Truth

CNN reports that

only about 5 percent of the nation’s churches are racially integrated, and half of them are in the process of becoming all-black or all-white.

Kind of funny.  Isn’t religion supposed to be about being the same in the eyes of God?  These are the kinds of anecdotes that remind me why I have turned my back to “organized religion”.  The hypocracy is absolutely mindblowing.

Found this little quote on religion in a 1964 interview with Playboy Magazine. She was asked if religion had ever offered anything of constructive value to human life.

..in the sense of blind belief, belief unsupported by, or contrary to, the facts of reality and the conclusions of reason. Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life: it is the negation of reason. But you must remember that religion is an early form of philosophy, that the first attempts to explain the universe, to give a coherent frame of reference to man’s life and a code of moral values, were made by religion, before men graduated or developed enough to have philosophy. And, as philosophies, some religions have very valuable moral points. They may have a good influence or proper principles to inculcate, but in a very contradictory context and, on a very — how should I say it? — dangerous or malevolent base: on the ground of faith.

This is kinda how I see religion. It holds true to antiquated models of reality.  Since it is supposed to provide insight into the metaphysical, then shouldn’t it be updated as our knowledge base turns more of that metaphysical stuff into actual physical stuff…so to speak?  What I mean is that if religion tells me that the world is 4,000 years old…but I have reams upon reams of verifiable data which not only supports a different model but actually refutes the religious claim, then shouldn’t the religious model be updated to reflect this?

It seems sort of irresponsible to me, as a thinking, rational human being, not to explore all models of reality in search of the ultimate truth.  This is why I tend to gravitate toward models of reality which seem to align most gracefully with current scientific models of reality.

I’d prefer to take my leap of faith after I’ve exhausted what science can tell me.  There is still faith.  But its the leap that has been reduced.

Does that make any sense at all?

Interesting article on New Scientist.com….here is the first paragraph.

Is the matter in the universe arranged in a fractal pattern? A new study of nearly a million galaxies suggests it is – though there are no well-accepted theories to explain why that would be so.

Can’t really comment on it right now because I haven’t had time to digest it…and I need to get a proposal out. But the concept strikes me as obscenely profound.

I will definitely be chiming in on this in a bit.

It’s funny.  I was reading an article about a really elegant model of spacetime in Scientific American on the crapper last night…I tend to do all of my reading in there…sort of my version of “a study”.  Anyway, the geometry described in the piece reminded me of “the reality” that users of DMT often see.

I find this very interesting because, as you probably know, I am very interested in the unexplored space between science and spirituality.  I believe that there is a set of fundamental ideas that unify these ways of exploring reality.  And to that end, I believe, as do many others, that altering your state of consciousness whether through meditation, entheogens, or otherwise can provide powerful insight into the true nature of reality.  It’s a simple matter of changing your perspective.  Is THAT perspective any more or less real than the basal state?

Maybe Joe Rogan isn’t as crazy as everyone makes him out to be.

This Umberto Eco quote was on my iGoogle today. It’s really a pretty profound insight…especially given the current state of affairs in our world.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

I was lying in bed last night when a thought popped into my head. It wasn’t as if the whole model was thought through…but I found it interesting enough that I jumped out of bed, opened a text editor, and wrote this.

A New Model of God
God is the super-symmetrical partner to the universe. Although we can never merge (annihilation), we move asymptotically toward God through the process of enlightenment and the understanding of the ultimate truths. We, in essence, would resonating on same frequency as God. We would be, quite literally, complete. True Harmony. Bliss. Nirvana. Heaven.

The reason why this strikes me as the making of something profound is that it brings together some ideas that have been rattling around in my head for years now — string theory, the Higgs Boson, Kant-Hegel asymptotes, Akasha, reincarnation, etc.

I’ve had a problem with God as a human construction for years now. Although the Bible says that God made us in his image…I kinda think that its the other way around. What is it about us that is so special? I think that this line of thinking is extremely short-sighted and frankly, a bit vain.

I’ll be writing more on this subject as I begin to explore it a bit more.

Great article in the New Yorker on Buckminster Fuller…best known for his geodisic domes…the guy even got a molecule named after him.

Anyway…he was walking by Lake Michigan one day in a depressed mood contemplating suicide…or at the very least, the point of his existence. He says that all of a sudden, he was suspended above the ground…floating, if you will…when a voice spoke to him.

“You do not have the right to eliminate yourself,” it said. “You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe.”

It was this experience that pushed him to begin his lifelong quest to enhance “humanity’s success in the universe”.

Pretty profound stuff.

But, the article goes on to explain

He rejected fundamental tenets of modern science, most notably evolution. “We arrived from elsewhere in Universe as complete human beings,” he maintained. He further insisted that humans had spread not from Africa but from Polynesia, and that dolphins were descended from these early, seafaring earthlings.

