Atheism, or Archetype?

Religion is built on a series of inborn archetypes and intuitions. Does that mean it is inevitable?

Religion is natural, but is it right? Increasing numbers of people in the US are giving up the practice and belief, if polls are to be believed. Hellfire and damnation is sure to follow, according to those left in the pews, at least those of the farthest evangelical congregations. As a student of Carl Jung, I appreciate the psychology of religion, seeing its processes as deeply reflective of our individual and communal psychologies, as well as the consequence of a complex evolutionary process whose aim has been as much social solidarity and reproduction as much, or more than, philosophical truth. At base, we are not rational beings, and follow a variety of themes and images, termed archetypes in the Jungian system, which persistently guide our dreams,  motivations, and cultures. We are not just economic units driven by profit and loss, but have richer dramatic lives and needs.

Father

What could be more obvious? We grow up in households with father figures who are unimaginably powerful. Food just appears, housing, furniture, love, care, and power and discipline. It is no wonder that, once we grow up, there is a father-shaped hole in our view of the world. In the usual patriarchial culture, the father stands alone, at the top, as both creator and moral disciplinarian, in an archetype that is expressed over and over again in cultures throughout the world, from Zeus to Allah, as it is in our political systems naturally as well. But the mother archetype is also in play, especially in Catholic and Hindu cultures, in the Marys and various powerful devas. Is it possible to see the world without using these instinctive lenses? That is what the scientific revolution and enlightenment attempted, in a cognitive revolution that remains, evidently, incomplete. Take prayer. In the form of requesting something from the father in the sky, it is pathetically immature and retrograde, however understandable in primitive conditions of complete existential mystery. On the other hand, some meditation, joy, and gratitude for the wonders of existence are surely healthy and consistent with mature knowledge of where we stand in the universe. Involvement with this archetype reflects quite directly how far one has gotten along the developmental road from childhood to maturity.

Heaven

The afterlife used to be a rather drab, depressing affair, in the classical Greek and Jewish systems. Then it was progressively gussied up into a lottery jackpot, in the Islamic and Christian systems. Buddhists and Hindus also find life after death, in the form of reincarnation, to be absolutely central to their philosophies. The magic of consciousness is incredibly hard to give up, and hard to get rational perspective on. It takes stringent dedication to naturalism and the evident facts of the world to accept, deep down, that death is really going to be the end- of everything. One need only think about animals- they are obviously conscious, and there are levels of consciousness all the way down the scale of evolution, to infinitesimal, then finally to nothing at all. How does that work, other than in direct proportion to their physical, brain-based endowments? What could be more clear, and in stark contravention of our intuitive and (weirdly) hopeful dream of life after death?

Tribe

We are not just endowed with intellect, but with a social nature, which focuses our striving and loyalty on the tribe. Our tribe is right and good, theirs is bad and wrong. Tribalism founds and plagues every new religious sect or philosophical school, which strains to show how it is right and its predecessors wrong. Jung vs Freud, Analytical vs Continental, Shiite vs Sunni, in endless profusion. Religions lack even the veneer of factual basis which characterize other divides like political polarizations or academic disputes. Doctrine, orthodoxy, and heresy are freely defined by whoever has social power. If one's village is Evangelical, woe to Catholics. If one's family is Seventh-Day Adventist, mere contact with outsiders is forbidden. Tribes have totemic symbols and artistic traditions as part of their identification / bonding apparatus, tokens of the archetypal processes at work.

Magical or zodiacal symbols in an Islamic Book of Wonders, circa 1400. 

Magic

Living in an enchanted word is natural, and wonderful. We all start there in childhood and treasure the dramatic, humanistic power of seeing the world through archetypal lenses- in animals with special totemic powers, crystals that heal, trees that listen. This is truly where traffic with archetypes is most fluid and explicit- bringing dreams to narrative life. Religious superstition raises this drama to existential levels, putting the magic on a celestial level of god(s), all-powerful father figures, and alternatives of eternal hell-fire or bliss. The chances of all this actually describing any kind of reality is nil- we are talking total fantasy. But its evident grip on billions of people shows just how powerful magical thinking is and how far we are from being rational.

Truth

All claim truth, but few prove it. Religions are notorious for splitting into sects, each possessing the final truth, the real story. Interestingly, atheists do not splinter in this way. There is plenty of bickering, about what humanism entails or is, how liberal humanists should be, etc., but there are no Seventh-Day atheists, or Twelver atheists, or other miscelleneous schools. Communism was atheistic, but was in truth a quasi-religious, authoritarian cult all its own. Once one has discarded attachment to these archetypes and the theologies they underpin, and to the need for truth as a matter of self-identification, why then it is easier to agree on what is actually true, as well as on the many areas where we just don't know, without the need to make up stories. This need, a dire need, for answers, especially to "big" questions, is a tipoff that we are dealing with archetypal energies, not with a rational level of thought.

One could compare atheism to the concept of nirvana in Buddhism and Hinduism- the release from the cycle of rebirth, from attachment to the archetypes, and escape to a level of intellectual / emotional freedom. Escape from rebirth is implicit, since the atheist doesn't believe in rebirth, heaven or afterlife at all. It focuses attention on this life, this moment, and compassion here rather than later. But to escape the causes of suffering, (especially the infliction of suffering upon others!), by regarding the archetypes intellectually and skeptically, and by distancing one's self from them, is far more important. To leave behind the seductive entanglements of archetypal belief and the often-abusive social relations they entail is personally momentous, and a healing balm for a planet full to the brim with faithful dogmatists.

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The Extermination of Tibet

China is culturally cleansing Tibet. "Seven Years in Tibet", by Heinrich Harrer, and "My Land and My People", by the Dalai Lama.

It may be falling off the world's radar screen, but Tibet remains a tragically oppressed land, well worth our remembrance and sympathy. Two books, "Seven Years in Tibet", and "My Land and My People" describe the heartbreaking slide from a happy, innocent, and isolated region to the Orwellian horrors that succeeded and continue today. One of the first significant acts of the new communist government of China, fresh from its civil war against the government that actually faught the Japanese, was to fulfill not any orthodox communist aims or development for its people, but the most rapacious and ancient ambition of Chinese governments, to subjugate its neighbor to the West, Tibet. Amid a blizzard of lies, China invaded the virtually defenseless state, oppressing Tibetans from the start in an ever-escalating war of cultural extermination. After almost ten years of trying to get along with the overlords and calm the waters, amid general rioting, the Dalai Lama fled in a dramatic escape from occupation, to welcome refuge in India, where he and the Tibetan exile community remain today.

