This morning, Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany, took part in the Armistice Day ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris, France. This is the first time a German Chancellor has done so since the practice began after WW2. France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, called this an "historic act", and indeed it was.
Think about this for a moment. This is the sitting leader of Germany, going and honouring those fallen French soldiers who died in the process of defending their country against the evil German hordes. To put that in context, try to imagine - really try to imagine - a time some sixty years from now when a sitting American president visits Iraq and lays a wreath at a memorial commemorating the Iraqi soldiers and insurgents who fought and died in the process of defending their country against the evil American aggressors.
Pretty hard to imagine it ever happening, isn't it?
I would love to know, to really understand, what this means to the average German. This is a country - and a person, in Chancellor Merkel, in particular - which has really, really seriously come to terms with their history and made their peace with the fact that they fucked up bad. No illusions. No excuses. No false bravado. They admit and acknowledge that they have, in living memory, been unimaginably screwed-up as a society, and have come to the point where they can be mature and genuine enough to be utterly contrite about it. How many countries have ever reached this point? Germany is certainly one of the worst and most notorious of the various nations who have, in the history of mankind, decided to destroy everyone and everything in their path of destruction, but they're by no means the only ones, and I can think of few that are willing to make a gesture like this.
I would love to be able to understand this cultural experience better. I really would.
Have you ever heard of the Antikythera Mechanism?
(a modern re-creation of the machine)
This was a clockwork computer which was recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece back in the year 1990. The device is simply amazing in a number of different ways; it seems to have been built some time around the year 100 BCE, and employs the sort of technology which the world would not see again until the 18th century; a complexity and miniaturization of gears that was literally MILLENNIA ahead of its time. What's more, it seems to have been built to keep track of the movements of the earth, moon, sun, stars and planets, presumably in aid of nautical navigation. Whoever designed this beauty seems to have had a solid grasp of the fact that the Earth revolved around the sun, rather then vice versa. In this, too, this inventer was thousands of years ahead of the rest of the world.
Imagine the mind behind this feat. The ancient world contains virtually nothing resembling this. There were other devices which employed gears and even a certain degree of clockwork, so it's not entirely unprecedented, but to sit down and take principles like this and construct a functioning computer capable of working out precise positions and calculations like this in a world where there was simply nothing else of its kind that had ever been conceived... and then subsequently vanished again, not to be seen again for nearly two thousand years? Imagine the loneliness and isolation of an intellect like that in the ancient world. Imagine being able to produce such notions with such primitive tools and resources to draw upon. Who knows what such a mind would be capable of with the technology and accumulated knowledge we have today.
And we don't even know their name. There is some suggestion that this may have been the device mentioned in an account by Cicero, in which he spoke of an instrument "recently constructed by our friend Posidonius, which at each revolution reproduces the same motions of the sun, the moon and the five planets." Certainly, it's difficult to imagine that there could have been two such men at one time in history while all around them they were surrounded by savagery and ignorance, but who knows?
It's at one time depressing to think of society possessing even one person capable of producing a work of genius like this and then utterly losing it, losing even the memory of it for countless centuries, rather than building upon it... and also tantalizing to speculate as to what might have been, if the tradition of this sort of invention had persisted instead of vanishing utterly. I'm frankly shocked that there doesn't seem to be any historical fiction, or indeed ALTERNATE historical fiction based upon this.
***
Dear Mr. Comfort.
Earlier today, I read an interview with you on the topic of your abridged version of The Origin of the Species, and specifically your introduction to the book. In it, you made reference to the science of evolution's “undeniable connection” to the holocaust. This is not a new claim, and not one that I am not unfamiliar with, but on this occasion, I felt motivated to investigate the claim for myself. I found that, broadly speaking, there is some truth to what you say; some of Hitler’s stated justifications for the holocaust do indeed include his misinterpretations and misapplications of the science of evolution.
This says nothing whatsoever about whether or not the science of evolution is valid or true, though; merely whether or not it is of benefit to society that people be aware of it. Assuming, for the sake of argument, then, that you are correct, and that without having this body of knowledge to misinterpret and misapply as Hitler did, the holocaust would not have taken place (which I am dubious about; it seems to me that he would have found some other justification to hang his irrational hatred of “the other” on, just as so many creeds, philosophies and religions have been abused for the purposes of over the course of human history), I wonder if you will then apply this same standard to other bodies of knowledge without which he also could not have accomplished the horrible deeds that he did?
For example, will I hear a similar denouncement of the science of metallurgy for its undeniable connection to the holocaust? Without access to this body of knowledge, Hitler’s forces would have had no train tracks, no trains, no bullets, no gas chambers, no metal fences, among many, many other implements which were critical to his execution of the many “undesirables” during the holocaust.
Will I be hearing of your outrage at the science of masonry, and its undeniable connection to the holocaust? Without the ability to produce bricks and construct buildings of them, the nazis would have been unable to house the infrastructure of their murderous war machine, and their death camps would surely not have been the inescapable prisons that they were. Nobody will claim that masonry is not a valid field of knowledge, but neither can the claim be made that without it, the nazis would have been all but powerless to carry out their extermination regime.
Indeed, even the body of knowledge of language itself has the very same undeniable connection to the holocaust that the science of evolution does. Indeed, it has an even deeper and more fundamental connection; without knowledge of language, Hitler would never even have had access to the ideas that he did, would never have been able to convey them to the German people, and would never have been able to conduct his orders to the countless thousands of devout Christians who worked as death camp guards and operators*, without whose enthusiastic support, Hitler’s will could never have been executed. Will I therefore be hearing you tar language itself with the same brush that you apply to evolution? And if so, how do you plan on doing so without employing the Nazi-related science of language?
