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Greatness: Existentialism, Nihilism, and You!

Dan and Trish and I watched “I Heart Huckabees” last night (against my wishes!). It’s about an existential detective agency which you hire to spy on you, and figure out your innermost…whatnot.

I don’t like Existentialism because it stikes me as an entirely Constructed method of Deconstruction (in the movie they called it “dismantling,” but the philosophical and literary term “Deconstruction” came out of Existentialism — I believe.)

Existentialism calls for an understanding of and intimacy with the principle that all things are one. It’s got its similarities to Buddhism, with a higher degree of New Age thrown in, and here’s my problem with it: even though the language of Existentialism completely escapes the greatest problems of Buddhism (ego-centricity), the practice of Existentialism achieves the exact same effect. The one-ness is entirely internal. An Existentialist brings everything in the universe into his own consciousness, ties everything to himself, and then reacts to everything in an entirely selfish way (after all, his “self” is now the whole universe, so that’s an unselfish attitude, right?).

The LANGUAGE of Existentialism is focused on others and respect for all things and et and cetera, but the drive of Existentialism, really, is to break everything in existence down until you understand how it relates to you (oneness, right), which is essentially stripping it of its independent existence, its independent reality, and leaving behind only the ghost of it that was your constructed version.

Because, yes, everything in YOUR universe is wholly One, because all of it is the product of your mind. You can attain perfect Oneness within your universe by divorcing yourself from the connections with other Constructing realities, leaving only yours, unchallenged.

Thereby removing yourself from the human drama (as they put it in the movie) and gaining a pure understanding of everything going on in the whole universe (because it’s all the product of your own mind).

Nihilism does a very similar thing, with opposite language. Nihilism recognizes the utter incomprehensibility of Unconstructed reality, and rather than trying to draw Meaning from it (where the incomprehensible is, in my opinion, the only source of Meaning), Nihilism concludes that the whole universe is a dark, chaotic, unfriendly place. Nihilism brings people closer to Real Truth (by focusing on the incomprehensible and ignoring the Constructed), but gives them no hope and no tools to react to Real Truth once they’ve found it.

It boils down to this: Life is not Nihilistic. Life is not Existential. Life is not Christian. Life is not our explanations of Life, it’s the thing they’re explaining. At one point in the movie, Mark E. Mark asks, “Why is it we only ask the big questions when things go terribly wrong? And then, when it gets better, we forget all about it….” That’s an easy one: Life isn’t what you read about in philosophy books. Life is the normal human experience. When it starts to confuse us, though, we begin to look for a rational explanation, and so we begin constructing.

Existentialism CAN describe the human condition (Creators that we are, any philosophy can eventually be built up to describe the human condition). The thing is, it’s not how we live most of our lives. It’s not the consistent thing across human experience, it’s a manufactured and TAUGHT method of understanding that experience. All philosophies are constructed. All religions are constructed. All logical frameworks are constructed.

The thing about Existentialism, though, is that it uses the language of Deconstruction as its method of Construction. That annoys me. Really, deep down, it makes me want to punch a hippy.

Nihilism gets to me, too, because it achieves what I WANT to achieve, but leaves you at the end of your journey with none of the resources necessary to enjoy the destination. I feel sorry for people who go that route, because I can’t even argue that it’s an ineffective method, just that it’s ultimately unrewarding, and I believe better options are available.

(Argh! RELIGIONS, I said! Not God. Not Real Truth. The temporal structure we use to worship God is Constructed. That’s no heresy. The Temple was Constructed (physically, manually), but it was still a viable place to worship God. It’s no more terrible to say the methods themselves are Constructed. That’s all I was getting at.)

P. S. – I’m actually not saying anything for or against the movie here. It was a fun watch, in a delightfully wacky kinda way, it brought up some good conversation. This article is about some of the things they discussed, not what they did with them. I was impressed with the structure of the movie, in spite of its alarming hippiness. Oh, and I hate Jude Law.

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Greatness: A Mind Puzzle

Okay, I’ve been told that I haven’t made some points clear enough, and I’m going to stay within that theme….

This one you have to do for yourself. When you first read it, it probably won’t seem significant or reasonable. It is, though. It’s a REALLY tough one. Spend some time, figure out what I’m really asking about…and then consider it for a while.

