The purpose of these blogs has become, for me, an exercise in finding ground, a reality that encompasses all that has come to my mind, as well as all that can be. It is understood that the goal will never be reached, just as perfection in anything of consequence will never be reached. It is a goal, but one that trails off into infinity. Yet it also encompasses that which is communally known, or what we might call the cultural reality. But even an understanding of this is a difficult task.
Take in point our knowledge of nature. From our scientific-materialistic viewpoint, it is a set of interdependent systems - from weather to humans - that interact in a cause and effect manner that can be calculated, if only enough facts are known. There are, from this facet of our cultural perspective, no real mysteries to it - only unknown conditions or qualities that can be known and used to calculate what is and will be with greater accuracy. Acquiring this knowledge and finding the underlying rules of the relationships is the job of the scientist. Most look for nothing transcendental or mystic in any of it - only cause and effect relationships of matter and energy. This perspective is the one we mutually understand to be the most real, exactly because it can be used to control and predict by anyone with the correct formula.
But this understanding does not satisfy. For one, it does not explain our personal relationship with nature - our sense of beauty in it or dread of it - nor does it represent our intimacies. We might love our dog, for instance, and think that it loves us, to the point where it and we behave in ways that are not reflexively logical. Humans might love or hate each other, which is, in the objective sense, merely two entities interacting with each other, and yet it is these feelings that are the cause of many of the interactions. We cannot, then, rule out the subjective to explain the objective. Here, we are already turning our solid ground into sand.
Might we extend the subjective, then, to nature at large? For the Chinese, nature is the materialization of the laws of heaven, and in it, we can find the reasons - or laws - for human behavior. For instance, nature shows us that plants sprout at a certain time, and regress or die at others. Thus, they think, it is for human life: at times it is best to NOT act when the situation is like winter, and to act with great energy when signs show us we are in a personal spring. More so, the Chinese concept links their culture to virtually every other traditional culture in the world, which treats the things and ways of nature in human- like ways: the bear might be the embodiment of power and anger, the wind a capricious personality, and water wise and thorough. And with this lending of human qualities to nature, we find that we can access it, and perhaps control it, through personal, rather than material means.
The jump from human interaction to human-dog to human-natural forces might seem a stretch, but it is based on a rather scientific principle: that is, that humans are only a part of nature. As this is so, why wouldn't nature share human qualities of personality? Or at the very least, respond to the human in ways that humans see as human but are not, but still have an effect. Behaviorist psychologists see humans as artifacts of nature, while traditionalists see in nature different sorts of humans, but either way, the effects of behavior might be the same.
To make a long story short, how real are wishes or prayers in the "real" world?
I have struggled with this for some time in this blog. Is there a caring God, a father-like being that grants us those prayers that do not contradict His plan for us? Or is God like nature often seems to be, remote and uncaring, a power of the universe where our being is no more considered than we consider the life of an insect? My recent instincts have often settled on the latter, especially given the failure of my own prayers. Yes, I argue to myself, God does not give us what is not good for us, but that rests on a premise that does not allow us to examine the cause and effect process. If one's prayers are answered only to the degree one might predict from randomness, how can we speak of any efficacy here, or of a caring God? Must we believe that God is premised only on the un-provable - on faith alone?
At his point, though, I have come around, not because any miracles (from my vantage point) have occurred, but because of the likeness that is found in nature. Just as evolution has provided all living things with the same basic building blocks - from ratios of proportion to biological processes - so, it seems to me, that which we call emotions should also be built into nature's designs. And with that, we get subjective malleability, and the possibility of altering our normal reality through an emotional process.
This is no great leap forward for most - the polytheistic and animistic religions of the past all shared this belief, but for me it is a starting point, something to stand on besides cold, emotionless space. What's more, it brings to mind miracles that have happened but have been overlooked because belief in them has been denied. Look at where you are, how you got there, and how until now you have survived. Were there not coincidences, "luck," and improbabilities in your life? Is there not a kind of magic that runs through all our lives, that gives us what we are and what we have beyond our own conscious powers? Are we not simply separate entities but also conjoined, where the great cosmic forces also are at work in our humble lives?
