The Choice is Yours
Poetry and Polemics: The Choice Debate
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
I've been wondering if I should post our discussion about religion, love, etc. I don't mind doing it, but I won't post your stuff if you think it's too personal. I personally don't care who sees what my religious beliefs are as long as they aren't trying to force THEIRS down my throat (which I don't think you do, BTW, which is why we can even HAVE these discussions).
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Put it all out there, works for me...attribute it to Bula Kenaba from Nashua NH! Then it sounds kind of Islamic. (Note: Bula Kenaba was an old childhood name we used as part of a game when we were growing up.)
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
Come on.....I like you being you! And you don't want to be a victim of racial profiling, to boot.
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Well it also might lead people to think that maybe there are deep thinking Arabs out there... can't have that, can we??
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:Okey dokey! That being said......here we go!
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Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Regarding the previous Supertramp song, "Logical," I would think being clinical, intellectual, and cynical are the bigger problems :-)
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
Well, intellectual is fine if you don't overdo it, don't you think???
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Yup...to the extent that it's true intellectualism, rather than the reductionist kind...
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
Wikipedia: Reductionism in philosophy is the theory that asserts that the nature of complex things can always be reduced to (explained by) simpler or more fundamental things.
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Note that I didn't say reductionism negates religion by its very nature. However, it cannot be used to its fullest potential in that arena. It might be useful to determine for example, that thunderstorms are caused by this thing called weather rather than a vengeful God. But it can't figure out why we're here. Religion and philosophy can do that. Reductionism also cannot tell us about non-utilitarian joy - the running through the woods example we used.As far as no map being the ultimate form of reductionism...that stretches the metaphor, as reductionism IS the map, at least the way I meant it. Like just try to reduce the explanation of why we get a rush walking through the woods!
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
But complex things CAN always be reduced to more fundamental things! Because what makes things complex is that they are made up of multiple simple things. Look at government. There is no good reason that Congress can't make a decision except for the SIMPLE fact that they are bickering and headstrong and refuse to get along.
We get a rush when we walk through the woods because we are alive and thus connected to other living things. We are "part and parcel with God." It's simple. What's so bad about that??
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Nothing wrong if it's used to analyze things like government structures or things that can be examined via the science and the scientific method! In fact, it's great! But it's the "always" part that runs into problem, because "what lies on the road isn't just what you see on the map". Reductionism cannot be used (or can only be used to a limited extent) to develop philosophies or explain spiritual realities like the nature and purpose of the cosmos. A typical reductionist based philosophy wouldn't use the God argument at all for anything, because God cannot be broken down into other causes. God is the primary and original cause, the ultimate Source, the moving force that always IS, without which nothing else could be. When the reductionist breaks down something to it's most simple, atomic form, I wonder what answer they come up with when they asked "what caused that?"
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
I am the last person to believe that what's on the road is what's on the map. In fact, I could argue that "there is no map," which would be the ultimate reductionism, yes? I've reduced it into NOTHING, which makes up all of us, if you really want to think about it. The whole concept of matter is something we've come to believe because we believe we are, indeed, here. "Phenomena certainly present themselves to us as objects of consciousness; they are open to investigation and analysis as such" (source: www.ucalgary.ca/~eslinger/pub/reduc.html). If you take away that assumption, then you have reduced everything to nothing, or you have at least reduced it to the source, which you can argue is God, if you so desire.
Okay, and as to your rock in the road, I would say that if the map leads you to the rock, or if the map is so convoluted that it leads you nowhere, then the map is NOT an artifact of reductionism. The map IS the rock! Reduce the map to simpler terms and you have understanding. It's like what we do when we teach writing. Get students to write a simple outline, and they come out with a more organized, simple essay. See how that works?
If we are ALL part and parcel of God, you can love others in all kinds of ways because when you love someone else, you love yourself and God all at once. It's not far off from the Christian concept at all...it's kind of Buddhism with Christianity and some tree hugging merged with emerging 19th ideals. You see, if nature is God and We are God and God is God, then we are all connected, and we are all connected to the Earth and the Cosmos. And since love helps and hate hurts, seems to me what you do to yourself and to others spreads throughout the whole, so you better be careful how you treat people and yourself. "Love others as you do yourself" and to boot....well, see http://www.egogahan.com/Spiritual%20Issues/GoldenRule.htm for some inter-faith interpretations of the Golden Rule.
