September 2010

Hypatia’s Revenge

By in atheism, jests japes jokes jollies, religion

Speaking of that Pew survey:

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.
Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.
“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.
That finding might surprise some, but not Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, an advocacy group for nonbelievers that was founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair.
“I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people,” Mr. Silverman said. “Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.”
Zing!

If the Mountain Won’t Come to Muhammad, Fuck It, He’ll Invent His Own Mountain

By in foolosophy, religion, spiritual-not-religious

The religious message is “less clear when you wear an Om and you have no idea what it means,” says Prothero. “Smooshing the Buddha together with a cross and star of David has a clearer message of someone who is spiritual and doesn’t belong to one religion.”
He adds that even though all of these symbols may be floating through the fashion world on shiny gold bangles or set with diamonds, people should be religiously literate and know what the symbols they’re wearing stand for. “I’m torn. Sometimes I do get annoyed when venerable religious symbols get dumbed down, but when has it never been like that? Besides, all religions are just different paths up the same mountain.”
Of course, those who claim that the world’s religions are different paths up the same mountain do not deny the undeniable fact that they differ in some particulars… It is to deny that those differences matter, however. From this perspective, whether God has a body (yes, say Mormons; no, say Muslims) or whether human beings have souls (yes, say Hindus; no, say Buddhists) is of no account because, as Hindu teacher Swami Sivananda writes, “The fundamentals or essentials of all religions are the same. There is difference only in the nonessentials.”
This is a lovely sentiment but it is untrue, disrespectful, and dangerous.
Hee hee. Hope those two can work out their profound differences! Anyway, blatant contradictions aside, I’m actually sympathetic to the devoutly religious who have to see meaningful symbols of their beliefs used as trendy accessories by airheaded celebrities and fashionistas. I mean, I’d be willing to bet that 99% of the time, when you see someone “smooshing the Buddha together with a cross and a star of David”, the “clearer message” you’re actually getting is one of a vapid twit who doesn’t understand anything about any of them, but ooh, shiny bauble look purty, must have, must have!
While I’m being generous toward my bête noire here, let me also concur with a typical complaint you hear from traditional quarters regarding this buffet-style spirituality: it also can encourage a sort of dilettantism, a shallow tendency to stay right where you are and look for various concepts and themes to basically wall yourself in, to tell yourself what you want to hear. Sort of like how allowing high school students to set their own curriculum might lead to them concluding that the Twilight series is the pinnacle of all fiction and there’s no need to try anything that doesn’t cater to the way they feel right here, right now. One of the possible benefits to picking one faith/tradition and sticking to it is that you’re forced to grapple with issues and concepts and rules that might not appeal to you or make sense initially, and out of that, a new kind of understanding might result, if not acceptance. Growth through struggle. Too many of the spiritual-not-religious types are complacent and looking to avoid struggle, having already settled into a comfortable niche, and are now just looking to accentuate it with exotic accoutrements.

The Old College Try

By in education, foolosophy, work

Joseph Epstein:

