Sex is one of my favourite topics. I spend a great deal of time thinking about it and I don't just mean in the sense of erotic fantasies, although I can't deny that a I do do that too. If you read the newspapers and the billboards you might think that Australian society generally is quite comfortable with the topic of sex... but my experience has generally been the opposite.
Sure, I can sit down with most men and have a discussion over which women are the most attractive, which quickly turns into an argument in my case because I'm quite comfortable pointing out that my tastes in women are not conventional, but if I wanted to bring up a more emotional topic like how I feel at the point of ejaculation then no way! Australian men quickly turn into prudes far too uncomfortable to talk about sexuality with any degree of insight or seriousness.
Strangely, Australians will often criticise foreigners, such as muslims, for being sexually repressed. Yet some of the 'sexiest' people I know are muslims. 'Sexiest' is in parenthesis because really, I don't think many people seriously think about what sexy is... I will get to this in more detail shortly. What I want to make clear at this juncture is that when it comes to talking about emotions and sex Australians are as repressed as that undifferentiated mass of muslims they like to contrast themselves against.
I can see that comment upsetting a lot of people already... good that's part of what I do here. :)
Where religion comes in for me, well I was raised catholic and I was left without any doubt that sex was a disgusting thing. Sure no one ever said explicitly to me that sex was disgusting. But at the same time no one talked about it except in awkward and uncomfortable tones... or in jokes as a rude topic. When ones only exposure to sex (because it is a taboo subject) is from dirty school yard jokes one starts to think that sex is just as unspiritual and dirty as those jokes.
But as a teenager, deeply interested in sex, I came across wicca and paganism. They treat sex in a completely different way... sex is a beautiful, sublime and spiritual experience. Both men and women are encouraged to think of their sexuality as divine and a beautiful aspect of themselves. Whereas catholicism was bent on convincing me that my sexuality was sinful and the pathway to the devil.
Although I am an atheist now I learned a great deal from my reading of wiccan texts on sex. Far more than I ever learned from the Bible... which seems to focus on the proverbial sexual appetite of King David to the point of ridicule and the justification for Lot's multiple acts of incest with his underage daughters. Jesus is a sexless or homosexual figure whom I never felt connected to as a sage on sexuality.
I feel that dogma has deeply harmed our sense of sexuality... because there is no aspect of humanity more involved in creativity and imagination than sex. Dogma stifles creativity and for this reason I feel the religious dogma is usually doomed to be sexophobic in the long run.
Why is sex a creative act? Firstly, the best sex is in ones head. Sure, 1 in 50 people have a face and body that just screams "great sex" but often they have a personality that screams "get stuffed" too. No, for most of us the key to great sex is in our imaginations: in love letters, poems, stories, pillow talk, sexting and erotic fantasy. When I first read about some of the testimony from the witch trials I vividly recall being in the school library feeling profoundly uncomfortable. I was reading about accused witches describing sexual encounters with the devil in graphically detailed confessions, after being tortured of course, and it was giving me powerful erections. I never told anyone this because I felt embarrassed and disgusted with myself. But clearly, there was something in those sexual fantasies created by these poor sexually repressed women that was exciting. Yes, sex with the devil must have been a lot of fun: dangerous, forbidden, exciting and unrepressed.
This brings me to one of the biggest problems of relationships today is keeping sex interesting. Think about this, we as a species have relationship problems because we don't know how to keep sex interesting. If you think this doesn't sound absurd then you've probably been living in a sexually repressed culture all your life. We are surrounded by a huge variety of entertainment forms and we don't ever get so bored of them as we do with our sexual partners. We can keep ourselves going to movies all through our lives, because although our tastes in films might change as we get older we never get bored of new movies so long as they're different, creative, dramatic and interesting.
And yet we get bored of sex? Something that we actually have an orgasm over? Something in my head just screams *crisis* whenever someone hints to me that they aren't satisfied with their sex life.
Again, we don't talk about it, we don't ask about it, we don't give each other practical advice on how to make sex better. Instead we suggest people modify their bodies artificially or through diets and exercise to achieve a sexiness that will rescue us from our woeful sex lives.
In church, no one asks for a genuine prayer from the heart like:
"Dear God, please relieve our poor humble sex lives of their boredom. Send me and my friends passionate sexy and considerate lovers who are not clingy yet deeply respectful. Make sure they are free of STDs and no unwanted pregnancies result. Teach them to touch us in just the right way to maximise the pleasure of our orgasms and find happiness through the bodily means you so generously bestowed on us for this purpose,"
No one would feel comfortable saying that out loud in a church and nor would anyone in the audience likely feel comfortable listening to it... but really... who doesn't secretly wish for a prayer like that to come true?
And as exciting as that prayer is, it still misses the point. Sexiness, like happiness, is all in the mind. If we want great sex we shouldn't be spending so much time worrying about the body. Instead we should be worrying about the heart.
For me, some of the biggest impediments I've had to enjoying sex is worry, fear and guilt. Worry because I'm terrified of disappointing my sexual partner, mostly because no one told me some really important information... like how to have sex - yes, some of you may laugh and say it just comes naturally, but when you've never seen a vagina before, much less felt the inside of one then it's a pretty nerve wracking experience. The kind of nerve wracking experience that gives a man temporary impotence from worry. Just briefly on that point, generally the best cure for impotence is to slow down, relax but not to give up. Instead we tend to ridicule and laugh at men brave enough to admit to having this problem making it much worse... to me that sounds like a psychological strategy to make other men infertile. Interesting, yes? Men can be bitchy too, although they're probably far less aware of what their psychological blows are meant to achieve.
So yes, the how to have sex was never adequately described and in my catholic sexual education, mostly given by female teachers (who obviously felt awkward talking about it to classrooms full of teenage boys), and I graduated with an absurd idea that the vagina was two squiggles of ink on a caricature of a woman. I wonder what the girls imagined a penis to be like? Although a penis is probably more self-explanatory than a vagina which is still a mystery to me to this day and I'm sure it is a mystery to many many women too.
But the secret to great sex is not where you put and touch the various genitals. The secret is being receptive to the experience of having sex. And being receptive is about being comfortable, feeling sexy and excited all at once - all things that happen in the imagination (and with the devil, apparently). The words one says to ones lover leading up to sex are as important, if not more so, than the places and ways you touch them.
I've come to the conclusion that if you can play make believe comfortably with someone as though you were still very young children, then your potential for awesome sex with that person is very high. Strangely, we discourage day dreamers and imaginative children... do we want to make our sex lives boring? Do we want to stomp out the divine spark of creativity in our bodies?
One final illustration.
When experiencing orgasm inside a woman I used to feel guilty and dirty for it, because I felt like a parasite trying to infect an innocent woman with my seed. I've heard couples fighting and women say things to hurt their partners to encourage this perception: that men are parasites just trying to spread their genetic disease to women then run away. Let me tell you as a man nothing is more deeply troubling to my soul to think of myself like that. Instead, when I orgasm now I think about how I'm potentially physically merging with this woman whom I love and admire. Part of me, merging with part of her to create a new life made from the two of us accepting each other.
I think the catholics have it all wrong. I think they actively encourage sexual perversion and the cheapening of sexual experience. I think they're very good at telling themselves that they hate sex because they love it so much. In any field of study, anyone who is proud of being ignorant is generally considered a shameful fool, so why are catholics so proud to be ignorant about sex?
I don't know about how most other religions regard sex, because they don't talk about it either... or maybe they just don't talk about it to prudish catholics, I just don't know. But being conscious and knowledgeable of ones sexuality is a spiritual and divine element to a human being in my opinion.
31 December, 2009
23 December, 2009
Discogia and Becoming an Atheist
When asked why I became an atheist I usually answer with a stock standard answer like, "There just isn't any imperical evidence for the existence of god and there are far more likely explanations that fit the facts and evidence that is available and these explanations do not require the existence of god to work,"
This statement might well be true but it doesn't actually convey any of my personal or emotional experience with coming to terms with living in a universe without a god in it. In truth my loss of faith was driven not my intellectual needs at all, but by emotional forces at work within me.
To understand why it felt so unbearable being a Catholic one first needs to understand the concept of cognitive dissonance. Notice that the feeling doesn't have a specific name, instead they just refer to it as involving a mixture of secondary emotions like: anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment and stress. However, none of these secondary emotions adequately describes the primary feeling. I have adapted the term 'discogia' to describe this feeling.
As a young Catholic I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I would go to hell if I died. See, although many people say that I was a quiet well behaved child I nonetheless knew better. I had frequently lied to, stolen from, harmed and decieved many people (including my own family), albeit these were petty crimes typical of a child in retrospect. However, it was very clear to me that I had committed serious crimes and injustices to other people. God was very clear on this and he watched everything that I did and he knew my thoughts so I couldn't lie to him. I had no explanation for my actions except that I was evil. Therefore I was going to hell. When I confessed my sins to the priest he assured me that my sins were not that important and I would be forgiven.