We are all one....and the sooner we recognize that, the better off we will be.
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
Ok, I'm looking forward to reading the link later, since at least in theory, I'm at work. And not get get into semantics, but lets look at it this way. My foot is part of me. I can care for it. I can protect it. I can love it because it's part of my body and I rely on it. But it'll always be a foot. I can't coach it into an arm, I can't comfort it, I can't encourage it, I can't have a relationship where both the foot and I engage in any type of mutually consenting bond (bizarre fetishes aside) because I am the human being and it is my limb, and that's all it will ever be.
Now lets look at God. If God really loves me, and I'm "part" of God, then, using the foot analogy...you see where I'm going with this. Logically, you can't have a love relationship with something as an equal (and I mean equal in the sense of both having free will) if the thing being loved has no choice about being in the relationship. So God cannot have a love relationship with me if I'm "part" of him. My personality, my being, my choices would not be free. So it isn't love in the truest sense of the word. Freedom of will, and the possessions of a distinct and separate will, is the only thing that allows me to choose to love someone, whether it's my wife or God. If either one of these ingredients are missing, then it's not fully love.
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
Now...."part and parcel" means "one in the same." And why are we one in the same? Because WE are divine. WE and God are the same thing....we just fail to recognize it. Once we recognize it, we start to become our best selves because we SHOULD be our best selves. And we DO have free will. We have chosen to evolve in the physical and spiritual worlds.
This kind of gets into a religious experience I had on a bridge in Pepperell where I saw and understood that we are here because we have sent ourselves here (which is not strict Transcendentalism, BTW). We have erased most of what we knew before we came here because if we did not, we would not learn what we were supposed to learn. WE are GOD, positive creative forces, and when we die, we go back to becoming one with ourselves. But if we don't learn, we suffer from evil (negative energies), and we will come back. So we have duel reasons for needing to make this a better place....one, because to fulfill our mission and to evolve, we must get in touch with that "oneness" and that means loving, caring, and making things better. Two, we most likely will not evolve during one lifetime, so if we make things worse, we are condemning ourselves to come back to a place that WE have made more miserable than before we came.
Love is acknowledging and nurturing our oneness, contributing to our evolution here and in the spiritual realm. This is what makes the world work and function. Note that dysfunction, fragmentation, division does NOT work in the physical world. It doesn't work in the spiritual sense, either. Love isn't some unequal relationship. When we truly love, we make things whole.
Joseph Mercurio Writes:
I really like that summary from the link. It shows the one commonality that all true religions share: belief in love for one's fellow human person just because each person has a dignity with deserves (demands?) it.
But nothing but religion has this concept of charity or agape or fraternal love, and this common link points to the reality that all true religions have the same Origin....contain the same echoes of where we came from in some long ago lost history...
But do we really have a choice in whether we evolve or not? Certainly not in the physical world. It just happens. And certainly not everyone has chosen to evolve spiritually. There are millions out there who are animalistic, beastly, murderous, self seeking, power hungry and selfish. There are those streaks, however faint they may be, in all of us.
But I think we both agree that the elixir, the healer, of these problems is love - real, perfect, self-emptying, utter, and boundless love. True love goes out from the lover. It's given by the lover and empties the lover so that the lover can be filled. It's a dying to our selves that ironically is the only thing that brings life into our so often tired souls. True love realizes that we are loved and ultimately, that we have God's life in us. That truly is the source of our dignity.
But in nature, everything comes from something (here's where I like reductionism). I came from my parents who came from their parents who way back came from either some ape thing or some dude named Adam, take your pick. The water molecules that sustain me came from elements that came from the sun, etc. So if everything in nature comes from something, then nature itself must come from something, some kind of super-nature. That super-nature can be present in the nature that sprung from it. That super-nature can pervade every fragment, space, and essence of the nature that sprang from it such that all of creation reflects and exudes the essence of its maker. But that super-nature is still its own unique entity. Logically, it has to maintain its uniqueness or it ceases to be.
