David Teachout's Blog, page 25

The Darkness Within Light

Ever stare at a candle-flame, focus on the wavering and flickering quality of its nature? There comes a point when the flame is all you see, everything around you fades away into darkness and there’s a feeling of centeredness in which the attachment or association your thoughts have with the so-called external reality is reduced to a fraction of its normal energy-draining experience. There has been thrown around for decades ideas, often associated with the self-help movement and various forms of spirituality, in which positive thinking or positive appraisal gets thrust front and center in what is at times declared a war against negativity and the feeling of smallness or disempowerment. Often connected with the fight against cancer in which negativity lets the cancer win and even more simplistically with attracting monetary wealth, positive thinking has a long history of running up against the difficulties of life and positing that a smile and a chuckle will do what a dedication to work often won’t.



I am not removing the power of looking at life through the lens of a more positive framing, our experiences are shaped and the particulars of them focused on through the emotional lens applied. How many of us, having decided to force a smile and view things from a different perspective, find our anger and negativity waning and opportunities that were unseen suddenly becoming noticed? There is not so much a creation going on here as the opportunities were always there in potential, but until our minds changed to hold a space for them, they might as well have been non-existent. This sense of positive thinking is essentially the positive side of it, but like all good ideas the attempt to frame the whole of existence through only one lens gets us into trouble. What ends up happening in this myopic view is not so much a renewal of positive thinking but the erasure of all other kind of thought, all for the purpose of ensuring the continued forward-moving power of positivity. The exclusion of all else ignores the multiplicity of which life can and should be viewed. Anymore than a continued focus on depression and negativity and worthlessness closes a person off to the very real facets of life that are important, beautiful and ecstatic so a simplistic willful focus only on positivity can blind one to very real difficulties that are nipping at our heels and sometimes beating on our back. This is, what Ken Wilber notes, a refusal to see life as a system of interlocking nests within nests or contexts within contexts all the way down, in which one method of inquiry within one context is broadened to all, losing nuance and the acknowledgment of a differentiated reality.



So why the candle example? A flame is beautiful, giving light, giving warmth, associated with the crackling flames of a roaring fire and the tenderness of a romantic dinner. If focused on too long however, everything else disappears and becomes ignored eventually leading even this singular vision to delve an absence. A flame does not exist without fuel, without a context through and by which it exists and has being. To focus solely on the flame is to ignore the multi-faceted reality which gives it form and forget the thought and intent which brought it into existence. The flame that began as warmth and object of focus becomes a consuming and destructive fire. I remember learning to drive and getting my first car, a rather horrible vehicle that signified so much of the journey through adolescence. If I were to focus only on the vehicle itself I’d lose the context of its associated goodness, the laughter among friends, transporting nine people at a time all piled in, and the freedom of travel. If I focused solely on the associated good times I’d lose track of the terrible gas mileage and the way the brakes seized up and almost ran me off the road. There is no singular view that encapsulates the totality of the experience owning that vehicle and I do my life a disservice by focusing on one to the exclusion of the others. Good and bad here are less important, if even possible to be objectively determined, than the meaning and lessons learned from noting the whole of that time.



I want to posit a slightly different framing here, that sometimes the “dark” is actually truth under a false light. The desire within positive thinking is, I believe, reactionary, an offering to counter the supposed negative or mechanistic soul-denying view of a purely scientific/technological reality. While there is legitimacy in this framing of the scientific view of reality, it is itself a reactionary position against the ideological context that science grew out of. In a time where truth was dictated by religious fiat and those who questioned the divine nature of these declarations were killed, it is little wonder that science began and was fueled by an abject denial of the spiritual and sought to boil everything down to a flatland of mechanisms, or as Wilber says, “its.” This is not the world of science today however, as specialists recognize the interconnection of various disciplines and there is a willingness not blindly to accept the mystical but to account it a space of meaning. Science has always been constrained and found freedom within the principle of contextual-criticism, where one’s ideas are noted for their particular placement in the sea of understanding and critically analyzed for their ability to account for the information available to a greater or lesser degree than so far offered by others. Indeed, it is here in this “darkness” of critical uncertainty that truth is so often sought and found. Light being light is already illuminated and serves not to broaden our vision but to showcase where we have yet to look.



As a flame flickers we can notice the illumination even as we note the presence of a dark inner aspect of its existence. The exclusion of all else, such as is found in an over-reliance on intuition or the emotionally monumental quality of phenomenological experience, make the flames become only absence and therefore leads to the loss of the whole. Our perspective does indeed help shape our world but it is not the only act in town as even that perspective is given shape and nuance via variables of which we have no control over. We can and should burn with the fervor of constantly seeking truth, the universe is a life-giving spectrum of possibility becoming actuality, though a responsible traveler will do so with an eye towards the dark of an uncertainty asking for light.

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A Hierarchy Of Separation

If you’ve been living under a rock lately there may have been missed the announcement that the Pope, yes the Holy Roman Pontiff, is resigning his post as the vicar of Christ on Earth. Pope Benedict leaves amidst a great many scandals, from the not nearly reported on enough problem of hiding pedophiles from prosecution to the barely reported at all information that he was a member of the Hitler Youth and also presided personally over the relocation of priests accused of molesting children. This is not, however, an expose on the ethical practices of either the pontiff or the Catholic Church. Greater investigative minds than I have spent the requisite time to unearth information pertaining to these and other problems, not least of which was Christopher Hitchens, and large tomes have been written on the history of the Church and its association with so many historical evils. I am not giving a pass here so much as dealing with an issue that I think more pertinent to my own writing, that being the hierarchical nature of spirituality, a systematized feudalism of spirit at the heart of Catholicism and for that matter so much of modern thinking. The resignation that has shook the world leaders into abject self-serving protestations of the Pope’s magnificence usually reserved for a funeral announcement has simply inspired these thoughts, however much a part of me wants to delve into a diatribe.

Before Martin Luther nailed his theses in a piece of carpentry heard round the known world, calling for reform and ushering in a period of incredibly self-serving governmental riding of ideological coat-tails as they thrust off the so-called tyranny of Roman rule, the notion of a hierarchy of spiritual placement was standard for most people. One simply lived their life knowing the means of salvation and talking to god residing within the religious office of priest, friar, monk, bishop and ultimately that of Pope. Resembling the political system of feudalism, this spiritual reality was not a foreign conceptualization to most being as it mirrored the experience of life on earth so therefore must be a reflection of a divine plan, a rather horrid example of Plato’s ideas. The notion of going to someone else to talk to god, to receive forgiveness and a washing of sin strikes most of us, particularly Americans, as absurd to the point of silliness. We pride ourselves on our individuality and the abject worship of our own autonomous egos, believing in a democracy of social strata where hard work and determination can lift anyone by the power of gravity-defying bootstraps. Within these protests, however, lies a hidden (to those at the bottom of social class it is not so hidden) adherence to the idea of social placement as reflecting some inherent qualitative difference in a person. There is talk of “lifting your eyes to the prize” and “keeping your nose to the grindstone” as if recompense for trials and tribulations exist above one’s current station, allocating to those with more an automatic infusion of greatness those with less don’t have.

