Category Archives: Religion

Too Smart

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As a creature on this planet, we weren’t supposed to be super smart. We were supposed to be the smartest primate, perhaps, but not super smart. We’ve always known it was a mistake. To be honest, as a primate, humans aren’t developed enough intellectually to mess with their biosphere. The Jewish Bible has a story about it; it is carried forward from an older version from ancient Babylon. God built his earthly garden and all that was in it obeyed God without question.

God created two last primates, a man and a woman, who were his pride and joy. In the story, a snake represents improper behavior (If we modernize the myth, the snake represents unexpected genes). The snake encourages the woman to eat a fruit she is not supposed to eat. It is the fruit of the tree of knowledge and awareness of good and evil, that is, ethics and morality on the one hand and disingenuous and immoral behavior on the other. Being aware of intellectual judgment, suddenly the two primates become super smart; they know things only God should know. God’s earthly garden is about to be trashed. Passing centuries have exposed the truth: this primate can’t handle super smartness. Super smartness must coexist with super sensitivity to orderliness – one of four words used to describe God’s presence (love, truth, beauty and order) and required to sustain God’s garden. Had the man and woman also eaten of the tree of Eternal Life in the garden, maybe human history would have been better off.

Physiologically, there is no difference between the human primate and other primates. Habitat is identical consisting of vegetation, insects and meat and similar landscape and weather. Humans behave no differently than other primates except they are a little less demonstrative than chimpanzees and more like silverbacks and gibbons. As a rough comparison, adult simian (ape branch of primate evolution) primates behave like adult humans but demonstrate the comprehension of a five-year old human.

But humans have awareness; we have judgment; we have choice; we can choose disorder.

At first, humans didn’t disturb the biosphere. About 12,000 years ago humans began tinkering with their habitat: seed casting was discovered to increase preferred vegetation; domesticating animals already was part of migrating lifestyles; weapons and tools were made of stone, antler and other natural resources. The first disturbance of the natural environment occurred when humans combined tin with copper to make bronze, then soon after discovered iron and carbon combined make steel. By 7000 BC it was de rigeuer and moral for this super smart primate to use the surface of the Earth willy-nilly for human activities. We have refined this behavior, of course, so that today it is moral to have open tin mines that cover several miles in diameter. Profit making activities like a combined energy zone in Alaska seems perfectly moral to entrepreneurs. The energy zone will cover hundreds of miles and literally destroy several major species of animals by poisoning or destroying habitat.

By human standards, this is acceptable but is it orderly? Are we disregarding the fact that this is God’s garden not ours? Which comes first, God’s intentions[1] or that of a super smart primate who cannot respect the intrinsic requirements for a garden of love, truth, beauty and order? The traditional choice between God and mammon is avoided by the super smart primate; apparently we cannot control our desire for disorder. Perhaps we should not be so smart.

Examples of human disorder abound and will not be listed here. The point is that humans have pretty much destroyed order across the planet. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere the super smart primate has gone, has touched, has tinkered with, remains orderly and functioning properly within this biosphere. But there are signs our disorderliness will not be tolerated much longer in Earth time. The super smart primate emerged six million years ago and by all measures has around 10 thousand years left before the garden will oust all primates. It could have lasted longer in an orderly garden.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Interpret laws belonging to the universe rather than to humans in any theological model that is comfortable. Mariner uses the Judeo-Christian model because it is familiar and practiced widely.

The Relentless Presence of Donald.

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With great resistance, mariner must turn his attention to Donald. It has become a spiritual duty. The mariner prides himself on not following policy backed by ulterior motive, hearsay rumors, unjustified gossip, fake news, inadequately thought out if not childish tweets, Facebook abuses and a campaign of empty commentary based on vapors of nothingness backed only by petty, childish name calling. In cultural reality, this makes the mariner old fashioned and increasingly irrelevant to the essence of American culture in 2017.

Mariner vets his information first by reliable sources, then by cultural valuation, then by his own twisted rationale. Mariner has the assistance of his three reliable cohorts, Chicken Little, a compulsive alter ego, Amos, a skeptic of the first order, and Guru, incapable of evaluating an opinion without tracing it out to its ultimate end – usually the end of the Earth or beyond.

