Hedonix's Weblog

What If?

hedonix — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:02:12 +0000

What If?

Lloyd H. Whitling

What if we all have been trained from birth to see good and evil as reversed? By that, I mean to see what was created to be good as evil, and what was created to be evil as good? Does that sound ridiculous? What if people had been trained that way for thousands of years, until in today’s time we take for granted what is good and what is evil, and now we take them for granted? What if everything in our lives and in what’s around us has been adjusted to accommodate that? Would that not make our first question sound ridiculous?

“But,” comes the reply to that, “we can plainly see what is good and what is evil and know it by application of common sense. How do your questions get past that?”

What if we have also been taught for all our lives how we cannot trust our senses, that they will inform us wrong, and so we cannot apply common sense to such a question?— and that science makes a wrong assumption from the outset by basing its conclusions on sensible observatons? What if we are convinced that to even ask such a question as we did at the start, is a part of what is evil, designed to steer us away from the ancient writings? What if we have always been informed that we are inherently evil in our own selves, and so must be told about the good and, through instructions and punishment, learn to accept such teachings without question? How is our common sense going to be of anything different than what those teachers tell us and show us in the ancient writings which they have apprised us as truth?

So, even now, would not our common sense about it depend on what what the teachers chosen by our parents have taught us is right and wrong? Would not some of us see differently according to what we had been taught, so that sometimes we see evil in what they see as good, and each side think the other guilty of heresy? Could they not justify, according to the view of the ancient writings they had been taught, that we are guilty of heresy and not themselves, so that no agreement could ever be had about what the ancient writings mean?— or even, many times, of which ancient writings should apply? Would not both sides try to apply them upon each other in the same manner in which they were taught them in the first place, by insistence and punishment, even to the point of war?— and let that side which is most truly God’s side win?

What if the existence of every god depends upon the beliefs about them promoted among the people by teachers who have mastered the art of pursuasion, so that their existences, all, are only found in the support such teachers raise? What if the teachers’ efforts falter, and the people stop believing?— would such gods disappear from prominence and fade away until all that is left of them are statues and paintings?

And, what if what some of those faded gods had promoted as good what is now taught to be evil? What if, over the passing of generations of human beings, the course of history would show that what had replaced those ancient gods had always also sooner or later been replaced, so that all that had ever been allowed as good had now become viewed as evil according to the teachers who spread their names and words among the people? What if the gods whose edicts we now follow are also doomed in that same way?— or even, as can be seen within the ancient writings, doomed to evolve so that what we are told about them by one end of those writings is vastly different from what is said at the other?

What if the first gods were those of people unconscious of their own nakedness, and that increased sharing of a consciousness of evil led the people into feeling increasingly exposed, so the evolution of religion had evolved away from what the first god had declared good, to a state where what had been good to see gained punishment in the latter stage for its exposure? What if more than half the crimes and lewdness of the latter generations were nothing worse than a widespread emanation of a desire to shed the unnatural evil state and return to what the first god had declared to be good?— and that the evil teachers who rail against the good were made by such acts to climb upon their pedestals and pulpits and demand that laws be made against them, and that such laws as they had already caused to be made should be more harshly enforced, so that insistence and punishment should be carried forth in evil’s cause in the name of good?

What if an early promoter of the cause of good had set himself against evil in his own time, and demanded that we should care for ourselves the same as we do our temples, that we should live simple lives free of amassed wealth and possessions, that we should give of our excesses to the poor that they, too, might live good lives free of the evils of hunger and need? What if the evolution into evil of all such messages has caused his to be buried beneath the dross from later teachers, until productivity and amassment of wealth and possessions has now become the standard according to which we live, according to which we assess each other, so that our houses as well as our temples have become ornate and gaudy, and the walls of wealth put on display are built of amassment of debt, are false, and therein the evil lurks to strike us down when we answer to the stress of it, and relax our vigilance.

What if, in earlier times, seeds for a second prosaic vision of how we should understand our existence and all that surrounds us took root and slowly spread, as vines, into all of humanity’s endeavors and, by trial and error, grew until the priests took note of it and had it declared evil. What if centuries of human torture, burnings of live bodies, and persecution only served to stir wise persons into making assessments of this newly declared evil, so that it was seen to be useful, actually pacific, and to actually work where common sense as taught by the priests said it should fail? What if the priests and those politicians they supported used technologies advanced by this new vision to make weapons so they could show how it is evil, and demonstrated that by using them to destroy heretics around the world? What if this new heresy, which offered them so many advantages in their causes of insistence and punishment, were to also evolve at their behest, so that evil promoted evil until now it can threaten all of humankind, all of the forms of life that have for millenniums roamed and evolved upon this Earth, with extinction.

What if those who declare that to be a form of good, saying it would signal the return of their missing god, should vie against those who declare that kind of ending to be the totality of evil, and win? What if that must be the ultimate test for good and evil, and what if humankind must make up its mind whether barren planets represent the good because of their vast majority in numbers, or if a lonely planet teeming with a plethoric variety of life forms represents a good thing in the midst of prehistory replicas of catastrophes. What if we should someday observe how evil seems to displace good in every kind of way we’ve observed, and that good requires guarded protection and nurturance, not cudgeling insistence and punishment, if it will survive?

Posted in hedonics, philosophy, secularism

Religion VS Science

hedonix — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:54:45 +0000

Religion VS Science

by Lloyd H. Whitling

April 27, 2009

The religious claim science is based on an illusion of reality, which is necessarily a temporary version of creation. Supporters of science claim religion is based on unverifiable myths told about absurd incidents. Each side claims it cannot understand how the other can claim to possess the only version of truth. The conflict appears unresolvable for lack of a shared vision of what constitutes reality, and a shared language about it where words mean the same on both sides.

We can only and most quietly hope to settle the differences between science and religion, and show why science is the most effective stabilizer of humanity, by taking the discussion into a completely unrelated place. Let’s take it into the ownership of real propery to not only emphasize the nature of both, but to perhaps show why this kind of property gets called ‘real’.

Real estate involves definite chunks of property, with or without buildings, located in recognizable places on the face of the Earth. Consider how ownership gets transferred and also how it gets established. We can compare modern methods to the ancient, call the ancient “organized religion” (faith) and the modern ‘organized science” (objective). Faith and objectivity both are not about whether or not the property exists, but whether it was accurately and cogently described, and whether those descriptions were accurately translated into usable every day terms.

In ancient times, where individuals could own land, borders and corners were by individual agreement, as being something on the order of “From that hilltop by that tree down to that bend in the creek, over to the road, then to the bridge over the ravine, and back up to the hilltop.” While that might not be an exact replica of it in every instance, what is intended is to demonstrate the absence of any precision.

Winds blew hills away as the land passed from generation to generation, the creek eroded a new bed (or dried up and disappeared, the tree died and another grew near to its place, and the bridge over the ravine one day collapsed. The generations of humans involved kept their faith in the old descriptions, and learned to revise them as time would pass and the scenery rearranged itself.

As science advances, technological innovations develop to fill human needs, and accurate deeds and descriptions were most certainly one of those needs. People applied scientific discoveries to how to more accurately find locations on the Earth’s face, not for just this problem, but for how to cross oceans and end up closer to one’s intended destination.

What works on sea without landmarks works even better on land. The development of accurate compasses made predictable directionality a welcome achievement. The development of accurate clocks led to the dividing of the Earth’s surface into longitiude and latitudinal divisions, wherein exact points could be defined by surveyors, trained to read each others’ instructions and find within inches of where another had been perhaps years into the past. Stakes driven into the ground get reassessed from time to time to assure new owners that old lines were accurately defined and they could know where their property rights ended and their neighbors’ began.

Today, entire megalopolis-sized cities depend on scientifically-stated accuracy for their layouts, including beneath the surface. Mines collapse, and rescue workers on the surface drill precisely-located shafts into the ground to where they hope to find survivors. Pipelines and roads are laid out and constructed in carefully measured plots and, nowadays, crews can work toward each other while fully expecting to meet in an exact fashion.

Compare that to the laying out of Tennessee’s nothern border and the obvious miss those crews made while using ancient methods and primitive instruments. Constant refinement enables science to introduce technological devices of which that absence of accuracy is no longer granted consideration.

It is not only the exact locations that get serious consideration nowadays, but also the exact area confined with a set of borders. A small farm that may once have been assessed at “about” eighty acres may now be accurately measured at 72.6 with no one disagreeing. Surveyors can walk knowledgeable people around a plot of land and explain how they arrived at their figures, and all parties will either arrive at the same numbers, or know wherein their disagreements lie.

That cannot be said of the ancient ways. Money would exchange hands, a fight or feud break out, some authorities get called upon to arbitrate, but all sides would as likely as not fail to achieve real satisfaction from the results, wherein there would be winners and losers with bad feelings between them. One sides ‘faith’ in the results would be the other side’s reasons for doubt. That has been the case for most of the duration of human existence.

It is the nature of human beings that vested interests will also lead to doubt, one way or another. Application of technological advancesa that led to a smaller tax assessment might have gained a farmer’s support, but if it led to assessing a smaller acreage at the time of intended sale would certainly be put to the test. There will always be exceptions: “Uncle Charlie took it like a man, and sold a smaller farm than he bought and paid for.”

Part of science is the finding of ways to gain dependable answers to the questions it raises. If Uncle Charlie worked with the surveyors who measured his farm and understood their math and methods, he would be satisfied with a result that might have disappointed him. He would fully expect that surveyors far into the future would measure the farm and arrive at very similar conclusions. He would know that mistakes can be made, and that part of the process would require verification, and that he could, himself with the right training, check the math and methods and see for himself there were no mistakes.

That sort of assurance is not available where ancient methods still prevail. People who must “take it on faith” that their authority figures are acting in their behalf have to make choices when some authorities assess their property at “more or less eighty acres” but another insists it is hard-put to make sixty. Where the tax man insists upon eighty acres for a plot that a potential buyer can only see as sixty, a sale is apt to fall through unless the seller can successfully convince someone the farm is worth the asking price no matter what its size in acres.

When science fears to tread on religion’s domain, as in today’s hazardous world, no modern surveyors will ever get called in to decide the actual size of such a farm. The farmers on either side of the deal will have no idea how the surveyor arrives at his results, except for stories told down at the meeting hall in town. Urban legends will abound in such a climate, such as the story about a man who owned an entire tall mountain that got surveyed “as only one acre, and he had planted ten acres worth of seeds and gotten that much of a crop off it.”

After much exposure to many such stories as that, the farmers on both sides of a potential deal will hesitate to rely on modern methods and those who use them. Even worse, having heard of other surveyors who might have been beaten or killed for arriving at figures that diverged from what both sides had expected, many surveyors might turn down the job. The farmers on all sides might revel that the old ways of faith had been preserved, and never get to realize the peaceful sense of confidence they would never experience in their lifetimes.

By now, the point of this should be well understood. Faith in guesswork will never be the equal of confidence found in verifiable accuracy. Even while the landscape changes around us, an accurate understanding gained from verifiable methods enables the tracking of those changes, and awareness of their effects upon how we will describe and recognize that little portion of it all we wrap our minds around. Without that awareness, we must resort to placing our faith in authority figures and the gods for whom they decree enforcement.

And, that is when we have religion instead of science.

Lloyd

Posted in atheism, hedonics, philosophy, religion, secularism

What’s Wrong with Those Silly Atheists?

hedonix — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:06:54 +0000

by Lloyd H. Whitling

http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/atheist_faults

We start with a premise, that atheists have something “wrong” with them that causes them to make strange choices, reject all gods, and lead amoral, immoral lives. Add to that a second premise that arises from a different view, that we are born as hedonists, whether we later learn to condemn that label, misapply it, or study to discover what all it may imply about us. Most people seem to subscribe to the premise that both are somehow bad-wrong, even when they can be observed to live as though they have those same traits.