Intelligent people who hadn’t gone to college began to feel a great hole in their lives, and those who had gone could usually be relied upon to hide from them what is all too sadly the truth: they really haven’t missed all that much. Paul Goodman, the 1930s radical who became something of a guru during the student rebellions of the late 1960s and early ’70s, used to enjoy saying that all going to college meant was that in doing so a person showed how badly he or she wanted to succeed in society as currently constituted. Going to college entails a large expense, lots of useless work, and the acceptance of endless onerous, preposterous trivialities, all of which, Goodman liked pointing out, showed that any young man or woman who was willing to put up with this nonsense could be expected to put up with the even greater nonsense of boring and meaningless work later in life. College, in this view, functioned chiefly to turn out useful, moderately high-level drones, finely honed tools of capitalism.
…Of course, undergraduate education is only ostensibly about producing the sound paper on T.S. Eliot or the Renaissance or the Reformation. What it’s really about, or at any rate is supposed to be about, is the development of young minds, teaching them how to think independently, how to combine common sense with proper skepticism, the whole given a fine texture by the attainment of an at first widened and later (after college, acquired on one’s own) greatly deepened culture. But what percentage of the 65 percent of Americans who regularly participate in one form or another of higher education do you suppose derive anything resembling such things from their education? I would set it at somewhere between 1 or 2 percent, though that may be too generous. Most people come away from college, happy souls, quite unscarred by what has gone on in the classroom. The education and culture they are presumably exposed to at college never lay a glove on them. This is the big dirty secret of higher education in America.
This doesn’t mean that their having gone to college isn’t worth it. Not at all. On a strict accounting, a college education, expensively priced though it nowadays generally is, probably pays off as well as any investment. Endless studies show that young men and women who attend college earn hundreds of thousands of dollars more over a lifetime than those who, for one reason or another, do not go to college. Why should this be so? For the same reason that degrees in journalism, master’s degrees in business, and other (shall we politely say?) not strictly necessary degrees make for success: because, that is, people who have already paid for these overpriced appurtenances wish others to do so, forming a (not so) little group of those who have already pledged the fraternity.
I had an artist friend in high school who said he wanted to go to college even though he didn’t need it for his career plans, “just for the college experience”. (He wasn’t a drinker, or even overly social, so I guess he was referring to the intellectual aspect.) I think I know what he meant; I still enjoy looking through the course offerings that come in the mail from all the nearby colleges and daydreaming about possibly taking the classes that catch my eye if time and energy will ever allow. But dabbling in the odd class with no real remunerative potential would be good enough for me; I know too many people who invested four-to-eight years and tens of thousands of dollars into their education, only to end up with meaningless jobs they hate, a mountain of debt on their backs, and no capacity for intellectual curiosity or enjoyment anymore.

Titus Androgynous

By in beards, jests japes jokes jollies, religion, samesecks, waiting for the barbarians

Via PZ, this is funny:

In western countries in particular, a few years ago beards were often confused with a segment of society that reflected rebellion, namely the “hippy” movement of the 60’s and 70’s. It was felt that we should not in any way resemble those that reflected an attitude like this, or the drug culture that went along with it. We have to separate ourselves from that, and to have a beard a few years ago could be confusing, especially to an older generation of people at that time that were especially repulsed at the conduct of those of the younger generation. Even though we are some 30 or 40 years removed from that situation that existed during the late 60’s and early 70’s, it has been proven by experts that some people on some subconscious level do not trust a man with a beard. The underlying message that some get from a beard is that if you have one, you have something to hide, as if you are hiding behind the beard. I have even heard that idea expressed in sales courses that I have taken for secular activities. Beards are discouraged by some sales trainers because of the subconscious message that some people receive from a person with a beard, and some feel that a person without a beard generally speaking has a more professional appearance than a person who does.
…In the 1950s, in the the USA, beards were widely unpopular among the general public and most men who wore one were immediately perceived as beatniks (and later, hippies). In that American, Cold War climate, a young man who didn’t sport a military-esque brush cut and bare chin was out-of-hand labeled a communist or homosexual.
Beatniks, commies and homos, oh, my! But wait a minute…so, acting too stereotypically feminine will get a man accused of being queer, but sporting a beard, the quintessential symbol of masculinity and testosterone…also means you’re a gender traitor? Damn, they’ve got us coming and going, don’t they? Sort of like how they used to say that a witch could present herself as a beautiful young girl or a repulsive old hag. If I didn’t know better, I’d think all this paranoia was reflective of some weird psychological turmoil on the part of the accusers.
In all honesty, one of the greatest things about living among such uptight reactionaries is that they make it so easy to be subversive. No need to actually do anything confrontational or destructive, just let your facial hair follow its natural course!
Speaking of which, here’s another slander I’ve heard a time or twenty in my life:

Paul, the apostle, said something similar in 1Cor 11:14 about long hair being a dishonor to a man… Obviously Paul’s words were intended for his militant Roman contemporaries. That society started the cropped military haircut and clean-shaven face to keep lice to a minimum and avoid giving an enemy something to grab, in a skirmish.