All three requested a meeting yesterday to complain about Donald. Chicken Little said, “I’m afraid of him.” Amos said, “Don’t these idiots in government understand he’s a sham? Why won’t they just trash him?” Guru said, “If you value what’s left of decent human values in government and an economy that can launch any positive future, his narcissism, his identity with wealth and his fetish with gold are inadequate to make the transition.”

Well, what can the mariner say? He agreed to make Donald the subject of a post even though he believes it will be tantamount to urinating into a 100 mph gale.

– – – –

After listening to and reading all feasible news sources, reading a few relevant books, and applying his unique cultural valuation, the mariner arrived at this overarching view: Donald is a symptom, not a cause. The Christian caveat about casting the moat from one’s own eye before judging other people applies absolutely to the American citizen’s philosophy of government. “Americanism,” the spirit our founding fathers sought to underwrite freedom, democracy, liberty and prevent oppression, tyranny and populism, the mariner fears, has run its course. A civil war, four significant failures of the nation’s economy, internationalism of economy and a planet that has never balanced its global population with reality in any manner, has eroded the spirit (meaning the spirit of the individual) to the point that the US has retreated to the classic mores of the Roman Empire: leaders of any ilk make their own rules, have their own rights and privileges, are not responsible for the wellbeing of citizens except to stratify liberties to given classes; the common good is an extraction of “What’s good for me?”

This has become a nation (and an international community) that folks like Donald can thrive in. He is in his element. Ethics, morality, practicality and the job of caring and sharing left a few decades ago. Righteousness is found in “the deal.” Donald has only two platforms to sustain morality: Whatever happens, it must have an element to it that benefits him personally; second, he must glean an image of egotistical success and supremacy – even if it is only in his own mind. This second principle is a weakness that smart leaders will take advantage of in areas that truly affect morality and fairness but are of no interest to Donald. As the mariner said, among us, he is among his kind.

Debris lies all around.

Just recently, it was mentioned that the nation who fostered modern democracy ranks 27th out of 35 functioning democratic nations; out of every 100 voters, 43 don’t and 16 are denied the privilege.

The nation’s economy is at its peak and expanding as an oligarchy; out of every 100 voters, one shares in 90% of the nation’s wealth. Turned around, 99 voters share .001% of the nation’s wealth.

The cultural engine, business, aggressively moves away from any cultural responsibility; taxes are avoided to the point of hiding massive profits like pirates in places outside the world of visible commerce and salaries are at their lowest as a percentage of GNP for as long as such records have been kept.

The ethos of religiosity and the divine worth of a soul are but a skeleton, a memory of their worthiness. The driving factors of organized religion are rife with the distractions of ritual and selfishness. The individual soul is not worth saving at the expense of self-gratification or sacrifice. For every deal made by Donald, religion makes a hundred deals to avoid the responsibilities of compassion, sharing, and weaving the fabric of empathy.

So our culture has come to this in 2017. Acknowledging that a thread, a residue of graciousness still exists, our body of faith, of compassion, of industriousness, of sharing, of tempered discipline, lay on the planet’s trashed floor looking like a carcass picked over by our vulturous selves.

There is little left in man’s coffers. The mariner speaks occasionally of ‘world bounces.’ What is left to bounce to? The bread of life needs a starter but searches an empty refrigerator.

Welcome, Donald. Make us a deal.

Ancient Mariner

Totalitarianism is Here.

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In the book 1984 written by George Orwell in 1949, the evil element is totalitarianism. Orwell was afraid of the suppression of individual thought and individual expression – both empirically and emotionally. His fear came from communist movements in Spain and Russia which were using communistic (totalitarian) practices to control citizens. Orwell was afraid communism would cross the Atlantic and overwhelm democracy and capitalism. Some older readers may remember in the movie version the large screens that educated all citizens with the same information and may have noticed that everyone was wearing identical outfits.

George had the right insight about totalitarianism but the latent oppression would not come from political forces, it would come from computers.