This is where I started to feel discogia creeping into my life in a big way.
See, god hates sin, god is perfect, god created man, god created hell to punish sinners and god loves us. Why then would got create man in such a way that his natural tendancy is to sin? Then after he has sinned throw him into a lake of fire to burn in torment for all eternity... but still love him?
Also, if god created man why make him capable of sinning so easily? If he was perfect and all powerful surely he could have at least done a better job? As for free will this puzzled me the most because I was in love with science at the time and science could predict the future, albeit in limited ways, but the fact that science works at all implies that free will can't actually be free.
I remember being in grades 5 and 6 worrying frantically about this problem. I tried over and over again to write stories that were original... but everything was copied from something I'd seen, read or heard before... all I was doing was reproducing somebody else's ideas and mixing them with another persons. The creativity needed to produce truly free will didn't exist. In retrospect the knowledge and power needed to achieve free will is on a scale well beyond human capability. The conclusion was stark... I was just a machine. Worse than that, a sinful machine doomed to hell... because apparently a loving god had created me this way just for this purpose.
At the time my solution was clear, become a priest so that I could get on god's good side and it would all be ok. Although... god wasn't exactly someone I felt comfortable trusting either. I had been very disturbed by the angel of death killing all of egypt's first born. In mass I had heard that god asked Abraham to kill his only son as a sign of faith, true, he stopped him but later on God would actually kill his only son and I never could understand why he did that. God was actually scaring me quite a lot. Could my father kill me like god did? Just to make a point about how far he could go? Or what really confused me at the time was why would god deliberately forced his son to get himself killed (it is mentioned in the gospels that Jesus had the option of escape but god pushed him into it) then get angry with humanity for killing his son?
The feelings of discogia just got worse and worse as I grew older. But I didn't want to give up on god. So I started off by deciding that the old testament was garbage and focussed only on the new testament... then I started to get bothered by inconsistencies between the gospels which could only be explained if the writers weren't perfect/inspired by the holy spirit but just ordinary men. In which case they could have got it wrong. I also remember being bothered by Jesus' complete lack of a comprehensive schema or world view. His message was devoid of detail and practical advice. By my teenage years I had come to realise how childishly simplistic the words and messages of the bible were compared to the sophistication of later authors. I had to wonder if these were learned men at all writing it.
So eventually I turned to deism. God existed, but it was not for me a mere mortal to interpret his will. Then gradually the importance and role of god in the world grew less and less as I dealt with each remaining instance of discogia by putting in place scientific and rational ideas that dealt with the facts better than the religious one - although by this stage I was in university studying philosophy. When I started philosophy that's when I started gaining serious ground on the overwhelming sense of discogia that I had been ensared in. But that's still too simple an explanation for an emotional level.
It hurt.
Losing god in my life hurt me a great deal... it must have taken me 1,000 steps to get from Catholic to atheist. I was a wiccan in between and a pagan between that. For each step I removed one unpleasant feeling of discogia and replaced it with a sharper more painful realisation of my limitations, mortality, ordinariness and insignificance.
To become an atheist I had to give up these things:
That I was special and unique because I was part of a brilliant plan.
That my body was a work of art, not a randomly arranged set of genetic instructions.
That I would live after death.
That I would eventually see my friends and loved ones again.
That I could achieve anything because god doesn't make junk.
That there was justice in the universe.
That I would always be rewarded if I did the right thing.
That there was such a concept as a 'right' thing.
That I was loved no matter what I did.
That humanity was being looked after and cared for from above so it would all work out in the end whatever happened.
That good things will just come to me if I wait for god to deliver them.
^ That's an awful lot to lose. It hurt. It hurt so much one month I just couldn't sleep at all from fear of death. It hurt because religion had been my iron shield against insecurity in my life. Once I lost that shield I felt tiny, helpless and small. Becoming an atheist was not a quick, easy or effortless task. In this short passage I cannot describe how painful it was. I wasn't suicidal, rather the opposite... I was scared of stepping outside my door in case a car hit me on the foot path and it was all over.
Life after god was only painful to reach because I had had my hopes raised to outrageously high levels by religious education beforehand. If the feeling of discogia hadn't been so awkward (it wasn't painful, just awkward) I never would have given up on religion because those defences against uncertainty were wonderful.
So, for me, I became an atheist not because I thought more clearly than others... but because I felt more strongly than others. I find it awkward telling people that's there's no god or religious dogma is bad. Not because I don't believe it... but I know that every time I say it I'm pushing someone down another of those 1,000 steps that eventually leads to peace of mind... but every step hurts a great deal too and unlike god, I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
This statement might well be true but it doesn't actually convey any of my personal or emotional experience with coming to terms with living in a universe without a god in it. In truth my loss of faith was driven not my intellectual needs at all, but by emotional forces at work within me.
To understand why it felt so unbearable being a Catholic one first needs to understand the concept of cognitive dissonance. Notice that the feeling doesn't have a specific name, instead they just refer to it as involving a mixture of secondary emotions like: anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment and stress. However, none of these secondary emotions adequately describes the primary feeling. I have adapted the term 'discogia' to describe this feeling.
As a young Catholic I spent a great deal of time worrying about whether or not I would go to hell if I died. See, although many people say that I was a quiet well behaved child I nonetheless knew better. I had frequently lied to, stolen from, harmed and decieved many people (including my own family), albeit these were petty crimes typical of a child in retrospect. However, it was very clear to me that I had committed serious crimes and injustices to other people. God was very clear on this and he watched everything that I did and he knew my thoughts so I couldn't lie to him. I had no explanation for my actions except that I was evil. Therefore I was going to hell. When I confessed my sins to the priest he assured me that my sins were not that important and I would be forgiven.
This is where I started to feel discogia creeping into my life in a big way.
See, god hates sin, god is perfect, god created man, god created hell to punish sinners and god loves us. Why then would got create man in such a way that his natural tendancy is to sin? Then after he has sinned throw him into a lake of fire to burn in torment for all eternity... but still love him?
Also, if god created man why make him capable of sinning so easily? If he was perfect and all powerful surely he could have at least done a better job? As for free will this puzzled me the most because I was in love with science at the time and science could predict the future, albeit in limited ways, but the fact that science works at all implies that free will can't actually be free.
I remember being in grades 5 and 6 worrying frantically about this problem. I tried over and over again to write stories that were original... but everything was copied from something I'd seen, read or heard before... all I was doing was reproducing somebody else's ideas and mixing them with another persons. The creativity needed to produce truly free will didn't exist. In retrospect the knowledge and power needed to achieve free will is on a scale well beyond human capability. The conclusion was stark... I was just a machine. Worse than that, a sinful machine doomed to hell... because apparently a loving god had created me this way just for this purpose.
At the time my solution was clear, become a priest so that I could get on god's good side and it would all be ok. Although... god wasn't exactly someone I felt comfortable trusting either. I had been very disturbed by the angel of death killing all of egypt's first born. In mass I had heard that god asked Abraham to kill his only son as a sign of faith, true, he stopped him but later on God would actually kill his only son and I never could understand why he did that. God was actually scaring me quite a lot. Could my father kill me like god did? Just to make a point about how far he could go? Or what really confused me at the time was why would god deliberately forced his son to get himself killed (it is mentioned in the gospels that Jesus had the option of escape but god pushed him into it) then get angry with humanity for killing his son?
The feelings of discogia just got worse and worse as I grew older. But I didn't want to give up on god. So I started off by deciding that the old testament was garbage and focussed only on the new testament... then I started to get bothered by inconsistencies between the gospels which could only be explained if the writers weren't perfect/inspired by the holy spirit but just ordinary men. In which case they could have got it wrong. I also remember being bothered by Jesus' complete lack of a comprehensive schema or world view. His message was devoid of detail and practical advice. By my teenage years I had come to realise how childishly simplistic the words and messages of the bible were compared to the sophistication of later authors. I had to wonder if these were learned men at all writing it.
So eventually I turned to deism. God existed, but it was not for me a mere mortal to interpret his will. Then gradually the importance and role of god in the world grew less and less as I dealt with each remaining instance of discogia by putting in place scientific and rational ideas that dealt with the facts better than the religious one - although by this stage I was in university studying philosophy. When I started philosophy that's when I started gaining serious ground on the overwhelming sense of discogia that I had been ensared in. But that's still too simple an explanation for an emotional level.
It hurt.
Losing god in my life hurt me a great deal... it must have taken me 1,000 steps to get from Catholic to atheist. I was a wiccan in between and a pagan between that. For each step I removed one unpleasant feeling of discogia and replaced it with a sharper more painful realisation of my limitations, mortality, ordinariness and insignificance.