Clearly, this is not nearly as profound.

You shouldn’t need to look externally to find out how to get in touch with your spirituality. You should simply look inward.

Anything that becomes institutionalized tends to become bastardized over time. I think that it’s just the nature of overly scaled systems. Things are better when they are natural, organic, pure — simple.

So rather than prescribe to someone else’s definitions of things, I’ve simply decided to live by a few basic assumptions:

• People are inherently good.
• Balance is essential.
• Love is the only truth.
• We should find ways to maximize the love in our lives.
• To be able to love unconditionally is the pure form to which we all should strive.

Everything else is too much information for me. If I can simplify my life enough to use these basic assumptions as a guiding force in my thoughts and actions, then all of that other stuff will take care of itself. And you don’t need to follow anyone else’s prescription for happiness. It comes from within each of us. Not from books. Or things. Or other people.

Embrace that which makes you who you are. And embrace that in others. Period.

I often become frustrated with radicals…not the kind that produce molecular damage…the kind that push their ideas on you.

Essentially, I’m frustrated with anyone who is arrogant enough to think that they are capable of truly “knowing” anything. Religious zealots, community college english professors, bad bosses, guys on infomericals…you name it. Let me tell you why I feel this way.

I believe that everything that we, as individuals, process is an approximation of what it really is. The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle is a well-known articulation of this thought. Since different people have different frames of reference, no two perceptions can be identical.

It’s as if each of us looks through a pinhole to understand reality. None of us are right. But if we took those pinholes and combined them over the range of all consciousness, then we’d actually have a tapestry of experience that would, in essence, be that reality.

As such, someone else’s perception of the world is no more or less valid than mine. The abstraction may be universal. But the context cannot be. It’s simply impossible…at least at my level of thinking.

Ergo, how can anyone be “sure” of anything?

From my experience, the zealot is one who is so incredible ignorant to the world around them that they not only fail to understand the nature of the context in which they live…but they actual believe that somehow they are operating at some absolute level.

Reality check.

There are viruses, which by some definitions aren’t even living things, that are capable of selectively changing the behavior of higher order species as to create a more suitable environment for reproduction. Essentially, these viruses specifically change brain chemistry as to illict a response in the host…a “desired response” (not to personify the concept too much).

Maybe I’m not making the connection here as effectively as I could be.

My point is simply that in a world where viruses can “brainwash” us (a little dramatic but not untrue), how can we really think that we know much of anything. How can we be so sure that our view of the world is the only view? That our God is the only God? That my red is your red?

We can’t. And we shouldn’t. We’re all wrong and all right at the same time. It’s the abstraction that is real. The idea. Not the manifestation of it. Kinda like Plato’s forms, except without the pretense.

We should simply try to find what connects us. Not what separates us. We’re not that cool. We don’t know it all. We don’t know anything. We simply uncover what has always been there. Everyone knows the same things. We simply express them in different ways. Only the zealot truly believes that his vocabulary is the only vocabulary.

That’s why relationships and connections are so important. It allows us to understand and incorporate different vocabularies into our imperfect pursuit of understanding (in the bigger sense). This is why ideas such as chaos, network effects, and the like are so refreshing to me. They require us to zoom out of our localized existances. They allow us to everything as unimportant and essential at the same time.

Anyway…I’m starting to ramble…stream of consciousness soapboxing is starting to take over this post…so I’ll sign off.

But one last thought…if only educators could use this concept when teaching our children. If teachers could find ways to truly resonate with our children so that they could speak in the vocabulary (bigger sense) of each child, then the child would be able to begin to understand and untap the potential that he/she has. No one is stupid. They simple haven’t found the way to translate their own personal vocabulary with one that is more “mainstream”.

I’m probably making no sense now.

Oh, well…maybe I need to readjust my vocabulary.

Chrysler Building to be sold to Abu Dhabi (NY Post)

It’s oil-rich foreign governments who are using the money that we give them to buy our country out from under us. Essentially, the balance of power is shifting because these “third world” countries now hold the most valuable resources.

What are we going to sell next to feed our insatiable appetite for convenience? The Statue of Liberty? Yankee Stadium?

We need to put our frickin’ noses to the grindstone and get the fuck off of foreign oil. Actually, any oil. If we can get to the moon using Tandy computers from the 1960s, we can figure out how to harness the power of the frickin’ sun and desalinate water.

It’s about time we started getting our asses in gear. I’m encouraged by the direction that we seem to be leaning…but for Christ’s sake, I hope that we figure it out before the whole thing goes to shit.

P.S. The Italians just bought the Flatiron Building.  The end of American dominance is ending.  We’d better learn how to play well in the sandbox with the other kids.