Our first question must generally be, “Why?” Why, if both turn out to be true, must it be so? If they are true, can anything be done about it? What if the opposite is true, and the atheists’ naturalistic (so most claim) way of thinking is the most correct, and it turns out something is wrong with the majority of people, as some famous people have stated over the centuries? What if it might turn out that something that could be genetic works to separate atheists from the religious, since most atheists proclaim it to not be an intentional choice they have made, as religionists would like the world to believe. What if it boils down to something that separates both parties’ thinking processes, so that they can but barely communicate with each other about certain kinds of topics? Does that have to mean that some god created atheists with an extra hurdle to jump on their way to Heaven or Hell, that the merely religious do not face?

We have had some success with tabbing up a bunch of pages that had to do with the Hedonic Treadmill, that we stirred through to see what we could unearth. We could try that once again, this time looking for some basic characteristic of the human brain that might explain why atheists get results from their thinking that differ from the religionists, and why they prefer different kinds of material to gain those results. While we have as yet no reason to assume there is a brain difference, we must realize it is the brain that we use for our act of thinking, and so the assumption does seem reasonable. Looking into it, the most obviously basic difference may be in the fact of separation between the right and left cerebral hemispheres and the way they are wired together by the corpus callosum, “the arched bridge of nervous tissue that connects the two cerebral hemispheres, allowing communication between the right and left sides of the brain (American Heritage).”

Our first tab, from http://www.indiana.edu/~primate/brain.html by M.K. Holder, shows a graphic image of that, and introduces us to the phrase brain lateralization, the name psychologists have given to the functions played by each half of the brain, and the fact that many of those functions differ from one side to the other. Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke identified areas on the left hemishpere that are concerned with speech production and comprehension. While that applies to the majority of us, leaving others with anomalous conditions and patterns, prosody contrarily occurs in the right hemisphere, so that we can emote, and sing, invent poetry and be persuasive, or be responsive to others through intonation and accentuation and the processing of visual and musical stimuli, spatial manipulation, facial perception, and artistic ability. [See link at Wikipedia] It is interesting to know that singers who stutter do not do so while singing, an example of the effect this makes.

We can go to Wikipedia’s link at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_function to verify what we think we have learned, and see what else may await our eager eyes. Two facts emerge: One is that no one in whom the two halves have been surgically separated is a left or right brain only person; the two halves do communicate. The other is that damage to a function may be repaired when that function moves to another area, or perhaps to the other side. Language functions such as linear reasoning, vocabulary and grammar most often are lateralized to the left hemisphere.

Wikipedia lists left hemisphere functions as analytical, verbal, logical, exact numerical computation (exact calculation, numerical comparison, estimation), language: grammar/vocabulary, literal; and for the left hemisphere only: direct fact retrieval. Under right hemisphere functions in their little table, we find listed: holistic, prosodic, and intuitive functions, (compare:) approximate calculation, numerical comparison, estimation, and in reference to language: intonation/accentuation, prosody, pragmatic, contextual functions. In other words, the left side deals with facts and reasoning, the right side with guessing and emotions.

Not so fast, we might be warned by the page found at http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/brain.htm, where a Xian writer introduces us to the “two-brain myth,” and that bicameral laterlization comes out of pseudoscience rather than the real thing, because “…in the wake of the first flush of false teaching generated by incomplete findings having to do with persons with brain damage, [they] have then embraced the implications, labeled them science….” He goes on to complain, “The so-called left-brain person is thought to be linear, logical, analytical, and unemotional; and the right-brained person is thought to be spatial, creative, mystical, intuitive, and emotional.” What I like about Xian writers is that, even while taking a position in error, they can explain things in a nutshell and, for that reason, we will continue down the page.

Doing our best to not allow ourselves to get distracted by rampant poisoning of the well, where we read such as “Faith cannot operate in the left side of the brain” (His quoting of a radio preacher), we find him quoting Terence Hines, in the book Pseudoscience and the Paranormal (1988), that, “The actual evidence shows that, if anything, the left hemisphere is more involved with dreaming and mental imagery than the right.” We are not, however, informed about what evidence Mister Hines had researched to gain that, but hopefully that would show up in his book. He is further quoted or paraphrased as saying. “While each hemisphere may specialize in certain activities, the only clear-cut function which only one side has is related to speaking. The left hemisphere controls the muscles of the vocal tract.” (Terence Hines, Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, 1988, pp. 298-299).

The problems that sloppy speech and thought introduce to technical subjects becomes apparent when something called “the two-brain theory” gets introduced, and we discover what this page is really all about when his sources are shown as dealing with the bicameral brain as though the corpus callosum failed to interconnect them. The entire page appears to be dated 8/92. I wonder whether it will get updated to the newest science techniques before twenty years have passed. Probably not, because the only way to make it accurate and honest is to throw it out.

Having abandoned that as not current and out-dated, let us progress to http://www.viewzone.com/bicam.html, by Dan Eden, where, on the other hand, we get to be reassured that each of us is really two people. Perplexing? Yes! Informative? Well, let’s have a look-see.

I thought I had seen more than enough of Nixon’s image while he was still president, but I discovered the more I looked at his flipped images on this page, the more differences I could find in the details. It appears to demonstrate that we are as different side to side on the outside as on the inside. It makes me wonder if there is an upside to all of this, or if it has to be all on the downside.

Think of our brain, he suggests, as two computers connected together on the same network, to run the same information using different programs. Hence, two people tied together to work as one; two eyes, two ears, two lungs, two arms two feet and legs, two hearts, two stom— Hey, wait just a dim-witted minute, Buster!

He describes Roger Speery’s experiments with a patient whose corpus callosum had been deactivated: “Although this did not prevent his ability to walk, talk and eat, some unexpected findings were encountered in some of the higher brain functions when each side was examined independently of the other. The right hand and eye could name an object, such as a pencil, but the patient could not explain what it was used for. When shown to the left hand and eye, the patient could explain and demonstrate its use, but could not name it. Further studies showed that various functions of thought are physically separated and localized to a specific area on either the left or right side of the human brain.”

Interesting statements from this page: “The two brains not only see the world in vastly different ways but, in our current society, the left side just “doesn’t get” what the right side is all about.” “Our conscious mind can only focus on data from one brain at a time.” “Sometimes skills which the right brain can perform better are routinely handled, with less skill, by the left brain.”

This next one seems to address Sam Harris’s ‘monkey-chattering voice’ that he seeks to subdue by meditation: “The logical left side is easily bored by lack of input and tends to “doze off” during such activities as meditation (repeating a mantra or word over and over) or in sensory deprivation environments. The right brain is then able to “sneak” into our consciousness, filling our minds with emotional and visual vignettes and freely associated images. All too quickly, though, the left brain will assert itself and dispense with these irrational images, asserting its Spock-like logical dominance and the right brain will have to be content to find expression in dreams.” “…the left brain … is usually the dominant side.” Further exercises: http://www.viewzone.com/bicam33.html

Let us now progress to http://www.mathpower.com/brain.htm so we can discover, “Both sides of the brain can reason, but by different strategies, and one side may be dominant. The left brain is considered analytic in approach while the right is described as holistic or global. A successive processor (left brain) prefers to learn in a step-by-step sequential format, beginning with details leading to a conceptual understanding of a skill. A simultaneous processor ( right brain) prefers to learn beginning with the general concept and then going on to specifics.”

Here we begin seeing how the right hemisphere may be of a religious nature, while the left may lean toward concepts with a more logical appeal. That gets borne out by the interesting chart presented in the bottom portion of this page, where we spot, in slot number 5: (for left side) Responds to logic; (for right side) Responds to emotion.

The tab to http://tolearn.net/hypertext/brain.htm opens up a bit of history. Roger Sperry earned the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1981 for research that clearly showed that the brain is divided into two major parts or hemispheres, the right brain and the left brain. His research also identified that each of the parts of the brain specializes in its own style of thinking and has different capabilities. Groovy!

The left hemisphere, we are told, is associated with verbal, logical, and analytical thinking, naming and categorizing, symbolic abstraction, speech, reading, writing, arithmetic, sequential order. The three Rs, we learn, reading, writing and arithmetic, are the domain and strength of the left brain.

For the right hemisphere’s domain we are offered the realm of creativity. It functions in a non-verbal manner, excels in visual, spatial, perceptual, and intuitive information, which means that it processes information differently than the left brain via a nonlinear and nonsequential method. Because it looks at the whole picture and seeks out the spatial relationships of all the parts as they relate to the whole, this component of the brain is not concerned with how patterns fit with prescribed rules, but flourishes instead when faced with complexity, ambiguity and paradox. Right brain thinkers may often face a loss of words when the right hemisphere has developed a concept frought with complexity despite its ability to process information quickly, for its non-verbal nature can exceed the storehouse of language available from memory by outrunning the left hemisphere’s more careful sequential processing capabilities.

This page’s author, Michael P Pitek, III, proclaims that our educational system is too left-hemisphere oriented. You will find a similar statement on many of the pages we will visit here, even from other lands across the world. I do not wish to duplicate the long list of characteristics for each hemisphere found at the bottom of the page, and so have left it for you to make your own efforts at plagiarism. Put this one in your list of favorites for future reference, instead.

http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3629, our next tab, deals with problems inherent to teaching students whose predominant hemispheres may predispose them toward different styles and methods of learning that would tend toward different needs in order to be successful. We are informed about the tendency toward predominance of one or the other, and introduced to the concept of a “middle brain” with, “You now know whether your preference tends to the left, right, or middle brain, but what does this mean? First, for those of you who came out to be strong to moderate left- or right-brain dominant, be assured that your other hemisphere is alive and well; however, the results do mean that you tend to lead with your dominant hemisphere.

“For example, if you are right-brain dominant, it is your intuitive, emotional right hemisphere that guides the decisions you make throughout the day. If you are left-brain dominant, it is your sequential, time-oriented left hemisphere which tells you how to think, what to believe, and what choices to make.

“Those who are middle-brain dominant tend to be more flexible than either the left- or the right-brain folks; however, you often vacillate between the two hemispheres when you make decisions.”

So, what is this “middle brain” business about, when it is so obvious from all the sketches and photos we’ve run across on this journey that there is no substance in any of them showing with that name? A picture claiming to show it can be found at http://comps.fotosearch.com/comp/LIF/LIF151/sagittal-view-cerebrum_~ca205009.jpg and is great, providing you already know exactly what (in all that mess) to look for. That, you can learn at
http://www.jcu.edu.au/office/tld/learningskills/studysmart/energise.html. Viewing that allows us to interpret that it is buried beneath the outer hemispheres, and apparently beneath the corpus callosum. The literature on the page describes it as Mammalian Brain, functions much the same as the brain in most other mammals, which puts it in charge of the emotions, sexuality and the immune and hormonal systems and long term memory. But, shouldn’t we wonder, does that mean it is conscious?

http://www.alloexpat.com/taiwan_expat_forum/glance-remember-course-t1946.html puts the “middle brain” the same as the corpus callosum, and claims an ability to develop a “genius mind” with their method of training it. It would seem that, for this to be obviously true, it should also be common knowledge, not something one would have to stumble across while browsing the Internet. We can keep on trucking here, and see if we run across any verification for this.

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780768681826/ch18 tells us, in a book review, about a man whose corpus callosum has been kept exercised to increase his capacity for many occupations. The gist of his message is that exercising this “middle brain” increases the ability of the right and left hemispheres to communicate with each other. A person accomplishes this by constantly taking on diverse challenges while keeping in mind the necessity to succeed.

Alright, so maybe the corpus callosum is deeply imbedded in the thinking process. It is, after all, the network through which thought signals would be sent between the hemispheres, whether or not any would originate within its web of wires.

Is there a middle brain? we get queried at ugich konitari mumbai’s
http://kaimhanta.blogspot.com/2008/09/is-there-middle-brain_26.html where we are further informed of the differences (rightly or wrongly, and for most people, as always) between the left and right hemispheres.

Right brain, he says, uses feeling, is “big picture” oriented, imagination rules, symbols and images prevail, as do present and future, philosophy & religion, can “get it” (i.e. meaning), believes (which relates to our topic), appreciates (and other emotions would be included with that), spatial perception, intonation and accentuation, knows object function, fantasy based (also most relevant to our topic), presents possibilities, impetuous, risk taking (which may also be very relevant to our topic). [Material in parentheses is, of course, my own.]

