The Nature of Existence: An Insane Prospect of Knowledge
I’ve been reading a book called Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments For God Just Don’t Add Up by John Allen Paulos. One particularly potent quote caught my attention, but not in the way you might expect: [W]hy did He create the particular natural laws that He did? If He did it arbitrarily for no reason at all, there is then something that is not subject to natural law. The chain of natural law is broken, and so we might as well take the most general natural laws themselves, rather than God, as the arbitrary final “Because.” On the other hand, if He had a reason for issuing the particular laws that He did (say, to bring about the best possible universe), then God Himself is subject to pre-existing constraints, standards, and laws. In this case, too, there’s not much point to introducing Him as an intermediary in the first place. (8) What interests me about this quote isn’t that Paulos is essentially arguing that God is an arbitrary selection for our origins, but that the very nature of existence as we know it, whether one accepts God or not, is fundamentally unknowable. We desperately try to grasp at why anything exists at all, both in science and in religion, but ultimately, we don’t know, and probably never will. Belief, no matter how strongly you hold it within yourself, is always already a broken system, because it can never make firm its inherent hopefulness that it is correct. You can never “know” that God exists, nor can you ever “know” that he doesn’t exist, any more than you can “know” the theoretical first cause (which Paulos discusses in-depth a few pages earlier) in any terms whatsoever. Why? Because the moment you establish the first cause, there are always going to be questions about what caused it. Causation is inevitably endless, infinite in its possibilities. And what is so important about this? I think part of why we are such a religious species is precisely because it offers comfort for us in being able to claim that we know how it all began. We never read the theoretical endpoint and realize that there is no answer for why anything exists, let alone ourselves, because the curiosity that would lead to what I would call the insanity of eternity is stopped by the phrase “God did it.” I don’t meant that as a slight here (though I’ve certainly used it as such elsewhere). If anything can be said to be glorious and wonderful about religion, it is that it has, in various forms throughout our existence, laid to rest that most fundamental and terrifying of questions: why do we exist? I think that is the problem for me as a non-religious (if not atheist) individual. I cannot accept the God hypothesis precisely because I need to know what is beyond that, what brings the Creator into existence or, if the Creator doesn’t exist, what brought that initial spark into being, and so on. Curiosity consumes me in this pursuit, as it does many who question reality, existence, and our place in the cosmos, religious or otherwise. Just getting to the theoretical endpoint is, for me, one of the most terrifying things humanity can ever attempt to achieve. I’ll explain why. When (if) we reach that endpoint–and I use “theoretical” for this term precisely because the eternal is without a true endpoint–we may very well come to a series of revelations about what we understand about the universe: (i) That everything began for no reason whatsoever, and that every atom is nothing more than a cosmic accident in which there are no answers, no comforts, and no truths that can be ascertained. The very idea that existence “just is,” for no apparent reason, without cause or obvious meaning, is something that terrifies me. I am not terrified of existence being meaningless; I’m terrified of the moment at which we come to understand that existence is nothing, because we can always create our own meaning in existence. (ii) That if there is a God, he is spawned from the same meaningless nothing that permeates the cosmic ether. God must have a cause just as anything must have a cause. God is empty, a metaphor that, should he exist, tries to make meaning out of nothingness, and succeeds in only bringing us back to that nothing. (iii) That contemplating existence in concrete, clear, and significant terms, outside of the realm of base answers (i.e. “God did it” or “It just is”) means coming to terms with limitations, with voids, and with the eternal. It is knowing that we cannot know, even if we do know, as abstract and absurd as that may sound. To make that more clear: imagine knowing that existence began as a whiff of quantum fluctuations, and that we can finally say for certain that that was the theoretical endpoint. There still would be the unanswerable question, even in knowing the endpoint, and that question could never be answered, no matter our determination and ability. The eternal is both part of existence and what makes existence incommensurable. No wonder we have spent our short time on this planet trying to understand these things through metaphor, invention, and belief in the supernatural. Comfort in thinking we know lets us ignore our own limitations. But am I thinking in too negative of terms about this? Is questioning existence and explaining it away as incommensurable and fundamentally a downer too problematic for its own good? How would you think of existence without creating an unknowable endpoint? I don’t know. Maybe existence is supposed to be unknowable, or maybe it’s a question we’re supposed to spend our cosmic lives trying to answer, only to get nowhere at all for a purpose we can’t quite comprehend until it’s too late. I don’t know.
