My Sister's Church

(Warning! This post may change as I'm still thinking about a few aspects I don't think I developed properly in it)

One of my sisters goes to an interesting church. 'Interesting' simply means not one of the dozens of Catholic churches across the country I've been to. I must say that I like their format better than the Catholic model but overall I think Antioch (a Catholic youth group) has the best approach to communal whorship/gathering.

I must admit, after visiting my sister's church a couple of times in the last few weeks I did feel like going back again this week. Not because I'm in any danger of spontaneously discovering god. Certainly not for Pastor Garry's 'enlightened' opinions as to why we had the bushfires last year. But because watching them whorship was a far more emotional and moving experience than the typical Catholic herd. Although, I have seen communal forms of whorship so boring the only thing 'moving' communally about those services was perhaps the congregation's bowels from the endless cycling between sitting, kneeling and standing up, so maybe I'm not really qualified to judge.

Which has lead me to the very serious proposition of touring all of the different religious congregations in the area: orthodox, jewish, muslim, hindu, zoroastrian, protestant, buddhist etc... In fact I can already think of two friends who went with me to the Parliament of the World's Religions who are probably already anticipating exactly why I would want to do this and where this entry might be going.

Rabbi Irwin Kula is convinced that religion serves an important purpose in many people's lives. He also believes that the great number of non-religious people are having to give something up, as it were, when they leave the religious fold. I suspect that he and I are in agreement that it isn't the dogma of religions that they're missing either. Although the dogma serves to aid in the differentiation and establishment of battle lines between religions it isn't something non-religious people feel that they have 'given up' on. I believe that Irwin would probably emphasise personal wisdom or spiritual wisdom as being one of the main benefits of being involved intimately with religious tradition... but I would emphasise that behind every successful religion (and cult) is a powerful sense of community.

I urge you to re-read that last sentence. Community is the source of any religion's power. Community is also the powerhouse of society. Community is a tool and like every tool it can be used to help individuals florish and succeed but it can also be used to clamp down hard on individuals and fuel a horrendous war machine. It is important to consider that it isn't simply because of religions like islam that drive people to become terrorists but collective pressure from a community that feels under seige in the modern world that pushes individuals to go out and rage jihad against the west. Individuals generally struggle to act out against the wishes of the community even if they disagree with them. In fact extremists generally don't ever go it alone: they consolidate into communities first otherwise they wouldn't have the confidence to carry out the acts that they do. Heal the community and we effectively poison such terrorism... conversely we might also be establishing a system of control so rigid that no individual can think for themselves.

A challenge for the 21st century will be to create large cohesive secular international communities that encourage freedom, creativity and innovation but at the same time don't turn into mobs of angry, ignorant people afraid of change and differences. They must also be resistant to takeover from other hostile/disruptive cultures otherwise they will perish after a few generations.

These are altogther fine words and aspirations but building a new culture that encompasses all of humanity, promotes human rights, scientific progress, world peace, eudaimonia on a large scale, yet be sparring on dogma and resilient against totalitarian cultures is no small feat! It is to my mind entirely possible to achieve but the one million and one steps needed to reach it means it is a project that will require many prophets/visionaries/champions over many generations in many different countries to develop into a stable and practical form.

One of the things I learned from my sister's church is that the younger generation actually wanted to be there. They were involved, passionate and committed. Considering only 8% of the population in Australia reputedly go to church once a week my sister's church have already achieved sometime significant. Like Hilary Clinton, I'm a big believer that it takes a whole village to raise a child and that even the best parents in the world couldn't raise a child to their full potential on their own. So seeing a community of young people aged 10-25 gathering in a community socialising, going to movies, playing soccer, participating on working bees and countless other activities was quite impressive. Although I did notice that the 25-45 demographic wasn't very well represented. Maybe it was just the day I was there or maybe they have a high attrition rate over the age of 25?

It is all very easy to organise sporting groups, movie nights, camps and other groups but they tend to be very focussed squarely on the activity at hand. While focus is important what would count as a truly successful community for me would be more than just shared common interests but genuine affection, respect and desire to be with the people there not simply because of the common interest.

What is needed to link all of these things is revelation. I'm not sure if I am capable of thinking up the kind of revelation needed but I am convinced that the human capacity for affection (love) has a key part to play.