The mariner devised a new measure of eras called a World Bounce. The World Bounce lasts about 120 years more or less. He determined this length of time based on a quick survey of large changes in global culture. (See the post, “Whither We Go,” published recently.) Using the zooming capability of 120-year chunks, we can envision some degree of context about the World’s life and times. It seems increasingly that a lot is changing or preparing to change in the culture of the world’s population. Without going into a litany, global warming, and global extinction of species, changing weather patterns, international economic imbalance, and specifically, artificial intelligence – all are forcing the hand of our political structures, our economics, and what the experience of a lifetime feels like. We are about to bounce.

The least examined force of change by the person on the street is the impact of artificial intelligence. It spawns totalitarianism. Not with evil intent, mind you, but inadvertently; the large screens of Orwell’s book are identical to what is called “Big Data”. Within a decade or two – thanks to Google, Microsoft and other data snoopers, massive databases will know all about each of us. A working term being sold right now primarily to businesses is “The Cloud.” Clouds are extremely large amounts of data accessible by an endless number of processors.

Add to this endless data computers that know how to scan, sort, merge, match, equate, and deduce Big Data; it is the same as you performing a search on Google except we don’t need you anymore. “Google” will do its own search, thank you.

One of the first functional examples of this new artificial intelligence is a program called ALICE which you load into your own computer. It has a ‘person’ who talks to you in normal conversational style. You may have seen Alex Baldwin order a new pair of socks without touching anything – just saying, “Get me a new pair of socks.” The computer responds nicely saying it will do so right away. Without input from Alex about what the socks will look like, their quality or size, ALICE already knows by searching a database with previous purchases of socks made by Alex likely collected from a credit card database.

Another ubiquitous example: ALICE, buy me a car. Again, Alice already knows your income level, credit card score, neighborhood and geographic region, the size of your family, the value of your home, the types of driving you do, what kind of gasoline you buy, what kind of car you own now and resale value. It knows this because certain companies are in the business of building as complete a profile as possible about everything and everyone. They sell access to Big Data so that sellers and buyers can do business together automatically using only computers matching requests to solutions.

Did a few of you notice how, suddenly, a few years ago it seemed that  virtually everyone bought SUVs? Car manufacturers did a marketing blitz. Now, all a car manufacturer will need do is buy an algorithm in Big Data which will steer your computer to their product given that your profile matches. If you are interested in making a choice yourself, your computer will offer only choices that fit your economic profile; you won’t be able to find that luxury car no matter how hard you search. This is an example of totalitarianism; eventually everyone will be subject to one choice.

George was fearful of this unintended effect: In the mariner’s home town for example, it appears everyone is driving the same model car, wearing the same style and manufacturer’s clothing (which by the way will carry in its fabric how long you’ve owned it) and oddly, how everyone wears the same socks. Even aware of the totalitarian effect, people still would appreciate the convenience. It’s identical today when a viewer ties themselves to Netflix or other entertainment packages: the odds are you simply will use the offerings available to you through Netflix. Note the other effect: No subscriber can see offerings that Netflix doesn’t want to carry.

Now shift this pattern of retail compliance to the morals, thoughts, philosophies and behaviors that make up your religion, political party, candidate choices for public office, individual creativity, whether you can find a different kind of job, etc. Already dating firms select candidates to be your spouse; right now you can just say, ALICE, get me a spouse….. Shades of Stepford Wives!

In following posts the mariner will address other changes likely in the coming World Bounce.

Ancient Mariner

The Role of Myth

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Seems folks are knocking myth around lately. Not so much using the word myth necessarily though some do. It’s more an evacuation of confidence on what the role of myth is and ignoring the fact that myth is a major pier in the lives of culture, religion, business and even an individual life.

Mariner has written often that religions around the world which emerged between 7000 BC and 800 AD (virtually all of them) adopted pseudo-historical principles to guide H. sapiens’ accountability to be human. A raccoon doesn’t need to learn how to behave like a good raccoon; it has no choice. Humans need instructions and acquired them by observing the effects of human behavior and the ecosystem over many thousands of years.

