

The Political Animals

Plato’s disciple, Aristotle (pictured left) observed that “man is by nature a political animal.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Aristotle’s disciple, Scarotese (pictured right) cynically countered that primates are, by nature, social-hierarchical animals.

After which, Aristotle expelled Scarotese from the Lyceum.

Nietzsche, on the eternal recurrence

What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh . . . must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again — and you with it, speck of dust!” (Walter Kaufmann, translator)

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Nietzsche saw the eternal recurrence of events as a cause for joy.

He must have been addicted to suffering.

C J C : A M O M E M M X A

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A   ∨   E

T / F : A M O L E M D A O

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O   A   O

L   M   D

A   E   M

On Transpersonal Consciousness

A: You like to think of yourself as a neuron.

B: Metaphorically speaking, yes.

A: Don’t you value your individuality?

B: What do you mean?

A: Well, a neuron does not know itself. It has no identity.

B: Correct.

A: But you have an identity. A personal history. And you have emotions.

B: Correct.

A: But if you are a neuron in the mind of Gaia, what do your history, your identity, and your emotions matter to her?

B: Not much.

A: Do you find comfort in that?

B: My beliefs — whether metaphorical or not — have little to do with my personal comfort.

A: But your belief system seems to function as religious belief systems do.

B: How so?

A: You believe in a proposition that cannot be tested. Whatever the big G — be it God or Gaia — your belief that you are a neuron in its mind, or her mind, cannot be tested.

B: We’ve been through this before. Metaphorical beliefs are not subject to the principle of falsifiability.

A: Fine. But religious beliefs are supposed to bring comfort and solace to those who believe in them.

B: Truth — whether metaphorical or not — does not function like a security blanket.

A: Then what does truth matter? Why don’t you believe in illusion and magic?

B: But I do believe in illusion and magic.

A: But illusion, by definition, is a false perception. And hold on! I didn’t say truth brings comfort! I said religious belief brings comfort and solace!

B: Then I guess my belief that I am a neuron brings me comfort.

A: Even though Gaia doesn’t give a rat’s ass about you?

B: And does the Creator of the Cosmos give a rat’s ass about you?

A: I’m not so narcissistic to think so.

B: Nor am I.

A: Your Gaia does not know you exist. And yet it brings you comfort to think yourself an impersonal and unimportant part of a whole that does not — and cannot — recognize you.

B: Apparently.

A: I sense a contradiction. You recognize your individuality. And yet what makes you you — your soul, if you will — has no bearing on the whole of which you are a part.

B: “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.”

A: I get the reference. Its from the book of Ecclesiastes.

B: Yes! All is vanity! “There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.”

A: Why is it that whenever I back you into a corner you hit me over the head with the Bible?

B: It makes me feel better.

Nietzsche on Christianity

When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: is it really possible! This, from a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago and who said he was God’s son. The proof of such a claim is lacking. Certainly the Christian religion is an antiquity projected into our times from remote prehistory; and the fact that the claim is believed — whereas one is otherwise so strict in examining pretensions — is perhaps the most ancient piece of this heritage. A god who begets children with a mortal woman; a sage who bids men work no more, have no more courts, but look for the signs of the impending end of the world; a justice that accepts the innocent as a vicarious sacrifice; someone who orders his disciples to drink his blood; prayers for miraculous interventions; sins perpetrated against a god, atoned for by a god; fear of a beyond to which death is the portal; the form of the cross as a symbol in a time that no longer know the function and the ignominy of the cross — how ghoulishly all this touches us, as if from the tomb of a primeval past! Can one believe that such things are still believed? (The Portable Nietzsche)

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Unfortunately, such things are still believed.

Although I recognize the need for mythical narratives, much Christian mythology — yes, Christianity is a mythological system — is just plain silly.

Why does the Supreme Intelligence of the Cosmos favor credulity?

Why does God require faith? And why should skepticism be a sin?

The elevation of ignorance and credulity to virtues is what makes me hostile towards most religious systems.

N O 1

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C J C : A M O + D A O = …

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O   A   T

C J C : L N C + L E M = L G C

A : See?

B : Clearly.