Lest it be assumed I am dismissing hard work and determination let me be clear that I am not. For all my belief in certain spiritual percepts I do not find legitimacy in mystical hocus-pocus where thought immediately brings form in some type of magical ritual. As even Ernest Holmes notes: “We should not separate life from living, Spirit from matter…” (Can We Talk to God?) There is a correspondence between action and effect however much action first resonated and was created in mind. Amusingly or not, it is precisely the conservative mind, spouting the rhetoric of Weber’s protestant work ethic, which seems to bring about this magical link between work and reward, leading one to the assumption that reward then must allude to an inherent quality of the person. What I am noting here is that while hard work and so on are aspects of a life being lived they do not inhere any particular quality to the person, they rather emerge from the existence of qualities already in place. So it is then there exists no derivation of extra internal substance to the person. Work and action do not bring about new qualities, they are instantiations of a growing awareness of those qualities one already possesses.

Notice the reversal of the structure here as hierarchy is turned on its head, with the divine singularity residing in us all and in an infinite universe of creative potential through growing conscious awareness we can instantiate this spark in ever-increasing possibilities of behavior. As well, there is now room for context, for those variables that are outside of individual control or conscious contemplation. Circumstance no longer shows us who we are in some form of reverse-identity but is the evolutionary soup within which we grow and have our being. As Holmes declared: “The greatest good that can come to us is the forming of an absolute certainty of ourselves and of our relationship to the Universe, forever removing the sense of heaven as being outside ourselves, the fear of hell or any future state of uncertainty.” A hierarchy of spirituality is one of separation, of constant existential angst where one is pitted against the limitations of their own creation with circumstance giving meaning rather than the one giving meaning to experience. In this separation is all manner of psychosis and a focus on lack. Here is found the feudalism of spirituality in Catholicism, where another by virtue of holding a particular office is somehow possessed of a greater degree of divine form. If the construct of god as all is used, then divinity as singularity does not inhere within one form more than another, it simply is all.

When one owns the spiritual ground of their incarnation there is an acknowledgment of interconnection such that real power over effect is grasped, similar to when one learns a new skill or is enlightened to a new idea, that light being one of awakening from slumber. Our potential action is not infinite in the sense of being free from context, but it is only individually bound by our ignorance to a greater good. Imagination is the stuff of creation and it is supplied by a constant infusion of one’s recognition of spiritual union with all.

Being Completed By Romance

In contemplating the nature of love and the many forms the word is associated with, I’m reminded of the movie Matrix: Revolutions in which Neo confronts a computer program who declares his ability to love another program who he calls his daughter. When asked by Neo how a program can love the gentleman and father notes the word has no inherent meaning, rather only referencing the felt connection that exists by virtue of declaring it so.



While the love noted by the movie character is that associated with the love of a father for his daughter, it is the “connection” piece that I want to focus on, primarily as it is associated with romantic love (other forms or love in general can wait for another entry). I think it can be noted without too much in the way of protest that if there were no people to express a romantic love, then such would not exist, at least in so far as we understand the term. It is, like all emotions and their physiological instantiation, something that at least at some level must take into consideration the referential point of the creature expressing it. This is not to indicate that love of all kinds is completely encapsulated by referencing only the person(s) expressing it, creating as it were some love-flatland, but without this reference there is a distinct loss in contemplating its nature. Therefore, to understand romantic love it is best to figure out what this connection is usually exemplified within.



Romantic love seems to come in two stages: the first and easiest is that associated with the intense and often immediate infatuation or interest between two (or more) people, its grand energy derived from the newness of the situation allowing the explosive projection of hopes, dreams and fantasies; the second stage is close to this as it is often felt during periods of intense emotional energy and the creation of some event, often a trip or special experience. The first stage in polyamorous circles is that often described as New Relationship Energy (NRE) and is the stuff of rueful amusement and joy, but also wariness because of its tendency to drive people towards bad decisions. The second stage is usually found in established relationship connections both positively in those special shared moments or negatively where the parties involved want to "rekindle the fire" or in some situations create an experience so as not to look at the bad lying around at their feet.



The connection, particularly in stage one, is almost entirely one of projected intent, where each person is hoping the other fulfills their poetically impressive desires to be “fulfilled” or “made whole.” The metaphorical language here is illuminating. When someone operates under the notion that they are trying to be “made whole” it infers the notion that they are not currently of one piece or are lacking in some vital aspect, leaving themselves not quite fully alive. The usage of fire as a metaphor for the passions can easily here be connected to the fires underlying creativity or creation and therefore of building a "new life together" (notably in romance novels where this seems the only legitimate form of love the author feels their readers need or want).



Quite often, however, the piece found does not in fact “complete” anything or even fit properly, except of course during the first stage of romantic love when, let's face, the frontal lobes have been dumped like a broken transmission in a car. That this is the stage where the intent is focused less on the other party involved and more on the projection of a need being met is no doubt why being “made whole” is so often replaced later on with “falling to pieces.”



Response: I agree with everything you say with one exception. Not all people enter romantic love with the intention of being made whole. I would say that, unless the one is fairly stable to begin with an entrance to any romantic love will only hinder stability as one person grows to depend more on another. In a more mature romantic relationship (where both parties feel basically complete and are looking for a partner to enjoy life and fulfill more long term goals with) I believe there is a great deal more longevity possible.



You may be right that in particular cases, romantic love is not considered in the context of being “made whole.” As with any generality there are always exceptions. However, I still think the general principle holds.



The reason I say this is due to the particular ways in which love in the romantic sense is typically discussed. Phrases such as being “completed” and “made whole” are more typical when romantic love is the context. It would be very peculiar for a father to express the love he has for his child as “completing” him or “making him whole.” I hazard to guess that such language is not used because the form of love a parent has for a child is like what one has for a subordinate. I don’t mean to belittle the experience, on the contrary, I don't consider any form of love to be more special than any other though certainly particular forms of it, like the one in question here, are prone to more poetic license and irrationality than others. What I'm expressing is the fact that a child is in no way capable of meeting the full needs of an adult and thus love is expressed more in terms of protection and concern.



True, if a person enters a relationship with a less than moderately stable mentality, what often occurs is a relational dependency. Now, I have spoken before about attachments and how dependency is an inevitable aspect of existence, though like before notice here that I am using the term dependence not slavery. It is the latter term where the person does not find fruition of self but abject subservience or sublimation of self to the other. Consider how the term is used in other contexts, like in the case of “he’s a hopeless romantic” or even in describing the historical period after the enlightenment as “romantic.” The similarity of these two examples is one of being beyond reason, delving almost into delusion, where it is assumed that reality simply doesn’t allow for certain thoughts to be actualized, thus being thought to be classified as “romantic.”