Affection is important. Love, it seems, is a scarce commodity in our world. You have to love some people more than others and in doing so you have to divide your love and apparently when love is divided it ceases to be as special. For example, we consider it unusual for a person to have more than one best friend or more than one romantic partner. We might say that this because one can only give one other person the time and commitment that is required to make them feel special. But if this is the case then the love a parent has for their first child will diminish with each additional child. The first child gets all of their parents love so total love (TL) = 1/child. Then a second child comes along so the TL must now be divided accordingly, TL = 0.5/child. Then a third and forth child: TL = 0.33/child and TL = 0.25/child respectively and so on. I think you have to admit this arithmetic doesn't quite describe love as we know it. So why only have one best friend? Why not have several and love them all equally? As for loving one adult romantically totally to the exclusion of all others one wonders why an adult needs more care and attention than a child?

I'm not even necessarily promoting polyamory with that statement, just pointing out that defining love as a finite source is rather absurd. There really is no limit to the number of people we can love. I for one argue that the more open a person is to loving other people the more open that person is to new experiences, ideas and approaches to problems (because other people are new experiences, ideas and problems). Such a worldy and eclectic person tends to also be a peaceful and calm person. Simply because they are more accepting of the messiness and chaos that is other people and the world. I'm not saying I'm not chaotic either, I challenge people constantly by pushing them out of their comfort zones. When people learn to love another person, they learn to expand their world because everyone is different to us so learning to love others means learning to accept those differences in them... just as we had to learn to accept ourselves (assuming one has learned to accept oneself).

I'm an atheist and I will put this out there as simply as it is: pushing oneself to love more is a good thing. For yourself, your family, your friends, your community, your country and for your planet. It is hardly going to solve all of the world's problems by itself. But if we're going to move from followers of dogma to individuals guided by creativity and rationality we need to stop competing with other people to fit a mold and start competing with ourselves to grow as wise, strong and capable as we can be. How can we keep pushing ourselves, from within, onto bigger and greater challenges? By expanding our love. I believe that quite literally the more things we love, the more we can be.

In a sense, our minds need to eat. As appetite is to food, love is to people. For a healthy growing mind we need plenty of experiences and relationships to feed it. A good love, like a good appetite, helps us to eat everything we need to grow strong and healthy.

Of course, once we have a good appetite for experiences and relationships, we need to start thinking about the kind of experiences and relationships we allow our minds to consume, because our minds are what they eat. Another point is that sometimes we just need to have a strong stomach to digest the tough experiences and relationships we can't avoid. For those we need to learn coping mechanisms. All of these things can be best shared and transmitted through a community because a community is a rich source of affection, experiences, relationships and wisdom.

We have so many great reasons to build these great communities now that all that is left is a revelation that can be shared to bring people together from across the world to start building them. Of course previous revelations have been "I am the lord thy god, thou shalt have no other gods before me", "I am the son of god who has risen from the dead and he who believes in me shall not die", "reincarnation and kharma are the basis of justice and order in the universe", etc... But to be frank, these are hardly revelations that are going to stand the test of time or intense scrutiny. Nor are they going to promote world peace or cultural diversity.

Once upon a time the idea that a Pharoah could turn into a god if people whorshipped him was a revelation sufficient to create a vast unified community... but such an idea is now laughable. No, we need a revelation that is altruistic, enlightened, adaptable, expandable and resilent. Or maybe just better than what we have so far and when the next generation grow too wise for it they can simply replace it and step boldy forward once more.

I feel I should end this entry now lest I stay up all night. But the point I am most anxious to get across tonight is this:

One doesn't need to believe in god or supernatural phenomenon to realise that love has enormous potential to produce positive results in the growth an individual, a relationship and a community. Love probably simply evolved through natural selection precisely because it was advantageous in this way. Learning to master this emotion would be a great virtue for anyone to possess. Essentially what we need are love 'technologies' (literally love 'philosophies') for the 21st century.

Love and Submission

Over the last few weeks I've had no shortage of topics I want to write about. I've written several drafts of entries I have wanted to explore and not published them because while I'm full of ideas I'm not particularly emotionally stable these days. I find that when I try to write while not under the influence of emotion it is painful to write and disjointed in structure. When I'm writing under the influence of intense emotions it is altogether impossible for me not to sound manic.

While I hardly expect that I'm going to find inner balance and peace anytime soon considering the vast number of traumatic and high impact events in my life recently. Nonetheless, it is painful to be multi-tasking so many intense emotions for prolonged periods and very difficult for me to work efficiently. So, I'm trying to bring acceptance and peace to the turmoil within me. In the process I'm also appreciating that all my previous models of emotionality are far too simplistic to adequately describe the conflicts and changes going on inside of me. Models based on 2 or 3 primary emotions are really just preposterous to me now. I actually think only a thinking-type person with very little self-knowledge could put forward such a ridiculous idea.