I ask these questions because I know that as a man of god and as a man of learning such as yourself, honesty, integrity and consistency are indispensable and invaluable, and that your condemnation of these bodies of knowledge must surely be merely waiting in the wings alongside your condemnation of the body of knowledge which is the science of evolution, and that you have simply not found the time or opportunity to make clear your moral outrage that these knowledges should be allowed to be taught, given their shared history of nazism. If this is the case, I am more than prepared not only to hear this condemnation from you, but to tell all who would listen that you are indeed a man of conviction, of principle and of integrity, and that you are willing to apply the same standards to all of the sciences which Hitler and his forces made use of in the same manner and to the same extent, and indeed for the same reasons.
I thank you for your time and attention, sir, and eagerly await your reply.
• I realize that a lesser man than yourself might be tempted into falling prey to a “no true Scotsman” fallacy in responding to this point, but I have every confidence in your ability to rise above such obvious traps.
As anyone who knows me knows, I dress exclusively in black, about 99% of the time. This is not a question of slavery to some external trend or movement; I’ve never considered myself a goth, for instance; I realized in high school that, as much as I liked the way that goths dress, it’s mostly about a music style which doesn’t speak to me in the slightest, and that in any case the idea of suborning my own sense of style to anyone else’s expectations of what I ought to look like or present myself was just sort of fundamentally ridiculous and loathsome to me.
Similarly, anyone who has known me for more than ten years – which is admittedly a vanishingly small list at this point – knows that this has not always been the case; my later days in high school were a process of experimentation for me, as they were for many people. In my case, I worked very aggressively to define myself along very personal lines so as to prevent anyone from being able to sort me into any group or clique at the time. One day I would show up in a suit and tie, wearing leather loafers and a briefcase. The next day, I would be dressed head to toe in bright green, including an elabourate facepaint design (which would come to be the foundation upon which my body painting skills would later be built). The day after that, a blue housecoat, tattered jeans, orange reflective safety vest and floppy brown leather hat. It was only very gradually that I fell into a single style which I felt comfortable with and which I felt represented me well to the world, and this is a style which to one extent or another I’ve stuck with ever since.
I’ve had any number of people attempt to dissuade me from this course, of which the most laughable was a horrendous little cretin named Jason Engel, who worked day and night to conform to every “goth” stereotype he could, and was among the most superficial adults I’ve ever met. He viewed my dressing exclusively in black as a sort of trespass into “his” territory, and one I wasn’t entitled to. He attempted to get me to dress more colourfully in the service of his own vanity. I laughed in his face and remained steadfast.
Today, I’ve had a friend attempt to get me to wear colourful t-shirts and bluejeans so as to make myself more superficially appealing to women. The thought was utterly repulsive to me; being told that in order to find that right woman, the thing to do was to toss aside my own individuality and sense of visual identity in favour of a sort of generic mediocrity; blending in with the anonymous and faceless crowd. I don’t deny that this might be effective if my intent was to find some woman who were attracted to the bland and the generic, and I needed some camouflage or disguise in order to deceive her into believing that I was one such person, but I daresay that this illusion, and the feelings built thereupon would be shattered quite swiftly the moment that I began to discuss virtually any topic with her. Besides which, what use would I have for such a woman? It would be a trying ordeal for me to be involved with such a lady, I fear, and a trying ordeal of a relationship, startling as it may sound, is not actually something I’m actively seeking out.
Besides which, there are practical concerns, ranging from the physiological to the psychological. My legs are twin pillars of rippling muscle, bulging against the world with seething power. There is a terrible cost to this, however; they also bulge against one another in a manner which is fairly destructive; as my thighs press against one another, the friction caused ends up destroying the inner thighs of any pants which I wear. Even this, though, is preferable to the fate which awaits me if I were to wear more durable pants; a pair of blue jeans would rub against my legs no less than my preferred slacks, but whereas slacks would give way, the heavy weave of jeans would cause my flesh to be worn away, leaving a pair of oozing blisters in their wake. Not only is the agony of this sensation – which is all too well-known to me – a significant disincentive to following this advice, there is the question of how attractive oozing and infected sores on my inner thighs would be to that prospective Miss Right.
Then there’s the psychological, and here I cite no less an authority than one Mr. Albert Einstein. Einsten decided early on in his life what fashion was comfortable and serviceable to him, and he stuck by it. So consistent was he, in fact, that he came upon a startlingly utilitarian approach: He simply bought dozens of identical suits, and they formed the entirety of his wardrobe. Every morning, he could simply pick any shirt, any pair of pants, any jacket, and not waste so much as a single moment, a single spare thought on the topic; there was no question of what mood he was in, what went well together or what the occasion was. This was a guy who had bigger fish to fry with his brain than a question of what to wear. “But Dave”, you may ask, “What about the ladies? What about making a good impression with the ladies? Don’t they demand of their suitors a sort of blind adherence to an arbitrary sense of style chosen for them, against their will, by the mindless pressures of the society around them? How could a man of even Einstein’s towering intellect possibly be a role model for you in this regard, given that he must logically have been a romantic failure in light of his decision to be happy with his own appearance, rather than abandoning his own principles in an effort to satisfy the mindless shrieking demands of the collective unconscious?”
Well let me tell you a little about that. Albert Einstein married his cousin Elsa. Most women would be like “Ick, no! I will not grant you access to my vagina! Incest is disgusting and wrong!” But Einstein, being the cockpunchingly pimpin’ guy that he was, was able to brush that shit aside and be all like “Shit, bitch! I’m Albert motherfucking Einstein! You gonna let a little thing like THAT get in the way of you gettin’ with my fuckin’ same-suited, no-haircut-gettin’, not-shavin’-my-moustachin’ self?” And she was all like “Aw, what the fuck.” Cause you know why? Because chicks dig confidence, that’s why. And a guy like that, as confident as he was of the way he looked and dressed and groomed himself had a lot going on in that regard.