Pentagon Shootings: A Quick Thought On “Crazy”
(If you don’t know what is going on, here’s the quick version: John Patrick Bedell showed up at the Pentagon with guns and opened fire on security at the security checkpoint prior to entry. Recent news indicates that he held particularly negative views of the U.S. government, to the point of questioning whether the Government was involved in 9/11. That’s the story reduced even more so than the media is reducing it. The aforementioned most recent news is what I’d like to discuss briefly here.) Here’s my problem with the whole Pentagon ordeal:As much as it is desirable to reduce every domestic terrorist and political dissenter (violent or otherwise) in this country to being “quacks” or “downright insane,” doing so is not only adding legitimacy to a belief system desperately craving it, but also doing the opposite of what any civilized country should be doing. Bedell is one of a minority of people who believe something is true based on a handful of legitimate inaccuracies. It makes little sense to reduce the movement to insanity without doing the necessary empirical work to ascertain whether there is a modicum of truth to what they worry about day in and day out. His writing speaks for itself, actually: This organization, like so many murderous governments throughout history, would see the sacrifice of thousands of its citizens, in an event such as the September 11 attacks, as a small cost in order to perpetuate its barbaric control The question to be asked is: What if he’s right? His dismissal as domestic lune is an attempt to circumvent the hard work needed to be done. The problem with America, to me, is that it is so unwilling to consider that the “American Dream” is a facade; we can’t fathom it precisely because the idea of imagining this country (and our reality) as imperfect, perhaps even violently so, is not in the country’s best interest (and certainly not in the best interest of anyone who might be responsible for the manipulations, lies, and violence that do exist (without any doubt)). Fear has become a crutch, in a way. We’re conditioned to avoid that which is imparted on us as fearful. Thus, we avoid things like Marxism and Socialism and any ideas expressed therein precisely because of the fear conditioning associated with those things (never mind that we’re practically a socialist nation already, what with all our much-loved social programs funded entirely by tax dollars roaming around out there). In this case, we’re being conditioned to fear an unfavorable idea, precisely because of its new association with violence and anger. The conditioning may not be obvious (and it may even be fairly light), but instead of trying to understand why Bedell did what he did, we’re shoving him off as the lune. His unfavorable ideas are not worth considering, even if he shares them with many others who are not violent. Why are we so afraid to find the truth? Likewise, why do we fear thinking for ourselves? Acceptance of something should come after careful research. Otherwise, we’re part and parcel of a process of elimination by dogma–the unfavorable ideas are dismissed, while the ideas that sit in line with our core beliefs are applauded for their audacity to exist. Something is wrong here (in society and in the Pentagon shootings). Am I the only one that is bothered by the immediate assignation of a negative descriptor (not associated with action) to a man who has committed horrible crimes (for a good cause, in his assessment)? I want your opinions on this in the comments section. To clarify: I am not suggesting that Mr. Bedell’s actions are somehow justified, but it goes without saying that instead of reducing dissenters and violent people like Bedell as nuts simply because they believe in conspiracy theories, we should be trying to understand why they believe what they do and either address its empirical reality in a positive or negative light as necessary (i.e. if a legitimate concern is given, maybe we should address it culturally or governmentally; right now it seems like we’re simply affirming what Bedell has said about the government in reducing him to the lune).