Okay. Here it is. Imagine (I mean it, do it) imagine if what everyone else saw as red, you for some reason saw as blue. And vice versa. Totally cosistent, maybe a physical defect in your eyes or something, and not recognizable by doctors.

How would you know? How would you ever know?

Think about it. Keep going. Write a comment once you’ve got a good one.

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Greatness: Metals

As I have said before, all of our constructed reality begins with a foundation of Real Truth — chaotic energy that gives strength to the forms we build. However, most of our reality is an abstracted reflection of an abstracted reflection of an abstracted reflection to such an extent that the underlying Thing is entirely obscured. Obfuscated, if you will.

You probably won’t. Fair enough.

There are, however, things in Nature that are still mostly pure, still relatively recognizable as their base Form. Metals, I think, are one of those things. Metals are nearly pure Truths manifest in our reality. It helps that, to begin with, they are a very human kind of Thing.

Consider how much the history of Man has been shaped by and dependent on metals.With food and air and water we survive, but with metals we conquer. Consider how long gold and silver have represented kings and gods, and how bronze and iron and steel have allowed us to build mighty nations and reshape our world.

Metals are chaotic energy made manifest. They are magic, barely leashed. They are also an excellent example of what I was talking about the other day, the way humanity responds to Real Truth in our world, and I hold them up as a standard for how we SHOULD respond to them.

Because we have “precious metals,” and we have “practical metals,” (although no one uses that expression). And each kind serves its own purposes, and each kind is extremely valuable to us.

Bronze, iron, steel are examples of utility, of us taking Real Truth and taming it to our purposes. They are tools (in a very real sense), that we place in submission and then use to shape our worlds.

Gold and silver are different, though. Oh, sure, they have their practical uses (and will have them, more and more, as we strive to MAKE them useful), but throughout history they’ve been honored for their majesty — for their shine and beauty. We may make a hammer out of steel, but we make a wedding band of gold. It’s something Different. It’s something Meaningful. We prize precious metals, not for their utility, but for their Significance. They captivate us and enchant us, and we recognize that and, for most of our history, we haven’t tried to bend them into the shapes of usefulness. We’ve placed steel helmets on our soldiers, and golden crowns on our kings, and recognized the deep-down, fundamental differences between the two.

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God and Greatness: The Meaning of Life

I feel like I’ve lain enough of a foundation now that I can begin to draw some conclusions. If I’m wrong in this, let me know. I like a challenging comment as much as a supportive one (although I do like a little bit of cheer-leading from time to time, y’know, ‘cuz of the ego).

I’ve got some very contradictory ideas already stated, and Nicki’s called me on them (these particular ones I’m talking about, I mean), and I recognize the contradiction and that’s part of the reason I’m working on this blog. Getting everything spread out and written down makes it a lot easier for me to chase down those conflicting ideas.

Anyway, these particular ideas I’m talking about are the use of magic to construct worlds, the responsibility of Man to live up to his potential, and the inherent wickedness of trying to out-create God.

There’s another question which isn’t immediately related to those things, but which I’ll tie in. That’s this: why would a Christian, believing that Heaven is the ultimate goal of Man, believe that God would create earthly life? What’s the point of life, other than an opportunity for Man to fail, and get stuck in Hell?

It can’t be “to spread the word of God” because if God just skipped the Life phase, everyone would start out in his presence and not NEED to hear the word. It can’t be “to prove he’s worthy of living in Heaven” because we’re told from the start that we’re NOT.

I think it’s just this: Life is a chance for us to get it out of our system.

When transient beings make decisions, those decisions are transient. When infinite beings make decisions, those decisions are infinite. Not in duration, necessarily, but in significance.

We look at the fallen angels as our example. They lived in Paradise (real, whole, base Heaven), and decided that they wanted to rule over dominions of their own, and so they tore themselves away from True Reality to a place where they could make things of their own. And, to all appearances, they don’t get to go back. That’s the infinite decision there.

God created Man, then, with earthly bodies, so that we could test and retest and retest our ability to make a better world. You could even pretend he was being open-minded about it, figuring if we COULD make a better world than his, we deserved the right to it. There will be a lot of people who feel like they have, and they’ll commit their eternal selves to a temporally constructed world. Who knows — maybe they’ll get to have that world for their eternity. It’ll be Hell, in that it’ll be an eternity without God, but it might still be just what they built.