It was noticed that some parts of behavior were constructive, some destructive and some were beyond human influence.  Written language, when it existed, was not sophisticated enough to document esoteric, largely emotional and quizzical experiences. The best conveyance to describe these observations and solidify them as rules to live by was to tell stories – stories with melodrama and stark cause and effect just like today’s television. These stories were cultural treasures used as myths by which to live rather than instantly satisfying the same momentary emotional need we have today – without having to learn the substance behind the TV show like our ancestors did listening to their spiritual and cultural leaders.
When writing finally caught up, these stories were written down and codified. There was no reason to doubt them; it was just a more efficient way to replicate and distribute them. The power of written language enabled specialists in these stories to become political and even dictatorial. The specialists are called gods, kings, popes, imams and priests among many other glorifications.

Meanwhile, over the same millennia, culture broadened into specialties like commerce, tribal authority, standing armies, wealth, and other distortions which seemed always to evolve from mythic stories of bad human behavior. Mixed in were these powerful myths about how humans best should live; cultures set these myths aside as a reference rather than as a guide. The ‘reference’ came to be called religion.
Most of the time from about 300 AD to the present has been a continuous conflict between religion and each of the other cultural specialties, even between religious groups. Step on the sidelines for a moment to consider what exists today:
Global corporatism has its own guide focused on optimized profit which pays little heed to other cultural accountabilities; global nationalism has its own guide focused on tribal independence and authority which pays little heed to actual living conditions and ethnic equality; militarism has its own guide focused on domination which pays little heed to the value of life; economy has its own guide focused on greed which pays little heed to equality and fairness; religion has its own guide focused on superior authority which pays little heed to the mythic virtues ordained by their distant ancestors.

Back on theme, the specialties of culture are supposed to change as situations change to maintain their role in culture. Even religion for the most part, as its own cultural specialty, changes along with the other specialties. The sum of each specialty’s behavior equals the sum of the entire culture. How does one sort out the role of myth?

A myth is something one believes in as an absolute value unaffected by any other knowledge, rule, or condition. Mariner has a story he tells frequently about the woman who, when roasting a ham always cut a sizable piece off the ham before roasting it. Her young daughter was watching one day and asked, “Why do you always cut off a piece of the ham?” “Oh, I don’t know,” the mother said, “It’s how your Grandma always does it.”
On a later occasion, both of them visited Grandma. “Grandma,” said the little girl, “Why do you always cut off a piece of ham when you roast it?” Grandma replied “The pot’s too small.”
Myths shattered while you wait…

This cute story about a clean and simple myth held by the mother is useful for realizing how myths evolve over a long period of time (many modern religious stories took thousands of years to become mythic). It also is useful to highlight how dreaded scientific fact can raise havoc with a myth’s standing. Once new information reveals a fact that is subject to interpretation, the myth possibly may lose significant value.

Myths are not habits. Myths are representations of deep rooted values that guide one’s existence. A myth answers questions so ethereal that it is impossible to know self-worth without it. Why do we exist? The dominant reason in most religions is that we are here to make our reality better; we are here to make it better through intense commitment and respect for all living things. At some point, emotion becomes a bridge through art, service, and compliance. If an individual relates to the myth strongly enough, the individual is said to have faith.

Myths can be self-assumed. In the movie Fences, Actor Denzel Washington plays a poor African American (Troy) who had a severely damaged childhood. He finally leaves his abusive home at fourteen, later committing a murder and doing prison time. Upon release, Troy determines to have a ‘normal’ life and live successfully. Being damaged by his early experiences, he adopts an emotionally deficient belief that with a few rules focused on simple, superficial obligations he will be normal: always be employed, always keep food on the table and always provide cash to his wife and a roof over the family. This is an intense myth with no room for emotional reasoning. It is a myth of his own creation: it can never change, no new experience will ever change it, and if he violates it, he will turn into an absolute failure unacceptable to himself. The myth is the best he can muster to maintain personal worth.