Well, we might have many parallels with ancient Rome, but I’m pretty sure modern hygiene and grooming have rendered the lice issue largely irrelevant. And we blow our enemies up with robot planes from the safety of a control center far away from the battlefield, so I don’t think hand-to-hand combat is as prevalent as it used to be, either. But that’s okay; like I said, hidebound traditions make such easy targets. And at least we don’t have to worry about being crucified for undermining social cohesiveness anymore.
And speaking of that, I find it most amusing of all that these people have no problem worshiping a savior who is constantly portrayed as having…long hair and a beard. Imagine the mental strife that would result should they be additionally forced to admit that a man born 2,000 years ago in Palestine wouldn’t have looked like a white Westerner.

In the Depths of Their Humanity, All I Saw Was Bloodless Ideology

By in atheism, history, jesus tie-dyed for your sins, moralizing, non compos mentis, religion, waiting for the barbarians

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but the perpetually aggrieved Bill Donohue is a steaming, whistling little teakettle of a man, forever boiling over one thing or another. What is it this time, Bill?

The pope did not go far enough. Radical atheists like the British Humanist Association should apologize for Hitler. But they should not stop there. They also need to issue an apology for the 67 million innocent men, women and children murdered under Stalin, and the 77 million innocent Chinese killed by Mao. Hitler, Stalin and Mao were all driven by a radical atheism, a militant and fundamentally dogmatic brand of secular extremism. It was this anti-religious impulse that allowed them to become mass murderers. By contrast, a grand total of 1,394 were killed during the 250 years of the Inquisition, most all of whom were murdered by secular authorities.

Yawn. Same old, same old. I’ve heard this so many times it’s starting to sound in my ears like the way adults talk in the Peanuts TV shows: Mwuh mwah muh mwah mwah mooah. Hitler an atheist? Nope. Stalin and Mao primarily driven by radical atheism? Pick your favorite response.

But let’s leave Mr. Donohue to his angry jitterbug on the stove burner and take a closer look at the more interesting theme here. One thing all three of those famous monsters actually had in common with Christianity was a belief in the teleological progression of history toward utopia, as well as in the redemptive, cleansing power of blood and violent sacrifice. Biblical scholars are united in saying that Jesus, assuming he actually existed as a historical person, was just one in a long line of Jewish apocalypticists. I know they don’t tend to emphasize this in devotional readings for some reason, but the entire point of his ministry was to prepare anyone who would listen for the coming end of the world, with violent retribution for all whom he felt deserving, followed by endless paradise. Since then, whether it’s based on visions of heaven, the classless society, or living in perfect harmony with nature, this idea that the ends justify the means pops up repeatedly throughout history. Utopia is waiting just around the bend, right after we get through the great purification by flood, fire, earthquakes or mass murder. It honestly has nothing to do with religion or the lack thereof. It’s an abstract concept of perfection that isn’t exclusive to anyone in particular.

As I’ve said before, I expect that we’re in for some hard times in the next few decades as the glory days of life in America fade further into the past, and we face choices over how far we’re willing to go to maintain our privileged position in the world, especially as nations like India and China look to get some of our standard of living for themselves. Perhaps some more equitable, balanced lifestyle will be the end result of our downward spiral, but human nature being what it is, I’m not optimistic. And because of that, I don’t see any reason to gleefully anticipate the chaos and upheaval that may come. Hell, I’d be happy to be wrong. For me, a rule of thumb is that if you’re so attached to your ideological convictions that you would rather see widespread suffering on a massive scale than to have to revise those convictions, if you can envision that sort of suffering while feeling smug over having accurately predicted it, you might just be the kind of zealot we’re talking about here.

Ink-Stained Retch

By in art, jests japes jokes jollies

With 17½ hours of work adorning my body, I’ve spent a fair amount of time hanging out in tattoo parlors, seeing some, uh, interesting artwork on some, uh, interesting people. But via Radley Balko, this link contains some of the funniest and/or most horrifying imagery I’ve ever seen. Most definitely, do not click through if you’re on a work computer.

Most of us only use the term “trouser snake” metaphorically. Oh, wait, it has wings. I guess when that dude says he’s gotta go “drain the dragon”, he really means it!