Life is an opportunity to discover, once and for all, that we can’t do it ourselves. To prepare us to accept God’s Heaven forever, once we actually see it. I think everyone is welcome in Heaven (I think the Bible says so clearly), but not everyone is prepared to accept it.

It is possible to live a life, from the beginning, entirely devoted to eternal Paradise. Jesus did. It is…extremely unlikely. It IS possible to learn your lesson early, and every time reality tempts you away from total dependence on God, to return there quickly, as you learn what’s going wrong. Look at Abraham and King David, and even King Solomon. Look what they were given, in this world, for their devotion to and dependence on God’s eternity. And look at Ecclesiastes for a very perfect description of what Life is all about. Life is about learning that everything outside of True Reality is meaningless. Sure it’s fun, sure it’s invigorating, but it’s flash and bang and gone — meaningless.

Most people, of course, don’t even manage the King David route. Some start out that way, but somehow end up tempted too much by their own pride (like Solomon). Some start out brash and bold and self-dependent, but find their way to Paradise-living late in life. Most of us, I think, come and go. Sometimes walking in the light, sometimes walking out of it, and always, always wishing we were walking in the light. Know what I mean?

I think at the end, we’ll all have access to Heaven. I don’t think, at the end, we’ll all have learned enough of our lesson to accept it, even then. Jesus will have redeemed many, many, by his example and his message and his death. People who wouldn’t have believed, or wouldn’t have believed strongly enough, without him, will be able to make the decision to be saved, because of him. Even so…when that time comes, there will be those who will have learned enough to contain their pride, and those who won’t.

Maybe we’ll all get accepted in at the moment of our death, and those who can’t take it will dwindle away over time. Maybe God, infinitely knowing, will cull out those failures before they come in (it matches more closely with the Bible telling, anyway). More likely, I think, we’ll make our own decision, as soon as we become infinite. As soon as we can see clearly, no longer limited by our temporal understanding, we will make an infinite decision. That’s not unfair — it’s the nature of the infinite. And in that moment we’ll decide whether we have learned to be dependent on God, living in Heaven for the rest of…ever, or if we’ve decided that it were better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven.

So…live your life. That is God’s expectation of Man. Not to throw it away, constantly hoping for the next, but to spend our finite time learning all the lessons of trial and error necessary to prepare us to make good decisions, when the time comes. Or, rather, when time goes away.

What then? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? By no means. Living your life fully doesn’t mean crippling yourself by indulging in every vice. It DOES mean understanding vices, and what makes them vices. It DOES mean trying things on your own…and learning that it’s just not as good. Life is a playground with sand under the jungle gym. Yeah, we’ll fall from time to time. It’s expected. It’s also protected. It hurts…temporally. It hurts, and then the hurt goes away, and we get to try again.

You don’t really get that in infinity.

So…yes, you’ll fail. Your job, your responsibility, is to learn from that failure, not to surrender to it.

Go, learn, grow. Live and live and live. Death is part of it, too. If there were no death, Life would just be a prison of meaninglessness. As it is, Death is our opportunity to step into the real. Will you?

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Greatness: Solipsism

Okay, this is a tricky one, because I learned in philosophy class that it was pretty much true, and so I didn’t bother memorizing all the reasons. After all, it made perfect sense to ME. But I keep meeting people who don’t get it.

Well, okay, good point. I don’t ever meet people. BUT I am constantly surprised to rediscover that of the little group of five people I DO know, only two of them will even give me the benefit of the doubt on this one.

So I’ll try to lay a foundation.

I titled this bit “solipsism,” because (if I’m remembering my terminology correctly), that’s the description of the ultimate logical result of the issues I’m going to discuss. It’s also considered, in terms of philosophical conversation, catastrophically bad. But, the thing is, it can’t be helped.

Solipsism, in brief, is where you discover through your philosophy that you cannot meaningfully account for anything other than your own self, and only that on the very basest level. A philosophy that collapses to solipsism is considered a failure, if I understand correctly. Mine does. Kinda.