Tibet was, frankly, a medieval culture, with economic relations ranging from nomadic to feudal. But medieval in the best sense, of a people thoroughly engaged in a set of archetypes that yielded a richly nourishing, dramatic life experience as well as a durable social structure. Tibetan Buddhism is very demanding, taking a fair fraction of men and resources into monasteries where they live off the rest of population and devote themselves to philo/theological hairsplitting. But they also devote themselves to various traditional arts, and most of all to the cultivation of peace and compassion- the touchstones of Buddha's solution to the suffering of this world. After a long and martial history, Tibet eventually put itself under the control of its most respected leaders, the Lamas, creating a system that was peaceful and benevolent, if also hidebound and conservative.

Take the story of how the current Dalai Lama was found and put in power. It is a veritable fairy tale of portents, dreams, signs and wonders. It has a sort of Wizard of Oz quality, which obviously resonanates, not only with us as a romantic tale, but with Tibetans as a great origin myth. And one can make a case on a practical level that choosing a humble and obviously bright peasant child to rule one's land may be a superior method to one which relies on the most ambitious people to sell themselves in some way to various institutions of power, and to the populace every four years. How often do we fantasize that any halfway intelligent person could do as good a job as the current office holder? Especially if that person were from early on steadfastly dedicated to the cultivation of peace and compassion in him or herself and others?

Likewise, the Dalai Lama's secret and arduous escape from Tibet was again the stuff of legend, binding him to his own people, and endearing him to people around the world. The Tibetan system values spiritual attainment, expressed in the extremely pacifist ideology of Buddhism, combined with a great deal of pre-buddhist folk religion and symbology. The culture was thus temperate and peaceful, perhaps too peaceful for its own good, but surely a model to emulate in our spiritually unbalanced times. The Chinese, in contrast, brought rapacious domination, racism, and cruelty. They were and remain atheist. But it seems that their compassionless spiritual vacuity (which is quite a different thing) was more important, leading them (especially through the cultural revolution) to despoil the cultural treasures, institutions, and people of Tibet.

We may wonder whether China is more culpable in all this than the US was in its virtual extermination of Native Americans and their many cultures. The answer is clearly yes. The gulf between the American cultures was far wider, and the state of historical consciousness lower. Native Americans had no continent-wide governments of centuries standing, no meticulously recorded written histories and philosophical traditions, and little basis for common ground or negotiation with the colonists and their successors. We have belatedly granted Native Americans limited sovereignity in their institutions and barren territories, while China keeps pouring more Han Chinese into Tibet and keeps 100% social control. The world had just fought a war to end all wars, and to liberate peoples from totalitarian military oppression, including those of South Korea. But Tibet was a bridge too far- we could not lift a finger in China's back yard, and now hardly say a peep.

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Altruism Through Execution

Does our good behavior arise from artificial selection against norm-violators?

This is a companion piece to the prior "Altruism Through Genocide", which presented a group selection theory for our human moral nature. In that piece, group cohesiveness was the driving force that benefitted those cooperative people who could effectively conduct warfare to exterminate their enemies, who were, on balance, less effective in their in-group altruism/cooperation.

Now we are considering a new book, "The Goodness Paradox", by Richard Wrangham, which presents an alternative, only slightly less grisly, theory. The book generally argues that humans show many signs of selective domestication- a syndrome common in animals that we have domesticated- of arrest in many aspects of development, towards more juvenile characteristics, such as docility, lower aggression, floppy ears, white fur patches, and skeletal and especially facial juvenilization. That much is clear. Despite our love of warfare, we are on balance, and compared to our chimpanzee relatives and most other wild creatures, far less violent, less reactive, and far more effectively cooperative. This is not just a cognitive development, but an emotional change and a deep change to our moral natures. So who or what did the domestication?

Remember in Western movies how good it feels when the bad guy gets killled? It is an archetype of deep power, and we hardly think about its moral and genetic implications. Chimpanzees don't have this moral sense, as far as we know. Wrangham cites various experiments and natural observations to show that no matter how terrible some chimpanzees are, the others of their group will not or can not cooperate effectively to ostracize or disable them. It just isn't done. In the modern world, we have grown squeemish about capital punishment, but primitive cultures had no prisons, thus pervasively practiced ostracism or death as the only practical punishments for serious crimes and unredeemable people. It turns out to have been common for communities (typically the men of the group) to gang up on a member who got egregiously out of line and kill that person. Wrangham places this development at roughly the emergence of modern Homo sapiens, two to three hundred thousand years ago. Thus there is quite a bit of speculation about the relative backwardness of Neanderthals, who had much more limited cooperative capacities, though being roughly as intelligent as moderns, and having many advanced characteristics such as complex stone technology and control of fire.

For a Few Dollars More ... Clint Eastwood hunts down the bad men.

The development of advanced hunting and killing technologies made each person, and especially each man, in primitive human bands quite powerful. But even more important was language and great scope it offered to organize, to collude with and against others, This created enormous incentives to maintain a good reputation. Primitive societies are characterized by an almost pathological fear of rising above one's peers- there is a notable lack of ambition, for the very good reason that the group is all-powerful, and signs that one wants to rule others, abuse them, or collude against them, are all treated very harshly. The idea, then, is that the unique human ability and motivation to detect and eliminate threats inside the group led to a process of natural selection that quickly domesticated the species in superficial metrics of reactive aggression, while advancing our organizational, deceptive, and language capabilities, which have made us by far the most deadly species when it comes to organized hunting and warfare.

The explains rather easily the intense motivation that teens have to conform to their groups, to party, to bond and seek power, and to be forever uncertain about their status. It explains conventionality. But does it explain the nature of the morality that human groups generally express? The posses that hunt down criminals, and the modern state apparatus that does the same on a more legalistic basis, the value we put on altruism and kindness? Not quite. For example, the morality could have become one of extermination, where leaders would use all their guile to eliminate, one by one, each of the other males of the group, thus gaining all the females for themselves. This harem structure is common among other animals, and has occurred occasionally in humans in historical times. But it has obvious defects. If such an endpoint is common knowledge, then coalitions would be difficult to build, though perhaps not necessary since even crude technologies allow relatively easy killing, even one-on-one, given a small amount of planning. More importantly, however, such an endpoint would leave the group very weak relative to other groups.

So both overall hypotheses are relevant, I think, the group selection hypothesis and the execution hypothesis, to explain the complexity and explosiveness of our group relations, and the generally pro-social and cooperative instincts that form our group values most of the time. There is a complex calculation to be made, in light of the status of the whole group, with regard to the value of each person, each one of whom would on the face of it benefit the group in any outward encounter, but who might also be so disruptive and destructive of group cohesion as to instead be a net negative asset. Wrangham unfortunately finesses this problem, of the actual content of our moral group ethics, and suggests instead that pure relativism prevails- that our groupishness / conformity / docility is genetic, but our morals are not, and become whatever the leading (male) coalition says they should be. One can grant that human groups have adopted very unusual moral codes, like sacrificing their own children into volcanoes, or conducting constant ritual slaughter as the Aztecs did, or making a fetish of celibacy, as the Buddhist and Catholic theocracies do. Nevertheless, there is a core of cooperativity and deep-seated conceptions of right and wrong (including the rightness of killing when the target is damaging the group, or is an enemy outside the group) that demand a better evolutionary explanation, one that focuses on the value of the group as a unit.