In my quest to expand my model of emotionality I've found the following:



Wow.

The eight colours each represent a primary emotion. The intensity of which increases the darker it gets. The emotions written in between represent complex emotions made by combining the elements of the two neighbours. For more about the person who invented this wheel of emotion click here.

Intuitively I know there is something wrong with this model immediately: If we have 8 primary emotions then we shouldn't be limited to 8 composite emotions. While I accept that opposite emotions can't be combined easily there is no logical reason why composites can't be made across 90 and 135 degree arcs. Reducing it to 4 primary emotional bi-poles would eliminate such issues... but for all I know such complex combinations are allowed in the 8 primary system. But for now let's move aside from the flaws in this system.

What strikes me is the location of love on this wheel: between joy and trust. I've found myself many many times in trusting and accepting relationships that I just wouldn't call love. I trust them with my physical and material safety and they felt the same with me. But I never trusted them with my emotional safety and I have friends who would be far more intimate with me if they could bring themselves to trust me with their emotional safety.

My problem with my previous relationship was mostly because while I was seeking to encourage serenity within the other person, the other person was seeking to encourage fear in me. Which apparently would lead to my submission to them if successful. Certainly, I felt that their intention was to make me submit to them and their wishes and my problem was always being able to feel sufficiently good about myself to break free of them... otherwise I really did feel like I should submit to them. The thing is I haven't just experienced this dynamic, I've watched it in other people's relationships. One or either of the people in the relationship try to make the other person feel insecure about the other person's care and affection for them. Certainly, it feels more comfortable to feel above someone than below them.

It is probably much easier to get someone to submit than to combine ones psychological assets to work towards creating harmonary and peace with each other. It does require taking off ones psychological armour to another person and trust that they won't hurt you. In my mind the idea of getting someone to submit in a relationship sounds a lot like, "find their biggest fear, fluster them with it and fuck them," because it is easier to induce fear in a person than serenity and really, fear can be as reliable as serenity when it comes to tying a person to you. Also, I don't think this happens only in romantic relationships. I've been reading up on a few tyrants recently, they honestly see themselves as loving people and the people below them genuinely feel unworthy of their tyrant's love. Yet the flow of kindness and compassion in their relationship is assymetrical.

Of course, I for one belive that we should be brave in our search for love. We should bolster up the confidence and happiness of those we love even though we're giving them strength they could use to leave us with. I know abandonement hurts, but if you lift up a person and they desert you for it then it is a good thing that they have left your life because they don't deserve to have someone as wonderful as yourself. Of course you can get angry with them, hate them even for abandoning you, but I have to wonder, if we just accept that sometimes people will desert us for our effort just as department stores accept that a certain proportion of their stock will get stolen, then can we not avoid a corrosive recourse into bitterness? I hope you'll get me when I say what I am proposing is simultaneously optimistic and cynical. Optimistic in the endeavour to find true love but cynical in the acceptance that some people just don't want to love us back.

What impresses me about this model is that the creator, Robert Plutchik, wanted to prove that there was a survival advantage in having emotions and that all animals use emotions as part of their basic information processing schema. I wonder if he knew that we're now trying to give computers emotions because it is considered by some to be the missing ingredient in artificial intelligence?

What concerns me, as I've probably said it a million times, is the number of people in positions of authority in the world who don't appreciate the role and importance of emotions. They push them aside and dismiss them as though they are some form of weakness. A person without emotions is simply not alive and as autonomous as a robot. While conversely they would point out that people who are over emotional are inefficient and irrational. However, the fact that they've said 'over' instead of emotional gives away that they recognise the importance of emotions on some level and referring to people who struggle to balance and harmonise their emotions isn't fair considering the millions of people who successfully balance and harmonise their emotions every day.

What we need is to learn to be literate in an emotional and relationship-wise sense and appreciate the value of empathy. One can always reach a win-win solution with a person who has adequate empathy but you will never reach a win-win solution with someone who cares more for themselves than others. Conversely, a person who cares more for others than themselves will always be getting the rough end of the deal.

The Myth of Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is a term used by almost everyone these days. I often find myself talking to people about this concept but very quickly realise that neither the person that I'm talking to nor myself have any idea what precisely we mean by this. So do we mean that a person thinks highly about themselves because they do? Or do we mean that everyone has a scale somewhere in their mind where they measure their self worth at any given time based on what other people think about them? Or something else entirely?

Over the years I've started to build up a mental list of the properties that self-esteem has:

1. It distorts reality
2. It varies from day to day, place to place
3. Too little is very painful
4. Too little makes people act in desperate and self-destructive ways
5. Too much makes a person very difficult to deal with
6. Despite being called 'self'-esteem most people don't give it to themselves.
7. The qualities that a person has that boost their self-esteem are quite subjective.