I’m not trying to put myself in Einstein’s bitch-gettin’ league or anything here; he plainly had a great deal else going on that I could only ever asprire to. Why, he once had a three word conversation with William Golding!* What have I done that can compare to shit like that, right? But as far as role models go, I figure I could do a lot worse.
* This conversation, retold in Golding’s essay “Thinking as a Hobby”, took place atop a bridge over a small river at a time when Golding knew about one word of German, and Einstein knew about no words of english. As a fish swam under them, Golding remarked “Fisch”, thus expending the bulk of his german vocabulary. “Ja, fisch”, Einstein responded, entirely accurately (one presumes; in fairness I’m actually giving the two of them the benefit of the doubt here; they could have as easily mistaken a bit of garbage for a fish, in that neither of them are known to have been marine biologists of any repute).
A couple of weeks ago, I watched a fantastic documentary from Nova called "The Bible's Buried Secrets". As people who know me are well aware, this sort of thing is like crack to me. It essentially looks at the very early history of the Israelite people by means of a combination of approaches and creating a synthesis which is very compelling to me. They seek to disentangle the actual history of these people from the various strands of mythology which you find in the bible. And it does treat this book as mythology, and moreover, a sort of Frankensteineian hodge-podge of four DIFFERENT mythological traditions which were spliced, over the course of centuries, into the early books of the Torah (or "Old Testament" as the Christians somewhat condescendingly call it). It doesn't do so in an unfriendly or hostile way at all; it approaches the early history of this people as an engaging historical saga which has been obscured and confused by a series of myths which nevertheless served various useful purposes to the culture of this struggling people. It goes into a number of different corroborating sources for different elements of the story being told, many drawn from archaeological digs performed in the area over the last sixty years or so, mainly by Israeli archaeologists who have a vested interest in discerning the truth of their own early history.
I've shown this film to a number of friends, who have all enjoyed it tremendously, and I suspect many of you will as well. I know I fully plan on buying the DVD when it becomes available for sale in February.
For the time being, the entire thing can be viewed for free by Americans at Nova's page for the film here: http://www.pbs.org/nova/bible
For those outside of the US, there are a number of opportunities. For example, some helpful soul has broken it up into 12 parts and posted them on YouTube, the first of which I post here:
If that's not to your tastes (as Youtube video quality can be a little on the weak side), there's always the torrent option : http://www.mininova.org/tor/2030190
At any event, it's brief - it will only take about 25 minutes to play through in its entirety - and can only be called a "game" in the loosest possible sense of the words, but is entirely delightful; it's a sort of gentle subversion of Final Fantasy-esque RPGS, which possitively takes to early 19th century foppery in the same way that a pig takes to its own filth. I found myself positively prostrate with ejaculations of jocularity within moments of partaking in this comedic romp, and I can reccommend it to anyone fond of bourgeois excess and adventures therein with the utmost of confidence.
http://officialincorporated.com/storage/l
Rejoice and be merry! Less than a month after the release of Luck be an Empty Vessel for my Poisonous, Flesh-Destroying Seed Tonight, comes the Newdog15's most politically-charged thriller of all time...
For this masterwork, I am joined by a dear friend, one Doctor Ultimo, who I have for some eight years now hoped to collaborate with creatively. Alas, for all his towering intellect and sparkling wit, never has his genius been committed to text in this form before. Frankly, I suspect that his never-ending one man war on his hated enemy, the wicked King of Portugal, has dominated so much of his time that such pursuits have been frankly impossible. With the completion of this work, however, he has tasted the sweet juice of the fruit of success and found it pleasing. Already he speaks of our next collaboration. I can only hope the oppressed people of Portugal can afford to go without their living folk hero for another few days in the near future.
Now, without further ado...
( Click, dear readers, and hear a tale of sinister foreign powers and the brave men who stand against them! )
It bears pointing out, it seems to me, in the interests of prudence, that the above link perhaps ought not to be clicked upon whilst at your workplace, as some of the images in the tale woven therein have some faintly sexual undertones, which - depending upon your employer - may not reflect favourably upon your place in the workforce.
I've always had a problem with the enthusiasm of christians of colour, if you will, in the United States. And not merely the same problems that I have with christians of other races down there, though those certainly apply as well. No, my problem is one of a certain logical disconnect. One stemming from their point of origin, one might say. And here I refer primarily to those who are descended from slaves; though I'm quite aware that there are many black christians down in the states who either immigrated on their own or whose ancestors did, my quandary with them is a different one.
When I think about those blacks descended from slaves and who are now vigorous and impassioned christians, it outrages my sensibilities a little bit when I think about how christianity was introduced to their people. Their ancestors, who were kidnapped, tortured, and pressed into invoulentary service (or, if you will, "enslaved") by white christians were brought to the United States, and there told that they were to abandon their old cultural and religious beliefs and embrace those of their captors. I imagine myself in this situation, and I imagine myself saying "Yes, of course. You people who kidnap us, torture us, enslave us, rape us and murder us plainly have a pretty good handle on this 'morality' thing. Your god, who apparently condones and dictates the terms by which we're stripped of our humanity and treated as less than beasts is obviously a fine dispenser of virtue and morality. You guys totally deserve to be emulated, and your god is obviously the one we should be looking to for ethical behaviour. Oh, wait, no. You and your entire culture sicken me, your god, if indeed he exists is plainly a monster unworthy of my attention or adulation if he permits this behaviour among his followers, and your religion makes me sick to my stomach."