Wrangham also finesses another issue- that of eugenics. His theory is essentially eugenic. We have been our own selective agents, however unintentionally. In an afterword, he gives a brief case against capital punishment. Though it has had such positive effects by his theory, capital punishment is now unnecessary, since we have prisons and other mechanisms of social control. Yet the deeper issue is whether genetic selection is still needed to bias reproduction towards the well-behaved and away from the aggressive, psychopathic, misogynistic, and congenitally sleazy. Not a word on this, since it is a far more explosive and difficult issue, not to mention politically tinged at the moment.

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Incarnation and Reincarnation

Souls don't reincarnate. Heck, they don't even exist. But DNA does.

What a waste it is to die. All that work and knowledge, down the drain forever. But life is nothing if not profligate with its gifts. Looking at the reproductive strategies of insects, fish, pollen-spewing trees, among many others gives a distinct impression of easy come, easy go. Life is not precious, but dime-a-dozen, or less. Humanity proves it all over again with our rampant overpopulation, cheapening what we claim to hold so dear, not to mention laying the rest of the biosphere to waste.

But we do cherish our lives subjectively. We have become so besotted with our minds and intelligence that it is hard to believe, (and to some it is unimaginable), that the machinery will just cease- full stop- at some point, with not so much as a whiff of smoke. Consciousness weaves such a clever web of continuous and confident experience, carefully blocking out gaps and errors, that we are lulled into thinking that thinking is not of this world- magical if not supernatural. Believing in souls has a long and nearly universal history.

Reincarnation in the popular imagination, complete with a mashup of evolution. At least there is a twisty ribbon involved!

Yet we also know it is physical- it has to be something going on in our heads, otherwise we would not be so loath to lose them. Well, lose them we do when the end comes. But it is not quite the end, since our heads and bodies are reincarnations- they come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the DNA that encodes us. DNA incarnates through biological development, into the bodies that are so sadly disposable. And then that DNA is transmitted to new carnate bodies, and re-incarnates all over again in novel combinations through the wonder of sex. It is a simple, perhaps trite, idea, but offers a solid foundation for the terms (and archetypes) that have been so abused through theological and new-age history.

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Thomas Paine

Target of more than one early American smear campaign. Review of "The life of Thomas Paine", vols 1 and 2.

For an immensely talented, intelligent, and well-meaning man, Thomas Paine had remarkably bad luck at several key junctures of his life. The first was in marriage. No one knows what happened, but he and his wife quickly separated, more or less amicably, leading in part to his desire to move the American Colonies from his native England. Next was in his business dealings. He was not in the least a man of business, and gave away all his writings. This helped make them popular, but left him ultimately penniless. And the little money he had, he gave away freely. Lastly were his political problems in France and with enemies from the American Revolution, which landed him in prison during the French Revolution, and within a hair's breadth of the guillotine.

But he was very fortunate in his biographer, Moncure Conway, who published "The Life of Thomas Paine" in 1892, when lore and records about Paine were still reasonably fresh. Conway was a free-thinker, with deep sympathy with his subject, and this book is as detailed and supportive a biography as one might wish. We all know that Paine published "Common Sense", which cast the arguments for the American revolution in clear, populist language and sparked the national resolve to leave the British empire. He also published a series of follow-up pamphlets during the war, which he served as a foot soldier in Washington's army, that had equally important roles in supporting and funding the war effort, which was continually on the verge of financial and military collapse.

Paine was also an inventor, obsessed with building better bridges, using the improved forms of iron available at the time. This pursuit brought him back to England briefly, where he wrote "Rights of Man", as a response to Edmund Burke's somewhat reactionary "Reflections on the Revolution in France". "Rights of Man" was a comprehensive wrecking ball against monarchichal rule, and was very popular both in England and France. For this, the British government carried out an extensive campaign of villification, prosecuting him for sedition and libel. Paine escaped capture in just the nick of time, crossing the channel and entering France as a hero, feted with parades, and immediately elected to the National Convention.

There, he co-authored a constitution, whose fate illuminates those of the French Revolution in general, and Paine in particular. The National Convention was supposedly a temporary body, empowered, as were the American Continental Congresses and Constitutional Convention, to manage transitional affairs (at first, in France, in collaboration with the king), and to come up with a new constitution. But as crisis piled on crisis, the Convention split into parties- the Girondins and the Montagnards- the latter of whom decided that they didn't need a constitution anyhow, and could rule directly via revolutionary committees. The constitution was scuttled, rule of law went out the window, and the Montagnards, under Robespierre, proceeded to the Terror.

The most interesting and revelatory part of Conway's biography is his detailed account of how Thomas Paine ended up in prison. As a Girondin, and having argued forcefully against executing the king, Paine was definitely on the political outs. The Montagnards soon barred foreigners from serving in the Convention, depriving Paine of his seat. But why send him to prison in December 1793? Here we come to the machinations of the American ambassador to France, Gouverneur Morris. Morris is portrayed as a semi-Tory, supportive of George Washington's nascent reapproachment with Britain, which was consummated in the Jay Treaty of 1795. (Whose fruits would later arrive in the war of 1812.)

Unbeknownst to Paine, Morris also had personal enmities against Paine, who was the most famous and leading American in Paris, functioning in many ways as America's main envoy. The French government sought to remove Morris as ambassador, due to his pro-British, royalist sympathies, but were rebuffed by Washington, helped along by various misreprentations and lies from Morris. This left the French in an awkward position, vis-a-vis their only ally in the world, at which point they started listening to Morris and doing his bidding. And Conway strongly suggests that Morris let it be known at this point that the US would like Paine to be imprisoned, due to insinuations that Paine was a British citizen, a thorn to the Americans, and that Paine had encouraged the activities of the French ambassador to the US, Edmund Genet, who had angered Washington (and his sponsors in the Convention) by organizing pro-French millitias in the US to harry the Spanish in Florida, harass British shipping, and generally encourage party strife, among other vexations.