A Place for My Stuff

By in foolosophy, the madness of crowds

Morris Berman:

Even the anti-chic can be made chic. A Canadian magazine, Adbusters, became somewhat famous for ridiculing the need to be chic. It is now one of the chicest journals around–“underground chic,” as it were. If you are not aware of this publication, you are definitely out of it, and not as good as the people who are aware of it and read it on a regular basis. You are leading a diminished, unchic life.
This brings us to the causes of chic. If it really is as frivolous as it looks, why are we all doing it? Why does all of life finally boil down to high school? Alfred Adler, the psychoanalyst whose major concepts were “superiority complex” and “inferiority complex,” argued that the two were intimately related: the desire to be superior masked a deep sense of inferiority. If I care that much about being chic, it must be because I know, on some level, that I am terribly unchic. And this feeling of being inadequate, which dates from infancy, can finally never be overcome; which means that chicness is infinite: you can never be chic enough. Malraux was right: we never grow up.
I had just the other day mentioned a book by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter that examined this topic in detail (even criticizing Adbusters as well). In a nutshell, their argument was that while we typically condemn profligate consumption as something the mindless sheeple do to try to be like everyone else, the driving engine of it is actually the urge to differentiate oneself from everyone else by having different, cooler stuff (which always has to be replaced as the bovine masses eventually lumber onto what was once your exclusive territory). But buying more stuff, whether it be off-brand tennis shoes from Walmart or anti-name-brand shoes from Adbusters, only reinforces the idea that our personalities are defined by the stuff we have (or lack), an idea that the neo/post/whatever/capitalist system we have is perfectly placed to exploit.
That said, I also think the image of the perfectly self-contained, self-aware, unflappable person is largely a myth. Perhaps a useful one to hold up and strive to emulate, but a myth nonetheless. We’re social creatures who mostly derive our pleasure from the earthiness of our social environment, not the thin air of life on an intellectual mountaintop. Not many of us are rugged enough to stand being completely out of step with our friends and peers; most of us would feel twinges of insecurity and self-doubt if we couldn’t find reassurance and agreement somewhere. The attempt to wean ourselves off of defining ourselves by our material possessions is difficult enough; that of trying to consistently value intellectual principle over social acceptance is almost certainly a pipe dream.

Fuckin’ Media, How Do They Work?

By in bread and circuses, media/propaganda

Violent J learns how the infotainment sausage gets made:

To be honest with you, at one point—and this is what’s insane—they took my response to one question and edited it so I looked like I was responding to another question. And what’s scary to me is that this is Nightline. This is a respected piece of American journalism, and they were full of shit. That just makes me think, 90 percent of what I watch is full of shit. I couldn’t believe what they did with us, with the $10 million thing. He was so clever, the way he was saying, “No, no, no, Violent. I never said that, Violent.” It’s so clever what he’s doing—it was so clever! Then they had me sitting on the edge of my chair to make it look like I was getting mad. In reality, that was my response to another question. It was just so clever the way they did that.

Mick Foley had a similar experience with ABC’s 20/20 years ago, figuring that his own savviness and the presence of WWE’s own video crew would prevent his interview from being altered, spliced and taken out of context. He was wrong.
You might say, oh, who cares if some rappers in clown makeup and professional wrestlers get mocked or misquoted? They’re idiots anyway, right? But as he said, it’s scary when you see an article written on a subject you actually happen to know something about, and you’re appalled at how badly written and ill-informed it is. Then you have to consider how often that must be the case when you don’t know much about the subject, and have to depend on people like this to inform you. It’s a wonder we share as much common reality as we do.

No Viet Cong Ever Called Me a Faggot

By in germans supported their troops too, ohferfucksake, samesecks, tribalism, waiting for the barbarians


Let me emblazon it here, in bold type, for the record: GAY PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. Period, full stop, the end, roll credits. Therefore, it logically follows that they should be able to pursue any form of employment they want, even in, say, the military.