Yes, I think we are, and the cold blackness of space is only one aspect of being. As Einstein said, Evil is not an entity unto itself, but merely the lack of love. The blackness is filled with the power of the heart, and what we have faith in is the source of this power in its ultimate form. From the pit of nihilism, then, we should be able to rise up and say that "the answer is blowin' in the wind," for even the wind carries our breath. The cosmos is alive, as are we. FK
Take in point our knowledge of nature. From our scientific-materialistic viewpoint, it is a set of interdependent systems - from weather to humans - that interact in a cause and effect manner that can be calculated, if only enough facts are known. There are, from this facet of our cultural perspective, no real mysteries to it - only unknown conditions or qualities that can be known and used to calculate what is and will be with greater accuracy. Acquiring this knowledge and finding the underlying rules of the relationships is the job of the scientist. Most look for nothing transcendental or mystic in any of it - only cause and effect relationships of matter and energy. This perspective is the one we mutually understand to be the most real, exactly because it can be used to control and predict by anyone with the correct formula.
But this understanding does not satisfy. For one, it does not explain our personal relationship with nature - our sense of beauty in it or dread of it - nor does it represent our intimacies. We might love our dog, for instance, and think that it loves us, to the point where it and we behave in ways that are not reflexively logical. Humans might love or hate each other, which is, in the objective sense, merely two entities interacting with each other, and yet it is these feelings that are the cause of many of the interactions. We cannot, then, rule out the subjective to explain the objective. Here, we are already turning our solid ground into sand.
Might we extend the subjective, then, to nature at large? For the Chinese, nature is the materialization of the laws of heaven, and in it, we can find the reasons - or laws - for human behavior. For instance, nature shows us that plants sprout at a certain time, and regress or die at others. Thus, they think, it is for human life: at times it is best to NOT act when the situation is like winter, and to act with great energy when signs show us we are in a personal spring. More so, the Chinese concept links their culture to virtually every other traditional culture in the world, which treats the things and ways of nature in human- like ways: the bear might be the embodiment of power and anger, the wind a capricious personality, and water wise and thorough. And with this lending of human qualities to nature, we find that we can access it, and perhaps control it, through personal, rather than material means.
The jump from human interaction to human-dog to human-natural forces might seem a stretch, but it is based on a rather scientific principle: that is, that humans are only a part of nature. As this is so, why wouldn't nature share human qualities of personality? Or at the very least, respond to the human in ways that humans see as human but are not, but still have an effect. Behaviorist psychologists see humans as artifacts of nature, while traditionalists see in nature different sorts of humans, but either way, the effects of behavior might be the same.
To make a long story short, how real are wishes or prayers in the "real" world?
I have struggled with this for some time in this blog. Is there a caring God, a father-like being that grants us those prayers that do not contradict His plan for us? Or is God like nature often seems to be, remote and uncaring, a power of the universe where our being is no more considered than we consider the life of an insect? My recent instincts have often settled on the latter, especially given the failure of my own prayers. Yes, I argue to myself, God does not give us what is not good for us, but that rests on a premise that does not allow us to examine the cause and effect process. If one's prayers are answered only to the degree one might predict from randomness, how can we speak of any efficacy here, or of a caring God? Must we believe that God is premised only on the un-provable - on faith alone?
At his point, though, I have come around, not because any miracles (from my vantage point) have occurred, but because of the likeness that is found in nature. Just as evolution has provided all living things with the same basic building blocks - from ratios of proportion to biological processes - so, it seems to me, that which we call emotions should also be built into nature's designs. And with that, we get subjective malleability, and the possibility of altering our normal reality through an emotional process.
This is no great leap forward for most - the polytheistic and animistic religions of the past all shared this belief, but for me it is a starting point, something to stand on besides cold, emotionless space. What's more, it brings to mind miracles that have happened but have been overlooked because belief in them has been denied. Look at where you are, how you got there, and how until now you have survived. Were there not coincidences, "luck," and improbabilities in your life? Is there not a kind of magic that runs through all our lives, that gives us what we are and what we have beyond our own conscious powers? Are we not simply separate entities but also conjoined, where the great cosmic forces also are at work in our humble lives?
Yes, I think we are, and the cold blackness of space is only one aspect of being. As Einstein said, Evil is not an entity unto itself, but merely the lack of love. The blackness is filled with the power of the heart, and what we have faith in is the source of this power in its ultimate form. From the pit of nihilism, then, we should be able to rise up and say that "the answer is blowin' in the wind," for even the wind carries our breath. The cosmos is alive, as are we. FK
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