And then, I suppose I would be publicly and horribly murdered by these followers of christ for failing to see the innate goodness and superiority of their moral creed, so as to make an example to anyone else who got the idea in their heads that American christians are anything less than paragons of love, mercy, and virtue.
And I suppose it's insufferably smug of me to try to project myself into this situation; I've had terrible times in my life that nearly broke and ruined me, and the very worst days I had during these days can't possibly compare with the very best days that these slaves must have had, especially in those early days before they had "settled in" to their nightmarish new lives. How can I presume to know how I would react in that sort of situation, much less judge those who were there? But even so...
I wonder if part of it is that the most dissenting and proud among them were killed off, leaving only the most meek and compliant. I wonder if there was a certain horrible natural selection going on here, where the only ones who survived long enough to breed were the ones who had the good sense or lack of pride necessary to hang their heads and obediently repeat the empty platitudes required of them until their own children were old enough to never have lived in a time when they remembered any other religious views being observed?
I've heard tales of groups of black slaves in that time and place who cunningly disguised their own cultural beliefs by pretending they were worshiping christian saints and angels when instead they were continuing to revere their old tribal gods and spirits. While I have no less contempt for such practices than I do for christianity as a whole, in that day and age, one must have seemed as plausible as the other, and I admit to a certain admiration for their guile and nerve in pulling off such a ruse on their credulous "masters" until such a time as they were able to once again become the masters of their own destiny. It is in this way that practices like Voodoo (or vodun, if you prefer) first came into existence.
But today, in this day and age, in an age of rationality and readily-available science and historical perspective, the continued enthusiasm of black American christians offends my sensibilities. I realize that these are people who were raised in this faith. I realize that the church has long served as a centre of community from which they have drawn strength of unity as a peoples in very hard times. But even so... The very fact that this religion was pushed upon their people by the monstrous and savage culture of the southern United States, and is in a very real and ongoing sense a yoke around their collective cultural neck which was placed there by their oppressors, and which they don't seem to have the strength of character to cast off just kind of baffles me. For a people so demonstrably eager to be free in so many other ways, how can they be so eager to maintain their servitude and servility to the white man's god?
Even the emergence of groups like the so-called Nation of Islam, which seem to exist purely as a reaction against this history only partially address this historical inequity, in that they simply move their bondage to the irrational from one source to another. And these people remain a vanishingly small minority among the population. Upon consideration (and here I know I tread on very delicate ground indeed), I wonder if the poverty and poor educational opportunities which are all-too-often afforded them as a people is in part to blame for this? Both poverty and poor education have a statistical correlation with religiosity, and all three are well-represented within the American black population.
I don't claim any special insight or personal experience here, but I would like to learn more. Is anyone in a position to shed some further light on the matter?
cross-posted to the atheism community
Edited to add: The discussion in the above-linked community is actually really good and heated in places. Worth checking out if you're interested in this post.
According to Jewish mythology (as I understand it), one needs only be basically a good person in order to get a 'happy ending' afterlife. One need not even be Jewish; only being a decent person is sufficient. Christianity, on the other hand, says that being a good person is not sufficient; you must be a member of their particular religion, and that everybody else is deserving of the maximum possible agony as punishment for being ''not us''.
Now it occurs to me: Christianity seems to have a more primitive, tribal, adversarial, us-vs.-them morality than their parent religion on this topic.
This seems a little odd to me. I wonder if Judaism has simply become more morally sophisticated in the 2000 years since Christianity schismed off, and that at that time they were both just as xenophobic and brutish... or if the early christians were sort of a moral throwback to a more brutish and hateful time. Neither would surprise me, but I don't want to assume.
I feel like I want to talk to historians and maybe rabbis on this topic, but in the mean time, do any of you have any insights on the issue?
It just seems to me that the christian mythology, where it differs from Jewish mythology, is less forgiving, more harsh and cruel. Am I nuts for expecting that as new 'mainstream' religions emerge, they ought to be more morally sophisticated than their predecessors? It seems peculiar to me.
cross-posted to atheistofftopic
Are you familliar with Dada artwork?
It was this art movement in the early 20th century, created in part by a french artist named Marcel Duchamp. I won't go into great detail as to the history and origins of the art movement; if you want to know more, just click some of the above links. What I'm more interested in here is the spirit of Dada.
Dada is basically all about taking substanceless crap and - through subverting and corrupting it, either in presentation or in form - create some new peice of artwork out of it. Probably the first example of Dada artwork came in the form of Duchamp's "The Fountain", in which he yanked a urinal out of the wall of an art show he was judging, signed the name "R. Mutt" onto it, named it "The Fountain", and declared it the winner of the show, saying "Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.".
Dada took on a lot of different forms over the years; it was never about the specific medium so much as it was about the gesture of contempt for a genre or body of work. One of the questions about almost any Dada artwork that inevitably comes up is "Are we supposed to like the actual creation, or the mere act of corruption and subversion?" The great thing about dada is that that question is meaningless; the two concepts are inseperable and indistinguishable.
Today, the spirit of Dada lives on. I've seen two videos on Youtube which I feel are worthy successors to the legacy of Dada. The first is Japanese...
The second is an actual, honest-to-goodness American presidential campaign video from former senator Mike Gravel...
...which I feel shows the appropriate contempt and subversion of the medium and substanceless crap of American campaign videos.
I actually posted this in the
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
atheismcommunity about a week and a half ago. I know a lot of you cats are in that community, and have thus already read this, but for the benefit of the rest of y'all... ***
You know one of the things which bugs me about christians? It's their ignorance of their own mythology. Not JUST the fact that they don't bother to read the bible which they claim to support, though there's that too. No, it's the fact that they're UNWILLING to admit information about the actual history of their religion, because it conflicts with their invented history. And it's their actual history which I find interesting.