Shoring up belief in self makes it a myth. Absolute belief makes it a myth. Troy’s unflinching adherence makes it a myth. Withstanding reality makes it a myth.

What can be learned through the mother and Troy is that the vehicle through which the mythic value is conveyed, be it a pot and a ham, or a series of acts in life, the myth need not be scientifically provable. Myths are the seeds of faith that deliver us from being a raccoon. Being a creature sensitive to esoteric values and the ability to have extensive communication and affiliation with others requires humans to know “what is the right thing to do.”

The short version of this post is to establish a set of myths that give direction to the big questions in one’s life: Why is – birth, death, love, companionship, responsibility to others including the Earth’s habitat for life itself. What does it all mean? How does one live in compliance?

Start your search with the myths behind religious parts of culture but don’t be afraid to construct your own. Mariner senses, for example, that the Marine Memorial raising the flag over Iwo Jima and the story of sacrifice in that battle has been accruing mythic value representing loyalty and commitment to the USA.

The mariner always has felt that science does an injustice to mythology when it weakens the scientific reality but does not pay homage to the true reality supported by the myth.

Ancient Mariner

The Steamroller of Culture

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On the Live Science website this week are a number of news items about the nativity in the Christmas Story.[1] The findings depict accurately the story of the nativity but are 3000 years older. It is no wonder that faith often rejects science. On the one hand, faith accepts wisdom in any form as valid and eternal. On the other hand, science depends entirely upon facts and logical assumptions based largely on facts. Over the decades, mariner has found this confrontation to be the most complex and convoluted relationship – that is of dependence on faithful beliefs in good, life-saving theological and behavioral ideas versus the forever emerging accumulation of facts, discoveries, and the pressure of changing cultures.

What is good? What is divine? What is the behavior that will save humanity? The answers to these kinds of questions require a mythic premise – one that is not influenced by human history, one that is valid beyond human behavior and abuse. This is a good way in which to secure our religious ritual; it is beyond the reach of daily life and is based on heroic goodness.

Alas, it seems science is dedicated to disassembling myths. Still, humans are created to be sensitive to forces beyond human achievement. Since the earliest times 12,000 years ago there is evidence that H. sapiens has incorporated the powers of God as part of the management of life. If one could take a snapshot every 1000 years to assess the role of God, one will find remarkable modifications in who God is and how God contributes to human quality.

God must do some fancy dancing to keep up with the latest in cultural changes. Not only does science keep changing the rules, humans keep reinventing the way humans interact and find meaning in life. Whoever thought God would have to deal with memes? How will God find a path through the electronic games, devices and preoccupation with capitalism? How will God reintroduce for the umpth time that love and respect, not possessions, is the core value to happiness and sublime life?

We know science has no interest in inculcating spiritual value; that is not its job. But given the results of science – certainly knowledge is beneficial – how do we construct a new myth that is meaningful today? How do we return divine essence to the forefront of humanity’s values?

There are fragile signs. It is a topic of conversation that we have lost, among ourselves, the soul and spirit that is required to manage our political and economic life. There are growing concerns about matters beyond our own comfort and pocketbook: the environment of an entire planet is beginning to fail. There are conversations about how to elevate this issue to daily levels of awareness in our destructive oil economy. There are so many humans on this planet that the basics of why we have an economy must change dramatically.

Unfortunately, you and I are in the generation of basic labor and sacrifice. It is we who must pull hard on the reins of a diverse and self-indulgent world. It is we who will pay the price of change in our comfort, our faith and our pocketbook. Our job is to stop further degradation for we are approaching something akin to Armageddon (largely a metaphor but nevertheless inevitable).

It has become your turn to step up and take charge.

Ancient Mariner

[1] See http://www.livescience.com/57311-5000-year-old-nativity-scene-found.html

The God Thing Redux

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Have you seen the TV commercial where a fellow hits a tennis ball over an off-camera net and receives hundreds of balls back? So it is with ‘The God Thing,’ a recent post. To mix metaphors, mariner thought he could, like a fighter jet doing a touch and go on an aircraft carrier, do a quick touch and go on the carrier of Christendom. He should know better.

