metapunk

A couple of days ago I got my weekly YouTube update, which included a ForaTV link to “Dawkins: Did Religion Have an Evolutionary Value?”

You’ll note here that the use of the past-tense strongly implies that religion no longer has any value in evolutionary and social terms, and if you watch the talk you’ll see Dawkins imply that religion itself never actually did—that religion is just an unhealthy byproduct of healthy evolutionary imperatives. All of which is pure assumption / opinion on Dawkins’ part and nothing more.

But it got me to thinking I should write some more measured pieces about Atheism, considering my last one (the first post on metapunk written in anger, probably not the last, but hopefully one of only a few).

At the same time, Dawkins’ video led me to two far more intelligent discussions on the place of religion in the modern world. (continue reading…)

…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.
(continue reading…)

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…)

Well, it’s that time of year again, folks!  Halloween is my favourite holiday, for so many reasons.  You’ve got the candy, the costumes, pumpkin carving, the wild parties, and the wandering the streets until all hours of the morning, and all that jazz…  plus you can just feel something in the air.

Maybe it’s the chill of autumn, or the harvest moons, I don’t know, but the energy of this time is unmistakable.

The Celts called it Samhaine (roughly pronounced “sawhaena”), and made it their harvest festival and new year’s celebration.   It is when the last gasps of summer give way to the coming winter, and when the veil between this world and the other world is at it’s thinnest.   It is a time when spirits walk, visiting friends and loved ones, begging  for offerings to tide them over the long cold months ahead.

It is a holiday steeped in mysteries, from the tricks the spirits play on those who refuse to honour them, to the costumes people wear to frighten each other, and perhaps ward off unkindly spirits.

All I really know is that it’s time when my mind conjures images of my ancestors dancing and singing around bonfires, having fun, and paying respect to their own ancestors, to the Earth, to the Gods, and to the universe.

It is a primal and liminal time, a connected and sacred time.

If you’re into the whole Halloween celebration thing, please just remember, somewhere in the back of your mind, to honour your ancestors wherever they came from, and to thank the universe that gives you so much.   You may not think any of it is real, but the act of caring, even for the long dead and the imaginary order of it all, may bring you some peace in an otherwise rocky world.

Think about it, and have a safe and happy Halloween!

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…)