To become an atheist I had to give up these things:
That I was special and unique because I was part of a brilliant plan.
That my body was a work of art, not a randomly arranged set of genetic instructions.
That I would live after death.
That I would eventually see my friends and loved ones again.
That I could achieve anything because god doesn't make junk.
That there was justice in the universe.
That I would always be rewarded if I did the right thing.
That there was such a concept as a 'right' thing.
That I was loved no matter what I did.
That humanity was being looked after and cared for from above so it would all work out in the end whatever happened.
That good things will just come to me if I wait for god to deliver them.
^ That's an awful lot to lose. It hurt. It hurt so much one month I just couldn't sleep at all from fear of death. It hurt because religion had been my iron shield against insecurity in my life. Once I lost that shield I felt tiny, helpless and small. Becoming an atheist was not a quick, easy or effortless task. In this short passage I cannot describe how painful it was. I wasn't suicidal, rather the opposite... I was scared of stepping outside my door in case a car hit me on the foot path and it was all over.
Life after god was only painful to reach because I had had my hopes raised to outrageously high levels by religious education beforehand. If the feeling of discogia hadn't been so awkward (it wasn't painful, just awkward) I never would have given up on religion because those defences against uncertainty were wonderful.
So, for me, I became an atheist not because I thought more clearly than others... but because I felt more strongly than others. I find it awkward telling people that's there's no god or religious dogma is bad. Not because I don't believe it... but I know that every time I say it I'm pushing someone down another of those 1,000 steps that eventually leads to peace of mind... but every step hurts a great deal too and unlike god, I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.
20 December, 2009
Atheism and Love
I was chatting to a friend yesterday about a topic that related to my previous post about Atheism and Marriage. That is, how much effort one should put into a relationship and is it possible to actually have a relationship involving more than two people?
I said in that post, "The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three." This statement probably sounds shocking to many people, but honestly, how many people do feel helpless in doing away with the endless cycle of problems they seem to have in many of their friendships?
I would like to put forward my viewpoint that we're approaching relationships in the completely wrong way. We're looking at a friendship as an end goal: security, love, kindness and compassion whenever we need it. Truly, friendship is the greatest gift a human being is capable of giving, and often it is taken for granted or dismissed casually in statements like "we're only friends." While friendships are all of these things... we're expecting them to just 'happen' naturally and spontaneously. Once an international student asked me: "are we friending?" They used the wrong verb, but in so doing they produced a whole new concept: friendship as a process.
I believe that friendship is a process and all processes require one to put energy into it. No two people are exactly alike... most often they aren't even close to it. So you'll probably never meet a person with whom you agree with them on everything. So, you're going to have conflicts and disagreements with that person, it is inevitable. So how to do you deal with them? Generally, because laziness is a good survival strategy for any organism, we use the least personally demanding option. We can: ignore it, deny it, ridicule it, guilt/shame them into changing their mind or keep it to themselves and so on. But to accept, investigate, discover, understand and appreciate the difference requires more effort.
I think that it is always worth the effort to seek to understand these differences in our friends. Like my ealier story with Pandora implies; curing a disease is more meaningful than simply exterminating everyone with the disease. For example: if we just killed every person with haemophilia or who carry the disease in their genetics we could eliminate this disease forever. However, if we cure haemophilia in the process we become far far wiser about how blood clots, how blood works, how blood is created, how our genetics work, how our genetics can be repaired etc... while one group can say "we solved the problem," the group that cured it can say, "we cured it, understood the problem, learned a lot more about ourselves and even improved ourselves both in wisdom and compassion (and maybe genetically as well?) through curing it,"
I get annoyed when people associate 'love' exclusively with romantic relationships. I honestly believe love was originally intended to describe friendships not romantic relationships. But somewhere along the line we've stopped thinking clearly about the fact that at the root of romance is sex, lust and reproduction - not love.
Rather 'to love' is an extreme form of the verb 'to like' and is rather disrespected in English to this end nowadays. But how can we love someone who is so different from us? Two ways, the first is that we're ignorant of how different we are to that person - this is an unstable form of love - secondly, we have put the effort into getting to know that person inside-out and we don't feel threatened by the differences we have. I guess I've just invented the terms 'weak love' and 'strong love' much like 'weak atheism' and 'strong atheism' (weak = ignorant, strong = informed).
The conclusion, if we want to love someone in the strong sense we need to put energy, time and effort into the relationship. We need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable being open, honest and safe telling you their problems, vices and limitations - while at the same time the other person allows you to feel the same by putting in a recipricol effort. How can creatures such as ourselves full of prejudices, insecurities and ignorance do this? By changing, by listening, by growing in self-knowledge and knowledge about other people and where they're coming from.
I believe that if more people put the time and effort needed to bridge cultural, sexual, emotional differences that in the future the spontaneous formation of quaples and other complex social structures built upon the basic framework of friendship can become possible, easier and desireable. The thing is, almost everyone is capable of friendship and love... all that is required is a different perspective:
Why are the people who need love the most also the hardest to love?
Because love requires sacrifice and the harder you have to push yourself to love another person, the more you'll learn, grow and develop as an individual.
What about freeloaders and cheats?
If the other person won't put the effort you are putting into the relationship then it isn't going to work. There is nothing wrong in giving up on a person who doesn't try at all. While yes, you could still learn a lot from the endeavour, however, the one giving that much effort shouldn't expect or depend on it succeeding less they be compromised and exploited.
Again, there's nothing about sex in here because I don't see what it has to do with love. Friendship extends across all borders, including species (cats, dogs, pigs, horses etc...) and probably in the future it will include artificial intelligences as well. While saying that, loving the person with whom you have sexual intercourse with is a great thing... but I would hope that you're friends with the person you're having sex with first and that friendship is the root of the love. (Although if you're not friends with the person you're having sexual relations with and you're both ok with that I have no problems with that either - it just isn't my cup of tea).
I said in that post, "The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three." This statement probably sounds shocking to many people, but honestly, how many people do feel helpless in doing away with the endless cycle of problems they seem to have in many of their friendships?
I would like to put forward my viewpoint that we're approaching relationships in the completely wrong way. We're looking at a friendship as an end goal: security, love, kindness and compassion whenever we need it. Truly, friendship is the greatest gift a human being is capable of giving, and often it is taken for granted or dismissed casually in statements like "we're only friends." While friendships are all of these things... we're expecting them to just 'happen' naturally and spontaneously. Once an international student asked me: "are we friending?" They used the wrong verb, but in so doing they produced a whole new concept: friendship as a process.
I believe that friendship is a process and all processes require one to put energy into it. No two people are exactly alike... most often they aren't even close to it. So you'll probably never meet a person with whom you agree with them on everything. So, you're going to have conflicts and disagreements with that person, it is inevitable. So how to do you deal with them? Generally, because laziness is a good survival strategy for any organism, we use the least personally demanding option. We can: ignore it, deny it, ridicule it, guilt/shame them into changing their mind or keep it to themselves and so on. But to accept, investigate, discover, understand and appreciate the difference requires more effort.
I think that it is always worth the effort to seek to understand these differences in our friends. Like my ealier story with Pandora implies; curing a disease is more meaningful than simply exterminating everyone with the disease. For example: if we just killed every person with haemophilia or who carry the disease in their genetics we could eliminate this disease forever. However, if we cure haemophilia in the process we become far far wiser about how blood clots, how blood works, how blood is created, how our genetics work, how our genetics can be repaired etc... while one group can say "we solved the problem," the group that cured it can say, "we cured it, understood the problem, learned a lot more about ourselves and even improved ourselves both in wisdom and compassion (and maybe genetically as well?) through curing it,"
I get annoyed when people associate 'love' exclusively with romantic relationships. I honestly believe love was originally intended to describe friendships not romantic relationships. But somewhere along the line we've stopped thinking clearly about the fact that at the root of romance is sex, lust and reproduction - not love.
Rather 'to love' is an extreme form of the verb 'to like' and is rather disrespected in English to this end nowadays. But how can we love someone who is so different from us? Two ways, the first is that we're ignorant of how different we are to that person - this is an unstable form of love - secondly, we have put the effort into getting to know that person inside-out and we don't feel threatened by the differences we have. I guess I've just invented the terms 'weak love' and 'strong love' much like 'weak atheism' and 'strong atheism' (weak = ignorant, strong = informed).
The conclusion, if we want to love someone in the strong sense we need to put energy, time and effort into the relationship. We need to create an environment where the other person feels comfortable being open, honest and safe telling you their problems, vices and limitations - while at the same time the other person allows you to feel the same by putting in a recipricol effort. How can creatures such as ourselves full of prejudices, insecurities and ignorance do this? By changing, by listening, by growing in self-knowledge and knowledge about other people and where they're coming from.
