metapunk

…Frakking fundamentalists, too!

Okay, so I know, I know. Arguing on the Internet is pretty much always a waste of time. Every time I do it, I feel like I just crawled through a sewer pipe, looking for the elusive source of the world’s bullshit. But sometimes you just sorta get sucked in, y’know?

Before I go on, I should point out that atheists are not the problem. If someone chooses to believe in God, Gods, the flying spaghetti monster, the bloody timecube, or nothing at all… well, hey, that’s cool. I respect that decision—follow your experience where it takes you, I say. Be empirical. But those Richard Dawkins wannabe, down-with-spirituality-in-every-form, capital “A,” Atheists—well, I’ve got no time for them, because every one I’ve met is an arrogant asshole.
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Lately I’ve been spending some time over at Only a Game, a blog by video game designer Chris Bateman. Chris and I seem to have very similar interests: namely games, religion, and philosophy, and the intersection of all of the above. The main difference between us is that Chris really does his homework: he’s very well versed in the topics he discusses there, while I’m always winging it (Remember Mad Max 3?: “Plan? There ain’t no plan!”).

Anyway, a while back I read Chris’ piece on the meaning of life, and he reminded me of something very important. (continue reading…)

People of Walmart

A friend of mine recently told me about the People of Walmart website, featuring pictures of Walmart shoppers in various states of dress as they go about their business, and occasionally, their vehicles. Some of them are silly, some are disturbing, but most of them are simply a slice of someone’s life, replete with all the assumptions you can make about that life based on a photograph.

But there’s something terribly, tragically human about these photos, and it occurs to me that Dukkha is never more apparent than in a Walmart. Dukkha is a Buddhist word from the Pali language that usually translates to “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It refers to the desperation of the human condition as we pass from life to life through the cycle of Samsara. (continue reading…)

I don’t have time for a full post right now, but I thought I would share a couple of quotes from some of the books I’ve been reading recently, which illustrate what I mean by holodoxy.

The first is from When Gravity Fails, by George Alec Effinger.  The main character, Marid Audran, is narrating his experience in listening to the rumours in his community, the Budayeen:

“The information I got from one person often contradicted the version I heard from another, so I’d long ago gotten into the habit of trying to hear as many different stories as I could and averaging them all out. The truth was in there somewhere, I knew it; the problem was coaxing it into the open.”

I think that fairly neatly summarizes the holodox notion of Perspective—the way you kind of have to tease out the truth by listening to as many perspectives as possible.  The “Truth” in such a circumstance, is thus always a little bit fluid, and you have to keep up by always questioning what you think you know for certain.

The second quote is from American Gods, by Neil Gaiman; from a young man in the back of a limo:

“…Tell him that we have fucking reprogrammed reality.  Tell him that language is a virus and that religion is an operating system…”

Indeed, we do live in a programmed (social) reality.  Every day our economic, political, and legal systems; our culture, really, tells us what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t.  It tells us what we’re supposed to do, and what we’re supposed to want, because we worship gods (or icons / symbols / ideals) of various sorts without even realizing it.

I don’t know if language is a virus, but religion is certainly an operating system.  In fact, you could make that your definition of religion: the cultural operating system underlying your thoughts and behaviour.  It’s something very difficult to escape or even examine, because it embodies everything you take for granted.  Everything you do or say is built on this in layers so deep you can’t even see the foundation.

But religion is also the mystical enterprise: questioning reality—or rather plumbing through these layers to find that foundation and understand it, see it for what it is, and look beyond it to whatever is truly real: the world beyond our beliefs and assumptions.

Well, anyway, it’s an interesting metaphor, well worth contemplating.

Until next time…

I just saw this TED Talk by Karen Armstrong about re-establishing compassion and the golden rule, which exists in all faiths, and many non-faiths, as a central feature of our lives; no matter what country we happen to live in, or what religion or worldview we happen to subscribe to. She calls on us to practice compassion, and to challenge uncompassionate speech wherever it arises.

Some people may feel this is unrealistic, but all I would say to them is that we have to try anyway, and keep trying until we get it… I mean, can you think of a better way to make the world a happier place for all? And what else are you going to do? Keep your head down and hope the forces of intolerance don’t start looking in your direction?

Anyway, the TED Talk led me to http://charterforcompassion.org/, and made me believe there’s still hope for us yet.

Religion is one of those words that means pretty much whatever the speaker wants it to mean. It symbolizes different things to different people, and people end up fighting about it when they’re really talking about entirely different experiences that each of them labels “religion.”

To strict believers, the word summons the rich symbolism and way of life of their own particular tradition. To religious moderates, religion can mean anything from interpretations of scripture which fit liberal politics to more individualistic understandings of spirituality. To critics of religion, the word evokes all the ways in which religion has failed or been misused—holy wars, bigotry, anti-science; abuse of people and ideas.

So if I say the word “religion” to you, chances are you think of all sorts of things that I didn’t intend to evoke. It makes it very difficult to talk about. All I can do is tell you how I personally define the word, and hope that you’ll set aside all those other images long enough to catch my meaning. (continue reading…)

One of my most interesting teachers in university was anthropologist David Turner. After bringing convocation hall to order with a Didgeridoo, he and three other teachers began the first day of my first year anthropology class, describing the four branches of anthropological science (physical, linguistic, archaeology, and socio-cultural). Later that year, Turner taught the socio-cultural portion and I think for the first time in my life I realized that indigenous people really don’t think like us “civilized” folk at all. I mean, like night and day.  As someone who has been dissatisfied with the conventional thinking of Western Civilization all of his life—well, I took that realization to be a sign that there may, in fact, be some intelligent life still left on Earth. (continue reading…)

What is it?  The short answer is: taking a wide view of human experience. Holodoxy is Greek for “whole thinking,” a name intended to contrast with various concepts of orthodoxy (“straight thinking”). Where orthodoxies represent traditional, hierarchically organized dogmas, both religious and secular; holodoxy is heterarchical (distributed, democratic) and fluid. Holodoxy means a global perspective, but one rooted in individual experience. Whether or not it achieves this I will leave to you to decide.

In any case, giving your philosophy a fancy Greek name is a little pretentious, so I often just call it the wide view; or more accurately “a” wide view—one of many possible wide views. (continue reading…)

Albert Camus said*:

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

I disagree. Sometimes you have to look long and hard to understand what happiness is before you can pursue it. And the meaning of life… well… If you’re always looking for a purpose, it certainly is hard to live—but if you don’t have one at all, living is even harder.

I’ve created the Holodoxy category to summarize the results of my own fumbling search for the meaning of life.  Take from it what you will—it’s a work in progress.  If you’re feeling brave, maybe you can help me refine it.  Constructive criticism is always welcome.

*I’m only joshing—I’ve never read Camus—I just found that quote on the Internet.  When it came down to a choice of which existentialist philosopher to explore for further reading, I picked Buber.  If it helps, I plan to read Camus…