When a human body dies and is buried, it becomes "one" with the earth. That is to say, eventually the body breaks down and enriches the soil with its physical nutrients which perhaps in time become part of the bodies of other living things. At that point, however, there is no more human body. It ceases to be. Can that happen to God?
Can a potter become one with his clay pot? How about an artist with her painting? The art might be so profound as to reflect the very soul of the artist. Yet the artist remains the artist. And a book may reveal more about an author than the best picture or description. But the author remains the author. And creation is beyond beautiful, especially as expressed in the ultimate creation - human life. God's life fills us and echoes of it are to be found even in the most stark desert, the smallest blade of grass, or the tiniest grains of sand. But the creator remains the creator......
Humanism is an exception in the list because the motivation there may be self interest, albeit enlightened: I won't beat you up so you won't beat me up, and we'll both be better off as a result. In the military the bond is at least partially derived from the need to survive. Only religion espouses love of a fellow human just because it's the right thing to do.
My ideas of love come from Jesus. No, I don't think we all literally need to physically die to really love. And I also don't mean, by self-emptying and related descriptions, that we don't need love to come back to us. Love going out and love coming back are 2 sides of the same coin....the wheat must die so the seed grows in the earth, but the seed needs nurtering from the earth that receives it. Or to put it another way, the emptiness left in the dying frees up the space in us to receive love in return.
However, love says we do need to "die" in some less obvious ways....
Simple things, like having a conversation with my spouse when she needs to talk, even if I were planning to dive into some damn philosphy book. Spending time with the kids when I'd rather lump out by the TV. Stuff like that....and....(here's where it gets dicey for all of us) ....doing it with grace and genuineness. I'm not saying I succeed even most of the time here. But I have found through experience, that when I really love - I take the risk that what I'm doing may not be appreciated (or at least fully appreciated), and do the thing for love, there's a sense of fulfillment in that. Switch gears and get into the tit-for-tat thing with my spouse, and even if the end result is the same, there's tends to be a certain emptiness and disillusionment in the outcome....
More later after I've digested the rest. One parting thought, though: just as the map isn't the road, love isn't what's in the dictionary, either. It's not just a feeling (in fact, sometimes it's not a feeling at all). Love is a living, breathing reality that is lived, or not lived. To love is ultimately to decide. And this decision cuts like a knife and is at the same time ecstasy. And it is love that is the "stuff" that God is made out of, the stuff out of which all of creation flows. And even when creation does not love back, the Creator still loves.
Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt Writes:
I am out of time today, so my COMMENTS ARE IN CAPS.
I really like that summary. It shows the one commonality that all true religions share: belief in love for one's fellow human person just because each person has a dignity with deserves (demands?) it. HUMANISM ISN'T A RELIGION.
But nothing but religion has this concept of charity or agape or fraternal love, and this common link points to the reality that all true religions have the same Origin....contain the same echoes of where we came from in some long ago lost history... NO....THERE ARE LOTS OF BELIEFS THAT ENDORSE FRATERNAL LOVE. DAMN...LOOK AT THE MILITARY! WHAT IS ALL THAT "LOYALTY" STUFF ABOUT IF NOT LOVE? YOUR BROTHER IS YOUR BROTHER NO MATTER WHAT....ISN'T THAT WHAT THEY TEACH IN THE MARINES? YOU'RE THE FEW AND THE PROUD, BUT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO STICK TOGETHER UNDER LOVE AND LOYALTY TO COUNTRY. YOU TAKE ORDERS BASED ON TRUST THAT THE PERSON GIVING THE ORDERS HAS YOUR IDEALS IN MIND. ACTUALLY, IT'S INTERESTING BECAUSE AS HUMANS, WE NATURALLY ARE SOCIAL CREATURES, SO WHEN OUR SOCIETY DOESN'T WORK OR OUR INSTITUTIONS DON'T WORK, WE SUFFER OR DIE. SO THE CONCEPT IS BACKED BY BIOLOGY.