As for the left hemisphere, he lists: uses logic, detail oriented, facts rule, words and language, present and past, math and science, can comprehend, knowing, acknowledges order/pattern perception, knows object name, reality based, forms strategies, practical, safe. None of that disagrees with much of the foregoing but he treats the “middle brain” as a joke.

Hmmm?

Onward to the next tab, and hopefully a bit of actual enlightenment: at http://www.proedit.com/articles/article_middle_brain.asp we become informed that writing for the web requires us to use our middle brain. The left side of your brain, he (Doug Davis) tells us, does all of the highly technical work. Right brain is where your creative marketing and charm develop while you focus on your readers’ emotional sides, get into their heads and, while filling up their minds with factual information from the left side, you work to keep your readers interested.

That’s great, and in keeping with our learning so far. But, then he tells us (and I quote, “Middle Brain … (news flash), there really isn’t a middle brain, per se. But, writing for the Web requires so much right brain and left brain activity that most of the work probably happens in that soggy middle. The right side creates the draft, and the left side perfects it. Write, edit, write, edit… rinse, repeat. The left brain identifies the need to optimize the content, and the right brain finds creative ways to accomplish the optimization.”

If the “middle brain” turns out to be metaphoric, as it appears to be tending toward, even with identifying the wiring harness as a part of the human computer’s CPU, and all the advice available for its development could more accurately have been presented as a hedonic need for balance to increase its efficiency and power, the results boil down to being much the same.

Think of it in musical terms, especially if you have an old piano close at hand, where you can demonstrate this: Pick any two keys not too far apart and strike them both at the same time. If they are not perfectly in tune, you will hear what is called a “beat” frequency, a slow tremolo that varies the loudness of sound you hear. Piano tuners use that phenomenon to tune those big instruments, that (since the diatonic scale is not a perfect pitch setup) requires counting the numbers of those beats over a short period of time to know when the best tuning has been achieved for each set of strings. Superheterodyne radio circuits worked that same way, by using a ‘beat’ frequency created by two differently tuned oscillators to create a third frequency that could only exist because the other two frequencies worked to create it. Let all religious persons think about that, and realize that if their God is a human creation, their putting an end to this world and all the life upon it would make them responsible for the death of that God—and Allah—and all the rest!

Let that serve as a metaphor for the way disharmonic information serves to separate the two (strings = cerebral hemispheres) by creating dischordant waves between them. Tuning up your brain by making certain your information is accurate, can pass challenges by demonstrating its rectitude, serves to lessen your level of stress while increasing self confidence levels and ends up making you a more effective person. The “middle brain” might serve as a model of what your refinements accomplish, and as a warning center as you attune yourself more closely to disharmonious situations and teach yourself to automatically research for accuracy before either adopting or rejecting new information and ideas.

Or, so we might hope.

About.com offers an abundant resource for all kinds of information about all kinds of topics. In this case, we discover a tab for Grace Flemings’ page about how students can use an awareness of their own predominance to help in learning. At http://homeworktips.about.com/od/learningstyles/a/leftrightbrain.htm she informs us “According to recent research, people who are right brain dominant and those who are left brain dominant process information and respond in different ways. Most theories suggest that right-brain dominant people are guided by the more emotional, intuitive right hemisphere while left-brain people respond in sequential, logical ways, guided by the left hemisphere.”

“Everyone is different,” she tells us later, “and everyone has characteristics from both types. Some people are very equal when it comes to characteristics. Those students are middle brain oriented….” by which we must assume she means the two hemispheres have a balanced effect upon those fortunate persons’ thinking processes. Or else, according to the writer of a previously visited tab, cause them to vacillate.

The following links were also among our tabs, and more or less verify the foregoing. While there are likely thousands of pages written on the web about this subject, I suggest you might begin with these if you want to dig further into this.
http://www.funderstanding.com/content/right-brain-vs-left-brain
http://www.web-us.com/brain/LRBrain.html
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3629 for teaching your students. Take the simple test toward the bottom, to determine your own predominance and raise your own level of effectiveness. There are enough of these tests that can be found on the Internet to verify each other and increase your confidence in the results.

So, have we yet an idea of what is “wrong” with atheists? The most notable trait among us seems to be a preference of logic and reason above inspiration and spontaneous thought. We like numbers and data and demand to be provided them. No speculative forays into the night for us: We like the safety of having our inferences backed up by numbers and experiments so we can “show” somebody why their irrational guesses are either wrong or baseless. We see no more reason to believe in gods or the supernatural than in Paul Bunyan, unicorns or the tooth fairy. We tend to regard all of that as intellectually insulting. We tend to be cautious, calculate risks, to not rely on metaphorical images to justify our reasons, and so to behave with high standards because that is statistically better. We are of the left-predominant majority.

What puts us into a minority, as atheists, is a result of early training which reinforces right-hemisphere concepts. Before we can begin to gain language skills, our heads get filled with angels, fairies, witches, devils, ghosts, and other components of imaged language that serve to induce the best possible behavior in people who’ve not yet developed a capacity for reasoning and speech processing. Maybe our school systems are rather left-brained, but think what it might otherwise be like. Look at the Muslim institutions for your most expedient example, and you will see whole nations of people easily aroused into irrational behavior, stampeding each other to death at the slightest offense while they parade about and flagellate themselves in anger.

Secularity is a left-side process. That does not mean there is no place it it for creative thought, that only rational thought belongs to secular people. The greatest part of the universe is available to us as sounds, images, tastes, feelings. Words to describe them come from our minds, but they fail to replace the joyous aspects of our existence. Have you never marvelled at the stars?–at scenic vistas?–at brilliant sunsets and sunrises?–a full-blown oversized moon being chased across the sky by a tiny planet?–at nature’s bounty of sights and smells in April and May?–at the naked, wet body of your lover while skinny-dipping in a shallow woodland pool?–at the thrill of powerfully composed music the first time you heard it on fine equipment?–at the joy of making love, the comfort of falling asleep still entangled, and the thrill of waking up while still embraced and held close. If you have not, you have never really lived, for those are (for most of us) the things of the righthand side, the side that tends toward religion. It is where you bury the hedonic self you wosh to not acknowledge. Try to describe them with words, and then go and experience them and see how badly your words fail you–how inadequate they will always be. The difference is the amount by which a strictly left-side-performing person will have missed out on the best things life has to offer.

Does that make atheists into naturally bad people? In no way. Their left-side predominance imposes the controls that serve to keep the boundaryless righthand side from getting carried away. It is what makes atheists insist on a moral structure that has to be derivable from observable facts and data, not from hearsay and rumors for which no tangible verification can ever be found. Those who wish to repeat what a god has said had better be prepared to demonstrate that god’s existence in order to not seem hare-brained to your average lefty atheist.

So, what does that leave to show how something is wrong with atheists? We can assume that millenniums of being killed of by the religious has evolved the typical atheist into a quietly careful type who stays, as in the cliche, under the radar. If that is true, and our awareness of how biological evolution works allows that inference, the atheistic role whereby the rules-based left-side predominance serve to keep the right-side predominant in check has fallen to a level wherein it has achieved ineffectiveness. World-wide, Islam appears to have gone on a rampage, perhaps inspired by Xian atrocities of the past, and Jewish atrocities before that but still ongoing, so that religiously inspired violence has become a cancer world-wide. An active and effective, but well-protected population of atheists might well serve as a buffer for all the kinds of thought-processing that gives free rise to the wild right side’s inspired but unvetted free-for-all mode of thought.

Here are factoids for you to consider: If the vast majority of people are left-side predominant, then the vast majority of people are potentially atheists without the proper training. Most people to acknowledge themselves as atheists make it clear they do not have the proper training to defend that position. Most people who claim to not be atheists make it clear by their choices and actions that they are not truly believers, but make it unclear why they continue to dishonestly defend unsupported and obviously doubted beliefs. Here’s the topper: Truth be told, if all people suddenly and without warning would become 100% honest, atheists might far outnumber all the religions combined.

That last, if anything, might be all of what is wrong with atheists. The gist of all this is that the right-brain (a phrase most people use as shorthand) is the fun side. If we were stuck with the left side only, we could not do the things that require fast computation. We would be stuck with using words, numbers, and logic. The left hemisphere, if given the task of controlling our actions, would be so engaged with analyzing data that we could only respond to most emergencies only after we had wrecked. If we should observe a car on our left, calculating distances and clearances and comparing those umerically to the amount of its obvious weaving, the sudden appearance of a truck crossing the intersection ahead of us would initiate brain freeze in much the same way as an overload of data processing affects our computers.

Right brain processing appears to be responsible for much of the reason for why we jump in response to surprise, and then stop responding before we have recognized an absence of danger well enough to express an opinion about it. We can go flying, skiing, boating, and run complicated courses because of our fun hemisphere, the one on the right. Our fun hemisphere also enables us to fall in love, express that love with poetry, enjoys the pleasurable feelings of being in love, the sense of its warmth and the warmth of our empathy with a beloved person.

If put in full charge of our wellbeing, the fun side of our brain would respond to emotional stimuli with no logical controls, no data, no reasoned input. It would respond to emotive manipulation with fanatical zeal and quickly get us into trouble. If left in full charge, on the other hand, the left hemisphere would soon turn us into grumpy, half-starved, people-hating too busy at trying to figure everything out to do much about it, capable to point out all the flaws in the environment and everybody in it, but incapable to advise them about how to successfully change their ways.

What I gained most from this study is that only by balancing the two hemispheres’ influence in our lives can we be at our best, our happiest, take the best care of ourselves and those we love, and operate at our highest potential level of knowledgeable understanding. That is a very hedonic thing to learn.

If hedonism, at its fullest, is about achieving and maintaining homeostatic balance, we surely must begin with learning our own traits toward predominance, and how to achieve balance there. We who are mean and feisty, and we who are weak-willed and wishy-washy, are at opposite extremes from each other. Knowing this basic nature of how our brains function in cross-lateralization should alert us to the notion that this is where aiming for balance ought to begin. We might study art, music, poetry and other such subjects to develop our right hemisphere by giving it practice at its own natural functions. We ought to also study logic, develop writing and speaking skills, tease ourselves with puzzles that challenge our abilities to figure things out to give the left a chance to develop. Looking at the lists of predominant traits on a few of the sites devoted to this material, we might realize where we are weak and strong and, even though we feel resistive toward it, emphasize those in which we would question our own abilities.

The best part of this is that we can engage in this privately. We don’t have to worry about looking stupid or ignorant. The worst part is that, with so little inspiration to improve ourselves, we are very apt to never initiate the process. And, for those put off by the notion that a high enough percentage of us are wired backward to deserve special mention, the effect is the same. We won’t know it without specific tests aimed to discover that, so that if our right-brained traits are actually on the left side, we would still deal with them in exactly the same way—as right-brain traits.

Copyright ©2009 by Lloyd Harrison Whitling. All rights reserved. Materials quoted belong to their authors and were repeated here only as references. Please visit their pages to see all the quotes in context, to assure yourself about their rectitude.

Posted in atheism, hedonics, philosophy, religion, secularism Tagged: atheism, atheist, beliefs, hedonics, hedonism, hedonist, religion

The Scientific Method Exposed

hedonix — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:12:41 +0000

by Lloyd H. Whitling

Much of what passes for criticism of science accomplishes nothing more than giving voice to all kinds of suspicions regarding the nature of science. Though I am no great expert, I have made an effort to gain enough of a handle on it to realize most of such talk comes from those who know even less than myself. Any familiarity with science at all breeds within an interested student an appreciation for the good intentions, the immense curiosity, the craving to know, the vision of a better world for us to live in, that drives such people to give up ease and wealth in order to satisfy a craving too immense to otherwise appease.

What interests me is the nature of mystery, especially the elements of that nature that can lead those humans with a scientific bent to relegate some elements of it to the imaginary, while adopting other elements as actual aspects of reality. What differentiates them from those inclined to toss a guess into the ring, and then live as though factuality had been satisfied and rectitude had been established?