Anticipating Disaster: Our Obsession With Impending Doom
What draws us to the doom yet to arrive? CNN, pre-tsunami (in Hawaii), donates its screen time not to the already devastated areas of Chile (and elsewhere), but to the image of Hawaii’s beaches, from a distance, untouched, near-pristine. That’s the image that stays on the screen, the reporters anticipating–and building anticipation for us–the disaster waiting to happen. There’s a reason they show us this; if there wasn’t, they’d move on to something else, like Chile, where the proverbial shit has already hit the fan, or even New Zealand, where tsunami conditions have already arrived (and gone by the time this post hits the Inter-waves–pun intended). I suspect that our obsession with impending doom in the news is intricately linked with our love of dystopia in film and literature. The connection, I think, lies in our unwillingness to deal with reality–not in an absolute sense, but in a more immediate sense. Dystopias offer a way for us to see doom without facing it here on Earth, and without dealing with the immediacy of the doom that has already arrived. It is, perhaps, “safer” for our identities as human beings to imagine the end than to witness it firsthand. That’s not to say that we aren’t interested in the end, per se; we are, and, in fact, I imagine right now CNN is flooded with images of what may very well be the disaster of the week. But, our interest in disaster is not in the disaster itself, but in the leading up to it. The aftermath is an afterthought. There’s a hole in the argument, though. After all, we did focus so much attention on Haiti, where disaster had already struck before any focus was paid upon it. But this doesn’t apply for two reasons: 1. The disaster had already struck; there was no possibility for anticipation. 2. The disaster has slowly become less about the disaster itself and more about how the disaster can/could be turned into salvation. The controversial statement made by the unrepentant racist Pat Robertson (that this is a blessing in disguise) is, perhaps, not terribly far from the truth. Prior to the disaster, the international community had, largely speaking, paid little attention to Haiti, at least not in the capacity that it deserved. Yes, Haiti’s poverty was never a secret. Yes, there were organizations who put money and labor into helping Haiti prior to the disaster. But only after the disaster has Haiti received any considerable amount of attention and finances (and the promise thereof) to be used towards rebuilding the country. Yes, that very thought is a sick and disturbing one: that only after disaster do we provide legitimacy to the impoverished conditions of a nation that has been suffering the aftershocks of colonialism for centuries. The obsession continues, though. Whether or not Hawaii will (has) witnessed disaster, we are (were) fixated on our screens, witnessing the anticipatory moment, and in our free time, when we are/were not fixated, we pour(ed) our souls into the dystopic (not necessarily science fiction, but certainly dystopia in its non-speculative forms–what we might call “depressing” fiction). No wonder our ability to address the human issue at hand is deficient.
How (Really) Thinking About Star Wars Can Make You Feel Uncomfortable (i.e. Terrorists!)
How do you feel about terrorism? You don’t like it very much, do you? Most of us don’t, and for good reason. It’s bad, right? No matter what! Damn those evil terrorists! On the opposite end of things, there’s Star Wars. Most of us like that, right? Well, at least the originals. The prequels have really divided us Star Wars geeks… Now, what if I was to tell you that your hatred of terrorists is directly contradicted by your love of Star Wars? Stay with me. You see, Star Wars (the movies only) is basically a giant high five to domestic terrorism. You’d never know it if you didn’t dig in and think deep (the show, after all, does such a fine job painting the Rebels as the good guys). Think of Star Wars in terms of its internal biases: The Rebels are the focus characters. With the exception of Darth Vader, there are few, if any, Imperial focal points throughout the series. Figures like Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia, etc. are our heroes, and unabashedly so — watch the first movie again and tell me they’re not unreserved heroes. The Light Side of the Force is pitted against the Dark Side, and, thus, the good side is pitted against the evil side. We’re told that the Empire is evil. Sometimes we see it commit evil, but the assumption left to be made by us is that they are only capable of evil. What isn’t shown is actually quite shocking: infrastructure, culture, etc. The Imperial culture is militaristic, with an Emperor at the head giving all the major orders. But what about the normal folks living in the Empire? Again, we’re left with a biased view, because those planets we are shown tend to be outer world, low-resource, or near-inhospitable places where outlaws have lived pre- and post-Empire, and where we see the failures of colonialism most pronounced. What of the inner planets like Coruscant, etc.? In the prequels we have a good idea that these places are technologically advanced, culturally driven, and prosperous. If you really think about what is shown to us, you have to wonder how much of that is truly the mark of an evil “nation” or “empire,” and how much of it is simply an “empire” gone somewhat awry, but still a few shades short of the extreme evil that we are told it represents. Inevitably, as I briefly touched on above, there is a lot left out of Star Wars in terms of what it doesn’t tell us or intentional leads us to avoid thinking about. Such as: The Rebels are terrorists. They periodically infiltrate the Empire with spies, attack convoys, invade Imperial prisons to liberate criminals against the Empire (yes, Princess Leia is a criminal), etc. The fact that the Rebels almost immediately resort to violence (albeit in a seemingly toxic political environment) is rather telling here. Am I suggesting that violence against the Empire is inherently bad? No, but the problem is that the visual given to us doesn’t provide context to understand the motivations, at least not on a comprehensive level (superficially we are conditioned to hate the Empire). As I mentioned above, and what is relevant to the point preceded this one, the complete lack of Imperial culture within the films essentially leaves an entire side of the coin unseen. This leads us to the following point. Because we only see the militaristic sides of both the Rebels and the Empire (the prequels only show us a pre-Empire galaxy), we have no idea how these two groups are seen in the context of society. Are the Rebels viewed as a good thing, even secretly, among the citizens of the Empire? What about the Empire? While it is certainly relevant to recognize the impetus behind the Rebels’ actions, it doesn’t hide the fact that whatever good intentions there may be, they are still engaging in what we would call terrorism today. Think of it this way: to the people who support Al Qaeda, they are doing a good thing; likewise, to the people who support the Rebels, they are also doing a good thing. It comes down to perspective, and when you are on the outside, as we are, you can think objectively about the reality that Star Wars proposes. That reality is one where terrorism is something to root for, where good and evil are clearly defined, and where, inevitably, the folks we think are the good guys always win. While the Al Qaeda analogy might not hold up for most, it functions well enough to demonstrate how good and evil are defined by both context and perspective, both of which we cannot ignore here, even if the movies want us to for the sake of its internal logic. But ask yourself this the next time you watch the original Star Wars movies: are the militaristic and “evil” elements of the Empire the only things severely damaged by the end of A New Hope and Return of the Jedi? Or is it possible that the collateral damage from everything the Rebels have done is in fact far more devastating than leaving the Empire in control in the first place?