For example. The serpent in the Garden of Eden fable. Fascinating stuff.
Now, these days, christians identify the serpent as being one and the same as, indistinguishable from, the devil, whom they also identify as the fallen angel, Lucifer.
Not one part of this actually washes.
First of all, according to the bible, there IS no "fallen angel Lucifer"; Lucifer was just a guy. A babylonian king namd Nebuchadnezzar. His "fall" was not a fall from heavan, but a fall from power, as his rule came to a disastrous end. The whole "Lucifer as fallen angel" myth originated in or around the 1st century CE, with a myth (or, if you prefer, midrash, or apocrypha), called The Life of Adam and Eve. There is not one thing in the entire bible which supports the concept whatsoever. Lucifer, according to the bible, is neither a fallen angel, nor the devil.
Secondly, there is no biblical support for the idea that the serpent is the devil, either. So what WAS it supposed to be? Well, therein lies a tale! In the bronze age middle east, the early hebrews bumped up against all sorts of polytheistic religions, such as the Canaanites and the Egyptians. Indeed, there was so much contact that a certain amount of cultural interchange was inevitable. Symbols, concepts, and yea, even gods and goddesses of these other cultures found their way into the early versions of hebrew mythology. Though they have largely been excised in later redactions, there remain traces. The serpent in the tree of the fruit of knowledge is a classic example.
A popular goddess in the region was Asherah. She was alternately known, in various versions, as Ishtar and Astarte. Small variations, but basically the same figure. Asherah was a goddess of, among other things, knowledge. She was also, to the degree that ANY such virtues existed in those primitive days, a goddess of female empowerment. She was frequently symbolized by trees and snakes, and in fact the caducus, which today has come to be associated with medicine, seems to have some connection with an ancient symbol of Asherah, which was a pair of snakes twined about a tree.
Now, the Genesis myth covered a lot of ground for the ancient hebrews. The hebrews were always big into discouraging their people from having any truck with foreign gods. Throughout the Old Testament in particular, it comes up over and over again, usually explicitly stated. In the Garden of Eden myth, it's alluded to in heavy-handed terms, with allusions which are lost on most modern readers; the people of the time - the intended listeners/readers of Genesis - would have IMMEDIATELY understood the symbolism of a snake in a tree offering a woman knowledge. You wouldn't even have to use the word Asherah, since they all knew about the goddess from the neighboring cultures they were dealing with. Today, it's a little more obscure. The point is, the whole deal with Adam and Eve being cast out of the Garden of Eden was meant to be a parable for doom and disaster befalling people who dared to deal with foreign gods, like Asherah, such as when dealing with her in the guise of a snake in a tree.
Later on in the bible, there are references to the hebrews being ordered to go out and destroy "Asherah Poles", which were the centres of places of worship of this goddess for the local peoples. Just as with the Garden of Eden story, though, this point goes without explaining, leaving modern-day readers in the dark as to what's really being discussed here.
As with so much of the bible, you have xenophobia and misogyny wrapped up in a fable, wrought in symbolism, and meant to convey an obvious message to the readers. Todays christians, though, by keeping themselves carefully ignorant of their own history, isolated from other cultures mythology, and deluded as to the literalism of their own stories, manage to completely miss the point of one of their own central stories.
And it's all there to be learned if they just pay attention. But that might be too much to hope for.
Which is bloody irritating.
Remember that creepy kid in high school? It doesn’t matter which high school; every school had one. He was the kid that kept to himself, didn’t really get along with anyone, was probably a little smarter than the people around him, and was way too aware of this fact? He would sit at the back of the class, making snide comments about the shortcomings of the people he saw around him, read his heavy metal magazines, and whenever he was particularly moody and introverted, he would write.
He would write nasty poetry, maybe. Or violent song lyrics. Or more recently, vitriolic blog postings. Or maybe he would write elabourate revenge fantasies. You know the type; the short story about the day the school burned down, and all the jocks and cheerleaders and popular kids got burnt to death in it, while the main character – a crude analogue of the author – would stand outside, maybe with crude analogues of a few of his friends, watching the school and laughing. Or maybe it was masked gunmen. Or zombies. Or whatever.
You could read one of these stories, and see within them written a veritable roadmap of the mental problems of the author. You could see, in the traits and qualities which are punished and made note of in this story, what things he loathed. You could see in his selection of those who were punished, the people who he most hated… or envied. You could see, in his choice of descriptors, the traits which caused him the most distress and consternation. For all that he meant for the story to be creepy, or upsetting, or threatening, in the end, they always came across as sort of sad and pathetic.
I was reminded of these stories recently while thinking about the Book of Revelation; the final book of the christian bible.
As the story goes, the book was written by a fellow named John, living in exile from the Roman Empire, at a time when the Jewish cult which would become christianity was still a weird little fringe religion in the Mediterranean region. He wrote, in isolation, this bitter little story about how all the people who weren’t like him would very soon suffer this gruesome fate, with plagues and fires, and seas of blood, monsters with the bodies of scorpions, and, tellingly, the faces of women… and eventual eternal damnation for everyone who he didn’t like.
I thought about this poor, put-upon guy, sitting alone on his island, watching the mainstream of the Roman Empire thriving all around him, while he was all alone and getting crazier by the day… And I envisioned him venting his frustrations by writing himself this little story about how in the very near future, they would all suffer and die, but paradoxically still be alive in the Lake of Fire, and able to look on with envy as he and his buddies stood in the kingdom of god, in their nice white robes, where everything would be okay for them forever… And I saw for the first time just how sad it was.