Anyway, whatever, I don’t have any problem with solipsism. As I say, it makes sense to me. Descartes was starting with solipsism (not ending with it, which is the catastrophic failure bit), when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” It’s oft-quoted and, as a direct result, quite completely overlooked. The point of that essay was Descartes’s effort to find some absolutely solid foundation upon which to build his understanding of the universe.

Perhaps I should start there. What foundation could you use? The standard, most rational human foundation is human sensory experience. That which you can see with your own eyes, measure with reliable instruments…that is a reliable foundation.

But what of dreams, so vivid they seem real? What about hypnotic visions, or plain ol’ hallucinations. Everyone knows that the senses can, under some circumstances, provide entirely realistic impressions quite contrary to what everyone knows to be the truth. Consider advanced psychosis, like in A Beautiful Mind. Your mind can quietly people your world with sensations, experiences, even identities entirely of your own concoction, and the only apparatus you have by which to test these hallucinations against reality is, in fact, the same set of faculties generating the phantasms.

Consider in the world of the Matrix, where sensations are pumped directly into a person’s brain. It’s a theoretically realistic principle. I remember in our philosophy class we referred to that as the Brain in a Vat problem. If you were merely a brain, suspended in a complex chamber designed to keep you functioning and pumping you with the exact same electrical impulses you’d receive from your various nerves if you were alive…how would you know?

Solipsism. You can’t. Our only measure of reality is our nervous system, which we know to be subject to failure. And that leads to…nothing. That’s the PROBLEM with solipsism. You can kinda argue ANYONE to a standstill there, but you can’t do anything with it.

It makes perfect sense, to me, though. It perfectly describes what sounds most like reality to me. Men are, at essence, nothing more than motive will. We are nothing more than a Mind, constructing for ourselves bodies, worlds, experiences. That we consistently create similar enough structures that we can patch them together via language — well, that makes sense, given that we were all of us designed according to the same model, and given function through the power of the Word.

There I’m talking about Logos, not biblos. Y’know, for the Bible Majors out there.

(There’s another philosophical puzzle that goes along with the Brain in a Vat problem, and that’s the question of what physical bits make you you. If you cut off your arm, and replaced it with a prosthetic arm, would you still be you? What if you replaced your leg? Your kidneys? Your heart? The question is…where does your soul reside? I think everyone ends up guessing brain, because we’ve never heard of a successful brain transplant. That seems easy to me. I don’t know where I was going with this paragraph, but I’m kinda hoping Toby will jump to my aid here, because I know he’s fond of this puzzle. How exactly does it go?)

Anyway! Back to Descartes. Before we had The Matrix or A Beautiful Mind to pose the big questions of what can we rely on, Descartes was already working on it. He said, basically, that because there is a conscious will somewhere able to think “I think,” it must exist, and because I’m aware of that happening, the “I” must, necessarily, be me, so I can start out with complete faith that I am an extant consciousness. Congratulations. He’s reasoned his way all the way up to Brain in a Vat.

He builds from that, all the way up to a complete apology for contemporary assumptions of rational science. Oh, sure, there are huge logical leaps along the way, and you can’t really take many of his conclusions for granted, but you can easily admire his recognition of the problem, and his beginnings to answer.

There’s another bit in Descartes that I just love. It’s not new to him, but he did a good job with it. He posits (yeah, Kris, I said it again — that’s exactly the right word) posits, in fact, the Categorical Imperative. Wait…is that right? Or is Categorical Imperative something the Ferengi demand of the Bothans? I dunno. I THINK I’ve got my phrase right. Anyway, Dan can correct me here, because this is one of HIS favorite bits. It is, essentially, a philosophical rewording of the Golden Rule (which, yeah, appears in several cultures apart from Jesus’ teachings anyway).

But Descartes says, essentially, the only thing we can confidently believe in is the existence of people. Moreover, all people are equally absolute agents in a sea of uncertainty, and so there is a certain Human Greatness inherent to all Men which must be respected. So don’t do anything to deny or defy the greatness of others. Don’t keep them from achieving their potential. Of course, it goes without saying you shouldn’t limit your own potential, either.

Any of this sound familiar? Ugh. It’s too late, and I’m too tired to draw all the conclusions, but it should be quite apparent — throughout this article I’ve been describing the problems, the questions that first led me to some of the foundational stuff I’ve been talking about for the last week. If you’re curious (or unclear) what I meant by any particular thing herein, ask explicitly and I’ll clarify tomorrow. Until then, be glad you’re alive. I am.