However.
It really strikes me as sad and pathetic that this is what leftist, uh, progressive activism in this country has been reduced to.
Singing sensation Lady Gaga threw the full weight of her stardom Monday behind efforts to repeal a US ban on gays serving openly in the military, decrying it as “against all that we stand for as Americans.”
…”Equality is the prime rib of America,” she told the crowd. “But because I’m gay I don’t get to enjoy the greatest cut of meat my country has to offer.”
…”Doesn’t it seem to be that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is backwards?” she asked, observing that gay soldiers who “hold and harbor no hatred, no prejudice, no phobia, are sent home” while “homophobic” troops remain on the job.
“If you are not honorable enough to fight without prejudice, go home!” she said in her fiery 20-minute speech before hugging veterans who had been dismissed by the US military because their sexual orientation was disclosed.
That’s right, kids. If you can’t kill foreigners in their own country with an open mind, if you can’t respect the cultural traditions that you’re in the process of undermining and destroying (along with their physical infrastructure), well, you can just stay home and keep that hateful attitude all to yourself, buster! Uncle Sam wants you to blindly follow his orders and blow official Enemies of the State (this week) to smithereens as tolerantly as you can! A Pakistani villager can take pride as he stands in the smoking rubble of what used to be his home, with the charred remains of his livestock strewn all about, knowing that it was an out-and-proud lesbian who piloted the remote-controlled drone that turned his young sons into pink mist. It gives that man hope — assuming he doesn’t die soon from malnutrition, tribal warfare, disease or despair, that is — that such a world is possible.
I swear by the wine-stained balls of Bacchus, I can’t take seeing one more liberal/lefty whine about how this unfair policy is “hurting our military’s readiness.” Oh, is it? Well, good. It’s about fucking time we started trying to accomplish that! I want to “hurt the military’s readiness.” I want to see the offense budget slashed by 65%. I want to see leftists quit cowering in abject fear of being accused of insufficient loyalty to the troops. I want to see several hundred of our military bases around the world closed. As a moral issue alone, this should take precedence over everything else. Yes, you should be able to serve. The question is why you would want to, knowing what it is that your country’s military is primarily involved in doing.

Isn’t It Ironic, Don’tcha Think

By in animals

Jim Gorant:

As odd as it may seem, Michael Vick may be the best thing that ever happened to the pit bull. He gave the forum to discuss this and make it possible to get the message out there that these dogs are not what they’ve been made out to be in the headlines, that they really are just sort of dogs. And a lot varies from each one to another and then how they’re raised and socialized and all of these issues that go around them. You can find the sweetest, most loving pit bulls in the world and you can find other dogs that are as mean as you want.

I’ve often noted the same irony myself. I spent a decade involved in pit bull rescue groups with my ex, rehabilitating and adopting out a couple dozen dogs and keeping several ourselves (which all stayed with me after I split with her). The most stubbornly antagonistic, narrow-minded people I ever had to deal with were the members of my own family, who were firmly convinced that the stories they’d read and the yellow journalism TV shows they’d seen were all they needed to know; these dogs were rotten to the core and it would only be a matter of time before they ripped my throat out just to watch me die. That only began to change after Vick’s case made the news, when they finally got to see the dogs as victims rather than cartoonish monsters.
Nevertheless, I still would laugh uproariously at any calamity to befall that scumbag. Maybe that doesn’t speak well of me, but hey, I never claimed to be into all that Christian forgiveness business.

Fleurs Du Mall

By in foolosophy, sex-you-all, waiting for the barbarians, work

Micah White:

Can capitalism exist without its foundation of heterosexual monogamy? Is polyamory inherently revolutionary? To all these questions we must answer: capitalism is a master of recuperation. What first shakes it, soon motivates it, later strengthens it. We will never know which tactics bring it down until we try.
To rupture the consumer myth will take more than protests in the streets and boycotts of consumer goods. It’ll require a fundamental shift in the structure of society, a revocation of our libidinal investment. Whether that’ll take the form of polyamory or simply neighbors getting to know each other remains to be seen.
Huh? What difference would it make how many people you sleep with if your spending and consumption habits remain the same? What sort of consciousness shift is this supposed to bring? I mean, check it:

The U.S. economy is predominantly driven by consumer spending, which accounts for approximately 70 percent of all economic growth.