It came to me while working with music files on my computer (Now, there’s a Mystery!) that what differentiates the most of them is not whether any proposed solutions to life’s mysteries are anything directly accessible to the senses, but whether they can be quantifiable.

By that, I refer to their accessibility to be somehow defined by the language inherent to mathematics. I could use music for my example, but there are an great many other aspects of reality that we recognize in the abstract. While less apparent for some of them than others, the accessibility to quantification is what they have in common. Anything without that accessibility has to be deemed unreal. That leaves those who defend them as existent in some mysteriously inaccessible fashion to not only work to produce the hidden factors that have so far prevented their discovery, but to explain how some of them can lay claim to accessibility to the inaccessible without being deemed great and mischievous liars.

Music gains credence as reality not so much by its accessibility to our senses, but by what distinguishes it from noise. Music can be defined by mathematics, set within an agreed-upon system usually defined, like morality, by the culture within which it achieves its recognition. Such elements of music as duration, frequency, resonance, variants that determine harmony, key and scale, style, voice, and even what roles the materials surrounding the source and the audience will play in its reproduction.

While you and I may take for granted the various devices upon which music gets stored, someone who would chance to unearth us in some future time may find it all mystifying beyond words. “What is this stuff?” he might ask, while holding up a CD, a cassette or a sheaf of notation, perhaps a hymnal. “Music,” he might be told. Would he scoff, wonder what good is it, and declaim it as meaningless? Maybe, even unreal? Would he study the shiny surfaces on the CDs for a while, and declare to his answerer, “Impossible?” Would he, if he figured out how to work a device that could play them, shriek and plug his ears to ward off the unpleasant noises?

Now, we know that music represents memes, and that memes occupy many forms as they go through the various stages of their replications. So, what if his informant had declared, “Memes” instead of “Music?”

Any CD represents a memeplex, an organized complex of copyable ideas that can be replicated into duplicates of themselves, or be filtered through a human mind to reappear later as part of new forms. Ideas are information in the many forms that can take.

Individual components of such memeplexes are accessible to enumeration, by which their origins, the nature of the interplay between the various memes, and their emotional and physical effects upon their hosts, can be quantified. Just as experts have learned to predict the effects of harmony, and the effects of the environment, will impose upon sound reproduction in music, so can we learn to predict the effects of various combinations of memes as they unite to form memeplexes, or even whether some combinations are possible, harmful, beneficial, dangerous, and then test them to determine the accuracy of such predictions. It is the ability to use information to make predictions, and then to measure those predictions’ accuracy, that makes something scientific, In other words, the predictions can be quantified.

And yet, memes have no existence in any solid fashion upon which we can lay hands or sense in any direct way. We know of their existence only because Mister Dawkins alerted us to them, suggested their nature, and then left us to fend for ourselves while learning to understand them.

That memes were ideas that had been copied led to a lot of foofaraw that almost got the suggestion banished from existence. What got some people’s attention, and then piqued their imaginations, was the notion that misinformation also came from ideas that attracted people to copy them, and that such memes formed into dangerous sorts of memeplexes.

Once that became the de rigeur understanding by which we regarded memes, science began to be “accused” of being memes. Take a good look at the nature of science and memeplexes and, alas, it turns out to not be misinformation after all. Some memes can be quantified. Those are scientific by that very fact. Many, maybe most, cannot be quantified. Those are misinformation by that very same fact—or are, at least, highly suspect for so long as that condition persists.

Think about this: How much of what you believe can be measured in some way that would enable you to describe it numerically? Whatever our backgrounds, whatever our level of achievement, we all share a common agility that enables us to cope with what life throws at us, and do so with insufficient information.

Is that not enough for us to feel proud about, that rather than feel defensive over our ignorance, we should instead accept the shameful temptation to concretize it into factoids? It ought to be wiser if we could acknowledge our absence of prescience and omniscience, and realize that we have earned many opportunities to study events that could be repeated in kind, so that we can be their masters the next time around. A bit of experience with life informs each of us that knowledge in one subject can often be applied elsewhere to our own great benefit, so that a chance to learn something ought to be regarded as a great opportunity.

While a bit of learning may be accompanied by pain, it leads to pleasures that only dedicated students get to experience. That is hedonism’s secret, and unlike many other so-called secrets, it can be quantified. While applied, practical hedonism may be a wrongly maligned philosophy, it is rightly a kind of science for that reason.

Posted in hedonics

Practical Hedonism

hedonix — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:18:17 +0000

Part 1: http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/equivocation/
Part 2: http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/practical-hedonism/

Practical Hedonism
by Lloyd H. Whitling

Hedonism promotes healthy living

WHAT IS IMPRACTICAL ABOUT HEDONISM? Hedonism, in its basic form (that considers actions and choices only in a pleasure/pain scenario), must be semantically updated if it is to become meaningful to modern thought. The Greek philosopher known as the father of ethical hedonism, Epicurus (342-270 B.C.), expressed ethical hedonism as natural inclination to minimize pain and maximize pleasure in a way that was very advanced thinking for his time. By sticking with his original, outmoded terminology in their own presentations, modern writers discredit much that science has discovered about the biological, emotional and ethical nature of the human being and animated life forms in general. By limiting hedonism to being only about human beings, such authors discredit its universally natural application as something that has evolved into its current form among us. We apply it without much thought, and condemn it without a full, current conception of everything pertinent to it.

‘PLEASURE’ AND ‘PAIN’ ARE INACCURATE. To begin with, the terms ‘pleasure’ and ‘pain’ have induced too much distractive and counterproductive discussion due to their overly broad, yet self-limiting nature, and to the absence of any real definitions applied to them from the beginning. Modern language would assert ‘reward’ and ‘aversion’ in their stead, and then apply current knowledge to be gleaned about such subjects as ethology, homeostasis, sociology. The results can be as well applied to groups as to individuals, to cities, states and countries as easily as to any single entity. Such can be done without twisting semantical threads into patterns woven for self-support without any real-world application, as too often has been the case so far.

AS CURRENTLY UNDERSTOOD AND PRESENTED, HEDONISM SUFFERS CERTAIN WEAKNESSES. A real concern for those vying against hedonistic principles is about the abandonment of altruism as a pure and selfless process. If the only reason to reject the philosophy of hedonism is because the current form of this philosophy makes genuinely selfless behavior impossible (as stated in
<http://www.ldsphilosopher.com/2008/08/11/the-pleasure-principle/>), that is actually not a valid reason at all. It is simply not a reason, and certainly not a defense that supports altruism as anything real nor makes a case for it as an ideal. We can understand that the introduction of altruism into topics about hedonism serve only as a decoy to keep a reader or listener from actually assessing either subject on its own merits. As an ethical process, altruism can be redefined according to whatever can eventually be found to be true about it. That can be shown to be a natural part of a hedonic process, once understood in modern terms, that is as natural to animated sentient beings as to anything else.

Hedonism teaches us to avoid unhealthy living

HEDONISM’S NATURAL OBJECTIVE: As was shown in an earlier script, the objective of hedonic behavior is to gain and maintain homeostasis, the physiological balance required for healthy physical and mental existence. Stress results from off-balanced conditions. Stress represents a real problem that has permeated modern living, so that a majority of us suffer from it with little relief. We do not enjoy homeostasis in our lives, more because of inhumane systems of irrational belief than for any other reason. Such beliefs are those which induce behavior that counters our own best interests, and go far beyond the religious persuasions that generally get accused at this point in any discussion. Homeostasis represents an advanced understanding of such ancient terms as ‘ataraxia’ and ‘eudaemonia’, and infers much about such ancient concepts as ’spirituality’, ‘bliss’, ‘ecstasy’ and ‘joy’, which are but temporary manifestations of it.

WHY ‘PAIN’ IS A WRONG LABEL: To our updated view of hedonism, then, whatever would induce bliss, joy, ecstasy, homeostasis, would be promoted by the sense of good that would become reinforced by them, the modern understanding of pleasure in a philosophical sense. Whatever would negate such a sense, then, would be the aversive reinforcement that Epicurus equated with pain (a word that arises from the same roots as penalty). Pain, however, can often be shown to contribute not only to homeostasis, but also to such states as bliss and ecstasy; as, for an example, the orgasm of coitus, a form of pain, but much sought after by any animal capable to experience it; or, the sneeze, also from pain, which restores a semblance of balance to the nostrils by clearing them.

The successful achievement of emotional balance opens us up to homeostasis however we go about it. The sense of unbalance drives altruistic impulses as much as it drives any attempts to alleviate stress. Awareness of impoverishment in the midst of affluence will drive any sensitive person to “give back” in ways hoped to counter the imbalance and make it go as much as possible away. That in no way demarks the altrusitic act as self-centered nor other-centered, but does show it to be an entirely natural response to an undesirable condition. The old, and obsolete, way to present both hedonism and altruism required acceptance or denial of selfishness as an end toward which action would be directed. It failed inasmuch as the selfishness of others, set up to benefit from “selfless” acts, never got acknowledged. In our practical view, the role of self becomes simply unimportant. That renders any such acts as automatically ’selfless.’

IS HEDONISM, THEN, TRULY ‘SELFISHNESS’ AS DESCRIBED? In a different scenario often offered to counter hedonism’s apparent selfish motives, the example of a man who risks his life by jumping into a river to save a child from drowning gets offered as an unquestionably selfless act (sometimes it is a dog that dies trying to save a human). Look at the scene as one in which balance is threatened by the fact of the drowning person’s plight: The river’s forces are far superior to the threatened person’s ability to overcome them. The man (or the dog) does not take time to contemplate his own weaknesses, but takes for granted that he will somehow overcome the odds. The only alternative is an irrational claim that the man (or the dog) purposefully added his own demise to that one already impending, and so selflessly gave up his own life so the other would not die alone.

So, a modern version of hedonism would not depict a simple, black/white two-dimensional pleasure/pain scenario from which human beings have developed their ethical apporaches to socialized existence. A modern, practical hedonism requires more than that in order to be complete and cogent. Reward, penalty and balance play equal roles on life’s stage, with stability, tranquility and health as rewards, and disease, injury and stress as punishments. That a pleasure/pain schema could be developed from that, and defended accordingly, ought to not surprise us. That the pain half of it should be forgotten for the sake of commerce or religion ought to be even less surprising.

IS THE MOST COMMON CRITICISM JUSTIFIABLE? A criticism could be leveled against our practical picture by stating how such a statement might seem judgmental, that claiming those who suffer diseases must somehow deserve them, the same as others somehow deserve their status and wealth. How foolish must we be, that we would expect conditions of heritage, such as existed before a person’s birth, were somehow earned before his or her existence had begun? No, whatever our circumstances or station, hedonism serves only to acknowledge that, whatever our circumstances, our actions have consequences. Reward and penalty serve as our mentors so that we can learn an ethical process of living, establish a set of values (rewards) and gain a sense of justice by gaining awareness of how others are affected much the same as ourselves by the same natural rules and their inherent rewards and penalties.

THE MORAL RESULT: Morality begins when humanity learns to turn that sense of justice into an established set of rules according to which we should act as a social animal. Ethics begins when humanity seeks to refine its rules into a precise system of formal laws with which to accord in our business relationships, the goals being fairness of trade and a balanced society that serves our needs and rewards our accomplishments while it serves as an umbrella under which we operate the processes of our shared existence. Morality, then–our sense of good and bad–arrives as a product of nature’s built-in mentoring devices, and not as a result of threatening impositions.

Posted in atheism, Eudaimonics, hedonics, philosophy, secularism

Semantic Equivocation

hedonix — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 23:13:32 +0000

Part 1: http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/equivocation/

Part 2: hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/practical-hedonism

by Lloyd H. Whitling

Most aspects of human endeavor become populated by those who reside at the extremes of misunderstanding and misinterpretation that originate within the camps of the sticklers and their opponents, the mitigators.