The book of Revelation is nothing more than an adolescent revenge fantasy. John was that creepy kid in the back of the class, who desperately wanted to be liked, but just didn’t have the proper social skills to do it. And so, alone, fuming with sullen rage, he wrote about what he wanted to see happen to all the more popular kids. They would all burn… forever! And not just the people alive now, but everyone who’s ever been alive, and who weren’t basically exactly like him.
As I said; one of the common elements of all of these stories is how, in the traits used in these stories to describe those who were worthy of punishment, we can see what things the author resents the most. Perhaps the saddest, creepiest part of all of the book of Revelation is the passage in which he writes about the people who are worthy of salvation being those who had not "sullied themselves with the flesh of women". It makes clear one of his own neuroses; the man was plainly a frustrated virgin, and wanted to see all the people who weren’t virgins punished for their damnable successes with women.
The fact that one of the world’s most influential religions is predicated in such a large part upon the ramblings of an adolescent revenge fantasy is at once both hilarious and crushingly, crushingly sad. Hilarious, in that christians don’t seem to see the neuroses-made-bare which is the book of Revelation; they take this childish cry for help from a broken mind to be literal truth, and sneer endlessly at those who don’t share their weird misinterpretation. I’m sure that John would have liked to have been able to have believed that it was a literal prediction of things to come, but I doubt even he was that deluded. Sad, because christians today not only lack the insight to understand the context of what they’re reading; they also lack the empathy to be able to identify the real pain and loneliness and frustration of the author which is so plain to anyone who cares enough to listen to this desperate cry for help.
I have often wondered what christianity would be like today if it hadn’t had Revelation tacked on to the end of its holy book. It’s the book where the afterlife myth was firmly entrenched, and where the apocalypse myth was introduced. Absent these, I’ve often thought that christianity would be a religion which would be a lot more concerned with actual human hardship and solutions to here-and-now problems, rather than deferring them until the coming of this bizarre afterlife. Now, in light of this revelation I have had about Revelation, I wonder something new: If the bible had not ended on this note, of crushing bitterness, resentment, frustrated longing, and desire for retribution, might it have been a NICER religion over the years? If people hadn’t been infused with the simmering rage of this mean-spirited misanthrope from birth onwards as though it were a virtuous thing, might they have been less apt to bring suffering on to those not like themselves? How many people over the millennia have suffered horrible deaths because, ultimately, of the inclusion of the bizarre revenge fantasy of one lonely, angry virgin?
It brings me both chagrin and wry amusement to think that John, could he have known the pain which would be meted out as a consequence of the misinterpretation of his cry for help would have been both grimly satisfied to see his pain shared by so many, and frustrated that nobody understood him.
I was going to write a new post to this effect, but then I thought, fuck it. I got it down last September 11th, and everything I said then remains pertinent now. So: repost.
***
Once again, like clockwork, September 11th rolls around. Once again, we're compelled to reflect upon the horrific events of September 11th, in which the proponents of a hateful philosophy, acting without mercy or conscience, struck out against a free and democratic nation in the hopes of crushing that freedom and imposing their ideology of intolerance and repression upon that nation.
I speak, of course, of the September 11th, 1973 military coup against the democratically-elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, by thugs and murderers sent by the United States government, under the Republican rule of Richard Millhouse Nixon.Thank you.
I know that by day's end, we'll all have had our fill of having heard the media droning on about "remembering the tragedy of September 11th" and "remembering the victims", and that indeed, by now, it's easy to have grown jaded about these events, which seem so far in the past. But it's important, not only for the sakes of our own consciences, but for the sakes of future victims of this hateful ideology called The Republican Party of the United States" to remember that this group is still alive and active in the world today.
Their indifference to the consequences of their actions remains unabated. Their greed and avarice remain unchecked. Their contempt for the free will of people around the world remains intact. Their will, their desire, and their ability to enact this hideous drive to stamp out any example of freedom from their ideology is as fierce today as it was those thirty-two years ago today.
And so I say, we must not only remember the tragedy itself, but also remember what it was that allowed this tragedy to occur. The indifference of a people to the evil in their very midst. The ability of a people to tell themselves that blind and empty ideology trumped actual human suffering. The will of a people to turn their eyes from the consequences of empowering such a regime.
It is all too easy to lose sight of the significance of a phrase like "bearing this in mind", but I ask you today to think about it. I ask you to bear in mind these facts. I ask you to hold it within your mind, and never let it slip loose from your thoughts. I ask you to clutch these facts to your heart, because by allowing ourselves to forget the tragedy of September 11th, 1973, we allow those who perpetrated this evil act and their spiritual successors free license to do its like again and again, repeating this tragedy at their leisure.
We must stand firm against the indifference of a people to the callousness of those who would lead them. We must be resolute in our opposition to the tenancy of a people to look the other way as the power they have vested in their leaders is used in ways that these selfsame people would never approve of. We must loudly proclaim that we have learned the lessons of September 11th, and that we will not allow the events of that dark day ever occur again.
Some months ago, I was talking to my friend Paul about Richard Dawkins’s meme theory. Like so many people, he seemed to have missed the core concept of the theory, which makes it in any way worthwhile as anything other than analogy. I sought to remedy this, but somehow forgot to send the bloody thing after writing it. Finding it on my laptop earlier this evening, I decided to put a bit of polish on it, post it here, and invite Paul and others to discuss it here.
Now, let us leave aside, for the moment, discussions as to whether or not this theory is correct. This is a worthwhile discussion to have, and one which I will be happy to have at some other time, but at the moment, I see it as a distraction and an obstruction.