Conway puts Morris in the center of a plot to imprison, and preferably execute, Thomas Paine, of which just a couple of samples:

"But the fatal far-reaching falsehood of Morris' letter to Jefferson was his assertion that he had claimed Paine as an American. This falsehood, told to Washington, Jefferson, Edmund Randolph, paralyzed all action in America in Paine's behalf; told to the Americans in Paris, it paralyzed further effort of their own."
...
"It may be wondered that Morris should venture on so dangerous a game. But he had secured himself in anything he might choose to do. So soon as he discovered, in the previous summer, that he was not to be removed, and had fresh thunderbolts to wield, he veiled himself from the inspection of Jefferson. This he did in a letter of September 22, 1793. In the quasi-casual way characteristic of him when he is particularly deep, Morris then wrote: 'By the bye, I shall cease to send you copies of my various applications in particular cases, for they will cost .you more in postage than they are worth.' I put in italics this sentence, as one which merits memorable record in the annals of diplomacy."
...
"Told that they must await the action of a distant government, which itself was waiting, for action in Paris, alarmed by the American Minister's hints of danger that might ensue on any misstep or agitation, assured that he was proceeding with the case, forbidden to communicate with Paine, .they were reduced to helplessness. Meanwhile, between silent America and these Americans, all so cunningly disabled, stood the remorseless French Committee, ready to strike or to release in obedience to any sign from the alienated ally, to soothe whom no sacrifice would be too great. Genet had been demanded for the altar of sacred Alliance, but (to Morris' regret) refused by the American government. The Revolution, would have preferred Morris as a victim, but was quite ready to offer Paine."

Paine was eventually freed by the next minister, James Monroe, whom Morris did everything in his power to impede. Monroe claimed Paine as an American Citizen, and that was that. Morris, for his part, escaped in 1794 across the border to Switzerland after getting embroiled in various plots in Paris and becoming even more non-grata than before, and wound up his career in Europe as a royal toady, as Conway puts it: "The ex-Minister went off to play courtier to George III and write for Louis XVIII the despotic proclamation with which monarchy was to be restored in France."

Paine's final landmark work was "Age of Reason", his defense of deism. This led to the most thorough campaign of villification of his life, and long after. What was to the aristocrats of his day and particularly of the American Revolution a common philosophy became in Paine's treatment a popular and populist attack on established religions of all sorts, and the sanctity and veracity of the Bible in particular. Paine derided its fables and contradictions, and proclaimed a simple faith in god, whose evident works were plenty to engender belief, with no need for thrice-told miracles or gold-embroidered priests. While twenty or thirty years before, such a work might have been taken in the revolutionary spirit, America had fallen into a revivalist spirit by this time, and the resurgent methodists and other preachers led a campaign that blackened Paine's reputation for decades, and from which it has only gradually and partially emerged.

One wonders what the Quaker Paine would have made of his religion after Darwin and Lyell, who so thoroughly demolished the deistic reliance on god to explain the most far-reaching and perplexing natural phenomena. I am confident that Paine's intellect, which shines through his writing, would have grappled honestly with these changed circumstances and come out with either a far-attenuated deism, or given it up in favor of full atheism.

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Postmodernism: License to Lie

A continuation of the Enlightenment project turned around to burn it all down, and our political system went along for the ride.

The discontents of modernism are legion. It is soul-less, rational, scientistic, dehumanizing. And the architecture is even worse, exemplified by the glass box skyscraper. Modernism was the stage after the self-satisfied Victorian age, our last unconscious period when Westerners felt confident in our myths, our cultural superiority, and our untroubled right to all the fruits of the Earth. Modernism came in the wake of Nietzsche and World War 1, which left all those certainties in tatters, followed by an even more destructive World War 2. But from America rose a new unbounded ethos of progress through cooperation and science, leading to the UN, the EU, the conquering of air and space, and the comfortable dispensation of the fossil-fueled late Cold War West.

The long-term theme has been increasing consciousness, from the Enlightenment onwards, adopting ever more realistic views of the physical and social world. Art was first to experience this startling realism. Then politics, with the slow destruction of the myth of monarchical and aristocratic superiority. And finally religion, from the work of Nietzsche and Darwin, among many others. Throughout, science has been steadily dis-enchanting the world, removing Earth from the cosmic center, mystical vitalism from the chemistry of life, and God from among our forefathers and mothers. With modernism, we had reached a new level of consciousness. We could look at ourselves as one among many world cultures, accepting "other" forms of religion, art, and world view as good, perhaps even co-equal, with those of the West. Frills and decoration were out, myth was relentlessly exposed, and we sought to plumb the psychological depths as well, exposing our complexes and deep motivations.

Then in 1970's France, the postmodernist school took it up another notch, trying to show that all our remaining certainties were also questionable, and could be deconstructed. Whatever narratives we live by, even the most attenuated reliance on general progress through the evident workings of civic, capitalist, and scientific institutions, were unmasked as just another forum for power politics, patriarchy, and elite control of the society's metanarrative. Build all the skyscrapers and Hubble telescopes you want, it all boils down to Game of Thrones in the end. All narratives were destabilized, and not only was nothing sacred, nothing had meaning at all, since interpretation is an ever-flexible tool that gives authority to the reader/viewer, with little left over for the author (or for "reality"). Anything can be read in innumerable layers, to mean ... practically anything. The narratives we can not help but to live by are all ripe for deconstruction, but then how does reality relate to our (limited) cognition of it? That gets us right back to the foundations of philosophy in the Platonic cave.

This approach clearly follows the modernist and psychoanalytic line of excavating ever deeper into our sources of motivation, meaning, and narrative. Indeed, other disciplines, like anthropology, psychology, and even economics (in its study of institutions) have long preceeded the postmodernists. But one has to ask two big questions. First, is there some limit of analysis beyond which, even if the analysis is valid, human functioning is so destabilized that, for all the intellectual benefits, we end up inert, stripped of larger motivating narratives and reduced to mere units of immediate consumption, mediated by our TV sets and phones? Second, have they gone too far? Is the postmodernist analysis actually valid in all its implications? An excellent article in Areo chews over some of these problems.

Being scientifically and psychoanalytically inclined, I would have to answer no to the first question, and yes to the second. While unproductive over-analysis can lead some people to inertia, any correct analysis in psychological, cultural, or other terms can not help but illuminate the human condition. This is in general a big plus, and not one to be discarded because it is uncomfortable or destabilizing to our customary life and traditions. We dealt with Darwininan evolution, (well, most of us did), and can still reach for the stars. Sources of narrative and motivation are vast and perpetually self-created. Losing the old gods and myths is not a serious problem if we have new and significant tasks to replace them with. For example, nothing could be more dire than global climate heating- it is the central problem of our time, and tackling it would give us collective, indeed eschatological, meaning. What makes this moment particularly painful and fake is not that we lack an animating myth or center, but that we are dithering with regard to the true and monumental tasks at hand, blocked by a corrupt system and various defects of human nature.

The second question more pointed, for if the postmodernist analysis is not generally true, then we hardly have to worry about the first question at all. This is a very tricky area, since much of the postmodernist critique is valid enough. We live by many myths and narratives. But its earthshaking claims to destabilize everything and all other forms of truth are clearly false. Many fields, not just science, have a living commitment to truth that is demonstrably valid, even if the quest is elusive, even quixotic. Take the news media. While the tendency to endless punditry is lamentable, there is a core of factual reporting that is the product of a great deal of worthy dedication and forms a public good. Whatever the biases that go into selecting the targets of reporting, their products, when true, are immune to the postmodern critique. The school board really did fire its superintendent, or put a bond on the next election ballot. The fact that we have a president who fears "perjury traps", labels all truthful reporting about him "fake news", and allies with propaganda outlets like FOX and RT should not put anyone in any doubt that truth, nevertheless, exists.