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Greatness: Real Truth

So far I’ve used this term a little loosely, but relied on the capitols to convey my meaning. Let me attempt to clarify a little.

When I say “reality,” I don’t mean it. I mean what we THINK of as reality or, in other words, the whole constructed universe. In other words, I’m using YOUR definition of reality.

When I say Real Truth, I’m talking about the opposite thing. That basic essence which is unconstructed, the God-breathed foundation on which our ephemeral fantasy is built.

Everything in our reality is a pale reflection of some Real Truth, although generally so distrorted as to be unrecognizable. Here’s why:

We expect the world to make sense.

On a basic level, there’s no good reason to expect this. The Rationalists reasoned that God had made Man greater than all the rest of Creation by giving him Reason, and therefore it only made sense that a loving God would cause the rest of Creation to be inherently reasonable.

God never promised that, though. And, until the Rationalists, Reason wasn’t really all that prized by Man, so even that expectation is a fairly new one. Naturally, all of modern Western Science is BUILT upon that assumption (which originated in the Catholic church, naturally), and we worship modern Western Science, so we tend to make the same assumption.

However, Science without God must admit that there’s no good reason to expect the universe to be reasonable and ordered and, moreover, God himself never promised it would be. In fact, nature is, itself, plenty testamental to the fact that it ain’t. For this simple reason: things don’t start out ordered and reasonable, they have to be made that way by Science.

Now, in my effort to clarify Real Truth, I’m obfuscating Science a little, and I apologize for that. Science is, essentially, the codification of Social Constructionism. Outside of Science, Social Constructionism just happens. Within the Scientific community, however, it is pursued as a constant, all-out crusade.

No, Nicki, I’m not talking about Science as a political agenda. Yet. I’m just saying, the very principles that are foundational to Science also generate a constant, dramatic and altogether proactive Social Constructionism, whereas most Constructionism through the course of history has been reactive.

Real Truth is fickle, chaotic, inscrutable. Real Truth is far greater than physical existence, than our temporal shells. You can imagine it as a hundred-dimensional entity that we are trying to observe from our three (or four, or five, or whatever you want to call it). What we glimpse of Real Truth makes no sense to us, and leaves us feeling uneasy.

So we call it a Thunder God or a Phoenix or a dragon. Real Truth is chaos within our ordered world, and irritates us so, as Creators in our own right, we begin trying to make sense out of the chaos. We react to Real Truth in exactly the way a clam (oyster? whatever) reacts to a mote of sand — we begin wrapping it in layers to make it easier to deal with.

Our first step is to give it a name. Remember what I said yesterday about Symbols? A name is the first Symbol of a thing. We name it, and use that name to try to understand it. Not only that, but to share our understanding of it with others. Once we have named the thing, we begin the process of taming it. We construct little realities which can contain it, and see how it behaves within them. With each test, we drape a new layer of understanding over it (the Thing behaves like this, and THAT makes sense, so we’ll consider the Thing normal). Once we’ve reasoned away a sufficient amount of the Thing, we can accept the minor irritations of its quirks, until it finally settles quietly into our reality.

Electricity is like this today. Electricity is an excellent example of a Real Thing, because it still has some vestiges thereof. Scientists feel like they have a pretty good grasp of what electricity is and how it works (they’ve mostly tamed it), and so for the most part we consider it normal. It’s definitely got its quirks, though. Sometimes, against all reason, it will misbehave. And, of course, its great-granddaddy — Lightning — is still more mystery than not.

As recently as a hundred years ago, I think, you could argue the same thing about Heat. And human blood. As little as two hundred years ago it could have been dragons.

Our world is an ocean of mother-of-pearl. Our world a massive, extremely complex facade that we have built to make the thin threads of Real Truth fit into a reasonable pattern. It is ASTONISHING how well Science works, how well the pieces fit together to be SO accessible to the human mind — until, of course, you consider that perhaps the human mind built the structure it’s seeking to understand.

I think we rob Real Truth of some of its potency with each layer we drape over it. Then again, we make it something we can use. Consider how Man trembled at Thor’s thunder, and the significance it bore in his world whenever it flew. Then, it was not just a dangerous thing, it MATTERED.