Meme theory was introduced, as you may know, as an adjunct to the study of genetics. The point of doing so was to look at these memes as an alternate form of self-replicator, much akin to genes. Genes are not conscious, and do not consciously make decisions in order to advance themselves, protect themselves, or to adapt themselves to changing situations, but the successful ones will create, in the bodies which they build in order to propagate themselves, systems, organs, and tissues which will serve to protect them and ensure their successful transmission to a next generation of bodies.
Memes, likewise, are not conscious, and do not make conscious decisions to advance, protect, or adapt themselves, but the successful ones will create behaviours, beliefs, and cultural mores to protect themselves and ensure their successful transmission to new minds.
Let me illustrate by way of example.
The Albigensians were a peaceful and reclusive culture of christians living in France in the middle ages. The meme structure of albigensianism (if you will) included many lesser memes, which could not survive or reproduce in isolation any more than a white blood cell can survive or reproduce in isolation, but which served the greater body of albigensianism. Among these were the meme "We are the bodily descendants of Jesus Christ; he had children before his ascent to heavan, and we are their offspring". Another meme was "All things material are evil, and all things spiritual are good. Therefore, we will own no more than we need in order to survive, as material excess is sinful".
Now, the Albigensians lived in isolation, way out in the boonies. They were remote and removed enough from catholicism for this memetic specieization to take place, and for the meme-structure of albigensianism to thrive, since in those isolated areas, it had no competition.
However, there came a time when the more aggressive predator which was Catholicism came into contact with the peaceful and sedentary albigensianism. This had the effect of a breeding population of wolves being placed on an island of dodo birds. Catholicism had sharp teeth like papal infallibility, and vicious claws, like the inquisition. The meek albigensianism didn’t stand a chance. The memes which comprised catholicism caused catholics to respond extremely poorly to this heresy, considering them enemies of the church, and so they moved in to convert the albigensians to their way of thinking. Thus, the memes of Catholicism attacked the memes of albigensianism, trying to claim their territory: The minds of the albigensians. The albigensians had no weapons, because the meme which told them not to amass wealth precluded the possibility of their being able to afford them. This meme was like the genes of the dodo which had caused wings to diminish beyond the point at which they could keep the bird aloft; a mutation which would be survivable only in the absence of competition or predation. Thus, the meme-structure of albigensianism was ill-equipped to protect itself against the organism of Catholicism, which had meme of the mandated the forceful conversion or execution of heretics at this time.
As such, very soon, the meme structure of albigensianism was wiped out. Those who did not convert were killed. Thus, the meme structure had claimed the territory and resources of its competitor – the minds and bodies of the albigensians – and ensured that it would not have this competitor for resources in the quest for continued competition.
Two species come into contact in a previously isolated territory. In this territory, there are limited resources, which these two species are in direct competition for. The meaner and more competitive one destroys the weaker one, and claims the territory for itself. Natural selection. The memes themselves never made any decisions. All they did was provide the belief-structures and behavioural framework to cause the two organisms which they had created – the catholic community and the albigensian community – to perform certain tasks and functions. The one with the memes for deadlier traits won.
Another example:
Martin Luther nails a list of declarations to the door of a church in Germany. These declarations are, if not new memes per se, then a new means of these memes to replicate themselves. A mutation. The culture in this region was insular enough to allow specieization to take place (though not without strife!). This new, mutant strain of Catholicism, which is called Protestantism, or Lutheranism, contains memes not found in the parent-organism. The two strains do battle for the territory which is the minds of the parishioners, each trying to supplant one another. The meme structure of Protestantism is hearty; certainly meaner than the Albigensian meme structure was. More survivable. It persists to this very day. Like hyenas and lions locked in constant struggle with one another over territory on the plains of Africa, these two predators constantly vie for one another’s turf.
Memes are not always passive. Sometimes they are. Sometimes, like spores carried by air currents, they drift, and fall where they may. But many of the larger, more rugged and survivable memes are better-adapted, having evolved many traits which will allow them to take and hold territory, fend of competitors, stave off the diseases of doubt and internal dissent, and ensure successful replication over the course of many years, many generations.
Dawkins calls religion a virus of the mind, making reference to its capacity to invade an existing idea structure, such as a culture, and use the existing structures of that culture to replicate itself, often to the detriment of the host organism (parenthetically, I feel his choice of the use of the pejorative term ‘virus’ is informed by his overall feelings on religion, and his perceived role as an enemy thereof. I don’t necessarily disagree, in principle, though I don’t know how useful it is in this debate). I make reference to it here as a predator. Really, neither is entirely accurate, because the "ecosystem" of human minds is not precisely analogous to the world’s physical ecosystem. In order to study and discuss this theory meaningfully, you would need to create a new vocabulary (just as the word "meme" had to be coined in order to even be able to frame the discussion). It is nevertheless instructive to think of the concept of memes in these terms so as to provide the logical framework necessary to envision what Dawkins saw when he first proposed the idea: Another variety of self-replicators, which are not so very unlike our own genes that we cannot see in the way they ‘live’ a parallel to our own biological systems.
(X-posted here: http://community.livejournal.com/richard
It seems this may not be entirely coincidental...
If Bush WERE the grandson of the 19th century's greatest satanist, wouldn't that just be... sort of *right* somehow?
So I heard this morning that Joe “Pope Benedict 16” Ratzinger visited
“How could god allow this to happen”, he mused to the crowd. The moment I heard this, I was filled with a seething contempt and rage. You don’t get to ask that question, Joe. You don’t have the moral authority to do so. Your church encouraged and enabled the nazis to do this. The organization which you embody at the moment wanted it to happen. Your organization states that that which the pope wants, god wants. Therefore, given the then-pope’s endorsement of these events, god – your god, whose will you purportedly represent – was plainly quite happy to see all those Jews dead. Don’t beseech a god who apparently endorses a genocide for moral clarity with regards to that very act of genocide. You would do as well to ask a psychopath to explain the morality behind his own murders.