Why some religious people have cottoned to the postmodern approach is somewhat mysterious and curious, for while postmodernism has mightily attempted to destablize reigning cultural orthodoxies, particularly those of science, it is hardly more kind to clericalism or religion in principle. At best, it may allow that these are at least honest about their (false) mythos/narrative basis, unlike the devious subterfuges by which science channels its bourgeois interests into claims to the really, really true narrative, which thus have posed the more interesting challenge in the postmodern literature. But make no mistake, if religion were the reigning cultural power, the deconstructionists would make mincemeat of it.

What makes Deepak Chopra so laughable?

But postmodernism has nevertheless filtered down from the academy to popular culture, destabilizing verities and authorities. Did they seek to have Republican policians declare that "we make our own reality"? Did they foresee the internet and its ironic capacity, not to make us all Orwellian drones with the same beliefs, but to let us stew voluntarily in propaganda-laced echo chambers, losing touch with reality all the same? At issue is the nature and status of factual authority, which we are so shockingly confronted with in this political moment. Coordinated assaults on our capacity for reason, from the wingnut right and its unhinged media, the new masters of the internet, the Russians, and the lying sleazebag who found his moment amongst the chaos, have posed this problem in the starkest terms. What is truth? Are there facts? What is an authoritative narrative of leadership, of care for the future and the nation? Should public policy be responsive to facts, or to money and nepotism? What is the point of morality in a fully corrupt world? Why is gaslighting a new and trending word?

The postmodernists insisted, as does our current president, that every category and supposed fact is a mask for power. They saw hobgoblins of social construction and violent dominance in the most innocent scientific facts and institutions. Such an attitude might be provocative and occasionally fruitful, but it has been taken way too far, rendering fields most affected (in the humanities) stripped of coherence, let alone authority. Leaving us with a modern art bereft of ideals other than shock, and the most banal literature and identity-based histories. It is also a sort of zero-sum-ism, needlessly oppositional and Manichaean. In their haste to unmask and tear down all idols and intellectual achievements that unify humanity, they have generated a sort of war against all meaning which is deeply anti-human- not just deconstructive, but destructive.

Yes, our narratives are in perpetual conflict. Different religions, political viewpoints, and cultures have distinct narratives and each seeks to win the hearts and minds in order to rule human soceity. The Reformation offers abundant examples of this, as does our current political scene. But at the same time, reality itself forms another, and very influential, locus in this conflict. For all the other narratives claim to be accurate views of reality, whether claiming that god is real, Catholicism is the true church, or that Republicans have a more accurate and effective view of economics and human nature. Each stakes its claims on discernment of how reality works, including the moral and other aspects of what people really want out of their social system. Do they want a king to look up to, or a representative government that may be more moderate and effective?

So narratives are not just thrashing our their conflicts on an entirely archetypal / mythical / power basis, as the postmodernists seem to assume. Rather, they are negotiating views of reality, including moral and social realities, which can be interrogated in large degree by reason generally and science specifically. Creationism and climate change denialism are just the most flagrant examples of narratives that seek social dominance on the backs of religious delusion and/or simple greed. And for all the equivocation of the postmodernists, they can be definitively dismissed given the knowledge we have outside of these or other narrative claims. The growth of mature consciousness means expanding our abilities to judge the reality-claims of narratives in a dispassionate way, considering both physical but also the psycho-social realities we share, and progressively leaving our psychological baggage behind.

• Coal is dead.
• The long road ahead against Alzheimer's. Though that article oversells our ignorance.
• Do shareholders come first, or workers and communities?
• Who is doing the harassing in the Persian Gulf?
• Rachmaninoff 3, after the instructive intro, ~5:30.
• Sanctity of life.
• Endless corruption.
• Better automatic stabilizers?

The Power of Prophecy

What makes prophecy such a compelling narrative device in fantasy and myth, and a psychological fixation?

Humans have been obsessed, from the beginning, with the future. As the only animal conscious of the future, its inscrutibility quickly became a frustrating obsession. One wikipedia page lists 372 forms of divination. Some of the earliest far Eastern writing we have is from divination using bones with wishes or questions written on them. How natural is it, then, to imagine that there is someone on the other end to tell us the answers, or some people gifted intrinsically or through some divine possession or shamanic training to foretell the future? My newspaper still publishes the daily horoscope, a sadly watered-down echo of these most fervent longings to peer into the unknowable.

It has been a fixation in drama, from Oedipus to Harry Potter. The Greeks went to Delphi and received dramatically cryptic answers, which could be famously misinterpreted. Oedipus fell into this trap, fulfilling precisely what he had strained every nerve to prevent. When used in fiction, prophecies are relentlessly fulfilled, since otherwise, why bring them up? Like for the more generic foreshadowing technique, the magic only works when the portents are true, and the characters, while twisting every which way to evade or fulfill them, find in the end that fate has spoken with one voice out of the timeless dimension.

The Harry Potter series makes generous use of prophecy, both in its main plot lines, where Harry is marked in advance in various ways for his extraordinary fate, including the special symbol tattooed on his face, and in one particular episode, where the characters fight it out in a hall of phophetic orbs, climax of the fifth book. The bible, of course would hardly be the book it is without a flood of prophecies. The new testament was in large part composed around the supposed fulfillment of various prophecies made in the old, with some squeezing and patching required. The king of the Jews who came to save the world  bears hardly any resemblence to what the old prophets were expecting! Yet, mysteriously and gloriously, the fulfillment came about in the least expected way, etc... Then the New Testament closes with another round of even more feverish prophecies, in the form of revelations where the mundane world will finally receive its just deserts and be swept away in favor of a new and perfect dispensation.

Stonehenge, in part an astronomical prediction machine.

Obviously, it is empowering to feel even a little in control of fate, a little gifted with insight into the future. Why else are countless people betting on sporting events? Why else make such a fetish of astronomy and the prediction of what can minimally be predicted- the steady progress of the days and seasons? It is endlessly maddening to know that the future is coming, but know so little about it. But the tide has turned a bit over the last few centuries as a new mode of thought came to the fore- science. The successful analysis and prediction of Halley's comet showed on a poplular level the power of Newton's system and its ability to predict the future. Now we can predict the weather with startling accuracy, at least a week or so in advance, and can likewise predict the climate decades into the future, somewhat to our horror. Yet there is so much that still eludes prediction. Even in the physical world, earthquakes remain a frustrating challenge, apparently fundamentally unpredictable. And despite the "end of history", human affairs remain not just unpredictable, but irrational, as our current political regime so amply demonstrates.