If you want to be revolutionary, stop spending money you don’t have on shit you don’t need. If you want to be sexually revolutionary, stop pumping out more little consumers. Period.

Saturday Shuffle

By in music, saturday shuffle

  1. School of Seven Bells — I L U
  2. Against Me! — Spanish Moss
  3. Meat Beat Manifesto — Repulsion
  4. Greg Ellis — Form 4
  5. Einstürzende Neubauten — Morning Dew
  6. Social Distortion — Ring of Fire
  7. Nobody — Hip$ters
  8. Dreamend — Magnesium Light
  9. Charlotte Gainsbourg — Master’s Hands
  10. Son Volt — Down to the Wire
  11. Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke — Pilgrimage of Lost Children
  12. Blackeyed Susan — None Of It Matters
  13. My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult — Spotlite Hooker
  14. Rasputina — Olde Dance
  15. The Vines — A Girl I Knew
  16. Clutch — Opossum Minister
  17. Gomez — Machismo
  18. KMFDM — Juke Joint Jezebel
  19. Mazzy Star — Into Dust
  20. Michael Nyman — Against Constancy
Let’s see Peter Jason Rentfrow find the common thread in that.

I Refute Voltaire Thus

By in fresh hell, history, jests japes jokes jollies, non compos mentis, science, the madness of crowds

So, my parents have gotten into the whole “raw milk” thing, thanks to some quack doctor they went to see. Just to make sure I didn’t space out through science class all those years ago and hallucinate about the whole reason we started pasteurizing milk to begin with, I did some looking around on the Internets. This made me laugh…

Food scientists can hardly believe that so many consumers have turned their back on one of the most successful public health endeavors of the 20th century. In 1938, for example, milk caused 25 percent of all outbreaks of food- and water-related sickness.

…and it also reminded me of a recent righteous rant by Ed about an outbreak of pertussis in California, related to the trendy anti-vaccination movement.
See, there’s a part of me that appreciates this on some meta-level, the counterintuitive “victim of our own success” phenomenon. Science has done such a good job of freeing people from having to worry about dying from contaminated food and drink or formerly terrifying diseases that they’ve become complacent and ignorant, enough so to become contemptuous of their benefactor and deny that they ever needed its help in the first place. Of course, public policy deserves a lot of the credit as well, and it, too, has ironically helped breed a superbug of stupidity in the form of so many Joe Republicans, convinced that they never got nothin’ from no one and don’t see why they should have to pay taxes to help anybody else. Indeed, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have so many thankless, functionally retarded children.

And if you need further proof that history is not progressive but cyclical, not a steady advance of knowledge and compassion but alternating periods of high-minded cosmopolitan and knee-jerk provincial values, consider the fact that Upton Sinclair’s famous exposé The Jungle was written in 1906. What do you think the reception would be for a book like that today, 104 years later? An earnest portrayal of the hopeless plight of the working class, the corruption of unregulated business and the need for social programs, written by an unabashed !socialist!, of all things?
Progress? Age of Reason? I laugh in your face.

Musical Mysticism

By in atheism, foolosophy, music, nietzsche, philosophy, religion, the big sleep

Let’s fall in love with music
The driving force of our livings
The only international language
Divine glory, the expression
The knees bow, the tongue confesses
The lord of lords, the king of kings
– Mother Love Bone

In keeping with this, we find that the interest inspired by philosophical and also religious systems has its strongest and essential point absolutely in the dogma of some future existence after death. Although the latter systems seem to make the existence of their gods the main point, and to defend this most strenuously, at bottom this is only because they have tied up their teaching on immortality therewith, and regard the one as inseparable from the other; this alone is really of importance to them. For if we could guarantee their dogma of immortality to them in some other way, the lively ardour for their gods would at once cool; and it would make way for almost complete indifference if, conversely, the absolute impossibility of any immortality were demonstrated to them. For interest in the existence of the gods would vanish with the hope of a closer acquaintance with them, down to what residue might be bound up with their possible influence on the events of the present life. But if continued existence after death could also be proved to be incompatible with the existence of gods, because, let us, say, it presupposed originality of mode of existence, they would soon sacrifice these gods to their own immortality and be eager for atheism. The fact that the really materialistic as well as the absolutely sceptical systems have never been able to obtain a general or lasting influence is attributable to the same reason.