Mariner is more than willing to engage in dialogue so don’t stop until you are satisfied. In the meantime until disagreements subside, the subject will remain part of a post rather than put into a reply. Let’s start by dissecting mariner’s theological shorthand into something with broader perception:

God is not directly a separate thing. Yes, in retrospect, that is obfuscating. If the word ‘God’ is an element in our discussion, the perception that God is the Trinity is not disturbed; the Trinity is intact. Mariner’s intent was to advance Father Christoforos’s statement that we, the humans, utilize God’s spirit when we take action to invoke the Second Commandment, the Ten Commandments, and most of the Beatitudes not to mention Old Testament prophets and New Testament disciples. The Father was advocating (if not admonishing) humans to carry out the responsibility side of their faith. Put your money where your faith is, so to speak: if we love God, we have no choice but to love people. God created all of us and commands in his name to love all things. Father Christoforos simply said if you don’t love people, you can’t love God.

Feeling God through empathy. Regarding the idea that the way we feel God is through sympathetic, empathetic and compassionate feelings is not one that can be dismissed. Jesus said more than once, especially in his parables, that if we behave in a certain way, great will be our reward in heaven. It may be helpful if one follows that thought as God’s tit-for-tat. Latch on to the experience that people describe when they have immersed themselves in a charitable act. Think about the athletes, celebrities, common citizens and just anyone who is committed to helping someone who has testified to the resultant deep satisfaction and reward; it is an experience too similar among them not to be a profound, deep seated human experience. Through an intense feeling of sympathy, empathy and compassion along with personal sacrifice, the flower that blooms is God’s Grace.

Showing a superior force. The superior force is the healing power of God displayed by Jesus in any number of healing events. This is frequently illustrated throughout the New Testament. Although most easily displayed as a medical advantage, the healing spirit of God applies to moments in the lifetime of every one of us. As God’s emissary, you show the power of God through the power of your commitment – expressed as sympathy, empathy and compassion. These three sensations are the tools by which you express your commitment to God, God’s domination of all things, and the power of love itself.

Mariner hopes these clarifications help. Clarifications aside, he wants to reiterate the importance of applying this portion of the body of Christian works, repeated from ‘The God Thing:’

Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

Ancient Mariner

The God Thing

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Mariner was watching the PBS News Hour the other day when the broadcast did a piece about the immigrants coming into Lesbos, a large island belonging to Greece. One of the locals in the video was an Eastern Orthodox priest, Father Christosoros, who was very receptive of incoming immigrants and was a leading helper organizing them and arranging shelter and food. All of Lesbos, in fact, has done the best they can for the immigrants despite an overwhelming obligation.

Father Christosoros, in an interview by the PBS reporter said, “How we see people is how we see God.” It reminded mariner of the years when he was a pastor and had the responsibility of assisting parishioners in seeing and knowing God in their lives. It still affects his conversation on occasion.

When you think about it, it is a difficult task to incorporate God – or any universal but not physical authority into one’s own very empirical existence with five senses and four dimensions. How can two such different entities coexist at the same time?

The Eastern Orthodox priest had it right. God is not directly a separate thing. God is experienced as part as one’s own ability to accept the reality that God provides. God’s existence can only occur as a result of your actions. Do you see sanctity in every individual? Do you feel a need to show a superior force spawned by respect, caring, and empathy that will easily assuage the difficulty that confronts others? Do you not judge or harbor feelings that separate you from others? The Bible is thick with comments that suggest if you take care of others, you will be taken care of. That’s about all you can ask, though oddly, the rewards of representing God are addictive.

Most literal, highly regulated rules about your relationship with God are antiquated in their presentation. They were formulated in past ages where knowledge, science, and culture were not as aware as they are today. Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

REFERENCE SECTION

Just a kudo for PBS. Watching the PBS News Hour has double or triple the insight into the world situation as the plastic, viewer share driven news channels elsewhere. If mariner can watch only one news program, it is the PBS News Hour.

Ancient Mariner

 

Loyalty is Everyone’s Mandate.