In its humbler incarnations, prophecy is merely evidence of intelligence- a keen imagination or intuition that is able to discern where things are going sooner than the next person. This is where sports betting and stock picking get their acolytes. But beyond that it is clearly a fictional device- one that we love in its fateful foreshadowings and tragic struggles, but one that has never risen above that level to divine inspiration, reading the mind of god. Naturally, that is because such a thing does not exist. We are trapped within the plodding arrow of time, as we are under the spatial light-speed limit, as we are under our own mastery of fate, such as it is, having no other to turn to.

• Like we need more billionaires running things, and preaching about the national debt.
• Wealth is the problem, far more than income.
• And we have the candidates to solve it.
• George Will does something good.
• Protect your and your country's health- leave facebook.
• Treason and corruption, continued.
• Income tax rates have no effect on economic growth.
• But what do economists know, anyway?

The Problem With Atheism

Bernard Mandeville and the impossibility of getting along without lying.

We live in a little cloud of lies. From the simplest white lie and social protocol for hiding unpleasantness, to the universal belief that one's own family, city, country are better than the other ones, untruth is pervasive, and also essential. Vanity, optimism, a standard set of cognitive biases.. are opposed to the reality principle. The economic commonplaces which are, as Keynes noted, unknowningly derived from some defunct economist. Our unconscious is resolutely irrational. Euphemism, humor and swearing are ways to refer to truths that are difficult to bring up in straightforward fashion. But more serious truths are the more deeply hidden. Such as death, the final stop on everyone's trip. Full-on honesty and truth? No one wants that, or could live with it.

Many thinkers have plumbed these depths, from Machiavelli to Freud. Bernard Mandeville was one, profiled in a recent BBC podcast. His most enduring (and brief) work was the Fable of the Bees, which portrays a society much like Britain's, rife with greed, ambition, corruption, and crime. Due to moralist complaints, god decides to make this hive moral and good, upon which everything promptly goes to pot. The economy, previously held up by a love of luxury, collapses. Courts and lawyers have nothing to do, clothing fashions fail to change. The traders leave the seas for lack of demand, and the military succumbs for lack of population. The hive ends up resembling one truly composed of bees, and goes to live a hollow tree, never to be heard from again.

"Those, that were in the Wrong, stood mute,
And dropt the patch'd vexatious Suit.
On which, since nothing less can thrive,
Than Lawyers in an honest Hive."
... 

"Do we not owe the Growth of Wine
To the dry, crooked, shabby Vine?
Which, whist its shutes neglected stood,
Choak'd other Plants, and ran to Wood;
But blest us with his Noble Fruit;
As soon as it was tied, and cut:
So Vice is beneficial found,
When it's by Justice lopt and bound;"

His point, naturally, was that vice is both natural and to a some extent the underpinning of national greatness and economic vitality (given some beneficial management). Greed is good, as is irrational optimism and ambition. Mandeville was also a famous anticlericalist in his day, but that is another story. It was a classic contrarian point, that what we fight tooth and nail to vanquish or hide has, in reality, a role to play in the national character and success, for all its embarrassment. And that we routinely lie, to ourselves above all, to hide the truth of reality so that we can go on our way from one day to the next.

"My aim is to make Men penetrate into their Consciences, and be searching without Flattery into the true Motives of their Actions, learn to know themselves."
- Bernard Mandeville, in Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness.

What is our most florid and communal lie, but religion? This is the salve of social togetherness, moral self righteousness, and imaginary immortality. It is the finely tuned instrument that addresses alike our private fears and social needs. And atheists know it is completely, utterly wrong! But what is the point of saying so? Religions have been corrupt, abusive, greedy and murderous from time immemorial- they have many faults. But untruth is not a flaw.. it is the reigning feature of this imaginative confection, providing the credulous a full belief system to support a positive and hopeful self-image, (not to mention conventional authority!), so important to happiness, providing the more skeptical an endless labyrinth of theological puzzles, while providing even the most skeptical or apathetic a social institution to call home.

So why go around ripping the clothes from believers, crying that their cherished narratives of meaning are senseless- that they should go forth theologically naked? It is a serious question for atheists, going to the heart of our project. For Freud, after all, repression had a positive function, and was not to be comprehensively cleared away, root and branch, only pruned judiciously. Lying is indeed integral to mature social functioning. Clearly, untruth is not, by itself, an unacceptable portion of the human condition. This implies that atheists need to be generally gentle in approach, and selective in what they address directly- the most significant outrages and injustices perpetrated by religions, of which there is no shortage. When religions invade the territory of science, making bone-headed proclamations about biology and geology, that clearly crosses such a line. And likewise when religions insinuate themselves into governmental institutions, bent on seeking power to foist their beliefs and neuroses on others.

The so-called arrogance of atheists consists of their opposing / exposing the cherished verities of others as false. Such arrogance is of course not unknown among religious believers and zealots either, and for much more modest cause. The secular state settlement of the West has forced religions to forego armed conflict and state violence in the pursuit of their truths and enemies. Atheists should take a page from this success to lead by example and humor, rather than frontal assault, even rhetorically.

• BBC to continue spouting religion.
• Silicon valley has its religion as well- a sort of Stockholm syndrome.
• But lies in politics.. is there no limit?
• Hate is in the textbooks, in Saudi Arabia.
• Euro countries are not independent.
• 5G to rule them all.
• Heredity counts for a lot.. more than parenting.
• The labor market could run much, much better.

Was Jung an Atheist?

Short answer: yes. Understanding religion, and believing in it, are two different things.

Jung was highly sympathetic to religion- Christianity in particular- seeking to explain its psychology and origins, and even to replicate it. There is an old joke among Jungians. A child asks her Analyst parent.. are we Christians? And the parent answers: "heavens no, we are Jungians!" While Freud was a rather vociferous atheist, Jung took a much more ambiguous, understanding approach to religion. Rather than a pack of lies, it was a truth, just not about the cosmos. What makes Jungians distinct is their respect for the power and psychology of religion, which they are generally obsessed with, and devoted to understanding. They are more anthropologists of religion than disparagers.

It is common for god and religion in general to embody the psyche of its practitioners. Even atheists take god's name in vain, to express strong emotions. Intellectuals customarily make of god whatever most interests them. Einstein and Spinoza took god to be the universe. Jung took it to be the self. While religion touches on many archetypes and psychic complexes, the nexus around which it all revolves is the self. Am I saved? Will I live ever after? Am I good? Is anyone? What is the meaning of my life? Jung took these questions to be significant and deep, not just the superficial reflections of repressed sexuality. Indeed, his view of the unconscious was much more positive than Freud's, seeing it as a fount of deep insight and healing, whose therapeutic power is not just the exposure and extinguishing of childhood traumas and instinctive conflicts. The unconscious has its own perceptual apparatus and methods of communcation (symbols, images) which can be seen as an autonomous entity within ourselves. I.e. god.