In semantics, stickler extremists demand only one definition for all words, and that those definitions should be granted by whatever philosophical, political or religious creed they most favor. Extremist mitigators, on the other hand, favor loose interpretation for the working room it provides (wiggle room, if you’d prefer), often to enable the meshing of disparate ideas into a cogent form.

EXAMPLE: Does the phrase “kill the light” mean to stand in front of it to cast a shadow?– to shoot it dead so it will never light again?– or something in between?

SO, WHAT IS IT YOU ARE CALLING ‘HEDONISM?’ Hedonism originated in ancient Greece as a natural philosophy wherein pleasure versus pain serve to guide our moral senses. That is what we should refer to now, and not the psychological, commercial or religious depictions that serve up pleasure as a goal in itself. Much has developed in various fields of science that serve to enhance the value of hedonic philosophy for anyone who would bother to make all the connections. My effort is to try to spare others the basic work so that hedonic philosophy can advance into a modern form of wisdom minus all the artifices and blather. Hedonism, once understood as a whole program, does not need all of that. It can stand on its own.

You will find that hedonism, as a natural philosophy, suffers from sticklerism. People who talk and write about hedonism’s happiness/pain scenario seem too often to be sticklers, especially when writing against it, and write their cricism according to their one-sided definition of hedonism while avoiding its original philosophical intent. I have read far too many essays about the many conditions that cannot qualify as ‘painful’ or ‘pleasurable’, however bad or good they make one feel. They seem to want to deny that the threat of Hell evokes pain-responses, or that the promise of Heaven elicits those of pleasure, which are hedonic interests.

Others seem willing to grant that all kinds of physical pain can be sensed as such, but that mental responses are irrelevant, with the same to be said about pleasure. Such stickler claims emanate from the same origins, often with anti-sexuality as their basis, so that physical pain (such as from sexually transmitted diseases) and sexual pleasure (described as booze, carousing, orgasm) become all that hedonism is about, and so Heaven and Hell stay unrelated to that.

Their sly ploy works wonders for their image among their semi-literate, gullible followers, and offers a hook that entices devils’ advocates to develop it for their own ends. As a result, the Internet fills up with misinformed BLOG pages about hedonism that cater to the commercial and religious views (even to the point of trying to develop a pleasure meter), only sparsely populated with pages from those whose studies allowed them to infer a picture far different from that commonly presented.

All of that gets mitigated by the “anything goes” crowd, usually in support of commerce. Pain gets forgotten by both sides in a distractive pursuit of pleasure that takes everybody off the main path and makes a side alley into the whole ball game. Pain and pleasure are not the goals of hedonism, but represent what is seen to be nature’s way of guiding us into evolutionarily beneficial behavior.

SO, WHAT ABOUT PAIN AND PLEASURE? It is correct to identify pain as a noun or verb referencing any condition or effect that signifies inconvenience, injury, distress or disease, whether mental or physical (the way you will find it in your dictionary). Let us oppose that with happiness and pleasure as synonyms (the same as our USA founding fathers and the ancient Greeks they favored in many remarks, and with which our handy thesaurus agrees without forcing it), and let that represent conditions opposing pain: soundness, tranquility and health. I insist that a study of ethology, and hedonism from its very roots, will bear that out. I must also insist that a study of religious and commercial documents about hedonism will bear out that with which this essay was begun.

Using your favorite search engine to ferret out documents about such subjects as homeostasis, ataraxia or eudaemonia will enlighten the diligent student with still more information in support of all the foregoing. Then, look to ethology to find your bearings and your natural reasoning.

There have been furtherances of such a natural understanding that have risen from recent developments in the fields of medicine (especially biological), psychology and sociology. All of it, taken together, can be assembled into a full-fledged philosophy of the kind the world needs that, widely adopted and practiced, subjected to refinements that could result from scientific study, would ascertain for all of us exactly what America’s founding fathers had visualized when they expressed our right for the pursuit of happiness. They had not seen Utopia, they had seen how to live, a natural way to understand how to live, and how to apply that barring interference from power-seeking groups with dominance agendas.

Feel assured that hedonism is a medically sound, practical philosophy when practiced to its fullest, with all its components kept intact. It today’s terms, hedonism is about an ongoing quest for balance that is natural for life-forms capable of autonomous movement. It can be shown how evolution favors such a quest, and that self-destructive life would soon die out at its own hands (1as have societies that favored cannibalism, especially of their own young, which should concern us about the immense willingness of advanced modern societies to send their own youngsters off to feed their war machines).

Neohedonism updates an ancient philosophy. Please look at my web page about something I am still learning. It rounds out hedonism’s “happiness” message, and makes it practical and practiceable:

<http://www.atheistlloyd.com/Hedonism/modern.html>

We can attain balance and still endure stress due to instability, as the web page demonstrates. The happiest, healthiest individuals, whether puppies or people, are those who are the most stably balanced, and those affected by their contagious attitudes. That applies to the physical and the mental aspects as they affect each of us.

The Xians have their godly triangle (Father/Son/Ghost) and we hedonic secular folks now have our own in Balance/ Stability/ Happiness. The difference is, ours is real, tangible, and obvious because it is demonstrable and verifiable, especially as opposed to the normal daily suffering of injury, distress and disease.

Things that other people do and say, words they use, should not bother us. That is one of the results of my having adopted those described as ‘religious’ for my own use, and so I think about my own meanings when I hear them or see them. You can do the same, and gain the same benefit.

EXAMPLE: My brother asked me whether he could say “God be with you” to me without my getting upset. I told him, “Of course.” When some one says ‘God’ I think ‘love’ (as in [1 John 4:8]< 8. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.> I do use that as a standard for assessing Xians and their messages. If the Xians actually practiced their religion in that manner, I would still be one of them. They don’t. I am not. When they don’t, then I get bothered, and seldom fail to tell them why according to their own written creed.

EXAMPLE 2: the word ’soul’ that the Xians use to label some aspect of a human that will live on after the person dies, does not mean a kind of ’spirit’ to me. I regard all of existence as being constituted of events in processes. The chaos of existence can be (at any instant) broken down to its smallest components, which will always be events in every aspect of existence.

In other words, nothing exists except as a result of events. Combined events contribute to processes, and those processes are what we see as ‘objective reality.’ All the processes are members of parent/child relationships, in which child processes conjoin to form larger ‘parent’ processes (as in a family tree): Atoms form materials form objects which are, themselves, part of still larger processes. (Atom plus atom plus atom plus atom = molecule; molecule plus molecule plus molecule = compound; compound plus compound plus compound = thing, and so 2forth in a hierarchy of processes.)

In such a scenario, we are the result of a conglomerate of processes, and we are living out the events in which we are but components. Every event branches into new events as the chaos of events interacts within itself. As events, we eventually die out, but the events we initiated, or to which we contributed, continue on in a cascading fashion, like tumbling dominoes. That is one thing I refer to as ’soul.’

There are others: for instance, the way black folks use soul (as in “She has real soul”) I find very acceptable as a reference to a person’s happily balanced image and the way it affects others. That joyous effect is invisible, intangible, but still very noticeable and desirable. Once you are onto this, you will find that an absence of it is just as noticeable (but undesirable), which will give you an image of my meaning for ‘zombie.’

That kind of way to understand existence seems essential to a full grasp of philosophical hedonism. All the events in which we perform result in processes that affect others. Our attitude while dealing with others throughout all the events in our lives puts the spin on how the processes will play out, long after our involvement has ended.

The attitude required to deny that steers us on a different course than would an attitude that would heighten a tendency to try to understand it. Each of us has that to be concerned with, and that to leave as out legacy, however large or small. That is our soul, not an object destined for a heaven or a Hell, but a condition we will leave behind us after our bodies have been buried or burned.]

WHY SHOULD WE WORRY ABOUT MORALITY IF THERE’S NO GOD NAMED GOD? While the balancing act depicted on the web page makes a point, most people would declare it impertinent to their own lives. By viewing pleasure as an aspect of sin-tainted endeavors, most people position themselves as though standing off-center at the brink of a cliff.

Our stress-filled lives indicate the truth of that. Avoidance of a hedonic awareness, whether intentional or the result of simple ignorance (by somebody else’s intention) does not position us to maintain an awareness about any long-term effects that will result from our actions and choices. We get taught to think in the short-term, and it catches up to us in the long run.

Thinking in the short-term, too, makes us less aware of consequences afflicting others, and of others’ past actions that later afflict ourselves. Whether or not we ought to be worried about others’ perceptions about us, we should be concerned with whatever influences that interplay within the processes that involve them and us, and the nature of any feedback from which we may benefit or suffer.

Morality in natural terms refers to the consequences of our actions as other human beings are affected by them—and as they affect ourselves, since we do ourselves harm at cost to others. We benefit in many ways as a result of having developed a reputation for maintaining high standards, and we suffer when we allow ourselves to fall into ill repute.

To take a stand that there being no god, or no god named God, to express an opinion wherein it gets said that no reason exists for moral behavior, that it is meaningless, tells more about the person issuing that expression than it ever will about anyone else. There either is a god or none, and if none exists, then it changes nothing about meaning nor morality to pretend otherwise. If morality depends upon a nonexistent god, there is no morality in it, for its reason and meaning is held by what is never there. It matters not what one pretends, for a fact remains a fact, and facts are what require demonstration to establish them.

If no god can be shown, if no god can speak to all for itself, if all the prayers ever issued have the same effect as all the curses, there is no god. Since there is no god, but only self-chosen spokespeople whose processes of living have harmed their reputations, there is no god named God, no god named Allah, no god named Buddha, no god of any name beyond what was whittled from wood or carved from rock.

We are then left with what we will do for and to ourselves and our communities. Our reasons and meanings then arise from what gets agreed upon as just and right, and that best when verifiable from nature. Then, the scope of its process becomes the size of the universe, refined understanding reaches to beyond all borders, and war becomes a stigmata of ancient history and the many contesting schemas of politics and misinformed ideals reinforced by systems of belief.

With gods, mankind’s ears have remained deaf and our eyes blinded. Without a god, we get to hear misery’s cries and know we must respond ourselves if suffering will ever end. Death may bring oblivion, but we are foolish to think we’ll care. Life gets offered to us once, and it must be we who give or take away its meaning, and we who foolishly choose to suffer stress when blissful balance, harmony and tranquility demand us to step away from the precipice we fear.

IN CONCLUSION, the human being may be the most foolish product of evolution. The greater portion of our population, across the face of the globe, works hard for the downfall of their own best interests. Masses starve in Edens, nations steal from each other, we slaughter each other wholesale, all in the name of short-range gains for a few and the long-range loss of the majority.

If made modern by incorporating recent information acquired by many important fields of science, hedonism provides a path into a calmer future that would enable human advancement that we already rocket toward in the desperate fashion of today. Our survival as a species most likely depends on our successful adoption of new paradigms wherein we take a longer, stronger view of the way our current events will prevail upon the processes of the future. It is for the wise among us to recognize how different philosophies and systems of thought interfere with or promote our current well-being while steering us into the foggy realm the future represents to us. Hedonism, understood according to modern knowledge, may well be the better choice compared with our current ships’ captains. We would be a credit to our species were we to adopt it as our own, and deserve our own extinction were we to not even consider it, or where we would fend it off.

Hedonism suffers at the hands of sticklers and mitigators with agendas to promote. If no god exists, it makes no difference what we pretend, no god exists and morality based on fantasy cannot be enforced by others nor upheld for long by oneself. Hedonism expresses nature’s path to moral values.

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NOTES:______________

1: Lest this be taken as an unpatriotic political remark, let me point out the way our militaries have developed, which enables a few casualties on the high-tech side to result in massive casualties among the enemy and those who harbor them. One mad suicide bomber might kill or injure tens of victims, which his comrades will regard to be a high ration. One aircraft pilot, or one ship lobbing smart bombs into a terrorist stronghold, can eradicate thousands of terrorists and those who give them a place to hide. By so stating, I do not justify war, but support that military cannibalism is most prominent where advanced technologies remain unavailable.

2: It may seem backward logic to describe a parent process as a product of its children, but then, think: Is not every parent a parent only because of the children?