But do we really have a choice in whether we evolve or not? YES WE DO. WE CAN IGNORE THE EXISTENCE OF OUR HIGHER SELVES---THAT IS OUR CHOICE. Certainly not in the physical world. It just happens. SURE, IF YOU ARE TALKING PURE EVOLUTION IN THE PHYSICAL, DARWINIAN SENSE. And certainly not everyone has chosen to evolve spiritually. There are millions out there who are animalistic, beastly, murderous, self seeking, power hungry and selfish. There are those streaks, however faint they may be, in all of us. OF COURSE...IF WE DIDN'T HAVE THESE THINGS, THERE WOULD BE NOTHING TO EVOLVE FROM. I SAID WE ARE GOD, AND GOD IS US AND WE ARE ALL NATURE....BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN WE HAVE REACHED OUR ULTIMATE, EVOLVED FORM YET. WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT FORM MIGHT BE...IT MIGHT MEAN WE DON'T HAVE TO BE PHYSICAL AT ALL AT SOME POINT, BUT IT MIGHT MEAN WE CAN ACTUALLY HAVE THE CAPACITY TO CREATE 'HEAVEN ON EARTH' SO TO SPEAK.
But I think we both agree that the elixir, the healer, of these problems is love - real, perfect, self-emptying IT'S NOT SELF-EMPTYING....IT'S SELF FULFILLING IF YOU LOOK AT IT FROM THE POINT OF BEING WHOLE., utter, and boundless love. True love goes out from the lover. NO....TRUE, REAL, HEALTHY LOVE NEVER JUST GOES OUT. IT'S NOT A ONE-WAY FLOW. WHEN IT GOES OUT, IT'S ALSO GOING BACK IN BECAUSE TO LOVE GIVES THE PERSON WHO LOVES SOMETHING BACK EVEN IF THAT LOVE IS NOT RETURNED EXTERNALLY. It's given by the lover and empties the lover so that the lover can be filled. NO, MAN, THAT'S JUST WRONG. WE DON'T NEED TO EMPTY OURSELVES. SEE, THAT'S WHY PEOPLE THINK LOVE IS SO HARD. YOU THINK YOU HAVE TO GIVE SOMETHING OUT, BE SELFLESS TO LOVE. YOU DON'T. IN FACT, YOU NEED TO BE SELFISH. YOU HAVE TO WANT IN ORDER TO LOVE. It's a dying to our selves that ironically is the only thing that brings life into our so often tired souls. LOVE DOES BRING LIFE INTO OUR TIRED SELVES, BUT WE DON'T HAVE TO KILL OURSELVES TO DO IT. JESUS MIGHT HAVE DIED, BUT THAT WAS JUST A SYMPTOM OF THE LOVE AND THE EXTERNAL, ANTI-EVOLUTIONARY FORCES AT WORK. True love realizes that we are loved and ultimately, that we have God's life in us. WE HAVE GOD'S LOVE IN US BECAUSE WE ARE GOD. AND GOD IS US. AND THE EARTH AND NATURE ARE US AS WELL. WE ARE ALL THE TRINITY. That truly is the source of our dignity. BECAUSE WE ARE GOD, WE NATURALLY HAVE DIGNITY.
But in nature, everything comes from something (here's where I like reductionism). YES...NATURE COMES FROM A SOURCE, A SOURCE OF LIFE WHICH IS US....WE ARE JUST ONE MANIFESTATION OF GOD. ANIMALS ARE ANOTHER. BUT WE ARE ALL OF THE SAME ENERGY. WE ARE EQUAL, JUST IN SEPARATE FORMS. I came from my parents who came from their parents who way back came from either some ape thing or some dude named Adam, take your pick. The water molecules that sustain me came from elements that came from the sun, etc. So if everything in nature comes from something, then nature itself must come from something, some kind of super-nature. That super-nature can be present in the nature that sprung from it. That super-nature can pervade every fragment, space, and essence of the nature that sprang from it such that all of creation reflects and exudes the essence of its maker. But that super-nature is still its own unique entity. I DISAGREE. THE SUPER-NATURE IS US. WE JUST DON'T RECOGNIZE IT YET. AND WE HAVEN'T EVOLVED TO WHERE WE KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH IT IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD. AND UNTIL WE REALLY DO RECOGNIZE IT, WE WILL CONTINUE TO BE UNDER-EVOLVED AS HUMANS....IN THE PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL SENSE. Logically, it has to maintain its uniqueness or it ceases to be. NO...LOGICALLY, BECAUSE IT IS ALL CONNECTED, IT CONTINUES. THAT'S WHY THERE IS NO BEGINNING AND END TO ETERNITY.