Now take this information and apply it back to the notion of romantic love as so far discussed. As I explained earlier, romantic love is typically used to describe the beginning of a relationship and later on into longer-term relationships though more about situations rather than a mode of being. Romantic love is what is typically meant when someone says that the couple has “kept the love alive.” (Forgive my mono-centered wording here as there are a vast number of variations in romantic entanglements which can involve more than two people.) There is usually a sense of euphoria and a significantly reduced sense of individuality when the thought is dwelled upon. Here then is the continuation of the notion of “being completed” and a sense of being absent a piece that has now been given, it is the very loss of individualness which drives the metaphoric principle in a form of the snake biting its own tail. Such notions are called romantic because, as was indicated above in it being beyond reason, at some level we know that it’s irrational. Incidentally, it's little wonder that we often use the phrase “crazy in love.” Love at this level is a little form of madness, not in the frothing at the mouth sense (though hey there's always whip-cream fun), but in the sense of lacking something and therefore placing us in the position of promoting ourselves as puzzles missing pieces.



I’m not saying that any of this makes romantic love wrong. On the contrary, it is not romantic love that is the problem but our worship of it as a society and the concomitant belief that there is an essential part of ourselves that is lacking, putting us always in a position of want rather than growth. There are many notions concerning our emotions packed with metaphorical entailments we are not aware of, romantic love is but one of them. When we take these ideas apart we are not doing so to get rid of them, romantic love in particular is a glorious and fun-filled adventure that I have experienced before and enjoy going through as it continues to happen.



To live a life of romance where "wholeness" is already experienced from each one of our existential places can keep us from later "falling to pieces." We are not trying to fill a lack but find new ways of expressing the human ability to love in many forms and in an ever-expanding way.



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The preceding is an exchange I had online discussing the nature of romantic love. The section in bold is a point made by the person I was engaging with. As is the nature of online discussions, initial written points are not always so polished and with that in mind I have gone through and redone my thoughts to reflect my current thinking and help with flow of information. I say this to be upfront and honest about the nature of this entry as I don't want to give a false impression as to either my writing or the conversation that occurred.

Self As Locus Of Interaction

In the previous entry I made much ado about the self and using it in the context of relationships as a means of being created from within and by those connections. I can only imagine that some may have been confused by this and from several conversations I’ve had in various community groups I realized perhaps it’d be a good idea to flesh this out a bit more. That a transcendent self, somehow disconnected from physical law and social variables (often religiously referred to as a soul though clearly soul need not be defined this way) is the basis for a context-free notion of free will and choice is only the largest consequence, providing a basis for the American system of justice/law and giving people the space to judge others with nary a reference to mitigating effects like upbringing, social influences and biology. There does seem to be an increasing sense in which this view of free will is inadequate and I look forward to the day when we as a society can look upon life-destructive behavior from a perspective of compassion rather than judgment. A step in that direction is to remove from the immediate lexicon of assumed ideas a notion of the monolithic singular self that interacts with circumstances.

One of my favorite thinkers who has had a major influence on the evolution of my ideas is Owen Flanagan, a professor of neurobiology at Duke University. All subsequent quotes are taken from his book The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them.

First let me point out my usage of the term “mind.” By mind is meant the interactive system of being derived from the complete biological systems of the body and the relationships those system have with all other entities, providing the means by which we relate to the world as one natural ontological entity to another. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics that notes the qualities or properties of what makes something what it is or its being-ness. We can speak of a universal substance and thus be discussing metaphysics generally, but when we get to particular instantiations and how to differentiate them and whether they exist at all we are then discussing ontology. A central difficulty in discussing the nature of mind/self (the hash noting already where I’m going with this) is our language system, given its subject-object form inherently providing a space for assuming a dissociation between the two. This is likely due to our biological need for differentiating what is our flesh from what is other flesh for purposes of procreation and eating. The reciprocal nature of our brains as it constantly interacts in a loop of input/output then gives us the feeling of having a self-knowledge of the mind. As Flanagan notes: “What we think of as our unique individual selves consist of the integrated set of traits we reliably express and embody, the dispositions of feeling, thought, and behavior we reliably display, as well as a certain kind of psychological continuity and connectedness that accrues to embodied beings by virtue of being-in-the-world over time.” Also, “The subjective feel is produced and realized in an organism by virtue of the relevant objective state of affairs obtaining in that organism.” In other words, the self exists not as a thing in itself, it has no separate ontology outside of the context from which it is derived, if you remove or change the extant variables you will remove or change the feel of which the self seems to possess all on its own. “What we call ‘the self’ is an abstract theoretical entity in the same way that force, mass, and energy are abstract theoretical entities.” We do not describe force outside of noting the interaction between two objects, no more than we describe mass except by the interaction between atoms and energy as the form it takes.

The problem here is one of inflation, of making more out of a feeling than what is actually there. To be self-aware is not a divorcing or dissociating concept but one that allows us to differentiate within experience what is our particular biological relation to everything else. “The self is an abstraction designed to do, in interpersonal and intrapersonal commerce, the work of explanation, prediction, and control.” The conceptualization of the self should be one of greater joining, in the sense that knowledge of how one is related can create a greater sense of being connected, even if such a feeling is initially felt within the seemingly necessary starting point of a separated self-awareness. We are not separated from anything else though as we all belong to an essential metaphysic, we all partake of and are created out of the same substance, the energy that manifests in form. While largely poetic, to say ‘we are the universe thinking of itself’ is not merely grandiose, though I admit it can certainly be used as such. Rather, it is a recognition that despite our differentiated ontology, we are of the same metaphysical substance that is no different than that which makes up the universe. As such, the action that arises out of the mind/self referred to as awareness is not just an individual enterprise but has cosmic connections.

Viewing the self as an abstract term given to the relational space created by the interaction between the brain and the universe allows us to see intentionality in a whole new light, one that is not about shame-filled judgment but a recognition of how we as the creatures we are interact in particular ways. It is an intentionality and an ethic derived from our particular ontology, not from a moral dictate separated and distant from the means by which we experience reality. All objects intend upon another in a broad sense of defining or giving structure to what the other is, each object not existing by itself but rather in relation to all else. For instance, to think of a rock only, disconnected from anything and everything else is impossible, for even in thinking of it within a dark expanse is to think of it in relation to that dark expanse. I have spoken of this in other entries when referring to the self as well, noting that to consider our individuality is to always do so from a place of relational dynamics, always in connection with something else. Here it simply points out that again we are not of a completely different nature then the universe and thus are not separate from the poetically-noted creative power of that universe. Consciousness or the awareness of self, as it relates to intentionality, is the ability to ‘see’ what is this intrinsic nature of all things, to imaginatively construct the relations of one to another. This imagination stems often from within the felt experience of an “I” participating from a place of declarative power, in no small way reminiscent of the Jewish and Christian myth of Adam and Eve naming the animals in the Garden. As Flanagan puts it: “What was this ‘I’ that is having the thought? ‘I’ is how we denote the biological and psychological continuity of our unique first-person stream of consciousness.” It is a linguistic notation of the centrality of the subject doing the action, not an expression inflated to a separate being.