I believe that if more people put the time and effort needed to bridge cultural, sexual, emotional differences that in the future the spontaneous formation of quaples and other complex social structures built upon the basic framework of friendship can become possible, easier and desireable. The thing is, almost everyone is capable of friendship and love... all that is required is a different perspective:
Why are the people who need love the most also the hardest to love?
Because love requires sacrifice and the harder you have to push yourself to love another person, the more you'll learn, grow and develop as an individual.
What about freeloaders and cheats?
If the other person won't put the effort you are putting into the relationship then it isn't going to work. There is nothing wrong in giving up on a person who doesn't try at all. While yes, you could still learn a lot from the endeavour, however, the one giving that much effort shouldn't expect or depend on it succeeding less they be compromised and exploited.
Again, there's nothing about sex in here because I don't see what it has to do with love. Friendship extends across all borders, including species (cats, dogs, pigs, horses etc...) and probably in the future it will include artificial intelligences as well. While saying that, loving the person with whom you have sexual intercourse with is a great thing... but I would hope that you're friends with the person you're having sex with first and that friendship is the root of the love. (Although if you're not friends with the person you're having sexual relations with and you're both ok with that I have no problems with that either - it just isn't my cup of tea).
Sex... Why are we so hung up on it?
Recently I saw this video clip on the Daily Beast:
Apparently, the Governor has a relationship with an escort and it's her fault.
Once again, as an atheist I feel it is my duty to strip away all of the dogma on how human beings are supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with each other and expose the prejudice here. When women label other women as 'sluts', 'whores', 'prostitutes' or whatever, they are living out what happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment. They feel once a women is publicly labelled as a slut that they can vent their repressed anger, jealously and frustration onto her. Why? Because they know they can get away with it.
This is immoral. Religious people often attack and demonise homosexuals and Jews for the same reasons. This is one of the things that upsets me most about religious people - they use the prejudices written in their dogma to justify the dehumanisation and venting of their frustration onto them.
I feel as an atheist I have to acknowledge that I have many feelings that are anti-social. Sometimes I get angry with beautiful people because they're shallow... sometimes I get angry with them because I'm very jealous. I believe that's part of being human I don't feel diminished in dignity and purity by admitting that I have destructive thoughts and feelings sometimes.
The majority of the women on this talk show appear to me to be angry with Mz. Dupree not because she had sex with lots of men but because she is beautiful, earned a lot of money doing something she enjoyed and managed to mingle with the creme-de-la-creme of society seemingly without any effort on her part. These are not good reasons to hate someone and the women on The View should feel ashamed not Mz. Dupree.
That said, I do find Mz. Dupree's sweeping generalisations about men irritating as she is only talking about her clientele and dating preferences not all men.
Conclusion, we often define mental illness as simply attributes some people have that we don't like. We invent reasons why their behaviour is bad after we've decided it is bad*. We then tell them it is their fault and their responsibility to change themselves when they can't really help being who they are. It is a twisted savage way of thinking.
* If you think that this is preposterous try this thought experiment: find a quality in a person that society considers 'good' then pretend that it's bad and think of reasons why it could be bad. You'll probably surprise yourself thinking about all the reasons why you could hate the 'good' things about some people.
Apparently, the Governor has a relationship with an escort and it's her fault.
Once again, as an atheist I feel it is my duty to strip away all of the dogma on how human beings are supposed to engage in sexual intercourse with each other and expose the prejudice here. When women label other women as 'sluts', 'whores', 'prostitutes' or whatever, they are living out what happened in the Stanford Prison Experiment. They feel once a women is publicly labelled as a slut that they can vent their repressed anger, jealously and frustration onto her. Why? Because they know they can get away with it.
This is immoral. Religious people often attack and demonise homosexuals and Jews for the same reasons. This is one of the things that upsets me most about religious people - they use the prejudices written in their dogma to justify the dehumanisation and venting of their frustration onto them.
I feel as an atheist I have to acknowledge that I have many feelings that are anti-social. Sometimes I get angry with beautiful people because they're shallow... sometimes I get angry with them because I'm very jealous. I believe that's part of being human I don't feel diminished in dignity and purity by admitting that I have destructive thoughts and feelings sometimes.
The majority of the women on this talk show appear to me to be angry with Mz. Dupree not because she had sex with lots of men but because she is beautiful, earned a lot of money doing something she enjoyed and managed to mingle with the creme-de-la-creme of society seemingly without any effort on her part. These are not good reasons to hate someone and the women on The View should feel ashamed not Mz. Dupree.
That said, I do find Mz. Dupree's sweeping generalisations about men irritating as she is only talking about her clientele and dating preferences not all men.
Conclusion, we often define mental illness as simply attributes some people have that we don't like. We invent reasons why their behaviour is bad after we've decided it is bad*. We then tell them it is their fault and their responsibility to change themselves when they can't really help being who they are. It is a twisted savage way of thinking.
* If you think that this is preposterous try this thought experiment: find a quality in a person that society considers 'good' then pretend that it's bad and think of reasons why it could be bad. You'll probably surprise yourself thinking about all the reasons why you could hate the 'good' things about some people.
18 December, 2009
Them Versus Us
I was at a dinner the other night with friends, mostly theists, and the topic of Prof. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris came up. This lead to some comments from my friends suggesting that there was only two sides to the God debate: Those who believe in god and those who do not.
This very simplistic viewpoint on the subject often comes up. I call it simplistic because right now in the world we have religious people killing other religious people, not because they don't believe in god, but because they don't believe enough in god. Yet conversely, we have people who do believe in god working very closely with people who don't believe in god to build secular societies. If the current clash of cultures is a 'them' versus 'us' situation then this hostility between theists and friendship amongst theists and atheists just doesn't make any sense. I personally use a 6 category system to make sense of this confusing situation, although keep in mind some other people use 7, 8 and even more categories in their systems than I do.
I've arranged the 6 groups in the order of their relative belief in a god. However, don't think that the further apart the groups are the harder it is for them to understand each other. Quite to the contrary there are lots of surprising interactions between these 6 groups.
First, just a brief description, in my own words, of the 6 different categories:
Fundamentalist: God is as real as the computer you're reading this off. God communicates his message to people directly, in miracles or through infallible intermediaries. Anything that contradicts the holy texts is a lie. Science is dangerous.
Theist: God is real, but he doesn't necessarily speak to humans directly. He is concerned about morality and wants to limit our freedoms to keep us behaving properly to each other. Only religious people are able to interpret his will through accurate interpretation of holy works. Science is generally beneficial but sometimes scientists go too far with their questioning.
Deist: God is real, but considering how magnificent and huge the universe is it is kind of hard to believe he worries about things like our sex lives or what time we eat our meals. Holy texts about god are written by ordinary people and interpretted by ordinary people. They might contain some valuable insights into the nature of god but ultimately we're very limited in what we can comprehend so claiming certain knowledge about god and what he thinks is actually quite arrogant if not outright heresy. Science is ultimately the study of god since god created the universe therefore scientists cannot ask questions too daring to threaten god.
Pantheist: God is only real in the minds of those who believe in him. But just believing in god is enough to make him real and so we should respect that.
Atheist: There is no scientific evidence that god exists and believing in something without evidence is delusional. If evidence that god exists is presented and passes scientifically rigorous examination then our viewpoint will change to accept that god in fact exists. All religious people and texts should be treated with the utmost scrutiny lest we be decieved by charletons and liars. An atheist is a person who lacks a belief in god. An agnostic is a person who also lacks a belief in god. Therefore I categorise all agnostics as atheists automatically - even though they will probably get annoyed with me for doing so.
Antitheist: It is a fact, god does not exist. Anyone who says that god exists must by definition be suffering from a delusion.
I just feel like highlighting a few interesting interactions that tend to happen between these groups because they don't all pick sides against each other in predicable ways:
Fundamentalists versus atheists: Strangely, atheists often respect fundamentalists because although they do not agree with most of what they say they do appreciate that they are consistent with what they believe in. If they believe the bible is literally true then they will insist that the world was created in 6 days about 6,000 years ago. They won't try to say it was created in 6 days in one context and then try to say it happened over billions of years in another like theists often do.
Fundamentalist versus theists: very often conflict with each other because they see theists as religious in name only. Pretenders trying to cheat their way into heaven. Fundamentalists will sometimes say that theists aren't even religious at all and will specifically target them for suicide bombings and as the first to be thrown into the lake of eternal fire in the after life.
Theists versus deists: deists sometimes see theists as arrogant and intrusive in affairs, such as their sex life, that have nothing to do with god or spirituality. While theists see deists like the fundamentalists see them: not religious enough. However, generally speaking, deists and theists don't have any major issues with each other.