How to Fail At Podcasting: From a Listener’s Perspective
The great thing about podcasting is that just about anyone can do it. The bad thing about it is that a hell of a lot of people try it, but end up producing a product that is of low quality, even if top-quality equipment and top-notch audio editing skills are employed. Some of the below has been mentioned before, but I’ve extended the list and updated it to be more relevant and more clearly defined. Regardless, below are a few new and expanded ways to fail at podcasting. PodcrowdingBringing all your friends into the podcasting world isn’t a bad idea, in principle. But, there is such a thing as too many damned people on a podcast at one time. For the listener, having any more than three people in the same podcast is basically like trying to listen to twelve people in real life without getting confused or disoriented when person #10 interrupts #3, who is then interrupted by #5, who comments on something #7 said, who originally had responded to #8’s question after #10 and #9 said something to #4 and #2 about something #1 had said to #Z…I mean #6. See what I mean? Pull back. Three people is enough. It’s less confusing for you, less confusing for listeners, and certainly less confusing for any guests you might have. Podcrowding is a disaster waiting to happen. Listen to the podcasts that do this. Count how many minutes are wasted on things that have nothing to do with the actual podcast (i.e. the hosts being confused about who’s next to speak). PoddroningNot everyone has a voice for radio…err, podcasting. It’s not the kind of truth anyone wants to hear, but it’s the truth nonetheless. For me, one of the most annoying things any podcast can have is a host who is boring enough to put me to sleep. These hosts include people with monotone voices, people who take forever to say a simple sentence, people who are impossible to understand (possibly because they mumble), or people who simply have nothing interesting to say. Some of this can be fixed with practice; some of it can’t. Accept your limits, though. There’s nothing wrong with having a regular old blog. Sometimes your voice is best served by the written word. Don’t put your audience to sleep. PodrepeatingOne of my biggest beefs with the podcasting community is that it constantly repeats itself, particularly in the fiction aspect. I’ve stopped listening to a number of podcasts because they stopped being about fresh content and instead became devoted to being a platform for plugging other “big names” in the podcasting world. The thing is, most of what was a novelty about podcasting went out of fashion almost two years ago. It’s not “new” anymore, and anyone doing a podcast isn’t doing something that hasn’t been done before (unless you’re actually doing something new with the form, which is something to note). Podcasting has become, in some circles, a giant circlejerk. For some listeners, like myself, it’s a podkiller. Even if the repeat offenders have something new to plug, they often repeat some of the same things they said the last time. It makes for some rather dull content. PodpluggingIf a podcast is about you, then it should be clearly defined as such. Mur Lafferty, for example, makes it damn clear that her podcast is about her (though she has branched out to include interviews with authors and the like). Unless your podcast is actually about you, however, don’t use it as a secret way to plug yourself. Why? It’s frakking annoying. If you do interviews with authors, then make sure the interviews are about them. When you start trying to relate everything to yourself, it not only irritates, but makes you look like a self-centered jackass. If you want to talk about yourself, then make a podcast about yourself; otherwise, don’t waste the listener’s time. PodologizingWhen every single podcast you release begins or ends with you apologizing for something you failed to do in relation to the podcast, then there is a problem. Occasionally apologizing is perfectly acceptable; all of us have time constraints, personal problems, and the like that can get in the way with an extracurricular activity like podcasting. Still, if you’re going to promise something, and then never deliver, then you need to reassess your podcast model. Apologizing for some failure on your part every single time is both annoying and also drawing attention to the fact that you kind of suck. Either get with the program, or change the way you do things. Leave the apologizing to truly unexpected issues. Now I want to know what you think is a quick way to fail miserably at podcasting. What has annoyed you in the past?