“The self that is the center of narrative gravity is constructed not only out of real-life materials; it is also organized around a set of aims, ideals, and aspirations of the self.” There is no relevant loss to ethics, meaning or purpose in removing the notion of a monolithic separated self. All these still exist and perhaps even more strongly as they are now acknowledged as being bound within interactional and inter-relational reality, providing us with a clear image that we are not lonely creatures striving blindly into a cold dark night, but alive and existing in a fullness the awareness of which is a constant path of further enlightenment. To wax poetic for another moment, “I and the Father are one” is not then simply a mystic declaration of Jesus but one which we can all make, partaking as we do from our own locus of experience we call self and yet always within the reality of a single non-separated universe.

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“Journeys Of A Spiritual Atheist” is a collection of entries from 2012 categorized and organized to help with integrating the flow of information. It is available on Kindle and Nook.

Relationships: The Expression of the Self

Recently I was asked by my amused and curious girlfriend just what my strategy is in pursuing other relationships (yes we’re poly, as I’ve noted before so this is a perfectly reasonable and wonderful question to ask within the space of open communication) considering that I don’t seem to do the same thing beyond one person. Coming as this question did upon the heels of conversations I’ve recently had in online groups concerning the nature of social bonding and the feeling of loneliness or lack that can sometimes occur in seeing other people who’s lives seem so much more special than ours, I now find myself returning to a theme of entries I’d left behind a while ago entitled “relationships.” As seems often the case I likely will be presenting something slightly different than the usual understanding but I do have my own projected reputation to uphold of being a dissenter possessed of an increasingly healthy ego.

Polyamorous circles or not, relationships are almost all anyone often talks about, with ridiculous amounts of books being written on the subject and research constantly being conducted as to the how of their working, the why of their existence and how to deal with the numerous difficulties that arise within them. This frankly is not an odd thing considering the central means of relating to the world is from the locus of an internalized ‘I.’ Try for a moment to think of or interact with anything or anyone without keeping in mind one’s interconnection with it. Don’t try too hard though as it is when we cease noticing our surroundings and therefore our connection with other objects that we start harming ourselves, either by stubbing one’s toe by running into something we didn’t see or having hurt feelings because we weren’t keeping aware of how another was relating to us. Noting this raises my point, that relationships, and by that term I mean any and all interactive connections, are the means by which we express our selves or the various ‘I’s’ that provide the focus of all our narratives.

I am aware and have written about this several times in the past, though undoubtedly will continue to do so again and again in the future, that the self as commonly understood is of quite a different nature than what I am discussing here. In a New York magazine article on The Self in Self-Help, it is noted that the common definition of the self in self-help literature is: “Somewhere below or above or beyond the part of you that is struggling with weight loss or procrastination or whatever your particular problem might be, there is another part of you that is immune to that problem and capable of solving it for the rest of you. In other words, this master theory is fundamentally dualist. It posits, at a minimum, two selves: one that needs a kick in the ass and one that is capable of kicking.” With this in mind it is easy to consider relationships, especially when difficulties in them arise, as instantiations of behavior stemming out of the false self in need of correction from the intuitive genius found in our other self. This is most easily seen whenever someone declares “I’m better than that” or “I don’t know what came over me” or “deep down I knew it was wrong.” Other examples abound and I won’t annoy the reader by attempting to note all of them. However, there is no such thing as this other self, this fount of wisdom just waiting like a blind yogi to expel pithy sayings in a breath of holy power. What this thinking seems to carry over from, though with less nuance, is Freud’s notion of the Id, Ego and Superego, with the Id being the self in need of a good kick in the pants and the Superego residing as the pontifical yogi.

While there is some truth to Freud’s notion it is not important to go into here, I merely point it out as a means of reference and noting how even great ideas (though I’m aware not everyone considers Freud’s notions as great) are used in an often simplified form leading to problems in relating to the world. I have written before how the monolithic transcendent self is an illusion and I plan to write more about it in an upcoming entry using Owen Flannagan as a primary source. However, related to that I want here to deal with the false notion of dualism in the sense of the two-self model found in self-help. Rather than two I want us to ponder the idea that there are in fact multitudes of selves, all with their own narratives, all with their own way of interacting with the world and providing a perspective through which experience is generated as a phenomenological feeling. We speak of it colloquially in our American culture as “putting on a different hat” when discussing work or being a parent or hanging out with friends (though curiously the latter is often depicted as being the most authentic, more on that later). What is often meant though is that the central ‘I’ chooses various aspects of itself for dealing with different circumstances and I want us to do away with that entirely, or at least as much as we’re able. Instead of “hats” I want to posit the idea that we put on entirely different “heads” and none of them contradict any of the others though the behavior that may result from these different selves certainly often appears to, hence the previous notation of people declaring they “weren’t themselves” when they acted poorly or not in line with what they now feel to be their true self. Looked at this way, the self becomes less about possessing a centralized clearing house to organize potential behavior and more about relating to an ever-changing world. From this perspective we no longer should look upon ourselves with disassociating shame when having committed a wrong act but with an understanding that like everything our selves are context-bound manifestations of relationships. While this makes us more responsible for our behavior in the sense that we can no longer call it “other,” it also should help us reconcile the flights of angst and condemnation when we do not do what we would like to do. Reality is we always do what we would like to do, it’s just that there are many sources for the creation of those wants.

None of this absolves us of the desire to strive towards consistency, in fact it frees us to pursue it from a better ground. Rather than fighting in a soul-searing tumultuous internal battlefield we can see our relationships as manifesting various selves and through the means of guiding awareness, focus on those relationships that bring about the self which contributes the most towards well-being and joy and the expression of values held dear. In discussing the creation of romantic relationships, an article from the National Institute of Health (NIH) discusses the role of various neurotransmitters in facilitating relationship bonding, noting that “Oxytocin does more than make us feel good. It lowers the levels of stress hormones in the body, reducing blood pressure, improving mood, increasing tolerance for pain and perhaps even speeding how fast wounds heal. It also seems to play an important role in our relationships. It’s been linked, for example, to how much we trust others.” This is more than just a reflection on romantic relationships but the bonding associated with any and all relational attachments with other people, from those able to of holding a space for the most casual of touch to the wildest of passionate intimacies. This is likely, as noted above, why we often think of time with our friends as being the most authentic, because we are busy interacting in a way that involves more touch and personalized bonding. Our bodies and the minds which are instantiated by and through them have an innate predilection and desire to form relationships, not just because we live in an interactive world though we do but as it is the source by which the universe finds intentional expression, meaning and purpose beyond (though still tied to) the merely mechanical. Who we are is not a lonely enterprise, it is a profoundly relational one.

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“Journeys Of A Spiritual Atheist” is a collection of entries from 2012 categorized and organized to help with the integrating the flow of information. It is available on Kindle and Nook.