Posted in atheism, Eudaimonics, hedonics, memetic, philosophy, religion, secularism, Uncategorized

Is Religion a Mental Illness?

hedonix — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:51:45 +0000

(A lot may depend on the nature of the religion)
by Lloyd H. Whitling

http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/mental-illness/

People often write to me, or complain to me, about the religious people in their lives. They want to know what to do about them, understand why they behave so badly, what makes them so pushy and arrogant, and why they say such crazy things that fly in the face of reality. They want to know why, when faced with something obviously true in an argument, they seem to have stock responses that seem not quite on target.

Their simple questions don’t have simple answers. The religious are seldom inclined toward complete accord with each other, let alone any at all with us. Each variety of them uses different information to authorize their systems of beliefs, however similar or different they may be. They do develop standard sets of obfuscations to rely on in the heat of battle, that some of them use for rules to live by, which makes their responses seem not on target but satisfying to themselves because they derail their opponents’ lines of thought.

Moreover, the world seems full of people who will intentionally misunderstand anything told to them, and twist it into something they consider “bad.” I think that kind of person breeds a lot faster and more often than healthy-minded people, and so they outnumber us by far. I also think that their kind tends to kill off healthy-minded people whenever and wherever circumstances allow that, which further adds to their numbers and depletes from ours. Beyond that, I think they tend toward hatred more than love emotions, and so that gives impetus to their negative characteristics, and drives them to try to be always “in control” because they fear that all of their negative ideas might be true.

To our own innocent eyes, it seems like the Satan and God they claim to worship have switched sides for many of them. Satan and God being unrecognizable as to which is which by their worshippers, they willingly address the mental idol of their choice by “God” and, the opposition that stands in conflict as “Satan.” Since there are no tangible features by which to identify them, a worshipper is left to decide according to what is written, political manipulation, rabble-rousing speeches, and whatever other kinds of expression have attracted his or her attention. All of such influences get sorted into an idea set with which each worshipper will accord.

Not that we do much different from that, but I will get to our secular side later. We can use what goes wrong with their processes to correct and maintain our own processes as we learn from them. We should not waste a wonderful opportunity for self-improvement by burning up energy generating nothing but complaints. Let them do that.

The bases of their illnesses: The Arabic religions originate from a design meant specifically for an ignorant society, and it includes justification for ignorance designed to promote acceptance from those who suffer from it. “I am illiterate, and the Torah says it is a good thing to be.” (So he got told.) The Xian Old Testament was derived from the ancient Jewish literature, and Islam is influenced by it as well. We, who promote nurturant education as a good thing, have that still working against progressive causes. If what we want goes against their grain, they are bound to be intolerant as part of their belief set, since it looks to them like everything we stand for would work to destroy their religious ideals, as you can often hear them complaining.

The ideas that such influences generate and perpetuate by passing across generations and permeating social groups’ ideals have become known as ‘memeplexes’ (‘memes’ for short, even though that refers to any single idea). Such ideas are contagious, either through an inherent ability to appeal to human senses, or to induce their ‘hosts’ (the people who adopt and believe in them) to scatter and induce them by any available means. Whole populations of human beings acting as hosts to such memeplexes willingly turn to violence and self-effacement to support them. Recall the events of 9/11/2001. Read up on the Crusades, the Dark Ages, Hitler’s regime in Germany, the application of Communism in Russia, China or North Korea. All are examples of humanity being victimized by memeplexes, and there are many others.

We find it hard to see such folks as being victims, but that’s just what they are. The memeplex driving them causes all kinds of self-effacing acts that use their time, energy and resources to advance the memeplex in every way it can steer them, to their own detriment. We see them as another person (which they are) and their actions as purposeful (which they are) and blame them because we do not realize the self-effacing forces at work inside their minds. Those are not apparent until we realize an idea-set provides a bias that causes them to lose focus on their own natural interests and needs, and become highly interested in perpetuating and defending whatever set of ideas has gained dominance within their mental systems.

In other words, they are sick. Most times, they are no more at fault for their illness than is anyone who has caught a cold, the flu, or cancer. The illness was likely passed down to them at the defenseless beginnings of their lives, as a part of the directives contained within the idea set that drove their elders at that time, who had contracted it the same way, themselves, passed down through many generations. Are memes something real? Ask yourself: “Are ideas a recognized part of reality?” They usurp a portion of a human mental system and use it for themselves and so, as described by Richard Dawkins, become comprised of human flesh, nerves and blood, but they are not the human being him/herself. We can expect they can be recognized by testing which portions of a human neural system they light up when they become active. They are real, and they can make their hosts sick.

It is hard for us to accept, and we may wonder by what good fortune we may have escaped that kind of influence for our own selves. We tend to believe that, if we could do it, they ought to be able to. The credit, however, is not all ours to claim.

Truth is, we are not all constituted exactly alike. Evolution requires diversity of all sorts to be always present for its own processes, to assure that every species always has the widest range of survival options. Truth is, we all operate according to memeplexes, and memeplexes, too, evolve and so are subject to evolutionary processes. In other words, memeplexes compete with each other the same as all species of life, as predator and prey in either symbiotic or parasitic relationships with the hosts that serve to perpetuate them. The conflicting memeplex your religious parent or neighbor hosts vies in competition with the different memeplex (the group of ideas that work together to generate a worldview) that you host. If his is parasitic (destructive of its host in its own interests) and yours is symbiotic (which serves to steer you toward goals and ideals that foster your own interests and preservation in order that it, too, can survive intact) they will be in conflict.

So, yes, when religion works to cause people to act against their own best interests (though not necessarily seen as such from their own eyes), then religion is an illness. Memeplexes that sponsor personal advancement, nurturance, creative freedoms, and the like are very seldom acounted as religion, but promote mental and physical health and social responsibility, could hardly be seen to be illness.

All of this does raise another question: “Should religious freedom, then, refer to a freedom to stay ill?” Your memeplex will tell you the answer. If it kicked you in the gut when you read that question, I would suggest its abandonment. Find one that loves you.

You can read a much deeper exposition about memes in my book, The Complete Universe of Memes. Visit my web site for details.

Posted in hedonics

Love Is God

hedonix — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 03:12:57 +0000

There is no God in America.

by Lloyd H. Whitling

http://hedonix.wordpress.com/2008/10/23/love-is-god/

Sure, I’m an atheist, bonafide, but this is not about that, this is about what is it that people are calling God and, “Why are they calling it that?”

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Now, Xians have been taunting me all my life about this thing called God that they say really exists. I might believe them if they could tell me what it is so I could go check it out. They tell me my puny brain cound not stand up to meeting with God, according to their Bibles, and that even Moses would be blinded by a vision of it.

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To prove it, they showed me a verse in the Bible that said pretty much that, and told me that whatever I wanted to know, to just look through my Bible and I would surely come across an answer. Well, I think they doubted I would do that. I think that they have never done much of that themselves, and had just heard that someplace and repeated it. Maybe their mamas told them, or a preacher somewhere, I have no idea. I do know they can’t have taken their own advice, or they would be just the same as me.

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Now, come to think of it, I have heard a couple of them brag about having read their Bibles through more than once, and daring me to do the same. I tried it, but it scared me too much and then tried its dambdest to put me asleep, it seemed there was no middle ground. What I learned from it, mostly, was why Xians act so bad as they do, what with their instructions to go about killing off people who won’t believe their tall tales, or else go to cutting of body parts for punishment. That’s scary, to think that people would believe in something like that, claim to one and all about how its the godawful truth, and proclaim themselves to be the servants of that belief.

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And one or two of them seem to be such nice people! Good gracious, go to living! How can that be?

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Well, I have found, during my studies, that there seems to be two kinds of Bibles that have been mashed together into one hodgepodge of stories that go in opposite directions. I don’t see how those braggarts could have missed that, unless they were so busy at doing their reading that not much if it sank in. It does make it clear, though, why the Catholic Church of old condemned to dire consequences anybody caught actually reading that book who was not an actual priest or somehow else in charge of churchly teachings.

What if it became commonly known what all it says people are expected, by God, to do and actually tried doing that? When they would try what the God on this hand says is right, they are going to discover themselves going against what the God of this other hand demands. They are going to say, “God works in mysterious ways, but even this is too much for my puny brain to figure out,” and end up doing what they had been doing in the first place, which was to go to the preacher in their churches, and do whatever he tells them. “Ask God’s forgiveness, because no matter what you do, you will have sinned and will come up short.”

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The problem with that, as I have always seen it, is that one person’s preacher will say one thing is right, and another one will condemn it and tell us something else. It makes me believe they all are just guessing, and guessing also about the forgiving part. One thing is for sure, you can test a preacher by putting some money in front of him. By their own words, and by that verse I told you about somebody showing me, if they had ever been in God’s presence they ought to be blind. If a preacher reaches out to touch the money, or gives any sign he knows it’s there, he is just plain being dishonest.

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So, okay, somebody told me that’s the law side of whatever it is they call ‘God’. While I still await their showing of that to me (een though I might go blind from it, I would have such a story to tell I have no doubts at all I could still earn a living. They do, after all, even with it being obvious they don’t know the first thing about it. That’s why they get so mad so easily, and go flying off the handle issuing condemnations and such. I would not ever have to get that mad at people, if I knew a story I told was true. No, if I knew that story was true and nobody would listen, I would not get mad, I would cry.

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I would cry because the law side of this God thing is still being pressed, even though it seems like all the dirty deeds that God demanded have been done. All the people were killed that it ordered to be slain. All the people were maimed, the babies were burned, the women enslaved, and the cities burned. That’s all in the past, and all that’s left, for the most part, are some how-to’s about things like trading jackasses and slaves that we don’t have all that much of going on nowadays. There’s all that stuff about murdering and keeping the Sabbath and such, some of what we have laws about, and some of which we can’t keep because our calendars don’t have the right days on them.

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I could send you to my web site for a better explanation of that but, it being kind of beside the point, let me give you something to mull over instead: There are 365¼ days in every year, leap or not. There are seven days in every week, leap or not. The calendar we follow was contrived about 5000 years after the week Creation was supposed to have taken place, and so it was by necessity that the Jews (who came along some couple-thousand years after that week) and the Catholics both not only had to guess at exactly what days were the first and last of each week, but also guess about the effects of that extra quarter day of every year. We know, and it has always been plain how the Jews and Catholics have always been at odds with each other, and it seeems strange they would agree about this one thing and very little else.

They don’t even agree on whether the first or last day of the week should be kept holy!

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And that even increases my perplexity about why so many people take their words about something that ought to be important, without checking out all they can of it for themselves.

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Well, that aside now, if I could only see it demonstrated as though people actually believed in it, I would take the description of God I found in the New Testament part of it. Now, no one can believe what they see is wrong. No one can force that. We can, at best, pretend for so long as we cannot be shown otherwise, but only because we are frightened of what the messengers might do to us, or because we cannot perceive of any alternatives. Either way, to pretend about this is unforgiveably wrong. People have tried, as I said, to convince me but my questions were those they had no resources for dealing with. Some would try, as I have said, but only get angry when I would talk about things for which they had no awareness, and then their attacks became more personal. (I am very familiar with ad hominems and other logical fallacies, as people over the years have plied all kinds of them against me until I became familiar with their tactics).

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Still, I remain basically tolerant. People can pray all they want, say “God bless you” or “I am praying for you” and I will accept that as an expression of love or concern (as the case may be). It is their effort that is being made and, if that is all their resources allow, I can accept that as the best gift they have to offer. When we first came to tennessee (I have not noticed of late, as we seldom go that way anymore), a sign near Nashville along Hwy 70 informed everybody who read it, “God is love.” That seems like something seldom practiced when it comes to God’s messengers, especially of late, but that sign bothered me when I first saw it because it seemed untrue.

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I had some thoughts that led to this: “If God created all. then god made lust, which begets love. If love in any form is a sin, then, there is not God, or else God is evil.” Would it not be better for God’s reputation that love in all its forms should be understood as a force for the good in every way. How can we be so foolish as to misunderstand that so badly that love gets our condemnation, and so, too, then, does God.