That’s not true anymore. There are some people who still give it strength, but we’ve made thunder safer by naming it and beginning to describe it — we’ve robbed it of its moral significance but we’ve learned from it and made electricity of our own, which serves our purposes instead of us serving its.

We take the big “F” out of Prometheus’s Fire, that lit the darkness and gave Man the power to rival the Gods, and turn it into little fire, which can be used to temper steel and from tools and weapons and make everyday life a little bit easier. That is what we do to Real Truth whenever we find it — we tame it, bury its essence beneath layers of utility, and use it to make our Constructed lives easier.

That’s what I mean when I say Science is a magic — it’s the last magic. It has tamed every beast, it has conquered every land. There are still threads of Real Truth out there — quarks, strings, even fusion — and new ones will constantly appear. But we’ve given up on prophets and soothsayers, on Oracles and story-tellers to examine the Real Truth and give us something Meaningful for our lives. Instead, we immediately rush it off to the Scientists and ask them to make something useful out of it.

That gets me down. More than being a tech writer, more than 18 months straight of writer’s block, more than the children hurting and dying in Dan’s sad Number 5 — more than anything else, I hurt for our constant, overwhelming desire to understand, rather than to be amazed.

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Greatness: The Forms of Magic

There are various kinds of magic. Essentially, it is just this: changing the world to suit your desire. It can be done gradually with tools, and then is considered no kind of magic at all, but just “doing stuff.”

As I said before, sorcery or bulldozers. It’s all the same, really.

I would try to define it differently, but really there’s nothing other than “not by normal means” that will do. I can add that in — “changing your world, not by normal means, to suit your desire.”

Expectation:
The simplest method is expectation — expect the future to be more suited to you than the present, and wait for that to come true. It allows for failures in faith because, instead of being one instantaneous flash forcing a change to reality, it’s more of a constant nagging, incessantly requesting a little something and reality, eventually, will give way.

You see expectation in many religions, as well as the “Power of Positive Thinking” guys, and it has been sanctified by the Scientologists. I believe in the power of scientology, because it’s nothing other than optimistic expectation (with some symbolism to power it). At least, from what little I know about it.

Symbolism:
Not far behind expectation is symbolism. It is a very common kind of magic, and absolutely central to the idea of Social Constructionism. Symbolism uses an easily manipulable symbol (concrete or abstract) to reference a less manipulable object (concrete or abstract). Once a sufficient similarity has been established between symbol and object, manipulating one affects the other.

The ultimate example of this is language itself. We use word-symbols to reference reality and, by changing and using names, we are able to alter reality. I’m doing it right now, and every one of you is under my spell (at least for a moment, until you manipulate your own word-symbols right back into the shape you want them).

I highly recommend symbolism — it’s the story-teller’s main craft. The purpose of myths, archetypes, and legends is to provide a single symbol for a highly abstact (but highly significant) concept. By saying, “Man can be this” and putting forth Odysseus or King David or, yeah, Jesus, you can then use the symbol in direct details in ways you couldn’t trying to describe all the vast kinds of Man.

(Yeah, that’s why I capitolize it, I’m doing that very thing.)

One of the most commonly-used and absolutely dreadful kinds of magic is the symbolism of self-image. We have this idea that “I am this” and “I am this bad” and “I have these weaknesses,” and we create an entirely imaginary symbol that we call “I” — and let me tell you, self-image is a LOT more manipulable than an actual person — and we twist it and turn it and, over time, become as people more and more like the symbol.

There’s a good counterpart to the same thing, naturally. We just don’t use it NEAR enough….

Conjuring:
I’m not positive on this, but I’m fairly confident Man is not the only creature capable of manipulating the void. I don’t know whether I draw this from the Bible, or just from Milton, but it seems like Satan and all his demons have the same faculty. I imagine the demons are those angels, Heavenly beings with the capacity to shape reality but not the ability (because there is nothing intangible in Heaven, all of it is Real Truth, all of it is Established), and so they abandoned Heaven, in their pride, for the opportunity to muck about.

I don’t imagine they’re any more powerful than we are. Probably less so. But they’re also mostly Outside — they have SEEN Real Truth, so they have no trouble recognizing how very much of reality is entirely insubstantial. So they have an easier time of it.