Thoughts On Metaphysics and Social Implications

There are times when I get ahold of something and like a dog with a bone, need to bite down and shake it about until the juicy truth within is cracked open. So much of my studies have centered on not merely understanding reality but in a growing recognition of how relationship of any and all kinds is a fundamental quality of existence. With this in mind I found a series of points I’d created years ago and, with an eye towards filling it out with what I had learned since, came up with ten statements that grow on one another to describe what I take to be the human relation with reality. Food for thought perhaps, articulations of frustratingly confusing points possibly, but in the end I hope at least it inspires some reflection within each of us of just how it is we view ourselves and this crazy wonderful thing we call life.

The term “reality” is universal in application as it pertains to all things, concepts, etc. both known and unknown. As such, when using the term it is best to keep in mind during discussion what precisely is being referenced to determine precisely what aspect of reality is being considered. This concerns in particular Ken Wilber’s notion of nested reality, noting that everything is context within context all the way down. Language as it concerns existential reference instantiated in words, reference or point to something specific. Whether what is being referenced is simply a particular mental status of someone and as such has no more context or truth-claim than that, or is part of another nest within broader reality is why reference is so important to be delineated, since what one references will determine what aspects of reality is being considered.Perspective is the conceptual formation of the particular frame of reference other aspects of reality are then subjectively known or understood. It is not of a dissimilar metaphysic since all is of one reality, rather it is the specific way in which the entity relates to reality universal. The very idea of perspective is only possible if there exists more than the subject, otherwise everything would be merely extensions of the individual and not be capable of existence as things or objects in themselves nor understood by any other person in a different manner.Subjectivity is not a creative enterprise, but an interpretive one. One does not create a new reality, since all belongs to a singularity, but rather one relates to it differently based on the interpretive devices utilized. These devices, from sense experience to critical rationality, subjection to authority, etc. are not perfect and can be error-prone though the particular error may belong only to a specific aspect of the interpretation, not the entirety. This non-absolute nature of knowledge in no way makes impossible the acquisition of truth in so far as truth is acceptable, as it seems it is required to be, as one of increasing certainty or probabilistic knowledge.The interpretive dimension of experience is and only can be known when brought into public discourse via description, i.e. the usage of language. Until this is done, interpretation is merely an imaginative construct, still a part of reality universal but not something that has been demonstrated as being accurate or inaccurate in its depiction of it, hence the need as noted previously of noting whether said opinion is referencing merely a cognitive state or has repercussions beyond the subjective experience.The relation a person has to reality can be mistaken as being that of a cause-effect relationship or of a separate disposition in so far as the reality one relates to is seen as somehow fundamentally different than the one relating. This tendency in thought is unavoidable given two issues: one, the nature of perception which requires a biological separation of subject and object to maintain a relational narrative and two, the nature of language as it exists in the form of subject/object/predicate. This gives rise to the phenomenological “I” that western philosophy is obsessed with and is found socially to be instantiated in ego-based individuality and the attachment to things. This obsession with separateness and individuality has created a social paradigm surrounding subjectivity that is without warrant, centrally that it is not beholden to any truth standards beyond the mere articulation of one’s point of view. There is no such thing as an “I’ other than as a reference to a particular contextual instantiation of reality. Social practicality may make this impossible to put into every-day practice, at least not without a complete overhaul of our social systems (especially that of the criminological), but that is not to ignore that in discussion of consciousness and related topics, it should be kept in mind in order to maintain an acknowledged relationship with more than mere ego.Hence, given the fact that existence exists and that subjectivity is only the interpretation of that reality, not a creative enterprise (at least as previously defined), interpretation is capable of being critically analyzed as either correct or incorrect based as it is in a declaration of what the shared reality is. That the interpretation is felt to be correct by the interpreter is a non-issue, nobody believes something of which they are not convinced or accept to some degree. However, as there are many particular physical manifestations and nests of reality, each one capable of being known in increasing probability, so any particular interpretations can be noted as either more or less accurate than others. While it is true that “society” is largely responsible for the definition of words and thus could fall prey to the frustration of a majority rule, this is more a warning to be careful of defining and articulating what is being referenced in any conversation of which the result has multiple ramifications. It is a warning against stopping the continuation of rational discourse, not against the seeming arbitrariness of verbal construction. Care taken in determining the particular reference allows for an identification of just what field or nest of reality is under discussion. A problem arises when a single definition or usage is indicated as enveloping all possible contexts, flattening reality to only one plane. The multi-contextual nature of reality requires a multi-perspectival means of relating to it, a power we have in abundance as indicated by the many variations in meaning we may ascribe to any single experience. Recognizing this is not to fall into subjectivism as that would make every manifestation of reality a single flatted plane all on its own, but to take the time to determine and appreciate the web that is of us, in us, and has made us conscious of it.

There is is so much more than these ten points, delving as it could into morality, just what relationships are and so on, of which I will no doubt continue to articulate and share. I hope these thoughts are not considered binding but a starting point brought out of the joy found in continually exploring. Life is not stagnant and neither should we be in living it or knowing it.

Memory Creation and Psychopathy

In The Psychopath: Emotion and the Brain by James Blair, Derek Mitchell and Karina Blair, when describing possible environmental contributions to the development of psychopathy, the authors noted that while damage to the hippocampus due to the release of too much cortisol from stressful events will result in a degraded ability to regulate the release of stress hormones, they did not think this would contribute to psychopathy as the hippocampus has been indicated to being involved with memory and spatial reasoning “It is unclear why impairment in either memory or spatial processing would cause psychopathy” (p. 35-36).

This statement sparked some thoughts derived from other literature I’ve read, with the result being a curiosity as to whether I am now embarking on a wild-goose chase of disparate connections or my pondering is actually leading to something legitimate. Time will tell and undoubtedly I’ll have to do some more research as to whether people with far more experience than I have covered this. Until then, here are some thoughts and perhaps it’ll spark some return reflections from others.

My initial inquiry centers on memory and I recall the book by Gerald Edelman entitled A Universe of Consciousness. While the point of the book is to establish within an embodied neurology a theory of consciousness, both what it is and how it developed, Edelman spends significant time on the nature of memory and its relation to human interaction with the environment. Edelman first articulates the notion of reentry as being central to his view of human neurology, describing it as “the ongoing, recursive interchange of parallel signals between reciprocally connected areas of the brain, an interchange in space and time.” Essentially this boils down to being like a teeter-totter of neurochemistry, with the action of one side having a result upon the other and vice versa, though when it comes to the brain there is no such thing as a single connection but thousands. A result of reentry is synchrony between functionally specialized areas of the brain. “This synchronous firing of widely dispersed neurons that are connected by reentry is the basis for the integration of perceptual and motor processes” (pg. 48). This integration is the fundamental building block of human behavior. Through the emergence of the thalamocortico complex, the reciprocal connectivity between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex, perceptual categorization in the posterior brain was able to be linked with value-based memory of the anterior areas of the brain, providing the mechanism for the creation of a “remembered present” whereby previous experiences could be linked with current or imagined contingencies.        