First I want to talk about where people get self-esteem.

Some people just seem to be content and happy with themselves and their lot. Others are disappointed and with their bodies, lives and lot in life. There are lots of theories as to why self-esteem varies so much across the population. Most of them relate to how our parents raised us, did they encourage and praise us as children or were they jealous and over critical? Others suggest that it is a genetically determined trait and that naturally some people think they are awesome and others think that they are trash.

I'm not completely satisfied with either of these viewpoints because self-esteem can vary a from day to day and sometimes minute to minute. Therefore there is definitely some plasticisty in self-esteem. When I'm poor I don't feel very attractive, but give me a wad of cash and I instantly feel sexier. Also, when my friends hug me and tell me how much they appreciate me I feel much happier about myself. Also, when people don't smile at me or respond when I say 'good morning' to them I often feel low for the rest of the day.

For an interesting article about how happiness spreads click here.

So it would appear we get a good portion of our self-esteem from other people. This is a very important point... having friends and family who reinforce a positive self-image is something one can control to a degree. As always with these things one would want friends to reciprocate any pro-esteem building activities in as close to equal measures as possible. But at the end of that day this is the reason why 'no man is an island' <-- a great deal of our happiness depends on positive communications and experience with other people.

Then there's the fact that ones perception of the world is altered dramatically depending on how much self-esteem they have. People with low self-esteem under estimate their value, over estimate the importance of other people, deny themselves things other people would freely take and often develop a cynical and bleak view on relationships. Whereas people with high self-esteem will over estimate their importance, dismiss other people as being less valuable and feel entitled to give themselves more breaks and perks thn other people. They will also think life is pretty damn good to them except for all of the other useless people getting in their way, perhaps.

I find changes in my self-esteem level disconcerting because I can see how they alter my spending patterns and decisions in relationships. Again, I'm a bit of a control freak and desire consistently in what I do so changes in self-esteem make me feel doubtful about my intellectual and creative abilities. Although really, unless the change is dramatic it doesn't appear noticeable to most people and I really do enjoy the odd spending spree!

When one has very low self-esteem one is left virtually defenceless and continuously embattled in relationships... it seems like a cruel trick because just having higher self-esteem can rescue struggling relationships but low self-esteem seems to destroy them totally even if the initial problems weren't that serious.

So surely it is best to have high self-esteem rather than low self-esteem? Well... I think the dangers of suicide and emotional trauma are lower for people with high self-esteem but at the same time everyone has worked for a boss whose high self-esteem does nothing back create frustration and inefficiently in the work place. Some form of moderation for self-esteem is needed. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest we just ditch this whole concept of self-esteem because it just isn't helpful: it is unclear what it means and actually serves to create more confusion about where real problems lie.

The more I think about it the problems of self-esteem are all just problems of relating to people. Fix your relationships with people and the esteem problems will disappear. The key to having good relationships is having them rooted in honesty, empathy and mutual reciprocation of needs. These elements all help to curb delusion and get things into perspective.

To illustrate what I mean by the lack of perspective and the delusions of self-esteem let's look at the things that boost people's self-esteem.

Being physically attractive
Being appreciated for kindness
Being listened to / respected
Being accepted as a valuable part of a community
Being talented in a rare or unique way

Physically attractive people feel good about themselves because everyone around them treats them with special attention and admiration. Not because they deserve it but because they might have won a genetic lottery. I'm unconvinced by this genetically superior argument as a great number of important people in history were physically ugly, infertile or homosexual and not beautiful heterosexual models of physical perfection. Rabbits demonstrate to us that want breeds quickly and efficiently isn't necessarily useful or desireable to civilisation. If you want to know more about how physically attractive people are really a burden on society read this article carefully.

So really, what all of these things point too is that by treating everyone with kindness, respect and dignity we can eliminate all self-esteem problems. By treating some people with special reverence simply because they are higher up the heirarchy or they look like great sex warmed up then you're unwittingly creating/perpetuating the very social order that grinds down on everyone. While investing time into developing a useful skill or talent is a sure way to boost your happiness.

I'm an atheist and I've just argued through reason that kindness, respect, understanding and self-discipline are universally good ideals to strive for. I did this without appealing to a supernatural entity. What's more, my explanation why it is so can be tested by experiment and observation. Also that maybe we should seriously consider deleting the concept of 'self-esteem' from our lexicons because it moves the focus away from what we can do to what we are. We can't change what we are, but we can change what we do.

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).