Theists versus atheists: theists often confuse atheists with antitheists.
Theists versus pantheists: surprisingly, theists also have a tendancy to confuse pantheists with deists.
Deists versus atheists: historically these two groups have always got along with each other. They after all created secularism together. Atheists tend to have a lot more respect for deists than theists. This is perhaps the most surprising interaction of all.
Pantheists versus atheists: pantheists very often don't like atheists (or antitheists for that matter). They find atheists to be rude, annoying and often consider them to be as fundamentalist about no god as fundamentalists are about god. While atheists often think pantheists are naive but harmless, yet curiously, although they are closer to atheists than deists they are very often respected less by atheists.
Atheists versus antitheists: Sit across the dinner table from each other and often agree on everything religious... yet sometimes there's that strange sense of awkwardness. I mean, isn't just a bit extreme to be certain god doesn't exists? What if the deists are right and he simply doesn't care or has completely forgotten about the Earth and moved onto bigger more challenging projects elsewhere billions of years ago? :)
This very simplistic viewpoint on the subject often comes up. I call it simplistic because right now in the world we have religious people killing other religious people, not because they don't believe in god, but because they don't believe enough in god. Yet conversely, we have people who do believe in god working very closely with people who don't believe in god to build secular societies. If the current clash of cultures is a 'them' versus 'us' situation then this hostility between theists and friendship amongst theists and atheists just doesn't make any sense. I personally use a 6 category system to make sense of this confusing situation, although keep in mind some other people use 7, 8 and even more categories in their systems than I do.
I've arranged the 6 groups in the order of their relative belief in a god. However, don't think that the further apart the groups are the harder it is for them to understand each other. Quite to the contrary there are lots of surprising interactions between these 6 groups.
First, just a brief description, in my own words, of the 6 different categories:
Fundamentalist: God is as real as the computer you're reading this off. God communicates his message to people directly, in miracles or through infallible intermediaries. Anything that contradicts the holy texts is a lie. Science is dangerous.
Theist: God is real, but he doesn't necessarily speak to humans directly. He is concerned about morality and wants to limit our freedoms to keep us behaving properly to each other. Only religious people are able to interpret his will through accurate interpretation of holy works. Science is generally beneficial but sometimes scientists go too far with their questioning.
Deist: God is real, but considering how magnificent and huge the universe is it is kind of hard to believe he worries about things like our sex lives or what time we eat our meals. Holy texts about god are written by ordinary people and interpretted by ordinary people. They might contain some valuable insights into the nature of god but ultimately we're very limited in what we can comprehend so claiming certain knowledge about god and what he thinks is actually quite arrogant if not outright heresy. Science is ultimately the study of god since god created the universe therefore scientists cannot ask questions too daring to threaten god.
Pantheist: God is only real in the minds of those who believe in him. But just believing in god is enough to make him real and so we should respect that.
Atheist: There is no scientific evidence that god exists and believing in something without evidence is delusional. If evidence that god exists is presented and passes scientifically rigorous examination then our viewpoint will change to accept that god in fact exists. All religious people and texts should be treated with the utmost scrutiny lest we be decieved by charletons and liars. An atheist is a person who lacks a belief in god. An agnostic is a person who also lacks a belief in god. Therefore I categorise all agnostics as atheists automatically - even though they will probably get annoyed with me for doing so.
Antitheist: It is a fact, god does not exist. Anyone who says that god exists must by definition be suffering from a delusion.
I just feel like highlighting a few interesting interactions that tend to happen between these groups because they don't all pick sides against each other in predicable ways:
Fundamentalists versus atheists: Strangely, atheists often respect fundamentalists because although they do not agree with most of what they say they do appreciate that they are consistent with what they believe in. If they believe the bible is literally true then they will insist that the world was created in 6 days about 6,000 years ago. They won't try to say it was created in 6 days in one context and then try to say it happened over billions of years in another like theists often do.
Fundamentalist versus theists: very often conflict with each other because they see theists as religious in name only. Pretenders trying to cheat their way into heaven. Fundamentalists will sometimes say that theists aren't even religious at all and will specifically target them for suicide bombings and as the first to be thrown into the lake of eternal fire in the after life.
Theists versus deists: deists sometimes see theists as arrogant and intrusive in affairs, such as their sex life, that have nothing to do with god or spirituality. While theists see deists like the fundamentalists see them: not religious enough. However, generally speaking, deists and theists don't have any major issues with each other.
Theists versus atheists: theists often confuse atheists with antitheists.
Theists versus pantheists: surprisingly, theists also have a tendancy to confuse pantheists with deists.
Deists versus atheists: historically these two groups have always got along with each other. They after all created secularism together. Atheists tend to have a lot more respect for deists than theists. This is perhaps the most surprising interaction of all.
Pantheists versus atheists: pantheists very often don't like atheists (or antitheists for that matter). They find atheists to be rude, annoying and often consider them to be as fundamentalist about no god as fundamentalists are about god. While atheists often think pantheists are naive but harmless, yet curiously, although they are closer to atheists than deists they are very often respected less by atheists.
Atheists versus antitheists: Sit across the dinner table from each other and often agree on everything religious... yet sometimes there's that strange sense of awkwardness. I mean, isn't just a bit extreme to be certain god doesn't exists? What if the deists are right and he simply doesn't care or has completely forgotten about the Earth and moved onto bigger more challenging projects elsewhere billions of years ago? :)
15 December, 2009
Atheism and Marriage
This is a big topic and not really one I can do justice to here. But I thought I might throw out a few daring and challenging ideas today. Also, if anyone wants me to write about a particular topic feel free to email me and I'll see about writing an atheist perspective on it.
So let's start. Firstly, every atheist I know has a different opinion on this topic so don't think I'm representing all atheist. Rather in the spirit of the Rabbi's (See first post) postulation that atheists strip away all dogma and idolatry I'm going attempt to strip away all dogma away from the institute of marriage.
Firstly, what is marriage? Many people have different ideas but the best I've heard is apparently from Emmanual Kant (although I've extended it a little): Marriage is a legal agreement between a man and a woman whereby each consigns the access rights to their genitals to the other person for the purpose of reproduction, child-rearing and determining inheritance.
Well the first question that comes to my mind as a liberal is, "Why would anyone be so willing to give up a right? For that matter one that includes access to their body and who gets all of their valuables when they die?"
Now traditionally, and still in many parts of the world, marriage is arranged for the couple and they have no say in the matter. So in this case marriage is simply enslavement forced onto the individuals and the stronger of the two is the master.
So what reasons would a person choose to get married for if it was a free choice?
I'm sure there are more, but in the 5 minutes I was jotting this down during lunch I could only think of these 5.
1. Raising children in a safe, secure and supported environment.
2. Financial security in case of sickness, old age and imfirmity.
3. Emotional security against loneliness, abandonment and depression.
4. Love, because you care for someone at least almost as much as yourself.
5. Guaranteeing the paternity of the offspring and the inheritance of property through the family name.
Now, none of these arguments are very strong. Yes, sure, people might get married for a number of reasons, probably a combination... but if none of these reasons are good ones it begs two questions: why get married at all? OR Why not reform marriage into an institution that you'd like to be a part of?
The problems I see with these arguments are summarised below:
1. About half of families are not safe, secure and supported environments due to neglectful parenting, stupid parenting and poor parents. Even if one parent is attentive the other can just as easily be completely neglecting them. Also, same sex and defacto couples are just as capable providing (and neglecting) children with a safe, secure and supported environment. Because it works maybe 50% of the time I am tempted to say it has moderate strength as an argument then again would you join any other social institution if there was only a 50-50 chance of getting benefits after investing so much time and money?
2. This is actually not a bad argument. Give up a little freedom in return for knowing that if you lose your job, get sick or succumb to depression there will always be someone else there to share in your misery and help you out. Kind of like a third parent. However, the only problem is that no-fault divorce is legal now and so these agreements wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. But in other countries were divorce is difficult this is a good deal, at least for the men that is.
3. This is similar to the first one except, unlike unfortunate events in ones life that one doesn't have control over, in this situation one can just have friends and an active social life and they don't really need to give up access to their genitals to get it.
4. I really do like the idea of love... but I haven't yet seen anyone actually love someone as much as themselves. For example, if you are a man and you care for the maximum benefit of your wife you will know that a varied and exciting sex life is often important for her happiness. Also, the genetic diversity of her children is a concern for her on a biological level so how many men actively encourage their wives to have multiple sexual partners and a different paternity for each of her children? While still supporting and raising them as though they were his own? Also, how many men are encouraged by their wives to go out and impregnate as many women as they can to fulfil their biological desire to spread their seed? Clearly in a marriage such satisfaction of the other person's desires cannot be met so both parties decide to mutually limit what desires they can actually have fulfilled. So both parties put themselves in uncomfortable anxiety producing situations... such sexual repression is bound to be unhealthy and to appear in other forms such as infidelity, homosexuality, porn addiction, pedophilia, anger, anxiety driven sleep loss, desire not to be home or with their spouse, etc...