The early Christians were, ironically enough, called atheists by the Romans because they refused to recognize the state gods. In somewhat the same way, I call myself an atheist because, as far as the common conception of God in my culture is concerned, I am. I don’t believe in any sort of personal god, which, as I keep asserting, is the only kind anyone is really interested in, and I myself am not interested in a god that has to be defined out of existence to be kept away from the prying eyes and grasping hands of science. But it’s always worth repeating, I think, that I don’t even consider the existence of God or the lack thereof to be all that important. It’s fun to argue about, in a mental exercise, intellectual sparring sort of way, but as the man just said, the only reason anyone even cares is because their ideas about personal immortality are all caught up in it. I’m not aware of any cultures that worship anything like the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent Christian God without a corresponding belief in personal immortality (though perhaps I should check with Pascal Boyer again and see if I forgot some), but some schools of Buddhism have managed to hold a belief in personal identity surviving physical death without any deity being involved. The thought of death, the knowledge of its inevitability, gives us all pause at the least, if it doesn’t inspire outright fear. We want to believe that it’s not really the end for us. Everything else flows from that. In keeping with that, I feel that disbelief in the “self” is far more radical than mere atheism, and more relevant to the heart of religious belief. If you’re not going to experience any reality except life in this world, and the most God is ever going to bother revealing about himself is vague images to thrill superstitious old ladies in the form of a stain on the wall, a burnt section of their waffles, or writing on a cat, then all that existential angst disappears in a puff, and all the tons of paper wasted on tortured attempts at theodicy can be used to start fires in cold weather.
But continuing with our themes of personal identity, life, death and nineteenth-century German philosophy, here’s an interview with Nietzsche scholar Julian Young that touches on a type of immortality I can fully endorse:

How did Nietzsche’s ideas about music affect his philosophy?
“Without music life would be an error” is a great T-shirt slogan, but its meaning is far from obvious. Here is how Nietzsche glosses his aphorism in a letter from 1888, the last year of his sanity:
“Music … frees me from myself, it sobers me up from myself, as though I survey the scene from a great distance … It is very strange. It is as though I had bathed in some natural element. Life without music is simply an error, exhausting, an exile.”
Nietzsche’s first book, The Birth of Tragedy, dedicated to Richard Wagner, is constructed around the duality between the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian.” Apollo stands for intellect, reason, control, form, boundary-drawing and thus individuality. Dionysus stands for the opposites of these; for intuition, sensuality, feeling, abandon, formlessness, for the overcoming of individuality, absorption into the collective. Crucially, Apollo stands for language and Dionysus for music. What, therefore, music does is to–as we indeed say–”take one out of oneself.” Music transports us from the Apollonian realm of individuals to which our everyday self belongs and into the Dionysian unity. Music is mystical.
Since the human essence is the will to live–or for Nietzsche, the “will to power”–the worst thing that can happen to us is death. Death is our greatest fear, so that without some way of stilling it we cannot flourish. This is why musical mysticism is important. In transcending the everyday ego we are delivered from “the anxiety brought by time and death.” Through absorption into what Tristan und Isolde calls the “waves of the All,” we receive the promise and experience of immortality.
Later on, Nietzsche realized that not all music is Dionysian. Much classical music, based as it is on the geometrical forms of dance and march, is firmly rooted in the Apollonian. Yet as the 1888 letter indicates, he never abandoned the musical “antidote” to death. Without music, life would be anxiety and then extinction. Without music, life would be an “exile” from the realm of immortality.