And that gives them the illusion of great power, superhuman strength, and so throughout time people have turned to demons (faeries, what have you), asking them to change the world for US. And that is the same as sacrificing your authority over reality in order to have one, for the moment, more like what you want. You’re stepping OUT of your constructed world, into theirs. A dangerous place to be.

Wizardry:
This is probably closer to what you think of as magic. It’s a systematic manipulation of reality based on a pre-defined Symbol structure. I really like the classical elements (Earth, Fire, Air, Water), so I’ll use it as an example. Wizardry describes all of reality as a combination of these symbol-pieces and suggests that if you manipulate just the BASE pieces, everything else will fall into place.

You can add to the Air in a bird, and it will fly higher, or add to its Earth and it will drop like a stone.

Eventually, Wizardry becomes basically mathematical, at which point it becomes kinda boring. And, yeah, you guessed it, I’d refer to all of modern Science as precisely this.

Sorcery:
Sorcery is really just something I like to imagine for my novels. I can’t really conceive of it existing. Sorcery is the manipulation of Real Things. Changing or controlling the base energies and powers that are reflected in our Constructed realities. Sure, God could do it, but he’s got no reason to. Even if there were sorcery, it would still only allow for manipulation of Real Things, whereas God holds the power to CREATE them, giving him still the trump card.

That said…I haven’t gotten NEARLY far enough in this conversation for you (or even me) to clearly picture what a Real Thing might be like, or how it could be manipulated (other than manipulating its reflection, which is just normal, everyday magic).

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God and Greatness: Jesus, Miracles, and Social Constructionism

I very nearly wrote this as a comment on my previous post, but decided it was important enough to merit a post of its own.

It’s important to note that all of my thoughts on God and Greatness, as expressed throughout this blog, began sometime in high school (yes, BEFORE the Matrix), while considering the words of Jesus.

It began at the passage about the mountain and the mustard seed.

Jesus said, “If you tell this mountain, ‘Go and throw yourself into the sea,’ and you have even the faith of a mustard seed, it will do it.” That made a lot of sense to me. Didn’t God, in Genesis, give Man dominion over all the earth? Didn’t Jesus call us all Sons of God? Jesus did miracles. Moses did miracles, too. And Elijah, and David, even, if you want to look at it like that….

After all, isn’t that the point of prayer? That you can, by asking, get a miracle happened? That’s like performing one, no?

Well, that’s how we’re taught the passage. If you ask God for something, and have faith in Him (and if you’re a faithful enough person that what you want meshes with God’s will), it will happen. God will answer your prayer, and move the mountain.

That is…that is not at ALL what Jesus says. It’s not even CLOSE to what he tells his followers.

And reading through his actions, the miraculous things he does, you see two sorts: there are those things he asks God for–and God grants them instantly–and then there are those things that he commands. He commands the injured to be healed, and they are. He commands the fish to have his tax payment in its mouth, and Peter goes and finds it true. He commands the fig tree to whither, because it displeased him. And he tells his followers, “If you command a mountain to move, it will.” And the story of the Bible gives us NO REASON to try to explain that away, as anything other than literal, direct truth.

That’s my basis. There are things that Jesus does as the Son of God. Then again, there are things he does as the Son of Man, and it’s not for no reason that he is called both. Yeah, I did it on purpose to make you read the sentence twice. Paul calls us co-heirs with Christ. Jesus, in the passage with the tax-paying fish, called Peter (and–as I’m not Catholic, I’ll say this–and by extension, all his other followers) equally sons of the king.

This feeds into the Don’t Worry speech in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, “When the one greater than the Temple comes, what does the Temple matter? Eh?” Reality was made for us, not the other way around. Mountains don’t MATTER. Water doesn’t MATTER. Jesus walked across the surface of the sea, defying reality, but when it comes right down to it, the sea is just a THING. Jesus is the son of God.

And we are too. That was most of his point.

Reality is just a dream we’ve constructed. We, on the other hand, are True Things. We are from a place greater than this, we can reorder EVERYTHING around us because we gave it the order in the first place.

It fits with everything else you’ll read in the Bible. It fits with everything Jesus said. This is not just a sojourn, it’s a fantasy. We have a responsibility to learn from it, to grow in this temporary soil, but it’s not Real. It doesn’t MATTER.