If both parties are asexual then I suppose it would work very nicely for them. But what about the children?
Otherwise, if you really loved someone that much... why would you make them suffer through marriage only to eventually divorce them?
5. This one probably makes the most sense. A man might feel uncomfortable about whether or not his woman's children are his own so he'll take her into his house where he can keep her better under surveilance and the institute of marriage can act as social pressure to keep her from abandoning him or sleeping with other men and thus helping to reassure him that his progeny actually inherit his property. What the woman actually gets out of this situation isn't so clear though. As this arrangement is clearly assymetrically in favour of the man so let's just consign this idea to the patriarchal past.
So... what am I saying? End the institution of marriage? No, I am not saying that at all. If traditional marriage works for you then you don't need to change anything. But if traditional marriage isn't enough or is too much then I believe there is no reason why we can't use our natural human inventiveness to come up with a creative solution.
Firstly, it is not wrong to expect more out of marriage, it is a feeling and it ought to be respected. Also, often demanding more isn't a bad thing. Often it leads to improvements and innovations that people more content would never have invested the time and energy into developing.
My personal take on how we should redesign marriage is to come up with a solution that meets all 5 of the previous arguments for a marriage and see how well it goes in addressing those.
One alternative I've considered is a 'quaple' or a marriage of four people.
A quaple is a group of 4 adults (any combination of sexes) who decide to pool their emotional, financial and biological resources into raising children in a safe, supportive and secure environment and taking care of each other's needs.
1. With four people raising children there is a lot more space for discussing parenting ideas, learning from each other, having the right parent nurture the right child in the right way. Help them with their homework and explore their interests. They can also provide more income and greater resistance to financial hardship thus a more stable environment for the children.
2. 4 incomes versus 2, or more realistically 3 incomes versus 1, provides far more financial security.
3. It is harder to get tired of the lifelong company of 3 friends than only 1.
4. There is no law of nature that says a person can only fall in love once in their life or that they could only love one person adequately. While such a devotion can be touching it actually reeks of insecurity and personal weakness. If your life centres around one particular person... what happens if they die or decide they don't love you anymore? Simple: total breakdown. Conversely if you depend on just one person, and they can't always be there to give to you, then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A strong person loves many people because they are loved by many people. They might give less individually but overall they give and receive the same amount but with the security of consistent support and not occasional support. If you are a jealous person and must control(/have) someone (all to yourself)... then that is your fear for yourself speaking, not your love for them. Confusing them is a common mistake for atheists and non-atheists alike.
5. OK... I don't think men will ever have it this good ever again. Though really, it wasn't a good system for the men anyway on a spiritual level. Insecurity about whether or not ones seed will be passed on in ones children is another form of insecurity. I think it is like insecurity about death. You can stay up all night worrying about it but it won't change the fact you're going to die. You can control and chain up your wife at home with a 24 video surveilance system on her... or you can accept that whether or not your sperm makes it into the mix for the next generation doesn't really matter on three grounds:
1. There are close to 7 billion people who already share 99.9% of your genetics.
2. You won't live to see the future so you can't know if your children live, die, succeed, fail or commit murder etc...
3. In the future genetic engineering will remove all diseases from people and designer babies will be normal. The days of 'your' genetics being special in any way are numbered.
So really, this is an insecurity like any other: it is learned and it can be unlearned. Once unlearned it will free one to experience much more fulfilling emotions.
Honestly, the fact is that quaples are better than couples in all counts of practicality. The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three. It is a frightening idea thinking about all of the arguments and conflicts you could have with three people: all of them ganging up on you for example. However, if one has good social skills and a good sense of empathy then it is possible to do it. And hey, good social skills and empathy are good precisely because they allow one to work in such complicated social structures as a team or a quaple. Why? Because team work always beats individual ability. The champion team is better than the team of champions.
So let's start. Firstly, every atheist I know has a different opinion on this topic so don't think I'm representing all atheist. Rather in the spirit of the Rabbi's (See first post) postulation that atheists strip away all dogma and idolatry I'm going attempt to strip away all dogma away from the institute of marriage.
Firstly, what is marriage? Many people have different ideas but the best I've heard is apparently from Emmanual Kant (although I've extended it a little): Marriage is a legal agreement between a man and a woman whereby each consigns the access rights to their genitals to the other person for the purpose of reproduction, child-rearing and determining inheritance.
Well the first question that comes to my mind as a liberal is, "Why would anyone be so willing to give up a right? For that matter one that includes access to their body and who gets all of their valuables when they die?"
Now traditionally, and still in many parts of the world, marriage is arranged for the couple and they have no say in the matter. So in this case marriage is simply enslavement forced onto the individuals and the stronger of the two is the master.
So what reasons would a person choose to get married for if it was a free choice?
I'm sure there are more, but in the 5 minutes I was jotting this down during lunch I could only think of these 5.
1. Raising children in a safe, secure and supported environment.
2. Financial security in case of sickness, old age and imfirmity.
3. Emotional security against loneliness, abandonment and depression.
4. Love, because you care for someone at least almost as much as yourself.
5. Guaranteeing the paternity of the offspring and the inheritance of property through the family name.
Now, none of these arguments are very strong. Yes, sure, people might get married for a number of reasons, probably a combination... but if none of these reasons are good ones it begs two questions: why get married at all? OR Why not reform marriage into an institution that you'd like to be a part of?
The problems I see with these arguments are summarised below:
1. About half of families are not safe, secure and supported environments due to neglectful parenting, stupid parenting and poor parents. Even if one parent is attentive the other can just as easily be completely neglecting them. Also, same sex and defacto couples are just as capable providing (and neglecting) children with a safe, secure and supported environment. Because it works maybe 50% of the time I am tempted to say it has moderate strength as an argument then again would you join any other social institution if there was only a 50-50 chance of getting benefits after investing so much time and money?
2. This is actually not a bad argument. Give up a little freedom in return for knowing that if you lose your job, get sick or succumb to depression there will always be someone else there to share in your misery and help you out. Kind of like a third parent. However, the only problem is that no-fault divorce is legal now and so these agreements wouldn't be worth the paper it is written on. But in other countries were divorce is difficult this is a good deal, at least for the men that is.
3. This is similar to the first one except, unlike unfortunate events in ones life that one doesn't have control over, in this situation one can just have friends and an active social life and they don't really need to give up access to their genitals to get it.
4. I really do like the idea of love... but I haven't yet seen anyone actually love someone as much as themselves. For example, if you are a man and you care for the maximum benefit of your wife you will know that a varied and exciting sex life is often important for her happiness. Also, the genetic diversity of her children is a concern for her on a biological level so how many men actively encourage their wives to have multiple sexual partners and a different paternity for each of her children? While still supporting and raising them as though they were his own? Also, how many men are encouraged by their wives to go out and impregnate as many women as they can to fulfil their biological desire to spread their seed? Clearly in a marriage such satisfaction of the other person's desires cannot be met so both parties decide to mutually limit what desires they can actually have fulfilled. So both parties put themselves in uncomfortable anxiety producing situations... such sexual repression is bound to be unhealthy and to appear in other forms such as infidelity, homosexuality, porn addiction, pedophilia, anger, anxiety driven sleep loss, desire not to be home or with their spouse, etc...
If both parties are asexual then I suppose it would work very nicely for them. But what about the children?
Otherwise, if you really loved someone that much... why would you make them suffer through marriage only to eventually divorce them?
5. This one probably makes the most sense. A man might feel uncomfortable about whether or not his woman's children are his own so he'll take her into his house where he can keep her better under surveilance and the institute of marriage can act as social pressure to keep her from abandoning him or sleeping with other men and thus helping to reassure him that his progeny actually inherit his property. What the woman actually gets out of this situation isn't so clear though. As this arrangement is clearly assymetrically in favour of the man so let's just consign this idea to the patriarchal past.
So... what am I saying? End the institution of marriage? No, I am not saying that at all. If traditional marriage works for you then you don't need to change anything. But if traditional marriage isn't enough or is too much then I believe there is no reason why we can't use our natural human inventiveness to come up with a creative solution.
Firstly, it is not wrong to expect more out of marriage, it is a feeling and it ought to be respected. Also, often demanding more isn't a bad thing. Often it leads to improvements and innovations that people more content would never have invested the time and energy into developing.
My personal take on how we should redesign marriage is to come up with a solution that meets all 5 of the previous arguments for a marriage and see how well it goes in addressing those.
One alternative I've considered is a 'quaple' or a marriage of four people.