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During the holiday season many, many charity organizations are working at maximum speed to spread the cheer that someone cares for the wellbeing of another. The reader should become aware of the many efforts at feeding, gifting, paying for, providing shelter, providing warmth, and providing other critical support to the growing number of those left bereft and friendless by our abusive society.

Do you attend religious services? Your place of worship inevitably supports several charity projects – probably even sponsors volunteer activities in house to distribute evidence of care and concern but even more, befriending those who can’t afford friends. That includes more often than not families with children.

The best gift is you. That is hard for many people to do. But once one gives with personal effort and time, once one shares with another face-to-face, hand-to-hand, there are two gifts: You receive one, too, and it will be the best gift to you for the whole holiday season!

Our national culture slowly has worn thin. Citizens relate combatively. All the circus acts in politics, all the pretending that when whole industries have discarded wage earners, there is no human impact and that their futures are chopped off – leaving them homeless and penniless with families to support – these are not bad people; these are not failed people; these are not to be scorned; at least not yesterday why today? The US was founded on a new philosophy among nations that every citizen is responsible for every other citizen.

We have forgotten that in the US, we aren’t loyal to a regime or an ideologue. In the US, the strength of our society is not loyalty to the flag. No, it isn’t. We are loyal to each other. Not just in political rituals or paying taxes; each of us has a bonded responsibility to look after our fellow citizens and they must look out for us.

Loyalty to one another is a political mandate to keep the US together and strong. It is not a game for soft-hearts or ‘liberals.’ It is a hard game to be played every day, in every moment. Eric Metaxas said the US is founded on freedom. Freedom requires belief in freedom; freedom requires loyalty; loyalty requires virtue.

Now show your freedom, loyalty, virtue and wisdom: get out there and create some truly precious and needed holiday spirit!

REFERENCE SECTION

ERRATA

In a recent post lamenting mariner’s fortunes at the voting box, there was a poorly phrased sentence about the Presidential terms of Lyndon B. Johnson. To clarify, LBJ finished JFK’s term when Jack was assassinated; Lyndon won his own term in the next election but declined to run for a second elected term.

Did you forget your reading assignment? It’s “If You Can Keep It” by Eric Metaxas, copyright 2016, Penguin Random House. ISBN 9781101979983 hardbound — ISBN 9781101980002 ebook. $26.00 hardbound. Or see your library.

Ancient Mariner

About the Presumption about Shapes and Genomes

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Thoughts about the last post, A Presumption – Is it true or False? which assumed that a preference for a given shape is stored in the genome, are far ranging. Many arguments don’t address the genome-memory presumption; rather the responses provide evidence that would allow the presumption to be true or false.

Mariner lists different ideas submitted by readers, responding to cogent arguments. Many responses from readers were edited for length. The mariner’s response is in italics.

  • About the Presumption about Shapes and Genomes. This is more evidence that aliens visited Earth in prehistoric times.May or may not be relevant; did visiting aliens morph our genomes to prefer certain shapes or sizes?
  • Primitive cultures did not need the sky to explain their theology; they worshiped what they saw in nature. One might ask why low round shapes dominated religious edifices in a region that has several large mountain ranges with Mount Ararat topping out at 17,000 feet. Did the genome prefer round shapes?
  • It wasn’t until the Iron Age that humans had the materials to build upward. A good assumption in its own right – linking religious shapes to emerging paleontological skills. What decided what the shape would be – a genome or a committee?
  • The American Indian worshipped Mother Earth, a view of which was limited to the horizon – a circular view that influenced them in their religion. A good metaphor. Circles are everywhere in American Indian culture. Did the Indian genome prefer circles?
  • The genome drives everything. In birds especially, instinct predetermines nest shapes, height and building materials; plumage is an ingrained judgment to make decisions about mating, etc. Free will is not as prevalent as humans would like to think. I vote for the genome. A strong argument. The mariner considered birds as well. Do birds have a religious culture – the other side of the presumption?

The presumption is much ado about little. The human brain is a montage of experience, genetic instruction and external reality as humans interpret it. Completing the puzzle or not won’t change anything or mean anything. It’s just a puzzle.