Rather than viewing memory as a snapshot of an event, Edelman posits that “a memory is not a representation; it is a reflection of how the brain has changed its dynamics in a way that allows the repetition of a performance” (pg. 95). “These changes are reflected in the ability to repeat a mental or physical act after some time despite a changing context, for example, in ‘recalling’ an image.” There is some linkage here that could be made to Dawkins’s and Blackburn’s notion concerning the meme. The sometimes parasitical nature of memes and memeplexes, when looked at from a neural point of view indicates a connection with certain behavioral patterns that are not beneficial for the host’s reproductive well-being but seem incapable of being stopped. Memory, according to Edelman, is not a separate function of the brain, but a result of numerous interconnected pathways. This interconnectivity results in “a key property of memory in the brain: that it is, in some sense, a form of constructive re-categorization during ongoing experience, rather than a precise replication of a previous sequence of events” (p. 95). Memory is like the continual creation of an expanding symphony rather than a discrete set of experiences being added one to the other. The “extrinsic signals convey information not so much in themselves, but by virtue of how they modulate the intrinsic signals exchanged within a previously experienced neural system.” In other words, an external stimulus acts not by adding large amounts of new information, but “by amplifying the intrinsic information resulting from neural connections selected and stabilized by memory through previous encounters with the environment” (pg. 137). Memory is like a painting then, with established colors being done over and over again, adding layer upon layer, when various colors are inspired by present events, leading some to be heavier or darker than others despite having all been originally created at the same time or out of the same experience.

        

Related to memory is the creation of an internal biological-reference or self. Owen Flanagan, in The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them, describes the self, most often referred to as “I” in personal narrative, as primarily indexical. “’I’ is how we denote the biological and psychological continuity of our unique first-person stream of consciousness” (p. 224). The “I” seems to be a result of the primary consciousness associated with Edelman’s construction of memory and the individual’s ability to create a remembered present, a connection between past experience and current or imagined context via the reconstructive properties of memory. “The fact that ‘I’ uttered today seems just like uttering the word yesterday is, first, because the conscious stream is sensibly and subjectively continuous and, second, because in the normal course of things we change very little from day to day” (p. 226).

If the role of the hippocampus is to consolidate short-term memory into long-term memory in the cerebral cortex, and an impairment in its function results in a loss of control for regulating stress hormones, then there exists a possibility that this breakdown could also lead to a difficulty in normal responses to stressors and a consequent difficulty in integrating stressful events into the continuing creation of a self-narrative. An inability to integrate events will result in undifferentiated anxieties that need to be treated by behavior, leading to a potential increase in instrumental or goal-directed behavior, the particular manifestation of which will be determined by social context. For example, stealing $50 is pointless for someone with millions but significant for someone with five cents.

Blair et al. note that “individuals with psychopathy show reduced responding to threatening stimuli.” These individuals also show “reduced emotional responses when imagining threatening events and reduced augmentation of the startle reflex” (The Psychopath, p. 50). This reduction in integrating stressors and events could be indicative of hippocampus degeneration leading to a difficulty in learning from these events and any changes to the self-narrative that usually result. In fact, it is later noted by Blair et al., individuals with psychopathy “present with particular difficulty for instrumental learning tasks that require the formation of stimulus-punishment associations.” Negative responses to behavior, which normally result in a changing of behavior for people, the psychopath seems incapable of processing. This lack of response seems due to a lack of empathy, which at core is simply the ability to associate the external stimuli of others with similar internal stimuli and thus experience a mirrored response. As Oatley, Keltner and Jenkins in the textbook Understanding Emotions note, “emotions guide action in a world that is always imperfectly known, and can never be fully controlled. It is not so much that emotions are irrational, rather that when we have no fully rational solution because we do not know enough, they offer bridges toward rationality” (p.261). Without these bridges, the psychopath is limited in his/her integrative ability and thus with connecting with others and assimilating new experiences.

The conclusion of all this is not that Blair et al. are necessarily wrong with their supposition of the hippocampus lacking a role in psychopathy development, rather I’m just noting that there should be more research into self-narrative development and the role the hippocampus may have in the reciprocal processing pathways that are at its core. The result may be a better understanding of not only the underlying mechanisms that guide emotional development but also why certain memes are so readily accepted by the brain of the psychopath. Perhaps, with these new insights, a workable therapy could be developed that focuses not on fixing emotional integration itself but on restructuring the self-narratives that provide the means for doing so leading to an increased focus on attachment.

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“Journeys Of A Spiritual Atheist” is a collection of entries from 2012 categorized and organized to help with the integrating the flow of information. It is available on Kindle and Nook and will soon be available as a paperback.

Expression Is Not Always About Freedom

In a psychology textbook from college there is a picture of teenagers all dressed in various states of goth or other styles of dark clothing, the caption under it declaring this to be a form of social mimicry and conformism. I certainly had a good laugh then and I’d be lying if I said it still didn’t bring a smile to my face. I can guarantee that were you or I to ask any of those teens they’d swear up and down that they were solid individuals completely against the “system” of social conformity and just expressing the way they were free to do so. Or at least something of that sort, as I’m likely giving many of them more philosophical credit than due. From our fashion to even much of the thoughts we have, these are simply regurgitated social memes taken in by other influences, media and relational connections, funneled through one of our own particular narratives but largely flowing into manifestation with little input from the all-powerful ego we so amusingly think we possess. “I just want to be me,” could be the siren call of modern America, the underlying selfish declaration beneath so much of conservative and liberal religious ideology alike, and the rallying cry for every fad and Oprah-inspired unscientific diet craze. We’re so busy wanting to just be us, wanting to be original or an individual that we lose sight of the anxiety of being unnoticed that undergirds all of this and in the process become even less individualistic than we started as.

I wrote in “Freedom From, Not Freedom To Do,” about how the mere ability to do something does not equate to real freedom when it does not come from a place of a life-giving and community-acknowledging frame of reference. Without this soul-deep understanding of an interrelated and interactive reality where no one person exists as an island no matter their magnificence, we become but disassociated flotsam floating in a sea of possibility and without any purpose. So it is here, expanded, that in the expression of what we call our “self” we often are so charged with doing something that we do no more than continue in bondage to old ideas given a shiny new polish. I’m thinking now of the man or woman embarking on their third marriage, having even declared at one point that marriage wasn’t important. I’m thinking of the woman or man who puts on the face of joy so that they never see the bodies of relationships they leave behind them, creating stories like an awful caricature of “Life of Pi,” desperate to never see the darkness that is a part of them. I’m thinking of the man or woman latching onto every new diet fad, every new fantastical spiritual craze, mentally screaming themselves hoarse in an attempt to leave behind old ideas of worthlessness and angst even as they cling desperately to those very stories in the chill of the night. In expressing ourselves there is no inherent or necessary joy to be found if such occurs while we are running away with chains dragging behind us.