A quaple is a group of 4 adults (any combination of sexes) who decide to pool their emotional, financial and biological resources into raising children in a safe, supportive and secure environment and taking care of each other's needs.
1. With four people raising children there is a lot more space for discussing parenting ideas, learning from each other, having the right parent nurture the right child in the right way. Help them with their homework and explore their interests. They can also provide more income and greater resistance to financial hardship thus a more stable environment for the children.
2. 4 incomes versus 2, or more realistically 3 incomes versus 1, provides far more financial security.
3. It is harder to get tired of the lifelong company of 3 friends than only 1.
4. There is no law of nature that says a person can only fall in love once in their life or that they could only love one person adequately. While such a devotion can be touching it actually reeks of insecurity and personal weakness. If your life centres around one particular person... what happens if they die or decide they don't love you anymore? Simple: total breakdown. Conversely if you depend on just one person, and they can't always be there to give to you, then you're setting yourself up for disappointment. A strong person loves many people because they are loved by many people. They might give less individually but overall they give and receive the same amount but with the security of consistent support and not occasional support. If you are a jealous person and must control(/have) someone (all to yourself)... then that is your fear for yourself speaking, not your love for them. Confusing them is a common mistake for atheists and non-atheists alike.
5. OK... I don't think men will ever have it this good ever again. Though really, it wasn't a good system for the men anyway on a spiritual level. Insecurity about whether or not ones seed will be passed on in ones children is another form of insecurity. I think it is like insecurity about death. You can stay up all night worrying about it but it won't change the fact you're going to die. You can control and chain up your wife at home with a 24 video surveilance system on her... or you can accept that whether or not your sperm makes it into the mix for the next generation doesn't really matter on three grounds:
1. There are close to 7 billion people who already share 99.9% of your genetics.
2. You won't live to see the future so you can't know if your children live, die, succeed, fail or commit murder etc...
3. In the future genetic engineering will remove all diseases from people and designer babies will be normal. The days of 'your' genetics being special in any way are numbered.
So really, this is an insecurity like any other: it is learned and it can be unlearned. Once unlearned it will free one to experience much more fulfilling emotions.
Honestly, the fact is that quaples are better than couples in all counts of practicality. The only real problem is that we often lack the social skills to have one good friendship in our lives... much less three. It is a frightening idea thinking about all of the arguments and conflicts you could have with three people: all of them ganging up on you for example. However, if one has good social skills and a good sense of empathy then it is possible to do it. And hey, good social skills and empathy are good precisely because they allow one to work in such complicated social structures as a team or a quaple. Why? Because team work always beats individual ability. The champion team is better than the team of champions.
14 December, 2009
Pandora
"Pandora had been given a large jar and instruction by Zeus to keep it closed, but she had also been given the gift of curiosity, and ultimately opened it. When she opened it, all of the evils, ills, diseases, and burdensome labor that mankind had not known previously, escaped from the jar, but it is said, that at the very bottom of her box, there lay hope." Wikipedia, 14/12/09, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora%27s_box)
When I was younger I had curiousity enough to go searching through my sister's room while she was away overseas and find amongst other treasures her Tarot cards with a book with about 26 tales of Greek mythology. Of all of the stories I read none touched me more than the story of Pandora. Although my recollection of the tale differs from Wikipedia because inside the alternate Pandora's Jar was hundreds of wasps. The wasps stung all of the humans alive at that time infecting them with burdens such as: old age, impotency, cancer, heart disease, plague, disease, greed, envy lust and all of the physical and spiritual ailments we know of today. In my version she closed the jar before the last wasp could escape, this wasp was to kill off hope.
Why would Zeus do such a thing to humanity?
Because Zeus was jealous and scared of humanity. We were too clever, too wise, too powerful. Zeus foresaw a day when the human race might one day ascend Mount Olympus and drive the gods out of the world. But if he merely slaughtered the human race outright in their infancy his weakness of character would be apparent to all. So instead he gave the jar to Pandora with all of these evils and told her not to open it. Knowing that human curiousity would drive her to open it and thus Zeus could claim that he was innocent and did not intend to cause the extermination of humankind but rather that they had brought it upon themselves through their curiousity.
However, the moral of this story was that Pandora had closed that jar just in time to prevent the loss of hope. In effect the human race had just had their development pushed back thousands of years as the things they had taken for granted were now taken away from them. Yet, despite all of the harm Zeus had inflicted, because the human race still had hope they would one day cure all of the ailments and burdens unleashed onto them and scale Mount Olympus to take their rightful place as guardians of the world.
Now, it might seem very odd that a scientist, such as myself, finds this story to be the source of so much of my inspiration in life. I mean, the idea the wasps could infect people with genetic diseases and limitations isn't very good medicine much less science. But the idea that all of the diseases and hardships in our lives actually serve a purpose. The idea that overcoming obstables, curing diseases and healing our psychological wounds is actually a divine act of human nature is what fascinates me. Invention, science and philosophy are human beings expressing what comes naturally to them. Even it is as simple as fixing a shelf in the bathroom with a few nails and a bit of timber this simple act is for me human divinity in action.
Further more, as an atheist I'm firmly of the opinion the gods are merely ideas in the minds of human beings and therefore the gods in this story symbolise our self-doubt, our self-denial and our self-contempt. They sit there on Mount Olympus or in heaven laughing and mocking at our pathetic struggles in a difficult, cruel and dangerous universe. But as assuredly as we crossed the oceans, built cities, mastered electricity, took to the skies and then to outer space... we are conquering our limitations and one by one putting those wasps back into the jar.
For me, working as a scientist trying to understand disease processes and develop cures, this is what inspires me. I do not believe there is any pride to be found in submitting to a god, only in being better than a god. See, the gods were born into glory, but we must rise to glory through blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice. Unlike the gods, we will deserve our glory.
Now, really, the whole point of this post wasn't to convert you all into followers of a new Pandoran philosophy. Rather to point out how literature can change and affect our lives. Different people need to different stories to inspire them but in the end, unless you don't have feelings, literature is a excellent source of wisdom, inspiration and finding meaning in this often difficult and troubling life. You don't even need to believe it is literally true. The heart is flexible when it comes to the truth, although I don't think your mind should be so flexible.
It isn't just atheists who seek solace and meaning through reading literature and then reliving in ones imagination and/or life. Millions of theists, deists and polytheists do too.
When I was younger I had curiousity enough to go searching through my sister's room while she was away overseas and find amongst other treasures her Tarot cards with a book with about 26 tales of Greek mythology. Of all of the stories I read none touched me more than the story of Pandora. Although my recollection of the tale differs from Wikipedia because inside the alternate Pandora's Jar was hundreds of wasps. The wasps stung all of the humans alive at that time infecting them with burdens such as: old age, impotency, cancer, heart disease, plague, disease, greed, envy lust and all of the physical and spiritual ailments we know of today. In my version she closed the jar before the last wasp could escape, this wasp was to kill off hope.
Why would Zeus do such a thing to humanity?
Because Zeus was jealous and scared of humanity. We were too clever, too wise, too powerful. Zeus foresaw a day when the human race might one day ascend Mount Olympus and drive the gods out of the world. But if he merely slaughtered the human race outright in their infancy his weakness of character would be apparent to all. So instead he gave the jar to Pandora with all of these evils and told her not to open it. Knowing that human curiousity would drive her to open it and thus Zeus could claim that he was innocent and did not intend to cause the extermination of humankind but rather that they had brought it upon themselves through their curiousity.
However, the moral of this story was that Pandora had closed that jar just in time to prevent the loss of hope. In effect the human race had just had their development pushed back thousands of years as the things they had taken for granted were now taken away from them. Yet, despite all of the harm Zeus had inflicted, because the human race still had hope they would one day cure all of the ailments and burdens unleashed onto them and scale Mount Olympus to take their rightful place as guardians of the world.
Now, it might seem very odd that a scientist, such as myself, finds this story to be the source of so much of my inspiration in life. I mean, the idea the wasps could infect people with genetic diseases and limitations isn't very good medicine much less science. But the idea that all of the diseases and hardships in our lives actually serve a purpose. The idea that overcoming obstables, curing diseases and healing our psychological wounds is actually a divine act of human nature is what fascinates me. Invention, science and philosophy are human beings expressing what comes naturally to them. Even it is as simple as fixing a shelf in the bathroom with a few nails and a bit of timber this simple act is for me human divinity in action.
Further more, as an atheist I'm firmly of the opinion the gods are merely ideas in the minds of human beings and therefore the gods in this story symbolise our self-doubt, our self-denial and our self-contempt. They sit there on Mount Olympus or in heaven laughing and mocking at our pathetic struggles in a difficult, cruel and dangerous universe. But as assuredly as we crossed the oceans, built cities, mastered electricity, took to the skies and then to outer space... we are conquering our limitations and one by one putting those wasps back into the jar.