Lowbrow but I Rock a Little Knowhow

By in art, books, foolosophy, music, psychology, the wire

If I told you my taste in movies, would you be able to tell me what kind of music I listen to? How about my favorite reading material, or taste in television?
Peter Jason Rentfrow can — and it’s no parlor trick. The Cambridge University psychologist is lead author of a new study that finds a person’s entertainment choices tend to share certain basic characteristics, which may or may not be immediately obvious.
…The highbrow/lowbrow split, which has dominated cultural criticism for the past century or so, remains alive and well: The researchers report most people gravitate toward one dimension or the other. But Rentfrow and his colleagues also identified an area of common ground. (Hint: It’s occupied by Oprah).
…After analyzing the data, the researchers concluded that people’s aesthetic tastes can be broken down into five “entertainment-preference dimensions.” They are: Aesthetic (which includes classical music, art films and poetry), cerebral (current events, documentaries), communal (romantic comedies, pop music, daytime talk shows), dark (heavy metal music, horror movies) and thrilling (action-adventure films, thrillers, science fiction). The first two fall under the general heading of highbrow, while the final three are labeled lowbrow.
…For instance, “individuals who enjoy the aesthetic entertainment factor, which may be regarded as abstract, dense and demanding, tend to be creative, calm, introspective and in touch with their emotions,” they write. Those who are drawn to dark entertainment genres tended to rate high on intellect and extraversion, but low on conscientiousness and agreeableness; they “may generally see themselves as defiant, reckless and immodest.”
In contrast, “It appears as though the psychological characteristics most central to individuals who prefer the communal entertainment factor are rather similar to the defining characteristics of that factor: pleasant, lighthearted, unadventurous, uncomplicated and relationship-oriented,” the researchers add.
I seem to be split between highbrow and lowbrow, with my enjoyment of watching professional soccer being the only thing I can think of that would qualify as communal taste. But I’m a little skeptical that there’s much of a common thread to be found between movies and music by Rob Zombie on the one hand, and the complete works of Mozart on the other. Or, to use an example from a recent post, books by Isaiah Berlin versus escapist fantasy novels. And where does an exceptional TV show like The Wire fall within this framework? Even Amazon can give suggestions based on individual purchases as to similar music, books or movies you might like, but this seems to suggest there’s a way to find deeper connections between tastes despite what seem to be wildly disparate surface appearances.

Correlation, Not Causation

By in augean stables, bring me the head of nicholas carr, foolosophy, technology

Having successfully shown that he doesn’t understand the nature or effects of linking, Nicholas Carr has decided to turn his critical attention to the brain-damaging effects of search engines.

Search engines’ function of providing us with information almost instantly means people are losing their intellectual capacity to store information, Nicolas Carr, said.
The author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, claimed that the web was depriving our mental faculties of the regular workouts they need.
He told the BBC that the internet meant people now found it harder to concentrate, for example when trying to read a book.
Right. I’m sure our addictions to overwork and accomplishment have nothing to do with our difficulty concentrating, not to mention the thousand-and-one other shiny objects and stimuli brought to our attention every day. And oh, how far we’ve fallen from the glory days of intellectual stimulation, when all we had to do for entertainment was watch TV and listen to our Walkmen. But didn’t those supposedly erode our attention spans too? Listening to the doomsayers, I’m surprised we’re able to do much more than drool and follow moving objects with our eyes after all these decades of technological bombardment of our fragile psyches.
But let’s leave aside the implausibility of studies being able to see significant effects on cognitive function in the short period of time that people have been using search engines. Just ask yourself the next time you start to type in a query: how would you have gone about trying to find this information before we had Google to use? Would you have driven to town to search for a needle of information in the haystack of a bookstore or library? Would you call some smart friend of yours, assuming you knew anyone who might have the answer? Or would you have just idly wondered for a moment before shrugging and forgetting about it?
And do you use this kind of information-gathering tool in the same way as a kid in school cheating on a test by copying off his neighbor’s paper? That is, do you simply look for the answer you need, write it down and promptly forget about it, learning nothing? Or when you search, do you find yourself following one or more of those, uh, brain-rotting links to more information on the topic than you even suspected existed? Who doesn’t have bookmarked pages of valuable information that was stumbled upon by accident? Who doesn’t have favorite writers online that they only found by following their nose (or perhaps we should say clicky finger) one day?
Clearly, something has impeded Carr’s ability to gather and process information, but I suspect that whatever it is, it predates the Internet.
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