Fascism (or How You Can Spot Fascist Thinking in Book Bannings)
You’d be hard-pressed to get me to argue my way out of this one; I’m using “fascism” to elicit an emotional response from you, my readers. A little pathos does us all a little good. But I have a reason. Throughout our short history (speaking of America) we have been remarkably vocal against any sort of non-democratic way of life. We’ve, thus, applied fascism and communism as the exact opposites of our democratic (translation: truly free) methodology. The problem, however, is that in being so anti-everything-else, we’ve started to become that which we fear. Case in point: the State Board of Education in Texas managed to get this book on Marxism banned from school libraries (and a book for kids by another author with the same name); a few states over in Menifee, California they are considering banning the 10th edition of Merriam-Webster (the dictionary) because it contains entries for “oral sex” (among others). I can’t help thinking that these bannings (or attempts, at least) are the result of an incomprehensible discomfort for those who still think it’s the 1600s. Even so, the problem with this whole picture is that for all its claims of protecting children and preservation of American freedom, it’s doing the exact opposite. I am not a Marxist. I’m not a capitalist either (not in the current sense of the term). But stifling the dissemination of knowledge, even about controversial topics, is a kind of low-level Orwellian act. We’re not talking about keeping pornography from being in school libraries. We’re not even talking about keeping things like the Anarchist cookbook, which is, if memory serves me, still illegal due to its content (it provides the “recipes” for all kinds of bad things, like bombs). We’re talking about keeping knowledge of a diametrically opposed viewpoint from reaching our children, and I don’t think this is simply because we don’t like those ideas. We’re afraid (or at least weak-minded people are). Marxism isn’t terrifying because it’s the opposite of capitalism, or because it is connected with communism and a lot of nasty things that have happened over the years. Marxism is terrifying because the more we learn about it, the more we realize that a lot of the things Marx and those that followed him said about capitalism are true. We’ve done a fine job maintaining the status quo in America. To break that by raising children who not only think critically about the way our nation is run, but are also willing to act and implement outside ideas to make changes (for the better, presumably) is essentially to shut down hundreds of years of damn fine brainwashing. Are fascism and communism actually bad? Sure, in a limited viewpoint, but in that same viewpoint our own system is equally as bad (American democracy and modern capitalism are not innocent systems by a long shot; to say otherwise is like saying colonialism never happened). American culture, thus, has become one of exceptionalism, particularly if you’re an adherent of a particularly vocal political right: they offer America an “out” from its “crimes,” while deriding other nations (primarily non-democratic ones) for the very thing we offer up as exceptions. Exceptionalism is equally applicable to the vocal non-political left, who often hold up more “socialist” nations as pinnacles of civilization, criticizing the failures of America, while exceptionalizing the aforementioned “socialist” nations. The problem of American exceptionalism is that it is too close-minded for its own good. We are incapable of thinking outside of the box because we’ve been conditioned to fear a political other that is not all that terrifying to begin with. What exactly is so frightening about Marxism, Fascism, or Democratic Socialism? Once you begin to siphon off the oft-repeated examples of all that is bad about these things (the last of which gets the short end of the stick because there are actually few, if any, prominent “bad” examples; the result is that it is often associated with Fascism), there really isn’t much to say except, “I just don’t like it.” Perhaps we need to really think about why it is we love Democracy so much, particularly in its American form. And where it’s weak, maybe we should also question why we are too afraid to criticize it, or only brave enough to criticize those who do the job for us. The one thing we can’t keep doing is looking away from criticism for fear that there might be some truth there in the first place. Marxism may not be correct in principle, but when you dig your heels in you begin to see why it is still so influential in the world and in universities: because it still says something true about the system we’ve all been conditioned to love; acknowledging that truth is a challenge to American hegemony. History, I’m afraid, does not shine too well on America’s reception of challenges.