But it goes deeper than that. God doesn’t exist. As far that catholic church goes, he’s nothing more than an anthropomorphism of their own political agenda. But Joe, personally, doesn’t get to ask this question, because he’s responsible personally for the holocaust. No, not just because he’s a German. Because he was a nazi soldier. He was drafted into the German army and agreed to serve during WW2. He, like so many of his generation, put their well-being and security before any kind of morality or principles. I have heard the argument that he had no choice but to serve. I say bullshit. A man who feels that a person who claims to have no moral choice has no right whatsoever to lead any kind of spiritual movement or organization. I have heard the argument that he – a single anti-arcraft gunner – being absent from the war would have made no difference. I say bullshit. If herr Hitler had started his war and all of his soldiers had set down their guns, refusing to fight, there would have been no war. Each and every nazi soldier is exactly equally culpable with every other one for the war, and all of its consequences. He is precisely as guilty for every atrocity which occurred in that war as every other soldier who agreed to fight in it.
So, Joe, if you want to know how your fucking imaginary god allowed this to happen, allow me to provide you with an answer: It was allowed to happen because you and people like you were cowardly, inhuman monsters, with no sense of moral responsibility to your fellow human beings. It was allowed to happen because you soft and craven worms felt it was better to place the authority for all moral judgements in the hands of a psychopath than it was to use your own fucking brains to make the right and necessary judgements yourself. It was allowed to happen because you and people like you lacked the strength of character to prevent it from happening.
You don’t get to ask that question, Joe. And you know why? Because you’re asking it sixty fucking years too late. If you – and people like you - had asked it sixty years ago, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened, and then we wouldn’t now be in a position to demand the very same question of you that you would have us ask your imaginary friend. When Jeffy, in Family Circus, points at his imaginary friend “Not Me”, to place blame upon when he has himself has done, it’s amusing and juvenile. When you do the same with your make-believe god, it’s sickening. So don’t even bother to ask the question unless you get down on your fucking bloodstained hands and knees and beg the world for forgiveness when you answer your own question by begging the world’s forgiveness for having the moral paucity to have caused it to have happened.
You did this. You. Your generation. Your culture. Your religion. Your entire way of life. Your willingness to abrogate your moral responsibility to others. You cowardly, weak, spineless, amoral, idiotic, tyrant-pandering, genocide-enabling monsters.
Question answered.
Tangentially, it has occurred to me, while writing this, that precisely the same argument applies to each and every American soldier who is participating in the current
A second tangent: While writing this, this logic occurred to me: Christianity precludes true morality, because it entails abrogating your moral responsibility to a tyrannical god. The fact that this god does not exist except as an anthropomorphism of christians’ own desire to be treated as children, with all the lack of responsibility this entails, is meaningless. Moral abrogation is moral abrogation, regardless of whether or not you put a bearded human face on it.
Once again, like clockwork, September 11th rolls around. Once again, we're compelled to reflect upon the horrific events of September 11th, in which the proponents of a hateful philosophy, acting without mercy or conscience, struck out against a free and democratic nation in the hopes of crushing that freedom and imposing their ideology of intolerance and repression upon that nation.
I speak, of course, of the September 11th, 1973 military coup against the democratically-elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, by thugs and murderers sent by the United States government, under the Republican rule of Richard Millhouse Nixon.
I know that by day's end, we'll all have had our fill of having heard the media droning on about "remembering the tragedy of September 11th" and "remembering the victims", and that indeed, by now, it's easy to have grown jaded about these events, which seem so far in the past. But it's important, not only for the sakes of our own consciences, but for the sakes of future victims of this hateful ideology called The Republican Party of the United States" to remember that this group is still alive and active in the world today.
Their indifference to the consequences of their actions remains unabated. Their greed and avarice remain unchecked. Their contempt for the free will of people around the world remains intact. Their will, their desire, and their ability to enact this hideous drive to stamp out any example of freedom from their ideology is as fierce today as it was those thirty-two years ago today.
And so I say, we must not only remember the tragedy itself, but also remember what it was that allowed this tragedy to occur. The indifference of a people to the evil in their very midst. The ability of a people to tell themselves that blind and empty ideology trumped actual human suffering. The will of a people to turn their eyes from the consequences of empowering such a regime.
It is all too easy to lose sight of the significance of a phrase like "bearing this in mind", but I ask you today to think about it. I ask you to bear in mind these facts. I ask you to hold it within your mind, and never let it slip loose from your thoughts. I ask you to clutch these facts to your heart, because by allowing ourselves to forget the tragedy of September 11th, 1973, we allow those who perpetrated this evil act and their spiritual successors free license to do its like again and again, repeating this tragedy at their leisure.
We must stand firm against the indifference of a people to the callousness of those who would lead them. We must be resolute in our opposition to the tenancy of a people to look the other way as the power they have vested in their leaders is used in ways that these selfsame people would never approve of. We must loudly proclaim that we have learned the lessons of September 11th, and that we will not allow the events of that dark day ever occur again.
Thank you.
So it seems that they've tracked down yet another mis-translation in the bible...
So, the number of the beast isn't "666" but "616". Delightfull! I can't wait to see how christians work to attack the credibility of the bible schollars who discovered this, and how they seek to justify their existing preconceptions.
I must seek more knowledge on this topic. See how corroborated this is. I want it to be true, though. I really do.
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