This is why symbology and ritual are so much more important in religion than is theology. All the Western attempts to rationalize the concept of god are so much wasted effort, not only because they are intellectually bankrupt due to the non-existence of the cosmic god they posit. They operate on a typically intellectual level that is totally inappropriate to the subject at hand.

An image painted by Jung, from his Red Book. The unconscious holds dark shadows as well as  compassion.

God is indeed real and an autonomous thing, at the same time it is a psychological construct, arising from our own selves and depths. The psychological concepts that Jung fostered, about an immense and fertile unconscious, which partakes not only of individual concerns, but of communal and cosmic ones, represents a significant and irreversible step in our understanding of religion and its panoply of symbols, motivations, gods, and other artistic paraphernalia.

Late in his career, Jung offered an interpretation of the evolution of Christianity, in "Answer to Job". God, as the manifestation of Israel's unconscious longings and strivings, is in the Pentateuch a thin-skinned, and fickle tyrant. He is immature, and when Job calls him to moral account for the Trumpian way he has toyed with his devoted subject, all god can do is blow up in an insulting twitter-esque rage. This exchange raises to consciousness the primitive nature of the god-concept in this culture, and rankles for several hundred years, at which point the solution becomes to make a better man of god by making him (notionally) into a real man. So, Pinocchio-like, he comes to Earth as Jesus, does good deeds, expresses some compassion, (though unimaginable ego seeps through in the commands for followership and claims of overlordship), and then ritually offers his self-sacrifice to assure us that he has really changed his ways and is now meek as a lamb.

Another self-explanatory image from the Red Book.

Obviously, this made a pretty modest impression on Jews at the time and since. But the combination of monotheism and a quasi-charitable, egalitarian form of god, leavened by Greek gnosticism and other intellectual additions, spread like wildfire through a West enervated by the relentless brutality of Roman civilization, and its fractured spiritual resources.

Many gods have come and gone, as cultures evolve and elaborate new images of themselves and their ideals. While Jung dabbled in some mysticism along the way, and was frustratingly ambiguous and unscientific in his writings on the subject, he laid what we can take as a very trenchant foundation for understanding religion as a psychological phenomenon. In this he followed the lead of William James, who recognized that it is a special area, so heavily subjective that philosophy has little hold. Like other freelance religious practitioners, Jungian analysts today split their time between writing books of uplift and psychological insight, and listening to clients bring up their difficulties, whether shallow or deep. They provide spiritual solace to the lost, while trying to heal the larger culture by bringing to consciousness the powers, compassion, and insight that lie within.

• The planet is burning.
• Workers, citizens, unite!
• An emotion in every chord.
• How China beat the recession- classic Keynes.
• What makes unemployed farmers so much better than other unemployed people?
• And why is the Labor party giving up on labor?
• Resignation- an excellent precedent!
• A difference between just desserts and business models.

The Sierra Club as a Religious Organization

Yes, and a good one, too.

The divides in the US have many dimensions, but a significant one is religious. Conservatives crow about their traditional religion- Christianity- and then, bizarrely, vote for Trump. What they really seem to be for is patriarchy and its traditional society-wide hierarchy (based on male-ness, but also on its accessory patriarchal religion and on race). Their model in the South shows that a bare-majority or even minority race can maintain power for decades in an ostensibly democratic society if enough levers of social, political, overt, violent, as well as covert power are used consistently. The movement against Confederate monuments is a watershed in consciousness of the thoroughgoing way the social gestalt of the South has been shaped by its treasonous and revanchist elite.

As far as rural and Southern America are concerned, the bicoastal elite live in another country entirely. In that country, we tend to think we have no narrative, no gestalt at all, but purely a functional this-is-the-way-it-is approach to reality and truth. A committment to reason, science, innovation, good public policy, social justice, etc. But of course, that can not be true. We have a narrative as well, and nothing illustrates it better than the Sierra Club.

This is the home of the shamans of environmentalism- the tree-huggers, whale watchers, and activists, inhabiting a completely different narrative from that of traditional Christianity and patriarchial conservatism. Its roots go deep into paganism and the natural reverence humans have for nature. It is a nature religion, but not animistic. There are no anthropomorphic deities or weird powers. We are the gods, but are fallen, now that we have inherited this awe-ful responsibility of taking care of a world that we have so hopelessly befouled. There is no bearded or other male figure behind the curtain. The Sierra Club conducts pilgrimiges, has its saints, sacred places and its version of the end-times, preaches to its believers, and expounds at every opportunity an ideology of love of and care for nature. It has its fetishes for untrammeled, unspoiled locations, its secret misanthropy, its revelations of human insignificance. And even jihad, if you count GreenPeace in the same sect.

A recent article by Gary Kamiya in the Sierra Club organ makes its religious nature particularly clear:

... Which takes us back to the wilderness within. No matter how refined we may think ourselves, at some level we are all still wild creatures, made up of the same materials as the mountains, the deserts, the oceans, the distant stars. "Wilderness" carries a connotation of chaos and anarchy, but that's misleading. Our inner wilderness is no more disorderly than the world itself is. A wild mind is a balanced mind. The wild world may be deeper and more heterogeneous than the city world, but the difference is only a matter of degree. The sense of wilderness is our birthright, and we can experience it anywhere. "The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning," Snyder writes. "One should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience . . . to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight." The real goal, he says, is to see all the land around us, whether in the country or in the city, as "part of the same territory—never totally ruined, never completely unnatural." 

Of course there is still absolutely nothing like a face-to-face encounter with deep wilderness. Once at Buck Lake, I was awakened by the screaming call of a pack of coyotes racing unseen through the 3 A.M. darkness, the shrill sound moving fast along the mighty granite ridge across from my campsite, then fading into the distance. That sound still rings in my memory, a quicksilver affirmation of the strangeness and holiness of the world.

The language and sentiments are clearly religious. But there is no theology, no theos at all. It suits the "spiritual-but-not-religious" mindset, whose sprituality is affective and natural, not burdened by over-thought (yet underbaked) theology and relic supernaturalism. Science isn't a problem here, but another way to appreciate the glory of what we love on so many levels- our world and biosphere.

Is all this good? People are naturally religious, creating and needing frames of meaning beyond mere subsistence and reproduction. The Republican Party and current administration shows what can happen when such a frame becomes completely moribund, paying lip service to Catholic and generally Christian dogmas while throwing any semblence of actual moral principle to the wind and practicing shameless greed. It is a revolting spectacle on every level. True religion fosters empathy and puts us in touch with our core values and commonality, not just among males, or with fellow countrymen, or even with humans, but with all beings.

• Silent holocaust.
• More lies.
• Are human desires endless, and therefore work endless? Only if money is distributed equitably.
• Does all our productivity get channelled to the top, or to those doing the work?
• How to design drugs with knowledge and computers.