Still, by following one’s thoughts, there are many side streets that help the brain stay supple and alert. For example, there is an old pop-psych quiz about preferred shapes: One is asked which of four shapes is most appealing – a circle, a square, a triangle or a squiggly line? Purportedly, a personality that chooses the circle likes things to be simpatico, undisturbed and pleasant; the person that picks the square likes things to be orderly, secure and well defined; the person that prefers the triangle is comfortable with change, conflict and existential attitudes. Finally, the one who picks the squiggly line is artistic, comfortable with surrealistic solutions, and dislikes redundancy. Which do you prefer?

4-shapesIn the end, does a personality select the edifice shape?

Is widespread use by others of an original religious shape simply practical and the simplest path?

In Washington D.C., edifices abound. Consider the Washington Monument, Saint Paul’s Cathedral and the Viet Nam Memorial. Which chose, the architect, the committee, the religion, or a shape preference in our genome?

Could it be all of the above?

Ancient Mariner

A Presumption – Is it True or False?

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Mariner begins a new series of posts that presume some idea is applicable to some process or result that may not be in the mainstream of history, science, or behavior. The posts will occur occasionally and unexpectedly.

Presumption – Over time, preferred geometric forms become ingrained in the genome. True or false?

To present a broad example, very early forms of religion (7,000 years ago or earlier) were not interested in height or divine sexuality until, abruptly, new gene pools from western Turkey and early Greece introduced a preference for vertical structures to express religiosity. The earliest gene populations built structures with rounded domes while later ones, like Egyptians, Babylonians, Mesopotamians and classic Greeks went with super large vertical architecture and focused on kings as gods (more a cultural preference). To a noticeable extent, the change in architecture was a rapid shift in preference for religious edifices; further, from the view of genetic anthropology, it is relatively clear that a new gene pool suddenly changed visual shape preferences.

Another illustration of circles dominating vertical architectures are the giant, geoglyphs discovered in the Peruvian desert; then there’s the example of soaring cathedrals and office buildings in large western cities. We could go on.[1]

On the other end of the European expansion, round edifices were preferred – consider Stonehenge[2] before the Roman occupation…

Another example occurs at the beginning and end of the great migration out of Africa – the one that travels through China, up to Japan and Russia, across the Bering Strait, down through North America and into Central and South America. Compare the architecture of the Xia Dynasty of ancient China to architecture at the end of the migration in Mayan and Aztec cultures – separated by 3,000 years and three continents.

In between were civilizations that did not create similar forms. Instead, one can see that these western civilizations, like the early religions in Turkey and Stonehenge, seemed to prefer round structures. The circle is prevalent in everything from igloos and tepees to religious symbols, to garment decorations to the Peruvian giant circles in the desert. Because these intervening civilizations existed in vast terrains that did not require reactions to mountainous geography, (the civilizations in between lived on islands, flatlands and ocean front) the theologies and godheads were vastly different yet none preferred vertical architecture until mountains were the primary topography.

There are historians who suggest that migrations traveled from the Indonesian area and settled in the middle of South America and are ancestors to a more primitive culture – remnants of which still exist in the great forests, Chile and Peru. However, in the deserts south of the Amazon basin, huge geoglyphs, well above normal size and often based on geometric design, reflect the same pattern of super sizing as the Mesopotamians.

It is agreed that terrain, over time, alters geographic preferences. But over generations, do certain cultural shapes become preferred as well? Darwin’s finches proved that finches developed new beak shapes and in England, feather colors matching local tree colors. Is this true about humans as well?

Can we presume that the genome carries a preference for certain geometric shapes – a preference ingrained over generations?

True or False?

Given the challenge, it will be hard to avoid association with successive generational adaptation.

Ancient Mariner

[1] The mariner cheats by including large, tall office buildings because they are neither religious edifice nor caused by one’s genome. They exist because there are too many people and not enough space. However, allowed to be taller than a religious edifice, one wonders whether capitalism is the actual religion.

[2] Weak example; It was a calendar. Nevertheless, circular architecture dominated the British Isles until castles came along.