As I’ve written before, I identify as both an atheist and as polyamorous, a social combination that has me looking at times like a blood-spattered biker entering a nunnery. And no not like the nunnery from Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail,” that would just be awesome (if you’re not sure the reference please watch the movie and laugh). Within these two groups there is found a great deal of people who are loudly “just expressing” themselves. Now, before I go further let me unequivocally note that the mere existence of what society considers outrageous behavior does not in any way necessitate that said person is doing so from a place of pain and escapism, ignoring their real issues. The 9-5 monotony of corporate work, the swallowing of one’s pride, being poorly compensated for work while management basks in ridiculously huge dividends, all of this and more that characterizes “society” is an insanity on par with thinking of oneself as being an egg and has little to no basis for calling out anyone else for being escapist and ignoring their problems. That said, the similarity we all share by virtue of belonging to the hilarity that is humanity, is a profound ability to seek healing through expression while ignoring the why of our behavior. Not every curious behavior can stem from this, but the reality of it is far too widespread not to make some general remarks. I have met far too many people shilling atheism, as I originally did, from a place of child-like wailing or engage in polyamory because they’re simply playing the field in search of a new monogamy but want to make it sound as if it’s more special than that. It is not, however the tone of this writing so far may indicate, from a place of frustration (or not entirely) that I am speaking but from a place of empathic pain, of shared discomfort and a fierce desire to have others reeling from real healing from within a space real peace.

In a recent conversation with a truly wonderful friend of mine it was brought up that there’s a difficulty in being truthful and wanting to engage in open/honest communication, but also wanting to spare someone the pain of hurt feelings or simply coming across like an uncaring person. We all know the person who declares themselves “too honest,” when the reality is they just like spouting off their opinion no matter the emotional repercussions. The result of this conversation was an emergent principle, or at least one now better articulated, stating that sharing one’s thoughts must first come from a place of acknowledging the space created between the two (or more) people and from within that space know what the boundaries are for expression. At no point does this allow for lying (I agree with Harris that lying is never a good idea, a point I’ll address soon in another entry) and if a question is asked that one may feel uncomfortable addressing fully, the responsibility rests upon the person asking to say how much of or whether they are ready for a full answer. Turning this principle around a bit we come to an answer concerning the current difficulty with expression as escapism rather than expression as freedom. In the manifestation of new behavior let us first ask ourselves what space we are operating out of, both in relation to our internalized stories and with those of whom we are about to share. If the space still holds spots of darkness then let us first begin by addressing them, embracing them, and politely asking them to be gone as they are no longer needed. When the space exists in which those stories no longer have as much power then begin questioning how much the particular behavior is important to do. Often it may not be all that significant anymore and interest may be drawn towards something that is far more life-giving. If it’s still significant, well then by all means, get your groove on and be proud, knowing your expression is from a place of grace and a desire to spread joy.

This process is not an easy one and certainly is not one that I find myself always following through on. I get depressed and will eat an entire pizza rather than addressing the nature of the depression, an expression of myself that brings definite momentary delight but no long-term solution. We all I am quite certain can come up with such small though poignant examples. Life is not always about doing something exactly all the time, but about an upward spiraling of awakening, building upon practice and knowing our dance is beautiful.

Answers To A Question: No, Yes, Maybe

My last entry concerned the difficulty associated with defining god and how atheists in particular, though everyone else does as well, fall victim to accepting the assumption that god is or should be defined by fundamentalism and so-called traditional religions. I pointed out that “God” has no distinct reference point in itself, however much Platinga would have us believe otherwise (for a critique of his type of thinking, albeit completely irreverent, see here). In other words, while “God” has many and sundry potential definitions there is nothing to which it applies as distinctly itself, existing as it does as a mere self-referential data point connecting only to an individual’s cognitive state. This is much like the case for love, existing as it does in many many forms for various people within a multitude of cultures, though happily and with some fascination we can isolate the neuro-chemicals associated with those associated mental states. Given this state of affairs, there is simply no reason to placidly accept for yourself what another claims, instead offering to engage in a dialogue and parsing out for the purpose of creating your own meaning what such a powerfully emotive term will mean for you. Notice I didn’t say anything about truth here since as “God” has no reference we’re merely talking about meaning and meaning is almost completely context-bound. Once someone’s personal meaning is expressed as relating to various claims about experience (beyond the phenomenological) and the universe, then it becomes about truth and is therefore open to criticism. Here then is where a more thorough understanding of atheism comes into play. I do this is a follow-up to “The God That Is There and Nowhere” in order to flesh out for others where my own stance is and frankly to provide some better understanding of what is often a rather poorly understood concept.

Growing up as I did in fundamentalist conservative Christianity, I began studying apologetics at the rather amusing age of 15, amusing because my brain was undoubtedly going haywire with hormones and my energy was spent on determining the efficacy of my religious faith rather than pursuing women though considering my often abject failure at the latter during that time perhaps it’s not so amusing. Within the bounds of C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Gordon Clark and others I was often presented with the notion that atheism was an affirmation stating effectively “the belief that there is no god.” I won’t go into the history of this brand of atheism as frankly the point of describing atheism this way had little to do with history and everything to do with keeping the onus for truth claims on the back of the un-believer, leaving the believer safely ensconced on the defensive, a place as any general would say is often the easiest way to fight. I find that most people tend to view atheism this way as well, which means the apologist has succeeded in defining within society what an entire group of people declare without actually consulting them. Later on in my studies I came around a book by George H. Smith called The Case Against God. In it, Smith articulated what is known as the negative or disconfirming definition of atheism, effectively stated as “the absence of a belief in a deity.” In other words, if one were to string out a person’s beliefs in a long line there’d be a hole or absence when coming to the subject of god or deity. Suffice to say this was the straw that broke the back of my by-then-difficult adherence to supernatural theism as now the question of affirming claims about reality rested where it should have rested all along, on the backs of the apologist, who by claiming the existence of a supernatural being and consequent means of epistemic acquisition found in revelation and faith, was making profound statements concerning the nature of reality and experience, all of which could be tested. As a side-note I reflect often on the humorous state of religious apologetics when finding arguments against evidentialist (McDowell and Geisler and Lewis) apologetics one only had to go to the presuppositionalists (Schaeffer and Clark) and vice versa. Christianity certainly does a fine job of destroying its own claims all by its lonesome.

Why does any of this matter however? I do endeavor in every entry to, even while attempting to be informative, offer such in a way that pertains to some aspect of living. So here goes. The affirmation or non-affirming stance of someone are powerful answers to various questions, not least of which to that of the existence of a deity. It is ridiculously easy when presented with an opinion, however heavily laden it is by information and research, to pontificate from a space of ego-strength how one views said opinion, when the more authentic and honest response would be to declare “I don’t have an opinion” or if this is too burdensome, declare “I have some thoughts but I need to study more to give a truly worthwhile response.”