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Quite some time ago, I had occasion to write about it, and about the nature of love and logical fallacies. It is a logical fallacy (equivocation) to turn it around while thinking, “If God is love, then love must be God.” [1 John 4:8] “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” I know that, but I am not the guy who wrote it into that New Testament Bible verse. If the fellow who wrote that was so all-knowing as wise as is claimed, then he must have intended the equivocation and it must be true if the Bible is deemed inerrant.

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Now I, as an ordained clergy for the Church of Spiritual Humanism (UK), would not ordinarily use the Xian scriptures as a source of information, but it sometimes can serve as a source of inspiration, usually in the reverse of what God’s self-appointed (they are not blind that I can tell) messengers would want. What I find inspiring is how that verse seems to justify the logical fallacy in this instance (I can somehow feel you glowering at me) so that its meaning holds when it gets turned around. If Love is God, then I can accept that and practice that for I find that to be sensible and even some kind of lovely. It heightens my urge to be tolerant of others, who have not had the opportunities life has offered to me, and gained the vantage point I occupy. It stills my concerns over their intentions towards me and towards those over whom I watch.

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I am more aware, of late, about when I am being attacked and when I am not. People do concern themselves about others in many ways, and concerned people who believe in spirits and souls will be concerned about that aspect of our existence they believe in. They are expressing love when they ask after others, mostly. Quite a few ask after that kind of concern because they feel like someone with a worldview unlike their own will somehow contaminate them. It threatens them to the point where they feel driven to eradicate the presence of it, either by seeking conversion or the removal of themselves or the other person from that current situation. Their concern is not one of love, but of self-preservation or preservation of the vested interests their beliefs have caused them to develop.

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It appears like the various sects of Xianity produce people whose natures differ greatly from one sect to another. Seventh Day Adventists appeared on my porch, learned I am someone willing to discuss with them, but to whom they had little they could say. They now leave me alone, and I appreciate that. Some people from the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons took a while longer to reach that conclusion, and now they no longer come around. Some people from an Evangelical Baptist sort of church kept at it the longest. I used to see them around town at various intersections haranguing people in their cars. Mama Lou read in the paper where someone had them arrested for harassment, and I have not seen them lately. I would join their church only to have somebody with whom I could ride bicycles, but I would not like having to wear a penguin suit while doing so. Besides, I would then be a hypocrite, and Love would not approve. I doubt, though, that they knew much about 1 John 4:8, about God being love, and so had very little experience at practicing love as being God.

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Let love be God, and act like it, and I will no longer complain about the nature of what I have come to know as the ‘Arabic Religions’. Let love be God, as the New Testament proposes, and I will take that as the proper interpretation for such phrases as “May Love go with you,” “You need to find love in your life,” or “Love forgives all sinners.” Only a crazy person would get angry over that, unless you made it clear you really meant otherwise, like the way it now seems: “Love, if You are out there, speak to your people and let them know you are real. Please?”

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Now, I could be very wrong about all of this. After all, there is little of science in the Bible, it having been assembled into written form a thousand and a half years ago, but I will still be the same person I have always been: If I am wrong, don’t tell me about it, show it to me. Is there Love in America? If there be love here, please show me it.

Posted in religion Tagged: atheism, atheist, Bible, God. love, hedonism, hedonist, Jesus, religion

The Advanced Self

hedonix — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:41:55 +0000

It feels disheartening to discover how many prominent people seek to discredit Western culture by denying the role of self in anything of value, including members of it that deny self-interest as “selfish”, “self-centered arrogance”, “egotism” and the like, wrongly claimed to be the opposite of “altruism”. The self is important as what it is; our failure to understand that attests more to the powerful influences that come from religion, more than anything meaningful or real. That we should be told to “deny self”, that “selfishness is not a desirable condition”, that one’s thoughts get reduced to “monkey chatter” and so demeaned as undesirable, such as comes from sources found everywhere tells us more about the poor mental condition of those writers and talkers, than it does of any truth.
Self is not made to be banished, except to be taken over by hallucinations, unconsciousness, or invasive memeplexes. So-called “monkey chatter” may, in fact, serve as a natural barrier to protect us from the onslaught of parasitical ideas we get exposed to every day of our lives. Self is not made to be banished, it is made to be attached to something one finds desirable to have or accomplish, or to be or become. The self is what finds one’s purpose to be served as a lifetime aim, a cause to adopt, a task in which to become so involved as to lose one’s sense of self as separate from that. To write, to make music (especially as part of a group), to work a garden, nurture children, pan for gold or stare at the stars, are all such tasks according to their appeal to any individual.
It is that appeal that becomes important to this: Our circumstances, our genetic makeup, and the pressures bearing down upon us all work to lean us toward whatever will most satisfactorily involve us. No one else can make such choices for us. Parents who demand their children to follow their footsteps through life by adopting the means of livelihood they may have worked hard to develop, may doom their children to fiscally rewarding but very unsatisfactory and depressing lives. Priests and clerics who demand their followers abandon themselves to a god and service to the church may doom many of their congregants in that same way. (Could the resultant shallow lives contribute to a reason for why so many of the religious seem so willing to go on missions of suicide?) Businesses who assign people to slots of work within their organizations while paying no attention to (even demeaning) their natural talents and inclinations cannot claim to have the most productive and zealous workers. “Monkey chatter” will not let such persons alone to concentrate the best upon their less-than-desirable work; to “banish the self” at such times contributes to 1zoning, something that could endanger unhappy workers whose mentality seeks to escape the conditions imposed upon them.
When oneself is ‘attached’ to a task, oneself is wide awake, fully focused upon that task and aware of each action taken. When away from it, the attachment does not lessen, but oneself still ponders the immersion into it to which one wishes to return, or the needed rest one recognizes as being a part of the overall accomplishment. One will talk about the beloved activities and effects produced by them upon himself and coworkers also engaged in it. One will dream about it at night, and perhaps arise early to jot down ideas and sketches about how to make it even better. While others, uninvolved, may find it unsettling, oneself remains attached, not banished, except to accommodate their demands or one’s natural needs.
We may rightly refer to such a person’s engagement as “the advanced state of self,” wherein one has uncovered a reason, a virtue, to devote himself to in life, and unabashedly, wholeheartedy pursues that. Such a person has become “self-actualized”, to use Maslow’s term for the highest state one can achieve. He represented it as something to be accomplished only because one can, that one must first surpass the four lesser states of existence in order to possess the intellectual and financial security that enables self actualization.
Self-actualization does not mean in any way “banishment of the self” or instruct us to consider selfishness as something disgusting. No, it is an instruction about what steps are necessary to be completed before we can most effectively attach ourselves to that “bigger that ourselves” life’s aim that gives us sufficient reason to endeavor and from which we derive a meaning existence for ourselves. That does not occur through hallucinatory processes, zombification, nor the supplanting of self with something else.
Martin Seligman, PhD, Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, shows he understands this after thirty years of practice: “…there is one thing we know about meaning: that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The self is not a very good site for meaning, and the larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life.” Richard Russell, in an email dated 9/23/2006 and posted to a yahoo group, shows he, too, understood that when he wrote, “An important psychological factor that Maslow identified is that a satisfied need is no longer a motivator. That is, you don’t much worry about food if you’re accustomed to 3 square meals a day and know where the nearest grocery store and restaurant are.”
Rather than banishment, self-actualization is only acheived as a result of self-awareness and self-confidence. Heightened senses of self-awareness enable the perception of one’s inherent needs. Heightened self-confidence results from the accomplishments at a lower level that provided the time for pondering insights, and so allowed the individual to gain a sense of direction. Accomplishments at lower levels affirms confidence in oneself, and so provides the drive needed to aim for ever greater heights. Self-actualization is taught by the process through which it is gained, while the individual is also strengthened to follow through. The small pleasures gained along the way provide motivation and a sense that something great lurks around the horizon that can be had just by one’s arrival there.
This most advanced form did not result from self-denial, but from self-confidence, self-awareness, and self-actualization. It did not result from lurking for months amidst the guano at the back of pitch-dark caves, from accepting anecdotal dogma from ancient times as current truths, nor from marching in lock-step to a drummer different from one’s own internal beat. It is a pity that the poorest members of the world’s social orders will never gain an understanding of that, nor even be exposed to the high concepts for which it stands. It is a greater pity so many of us lucky enough to have been exposed to decent educational systems devalue those systems and deny the good they do, and never make use of our ability to read and write to do more than study advertisements and read the screen blurbs passing our eyes by. In our time, information of this nature is readily available but, for all kinds of reasons, seldom sought by such as those who have been enable to make use of it to lead better lives with greater happiness, joy, pleasure, and balance.
Ah: Balance!
Balance is a rather recent addition to all of this. Ataraxia (mental balance), of course, was a topic of interest in Epicurus’ time. Homeostasis (physiological balance) is rather new by comparison to that. Both work together and affect each other as a system, to maintain (or fail to) a balanced person. What works for individual persons works also for individual groups, individual nations, individual worlds: a balanced existence is most pleasant; imbalance is unpleasant and undesirable at all levels.
Imbalance results from all kinds of adverse conditions: it is present when food supplies are less than needed to feed the person, the group, the nation, the world. It is present when income is not high enough to pay the bills, at any social level. It is present when knowledge is not enough to secure correct approaches to omnipresent problems, including when that lack results from conditions imposed to prevent the gaining of it. You will find it in superabundance where daily stress cannot find pleasures capable to relax it, but only drugs and drink, or religion, that actually act for its increase.
Balance is easy to achieve, once you get past all the hogwash that keeps you from discovering life’s simple secrets. Gaylord Maxwell, longtime columnist for Motorhome Magazine, told his secret in the April 2008 issue: “The objective of being useful is part of my general philosophy that our lives have to have purpose….Although the idea of purpose is often used in a religious context,” he wrote, “I use it in a worldly sense. Having purpose can mean many kinds of goals. Some people focus on self-improvement; others focus on bettering the lives of others. Both are comendable goals, but the latter is by far the most important. Doing things that make life better for others is undoubtedly the most important and satisfying of all purpose goals.” Mister Maxwell makes a fine example of the balanced kind of person that can result from answering the need to attach one’s self to a purpose one finds to be meaningful, and then focus on that task.
©2008 Lloyd H. Whitling

NOTES:
1) Zoning, as hinted in the dictionary, is a way in which the mind divides itself into regions, and by which it enables itself to ponder other thoughts while the body continues on in a somewhat automated fashion at whatever well-learned task it is engaged in. Rather than attaching itself to the task, the self disengages and dangerously seeks other things with which to become involved.

Notes on Religion by Lloyd H. Whitling

hedonix — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:41:46 +0000

I sometimes wonder, with all the writing I do, whether I can find time to write for a BLOG, let alone maintain it in much of any way. Not to worry, I have a wonderful source of inspiration in the form of the women who spur me on with their questions, comments, ideas, and their absence of any reluctance to argue with me and point out the errors of my way. I end up like a daily drunk on his front stoop, explaining to the woman in his life why he did not meet her expectations and why they might seem unfair to him.

Not that any of the fair ladies in my life would really treat me that way, including the love of my life, Mama Lou.

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from D—- (she knows who she is) “The ones pushing religion onto us have the gall to go up against the great erudite minds past and present, with their noodly platitudes and dogma and imagine they have a legitimate argument. THAT pisses me off.”————————————–

Noodly platitudes? Shades of the flying spaghetti monster! No, not in Xianity! I will rebel against them taking over the only reason for meatballs to exist. I cannot have that. No!

Whew!!! (wipes brow)

The great erudite minds of past and present are thinkers.

The great power of religions arises from feelers.

Feelers (thinking according to emotional rather than reasoned input) direct themselves according to what *feels* right versus what *feels* wrong. Objective reasoners have been taught (they claim) methods by which they can avoid the effects of emotional input upon their thought processes. For the most part, it works because reasoned input can be subject to testing and verification, and sooner or later will pass or fail inspection not only by other objective reasoners, but also by the feelers who will pick it apart in all the strange ways they can find and question every jot and tittie of it.