When a human body dies and is buried, it becomes "one" with the earth. That is to say, eventually the body breaks down and enriches the soil with its physical nutrients which perhaps in time become part of the bodies of other living things. At that point, however, there is no more human body. It ceases to be. IT CEASES TO BE HUMAN. IT IS NOT PART OF THE EARTH MANIFESTATION. IT'S JUST A DIFFERENT FORM. Can that happen to God? SURE...BECAUSE WE AND THE EARTH ARE GOD. WHEN YOU SEE GOD AS SEPARATE FROM YOURSELF, YOU KEEP YOURSELF FROM EVOLVING SPIRITUALLY. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF I BECOME HORSE DUNG AFTER I DIE....I HAVEN'T DIED. I MERELY CHANGED. MY SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS LIVE ON, AND I COME BACK TO CONTINUE MY EVOLUTION (BECAUSE I AM QUITE SURE I AM NOT DONE).
Can a potter become one with his clay pot? IT'S NOT THE SAME. ART IS ONE PART OF AN EXPRESSION OF AN ARTIST. WE ARE NOT GOD'S ART. WE ARE THE ARTISTS. SO WHAT WE DO IS NOT US...IT'S PART OF OUR EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS. How about an artist with her painting? The art might be so profound as to reflect the very soul of the artist. Yet the artist remains the artist. And a book may reveal more about an author than the best picture or description. But the author remains the author. And creation is beyond beautiful, especially as expressed in the ultimate creation - human life. God's life fills us and echoes of it are to be found even in the most stark desert, the smallest blade of grass, or the tiniest grains of sand. But the creator remains the creator......
YOU NEED TO LOOK AT THE PRIMARY DEFINITION OF LOVE. NOTE THE "SENSE OF UNDERLYING ONENESS." YOU CAN HAVE THIS WITH ALL THINGS, ALL PEOPLE IF YOU RECOGNIZE THAT EVERYTHING IS ONE.
A deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person, such as that arising from kinship, recognition of attractive qualities, or a sense of underlying oneness. DICTIONARY.COM
TRUST ME...I USED TO THINK LOVE WAS ABOUT GIVING YOURSELF AWAY, SACRIFICING THE SELF, EMPTYING THE SELF TO BE FILLED.....I THOUGHT IT COULD SAVE ME FROM SOMEONE'S RAGE AND ANGER, AND I THOUGHT IT COULD SAVE THE PERSON WHO DOESN'T WANT TO ACKNOWLEDGE HIS DIVINITY AND CAPACITY. AND THAT'S WHAT GOT ME INTO SOME PRETTY ABUSIVE SITUATIONS. THAT'S NOT LOVE. THAT'S SACRIFICE. IN THAT SENSE, WHY NOT JUST THROW YOURSELF INTO THE VOLCANO AND GET IT OVER WITH????
LOVE ISN'T ABOUT EMPTYING THE SELF. IT'S ABOUT GROWING THE SELF THROUGH ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR OWN POTENTIAL AND DOING WHAT'S BEST TO EVOLVE. YOU SHARE IT WHEN YOU CAN. YOU SHARE IT BY BEING WHO YOU ARE. THERE ARE MANY WAYS TO LOVE, AND SOMETIMES, YOU DO IT BY AVOIDING CERTAIN TYPES OF PEOPLE OR BY FIGHTING FOR WHAT IS RIGHT. SOMEONE WHO ISN'T EVEN ACKNOWLEDGING HIS OWN PATH OR SPIRIT CANNOT ACKNOWLEDGE YOURS, AND HE'LL TRY TO KILL YOU....SPIRITUALLY, EMOTIONALLY, AND SOMETIMES, LITERALLY.
THIS IS WHAT STUDYING WORLD RELIGIONS, PHILOSOPHY, LITERATURE, MY OWN EXPERIENCES, AND THE WORLD AROUND ME HAS TAUGHT ME, AND IT'S HOW I CAME UP WITH MY OWN PHILOSOPHY. I KNOW IT SOUNDS WEIRD, BUT HEY...I'M NOT HERE TO ESTABLISH A RELIGION SO I DON'T MUCH CARE : )
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