This is, incidentally and keeping in line with the theme of atheism for this entry, why I no longer adhere to either position of atheism strictly, as both address various aspects of the theistic question and serve up a more nuanced view of human experience. On one hand it is perfectly acceptable to declare affirmatively that “there is no god” as long as one has in mind a particular deity. Frankly all mono-theists are atheists in this sense when it relates to the Greek and Roman pantheon and to Hindu gods. What this position holds is the acknowledgment that what one is being presented with is a particular claim and, through an understanding hopefully garnered by dialogue, can then declare a yes or no to its claim and back up said position with reason and evidence. The negative stance, or “lack of belief,” offers up a foundation of skeptical inquiry where statements concerning reality are to be reflectively considered rather than mindlessly accepted or dismissed. Given the ubiquity of people’s notions concerning deity, an absence of belief here is not without some serious weight and helps clarify that when one declares the existence of an entity of extraordinary aspect, it is often best to withhold judgment until the claim is better articulated beyond stating mere belief. All this is considered when I declare my continued identification with atheism, that both those claims that are more carefully articulated have almost universally fallen short often within their own system but also that the concept of god has so many facets that to blankly deny all is to not give acknowledgment to the varied interrelated aspects of reality. Until a more carefully articulated form comes about, there’s an absence.

So it is then with many other ideas we come across, from the mundane to the conspiratorial. When faced with extraordinary or even contentious claims it is fully within anyone’s ability to bountifully declare their reaction, though as Mark Twain said “it is better to keep our mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.” What we can do instead is ask for clarification, see where the claim has reference to aspects of reality and find research and the linguistic understanding to analyze those connections, then determine whether the particular claim is entirely invalid or perhaps where aspects of it may hold weight or wait for further clarification and hence hold an empty space. There are so many ideas we come into contact with and so much to fill one’s time with that this often consuming nuanced approach is entirely inappropriate but when it comes to notions that have so many repercussions for how we view ourselves, others and the universe at large, perhaps it’d be a good idea to spend more time figuring things out than reflexively responding.

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“Journeys Of A Spiritual Atheist” is available on Kindle and Nook. It is a collection of entries from 2012 organized into categories and put in an order to help facilitate an understanding of the flow of information.

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The God That Is There And Nowhere

The concept of freedom in my last post has been pointed out to me as needing or at least asking for a fuller explication. Before I do so, however, I wanted to explain what many may wonder at as I continue promoting the publication of my collected entries from last year using the term “atheist.” Getting involved in online discussions has brought yet again to my attention how poorly the concept of god is often utilized and how unfortunate it is that those of us of a different spiritual persuasion assume as legitimate what fundamentalists often end up screaming about in their hand-made signs and thunder about from their pulpits that too often serve as political platforms.

I made the mistake in my extended history with fundamentalism and search through apologetics and religious philosophy to assume I knew everything the other side had to offer, to paint them with all the casual brush strokes I'd be taught. When I de-converted it was in no small part due to realizing just how badly the other points of view were being characterized and asked myself: if this were truth, why is there a seeming pathological inability to understand competing points? In my years post-faith I delved into a more militant style of atheism and frankly found much the same ideological shortcomings, people so incensed at the frankly well-established errors in religious ideology that everything was thrown out and concepts weren't carefully parsed.

While there are those who are accurate, mostly, in pointing to the god of western philosophers as being a speculative form based upon monotheistic thinking, it is not accurate to say that it is precisely the same god being addressed, as even a rudimentary reading of Kant, Descartes and Spinoza will indicate. Merely basing one's speculation upon old or largely bad ideas in no way demands subsequent articulations to be dismissed, no more than much of the science we have today should be ignored simply because it came from false ideas that were tweaked and revamped. The brilliance of Thomas Kuhn was not in pointing out that science is completely subjective and relative (a misunderstanding far too many people have of his thinking) but that science, like any means of understanding the world, operates from the perspectival basis of human cognition and hence is open to recalibration through the careful enunciation of new paradigms. When we were children we thought there lived monsters under the bed, as adults we know this to not be true, and yet do any of us mock a child in his fears or do we hold them and attempt explaining later, all the while knowing that development is more than physical but mental as well?

I think it best to point out that the concept of god is not a singular thing, there are various truth claims or references in play. What is often conflated for atheists/humanists is the references or claims towards metaphysics, forgetting that there are also claims towards ethics and ways of relating to life as well, among others. While certainly most religious apologists wish us to combine them all making their job, at least in their own minds, easier, it is certainly not a requirement of us to fall for it or accept their premises. Besides which, are we really going to claim that religion has done absolutely nothing good in any way for any individual or humanity at large? Shall we ignore the cohesiveness it often brings or the sense of peace or feeling of transcendence that those calling themselves atheists or humanists or pagans or some other often achieve by connecting with nature? Noting the positives of an experience does not mean we must accept the entire framing of the situation or accept what one ideology claims about everything else.

When I refer to god I am not making any particular metaphysical claims, nor am I making any specific, as of yet, ethical claims. God here is not a person, however much our language tends to point that way, nor is god an active force with intent guiding reality, at least in any way that is contrary to the active causal forces that already guide and shape us. That god in this way could be identified as the totality of those physical forces simply indicates that we live in a causal universe, one that acts from the premise of cause/effect relationships or karma as the buddhist would call it.

Ken Wilber in his integral philosophy notes that there are varying nests of being, of contemplation, of analysis which require varying modes of truth testing and so on. For instance, no amount of neurology is going to make me understand fully the first-person phenomenology that another goes through, to do so completely would be to be that person and thus defeat the attempt. We instead use dialogue, questions, narrative framing and so on to build a means of ascertaining the truth of any declaration of felt feels. It's what talk therapy is mainly about and the efficacy of its findings is found in the millions of people who have found real peace through its proper utilization.

The god here is of a nest far afield, one that holds all others not in a necessarily causal fashion but as a cognitive device much like the field of geology holds together, like an umbrella, various sub-fields of research. There is no such thing as just studying geology, it can always be broken down to a specialization and with it will often use its own language or terms that are not helpful in a different specialization though assuredly they can be integrated. There is no association or equivocation between god and physics or any other physical science, this is the god of contemplation and meditation, a heuristic device only. It offers a way of framing felt feels and a sense of the transcendence that, however much neurology we may discover is likely to never equate to the experience itself, no more than a full analysis of a hurricane will provide for us the experience of what it feels to be in one. Though clearly a growing understanding of neurology, physics, psychology, and so on can help us better articulate and frame our phenomenological experience such that we do not fall victim to the great many errors we as homo sapiens are prone to.

It is well and good to analyze and take apart the error-ridden claims of religious ideology, like any other other thinking, but we all must and should answer to reason and the careful articulation of the scientific enterprise. However, we portray ourselves as lacking in nuance and thus shortchange our ability to understand the fullness of the human situation when we think and accept as wholly accurate a simple common understanding of spiritual concepts rather than, as good creators of intention that we are, filling in ideas with what we'd like and using them accordingly.

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“Journeys Of A Spiritual Atheist” is now available on Kindle and Nook and will soon be available in print through Amazon. It is a collection of the entries from 2012 which have been categorized and organized to help with the flow of information and how it is presented. If you are so moved to purchase, please do me the extra favor of leaving a review. Thank you.