As a result, the feelers end up improving the very things they pit themselves against, and, hazardous though that process be, the information pool gets polished, corrected, and perfected, while the god-pool gets drained just a little bit more. You can hate the feelers, their ignorance, their slimy methods and the tracks they make across the contents of our minds, and the interim influences they make upon society, but the objective result of their efforts is against their own beliefs. They do, as it gets said, shoot themselves in their feet with every effort.

Why is that? I an sure you have noticed (if you will pause to realize it) that the process of thinking is incompatible with that of feeling. Feeling, in fact, prevents reasoning within the same body, except according to terms laid down by whatever is the ongoing emotion. It affects us in all ways, not just in our religious beliefs.

We *feel* lust, call it love, end up married, and wonder how it happened that pint-sized humans are making such strenuous demands upon ourselves.

We see someone doing something that appeals to us and struggle to become like that person, only to *feel* disheartened by all the unappealing effort it takes.

We hear a threatening noise in the darkness, and freeze in place because we *feel* too afraid to find a way to escape.

Our parents and all the adults we *feel* a need to trust for our very survival all seem to agree there is a world full of demons and angels that somehow shares tangential space with ours. Even though *reason* tells you that violates natural laws, you (and plenty of others who give you reinforcement) can imagine how it must be true, as almost everybody you know tells you it is. The only people to argue against it are a very few whose ideas seem wierd according to everything we have been taught to be true, and so we *feel* like they are just a bunch of nuts out on a limb.

So, I violated the rule of threes to show you how *feelers* are just normal people who have gotten trapped in a memeplex from which they can find no escape, nor any need to. Think of someone born in isolation, inside a room of some kind from which no exit ever gets made. All the awareness of anything beyond that confinement will come from bits and pieces of information planted in his/her consciousness by the parade of visitors whose support is necessary for survival.

Imagine how frightening the outside world would seem to such a person, how worried she would someday feel about its possible encroachments into her domain, how protective of her room she would eventually come to be, and how much invective she might spew against whom-or-whatever seemed to be threatening to her security. Imagine that, and then think of that room’s walls as representing the parasitical memeplexes that enclose most people’s minds, and how they act in just the same way as would that person when someone tries to poke holes into the complex makeup of that.

What it boils down to is this: Should we continue to *feel* hate against such persons as are trapped within memetic walls?– or should we *feel* sorry for them? Should we not, instead of either, *realize* things are the way they are at this time in the evolutionary phases of planet Earth, and attempt to *reason* out ways to increase the influence of *reason* upon a world that’s stuffed to overflowing with those who *feel* their ways through life. Remember: emotions prevent reasoned thought except in terms demanded by the emotion. It is a powerful trap waiting to snare all of humanity, and none of us are immune to falling into it.

We all need to always question our own emotional responses to assure ourselves the trap is not about to snare us and drag us down to the level of what-or-whoever influenced us to *feel* a response we can only express in emotional terms.

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D. responded with what boils down to “Why should we feel sorry for the religious, or pamper them? (They) have been coddled far too long, it is time to stop mincing words and tell it like it is, political correctness be damned.”————————————–

Well, maybe. :8^)~

The trouble is, we gotta find out what actually works and do that, because argument and reasoning doesn’t work. All it accomplishes is to arouse their feelings, and stunt their thought processes, and ends up having that same effect upon ourselves.

You make it quite clear that you are going through that process right now, and are feeling upset by it. Since I, too, had to live through that, I wonder if people are naturally incapable of taking pain/pleasure lessons from it, or if the necessity of living through the entire process is a result from our being so completely unschooled about the place of pleasure/pain in the human animal. Being a philosophical hedonist, I frame things that way because it seems to be more real than other methods I’ve tried for assessing human actions.

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She returns with (edited):

“…they have a brain like I do, eyes, ears. It is not like they were living incommunicado, born on, and isolated within, a desert compound.”

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The Mormons are extreme examples of exactly what I refer to. Islamics are another example, terrorists especially, but the Mormons are regarded to be Xians (same, only different).

They are taught to not use their brain for thinking, to never question, doubt or be skeptical, and then mainly get placed in the midst of others who will do nothing but support them in that, and who make “feeling” explanations of why alternative ideas are erroneous. Reasoned ideas are foreign to their mentalities, so their eyes and ears serve to warn them they are in the presence of something to be regarded as a threat, that the voice of Satan (or whichever) is speaking to them, to not listen or they will be guilty of sin, etc. They are thus, in effect, isolated from reason, which (considering the numbers) is regarded by them to be “incommunicado, born on, and isolated within, a desert compound” somewhere they are not, and so different from their larger view of the world as to be beneath their contempt. I hate that as much as you, but it is true, and it is up to us to use our eyes, ears, and ability to reason and project potential results, to figure out how best to make our views accessible to “feeling” at the outset of their exposure to them. They have already been well taught ways to respond to natural facts and the reasoned arguments derived from them by the time they are matured enough to go out looking for prey on their own.

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D. further comments about a previous message (see the foregoing):

“I think my “feeling” response to believers’ stupidity and irresponsibility springs from a rational thinking process – the situation was examined and a clear judgment made. Where is their skepticism? Their doubt? Their curiosity? They are pathetic. They are cowards.”

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They are “cowards” because they are taught to fear their gods and their demons, not because of anything real or physical. They are given lessons all their lifetimes about “Doubting Thomas” and the wiles by which devils will lead them off “the path of righteousness” that they and most of their peers expect each other to walk. Their skepticism, doubt and curiosity were vanquished at a young age, to be replaced with the regard that such things are evils imposed by Satan to tempt them, and by their gods to test their worthiness of access into Heaven and avoid Hell after death. They are living tortured, hopeless lives into which they were indoctrinated so young they had no thinking processes developed yet, all that is real replaced by myths and misinformation to which they refer for their own support.

Knowing that, I have no explanation for myself, but I do know what it took to show Mama Lou how to face the truth she so fully accepts at this stage of our lives. It took my patience, my love, my constant willingness to explain, to demonstrate, to be as entirely honest with her as I could find ways to be and so earn her trust. I have watched other couples (my own folks at times, for one set) get into violent arguments that got them absolutely nowhere, so I believe my advice is well-founded and worthy of consideration.

I can too well understand the urge to fight that religious people induce in us, but we have to remember that fighting equates us, at a smaller level, with the USA’s pogroms upon the world and all such attempts to induce Xianity –oops!–I mean “Democracy”– into all the world’s citizenry so that Jesus will hurry up and come back to haunt us with his nail-pierced presence. It could be that in reverse, of course, but that avoids the point.

Xians come to taunt us, of course, just the same as the Bush war was begun against Sad Man Hussein, and still continues beyond King W’s reign of terror. If we willingly engage them, let it be to harden ourselves against their attacks, to find the chinks in our own armor, and to have nothing to do with the hordes of them who, for so long as others will back them up, do not hesitate to jump onto us using the same failed tactics over and over again until they can wear us into submission.

They hope! Take a lesson and let them teach you how to be a stronger atheist. They will try all kinds of ploys upon you, and your only purpose has to be about yourself and not about them. Let their ability to piss you off inspire you to discover how to respond in ways they cannot destroy, however and whenever you can. Let your piss-offedness inspire you to remember that reason is futile and for good reason, and so you must find “feely” ways to respond to them and make your points.

They are there to fight; show them some hedonic responses that they will not have any idea what to do with. Show them the love that getting you pissed off arouses, give them some praise for the (even if you have to invent it) good parts of what they said to you, explain how it benefits you and what support it gave for your own positions, and lay it onto them. They will hate discovering how they shoot their own feet full of bullets with the only result of that being to give you new reasons for suporting atheism. Want to inspire pain in them? Give them that and you will have invaded their “feely” domain with your powerful presence. The “luv” people are so unfamiliar with love they will likely faint from exasperation, guilt and shame for a moment of pleasure they tried their dambdest to not have.

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Predictable questions: “Why should I be the one to do all the giving in and walking on eggshells just to avoid offending them? That is what this is all about, right?

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That is definitely not at all it. Try to remember, this is about ‘feely’ thinking versus ‘reasoning’ and an attempt to examine the incompatible differences. ‘D’ mentioned above about her own feelings that resulted from reason, that lead to support for her atheism because she cannot substantiate what the religious propose to her as true in any reasonable fashion. The problem is that her own questions about how to deal with the fundies in her life result from feely thinking, thinking in response to their actions against her and their treatment of her, rather than by any thoughtful approach she could contrive, try out, and adopt according to her testing and refinement of it– in other words, rationalizing is not the same as reasoning.

But, that my making of kind of response to her problem is nothing other than a demonstration of how pitting reason against emotions fails. I can only help her by following my own advice, which is to appeal to her emotionally originated question with a response aimed at feely actions. Before I do that, however, I want the reader to know there is no reason to condemn emotionally inspired reasoning, if one learns its place and contains it there.

For one thing, people incapable of emotions are also incapable of such laudable feelings as empathy, and so are incapable (as I understand it, correct me if I’m wrong, please) to realize how their actions affect others, good or bad. It is empathy, more than anything, that enables us to be sociable animals capable to live together and work together as humans must for species survival. The most effective moral and ethical codes, for that reason, are those that promote empathetic values and expectations of congruence.

Secondly, emotions can inspire an animal (which includes us) to respond to apparent emergencies much faster than reasoning out how to go and what do do while assessing the conditions to see if the emergency is real. It is that, in many situations, that means the difference between life and death, or escape and maiming. Emotions do have a valid place in our lives, but we need to understand that place a lot better than we seem to.

As ‘D’ has pointed out, emotions lend strength to help support the results of our reasoning. They arise because we have vested interests in the results of our reasoning over time, and that interest grows with the amount of effort we have invested into it. Just because one has had problems with feely thinkers invading her life does not mean emotions must be condemned; it does mean that she must recognize how to respond in kind, which apparently is not all that obvious, especially to the kind of person accustomed to subduing her emotions while struggling to correct her own worldviews in the most objective fashion of which she is capable. She knows she is right in her assessments, she can prove she is right, and she rightly feels upset when others refuse to see that and so devalue the investment she has made to gain her own sense of rectitude.

So, does that lead us to believe, as she seems to sense if my prediction of her next response is anywhere near right, that she should just “give in” and pacify those who molest her sensibilities with what she sees as offal thought? We ought to recognize that it should be understood without having to say it, she possesses the same rights as do those who violate her space by imposing their views upon it. Having said it, she should seek to generate effective responses rather than bow down to their aggressiveness.

Since reason obviously has no effect upon their feely-gained thought processes, the futility of attempting to apply it seems obvious, especially when all attempts to do so have failed her to the point of frustration. Effectiveness can only result from expressing herself with feely words, if anything at all she does has any hope of showing the validity of her own point of view to feely thinkers. She can do so by trying several roads to see which has any hope at all of establishing her credibility to them. Resorting to tears, though obviously an emotional response, will not work in this situation, as her accosters would take that as a sign of their success at “breaking her spirit.”

Rather than argue right and wrong, she could try to explain her disgust at their actions and violations of her rights and hard-won standards; her offense as a result of their condescending arrogance; her sense of injury as a result of what can only be emotional attacks as they slander her person with their disgustingly fallacious edicts; the sense of threat they present due to her awareness that they have nothing real to give them guidance, which they demonstrate by their disdain; the fear instilled by their presence due to her awareness of their religion’s violent history; the trepidation she feels about there being so many variations of their beliefs, all of which claim to possess the only truths available to humans…. Oh, yes, the list of potential feely arguments goes on and on, but I am sure that by now the idea is clear, and that how to put it to work is now apparent.

If not, you can read more at:

http://www.atheistlloyd.com/ten_rs.html

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That’s not all there is to it, folks. Stay tuned for subjects of increasing relevance with this BLOG’s main interest (Yes, we will eventually get to that). After all, pleasure and pain are ‘feely’ aspects of interest to us, hedonists or not, and it all ties together into a cogent whole.