When you look at it like that, miracles are easy. Magic is easy. But, then again, isn’t magic evil? No. I’ll say that immediately and without reservation, no. I’ll go on to say, you shouldn’t do it, but that’s another issue entirely.

Tools are not evil. Power is not evil. What Man does with it…that can be good, or it can be evil, but a capacity for change is not, in itself, morally aligned. Reordering reality can be used to improve people, or to destroy them. That’s true whether you’re using Social Constructionism or bulldozers. Same thing.

That said…I already answered this in yesterday’s post, and Nicki brought it up specifically in her comment. When we attempt to Construct a reality to suit our needs, we tend to build something other than the Paradise God provided. It’s possible to be making something closer to it than the world at large (happy families do it all the time), and that’s a good thing, ain’it, but the most powerful wizard couldn’t match the happiness, or goodness, of a truly submitted Christian.

Hmm. Thoughts. Let me know your reactions.

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God, Government, Greatness: The Concept of Sin

Sin: the deliberate prevention of the realization of potential.

Just like that.

I don’t believe in Positive Divine Law (that is, something is Evil because God says it’s evil). I don’t think there are sins that are sins because they’re “against the rules.” It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t WORK (God MADE people in such a way that they constantly test the limits, they constantly tear at any boundaries around them). Establishing any Positive Divine Law is the same as forcing Man to sin, which is, I believe, antithetical to God.

No. I really don’t believe in “sins” as atomic units. Rather, I think of “sin” as a term meaning, “those actions which prevent us from attaining Paradise.”

Close enough — those people who want to look at it that way could still use that definition to incorporate those atomic sins which, by being committed, keep us from getting to Heaven. Telling a lie — bam! You’ve sinned, so you can’t get to Heaven so, in effect, you’ve committed an action which prevents you from attaining Paradise.

My point with that last sentence was to convince you to accept my definition of sin, so that we can have some mutually-agreed-upon term. From that point, I’m going to establish my position (which you’re most welcome to whole-heartedly reject).

I do feel that the ultimate goal of Man is to attain Paradise. Philosophically, that’s referred to as living the Good Life. Theologically, it’s getting to Heaven. I’m talking about both, but most concerned with the latter.

Okay. So…. There’s a very long argument here, which I should get into exclusively under the topic of God, but I think I can posit a little bit here. The ultimate goal of Man is to attain Paradise, and every Man has the potential to achieve that goal. I believe that utterly, and encourage you to believe the same. Sinning is acting in such a way as to lose your opportunity or, in other words, failing to meet your potential.

Honestly, I feel like the only Evil Thing is deliberately preventing the realization of potential. Whether it be Murder (in which you stop a life, thereby preventing the realization of the ultimate potential, in that every Man, in every moment of his life, has the full potential of the Creator within him), or good ol’ Catholic Sloth (in which a Man, with the full potential of the Creator within him, chooses not to act, not to create, but to waste his potential).

This is my beef with the Church, and with the U.S., and my answer to several of your comments. Yeah, it’s good in it’s current form. Yeah, it’s doing good things in the world, even. It’s successful. But it’s NOT living up to its potential. A church as a social club can be quite helpful to its members, but it’s squandering all the authority given it by its being the embodiment of Christ on earth. NOTHING ELSE GETS TO BE THAT. The church is the only entity with that potential, and it is using that potential in only the smallest of ways.

That I call Evil.

The U. S. as well. Most representative governments, I believe, cater to the lowest common denominator, and that inherently limits the realization of potential. That’s not just something to shake your head over. That’s SINFUL. Every bit as much as Murder.

That’s where I’m coming from. That’s my starting point. You might hear me talk of the “Godaccountant Myth” and think I’m claiming there is no evil, there is no sin, there is nothing barring Man’s entry into Heaven. By no means. I’m just saying: God doesn’t make sins — people do.

Now…I DO have answers to the theological and ethical questions that raises, and I’ll get to them in another article. For now, I’m just establishing my basic concept of sin, which goes a long way to explaining why I feel the way I do about several of the issues I’ve already brought up (spittle flying in my bewildering vehemence).

Hope that helps. More later.

Aaron