For me, working as a scientist trying to understand disease processes and develop cures, this is what inspires me. I do not believe there is any pride to be found in submitting to a god, only in being better than a god. See, the gods were born into glory, but we must rise to glory through blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice. Unlike the gods, we will deserve our glory.
Now, really, the whole point of this post wasn't to convert you all into followers of a new Pandoran philosophy. Rather to point out how literature can change and affect our lives. Different people need to different stories to inspire them but in the end, unless you don't have feelings, literature is a excellent source of wisdom, inspiration and finding meaning in this often difficult and troubling life. You don't even need to believe it is literally true. The heart is flexible when it comes to the truth, although I don't think your mind should be so flexible.
It isn't just atheists who seek solace and meaning through reading literature and then reliving in ones imagination and/or life. Millions of theists, deists and polytheists do too.
Secular Morality Begins with Death
While I am certain there are atheists who believe in an afterlife. I am, however, not one of them. For me it is a certain fact that when any living creature dies the components of its body completely break down and are redistributed throughout the world from where they originally came. The mind, or spirit, of an individual is merely the product of the arrangement of structures inside the brain of the individual and are lost forever after death.
For me, this is where secular morality has its foundation. Consider that an individual fork, although useful, is not important simply because it is easily replaced. However, a human being is not like a fork and cannot be replaced. This is where I draw the sanctity of life from. When I think about my friends, family, loved ones and even those people whom I do not like... then I imagine the gravity of death means I find myself struggling to express the full horror that is death. Simply because there is not afterlife, there is no resurrection. Once dead a person is always dead and their spirit lost forever and irreplacable. Their beauty, physically and spiritually, lost to us forever. Their love, care, help, kindness and company never to be felt again. The places they made come alive will also died without them... their prized possessions will become knick-knacks and junk... their deeper meaning also lost to the living.
For this reason there is no crime worse than murder, and the reason for this conclusion is simply because there is no afterlife. If there was an afterlike, then yes, so what if you kill someone? They'll be alive somewhere else or they'll simply reincarnate. As an atheist I often feel uncomfortable with people who believe in an afterlife because I am scared that they don't value human life as preciously as I do.
I sometimes sit next to war memorials and weep as I read the names of the people who gave their lives for their country and communities - wittingly and unwittingly. As an atheist I find their heroism truly inspiring because I don't have nearly that much courage. Sometimes I think to myself, "Did they only offer their lives like that because they sincerely believed in heaven? Or did they on some level know that they were going to die and that would be the end of it and therefore their love and sacrifice was so noble it rightly makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end in awe?"
Honestly, I suspect most people know on some level that death really is final. It doesn't make sense why we would be against murder and war if the great mass of people didn't realise there wasn't an atherlife. The idea that people are against murder on the grounds that a benevolent God would cast them into a lake of eternal fire a punishment doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense in the logically internally consistent way a good argument should but also when someone close to oneself dies one is deeply affected by the loss unless one actually believes in an afterlife. If this person does believe in an afterlife then once again, I feel scared that they do not value life as strongly as I do because feeling deeply affected by a loved ones passing is a natural, rational emotion and for me as an atheist, it is the foundation of a strong moral sensibility.
Once I realised with full consciousness how fleeting, short and fragile life is that is when I feel that I ceased to be a moral entity based primarily on obeying a code of rules but became a person from whom justice truly lives in the heart. To hate murder, to hate war, to hate people who damage the enjoyment of other people's lives pointlessly.
And yes, I do hate, I hate those who take life or spend other peoples life as though they were currency. These people are verily the enemy of life itself.
For me, this is where secular morality has its foundation. Consider that an individual fork, although useful, is not important simply because it is easily replaced. However, a human being is not like a fork and cannot be replaced. This is where I draw the sanctity of life from. When I think about my friends, family, loved ones and even those people whom I do not like... then I imagine the gravity of death means I find myself struggling to express the full horror that is death. Simply because there is not afterlife, there is no resurrection. Once dead a person is always dead and their spirit lost forever and irreplacable. Their beauty, physically and spiritually, lost to us forever. Their love, care, help, kindness and company never to be felt again. The places they made come alive will also died without them... their prized possessions will become knick-knacks and junk... their deeper meaning also lost to the living.
For this reason there is no crime worse than murder, and the reason for this conclusion is simply because there is no afterlife. If there was an afterlike, then yes, so what if you kill someone? They'll be alive somewhere else or they'll simply reincarnate. As an atheist I often feel uncomfortable with people who believe in an afterlife because I am scared that they don't value human life as preciously as I do.
I sometimes sit next to war memorials and weep as I read the names of the people who gave their lives for their country and communities - wittingly and unwittingly. As an atheist I find their heroism truly inspiring because I don't have nearly that much courage. Sometimes I think to myself, "Did they only offer their lives like that because they sincerely believed in heaven? Or did they on some level know that they were going to die and that would be the end of it and therefore their love and sacrifice was so noble it rightly makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end in awe?"
Honestly, I suspect most people know on some level that death really is final. It doesn't make sense why we would be against murder and war if the great mass of people didn't realise there wasn't an atherlife. The idea that people are against murder on the grounds that a benevolent God would cast them into a lake of eternal fire a punishment doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense in the logically internally consistent way a good argument should but also when someone close to oneself dies one is deeply affected by the loss unless one actually believes in an afterlife. If this person does believe in an afterlife then once again, I feel scared that they do not value life as strongly as I do because feeling deeply affected by a loved ones passing is a natural, rational emotion and for me as an atheist, it is the foundation of a strong moral sensibility.
Once I realised with full consciousness how fleeting, short and fragile life is that is when I feel that I ceased to be a moral entity based primarily on obeying a code of rules but became a person from whom justice truly lives in the heart. To hate murder, to hate war, to hate people who damage the enjoyment of other people's lives pointlessly.
And yes, I do hate, I hate those who take life or spend other peoples life as though they were currency. These people are verily the enemy of life itself.
11 December, 2009
Secular Sprituality
Since my adventures at the Parliament of the World's Religions I've actually developed a narcissitic fascination in my own spirituality: atheism. In my last meeting with Rabbi Irwin Kula he told me that one Isreali Rabbi had postulated that atheism was the purest form of spirituality because it sort to strip away all dogma and idolatry to reach the true essence of spiritualism.
While I agree that that's what I seek to do... I nonetheless believe that does not accurately describe every atheist I know. Although I suspect many strong atheists wouldn't disagree either.
During the interview with the Rabbi I realised what his telos was in life. He was an expert on human experience and empathy. This allows him to be charismatic, also he sees the purpose of his charismatic talent to inspire people to resist their insecurities and fears with courage and wisdom. A noble endeavour in my opinion because the death of baseless fears would end the destructive influence of reactionary and conservative elements on our political system, while for the individual allow positive personal development to occur because once they are free from feeling fear, they are free to feel different emotions.
So I too seek what Kula seeks, however, to date I've only been seeking it within myself. But since I believe in his cause I've decided in my own small way to share my insights, the sights of a secular spirituality. That is spirituality apart from religion.
Because we atheists have a deep and rich cultural life it would also be my pleasure to share this with the world to help other people learn and understand that we're not so different after all. One thing we all have in common is a need to defend ourselves against the deluge of uncertainty life pours down on us throughout our lives.
We atheists have the same worries and anxieties as every other human being, and while speaking on behalf of all other atheists is beyond my capabilities. I will speak for the atheists I do know and about how we deal with these uncertainities in life from the beginning to the end of our days.
While I agree that that's what I seek to do... I nonetheless believe that does not accurately describe every atheist I know. Although I suspect many strong atheists wouldn't disagree either.
During the interview with the Rabbi I realised what his telos was in life. He was an expert on human experience and empathy. This allows him to be charismatic, also he sees the purpose of his charismatic talent to inspire people to resist their insecurities and fears with courage and wisdom. A noble endeavour in my opinion because the death of baseless fears would end the destructive influence of reactionary and conservative elements on our political system, while for the individual allow positive personal development to occur because once they are free from feeling fear, they are free to feel different emotions.
So I too seek what Kula seeks, however, to date I've only been seeking it within myself. But since I believe in his cause I've decided in my own small way to share my insights, the sights of a secular spirituality. That is spirituality apart from religion.
Because we atheists have a deep and rich cultural life it would also be my pleasure to share this with the world to help other people learn and understand that we're not so different after all. One thing we all have in common is a need to defend ourselves against the deluge of uncertainty life pours down on us throughout our lives.
We atheists have the same worries and anxieties as every other human being, and while speaking on behalf of all other atheists is beyond my capabilities. I will speak for the atheists I do know and about how we deal with these uncertainities in life from the beginning to the end of our days.
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