Thinking in Symbols, Speaking in Tongues

Theology, schmeology. Jimmy Swaggart's musical, tribal, shamanistic approach to religion.

What is church without music? Probably not much fun. Even Islam has smuggled in a musical tradition in the form of the call to prayer, which is often a virtuoso vocal performance. The important role music has in most religions is a sign that their gatherings are social bonding events, not scientific conferences. One of the clearest instances is the televangelism of Jimmy Swaggart, still going strong after 45 years. At its core are his amazing piano and vocal abilities, combined with a very tight band and other featured singers. A cousin of Jerry Lee Lewis, his talent was recognized early on, but instead of joining the recording industry, he built his own evangelical empire, whose broadcasts are heavy on the music, and light on the theology. The music is an extremely comforting, a sort of bluesy, (this is from Louisiana, after all), cross between Lawrence Welk and African American Church gospel. The focus is on praise and succor from god ("Take my hand, precious lord", "Jesus, use me", "I'll never be lonely again", "Sheltered in the arms of God", "What a friend we have in Jesus").

It is a little reminiscent of the gatherings of DeadHeads, finding a comforting sacrament of friendship and love in an endless bluesy/country jam, heavy on the sentiment. Yes, the Pentecostal / Swaggart version is a lot more conservative, and its love doesn't come from a puff of smoke, but the equally vaporous triumvarate of holy spirit, Jesus, and god. What theology there is is virtually stripped of any sense, however, consisting of archetypal references to give the whole jam more emotional power. It is, essentially, the power of shamanism.

For example, the creed of the ministry is:

“Dear Lord Jesus, I now realize that I am a sinner. I accept the fact that You died for me on the rugged Cross of Calvary. I now open my heart’s door and receive You as Saviour and Lord of my life. Please take full control of me and help me to be the kind of Christian You want me to be. Amen.”

Why "rugged"? How can Jesus take control when he no longer exists, and we do not know where he is or what he wants? OK, call me skeptical! Anyhow, the answer is always prayer, and the Swaggarts claim "Without a daily communication with our heavenly Father, we will only go so far in this Christian life, which won’t be very far, spiritually speaking." Prayer is the cell phone call to god, keeping Him up to date with what we want, and telling us what He wants. What does this really mean? It means one's conscience is going to do the talking, (at best), and its quality is going to be the tenor of our supposed talk with god. This might expain the problems that Swaggart himself has had in the sin department. It also means that anyone who can infiltrate our conscience and purport to tell us what god wants may end up with a great deal of control over our actions. For example, the ministry offers a wide range of "The truth about..." videos, telling the flock why Mormons, Catholics, Muslims, even Seventh-Day Adventists, are wrong and bad. The "full control of me" formulation could be taken as a little sinister, not just to keep the tribal boundaries clear, but to milk the flock for money, and drive a highly conservative political message that is in many respects rather uncharitable.

And control is surely what is going on here. The bonding is very strong and social, starting with the music and the TV shows, but extending to more intense "Camp Meetings" and other events around the country. Advertisements for youth events gush about how attendees feel the presence of the lord during the event. Theoretically, god is supposed to be everywhere, not anywhwere in particular, so these charismatic settings and climaxes are a clear sign of shamanism, not of any coherent theology, let alone philosophy.

The magazine, aside from advertisements for a rich assortment of ministry products, is full of word-salad theology, with submission urged to the will of Christ, or other spirits, so that the "Blood of the Lamb" can wash over the sinners in the pews, cleansing them of their sins. Sermons and blessings are "anointed", messages are "Spirit-baptized", and the "Powers of Darkness" are fought. This church is the "Bride of Christ", and good believers have "eyes of the spirit" to see "the things that lurk in darkness". The whole thing is a work of art, really- a poetry of metaphor which is highly meaningful without actually meaning anything concrete or real in this world. But when it comes to the prices, things are naturally far more explicit "Your price just $10 each".

Televangelism remains a remarkable phenomenon, drawing on the implicit cultural assumptions in favor of Christianity, on blues and gospel music, and on the power of personal magnetism and group bonding to comfort the lonely and lost. If the message were stripped down to the hymns alone, it would be a positive social force.

"If God Is Dead Who's This Living In My Soul?"

• Our government, regular people not invited.
• Even the National Review wonders about inequality. And then concludes that it should be made worse.
• GOP busy making things worse.. Things which clearly could be better.
• Making Afghanistan great again.

The Treacherous Invisibility of Sociality

We are dealing with phantasms, which makes drawing a line among them difficult.

It is easy to take potshots at science for its blinkered focus on the measurable and the concrete. How many people have pulled out the famous Shakespeare line about the many more things, poor Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy? How many times does the newest research in social sciences tell us what anyone with common sense already knows? However, on the other side, the quest by softer sciences, like economics and ecology, to man up and drown themselves in math in order to satisfy their envy of the "hard" sciences. There are clearly conflicting emotions on the matter, which occasionally boil over into Trumpism and general anti-elitism.

But understanding by way of careful observation, useful simplification / reduction / schematization is what all scholarship and learning is about. One can't get around learning about something in detail if one wants to master it, either operationally or intellectually. The scientific method was revolutionary development, not only for science per se, but for philosophy and specifically for psychology. It expresses a skepticism of knowledge gained by theoretical, authoritarian, and armchair means, untethered from whatever the object purports to be, whether physics or biblical texts or history. Just as we suspect statements made by our current president when based on nothing, likewise we should suspect other claims lacking evidence of a rigorous, empirical kind.

But there is a deep problem, which is that our most important issues and forms of knowledge are social, not measurable and concrete. While science struggles to grasp social patterns and knowledge from its particular perspective- and not yet terribly successfully- those patterns are at the same time experienced richly in everyday life by everyone and portrayed with great variety and complexity in the arts. It is the core of drama- who knows what, who likes whom, and can I see through layers of deceit.  All of this is invisible in the conventional sense. It may be encoded somewhere in our brains, but the proper level of analysis is clearly not that of the neuron. As scientists, we are left with questionnaires, polls, and, generally, utter blindness when it comes to this most important apparatus of our lives.

Hard to read?

What hides, and what exposes, the social matrix? Language is the premier medium, of course, going far beyond the pheromones, grunts, dancing, and grooming of other animals. Blushing, facial expression, and eye direction, are a few more biological examples of other ways we externalize our social feelings. Yet there is great value in hiding feelings as well, whether out of politeness or deceit. Indirection, subtlety, puns, jokes, allegories, metaphors, a single look. The cues, even when present, are devilishly hard to read, which prompts theories about how sociality drove gains in human intelligence. So even on the social level, let alone the scientific level, it is hard to know what is going on beneath the surface, where sociality truly resides.

An inference of sociality, constructed in typical mid-20th century fashion.

The result of all this is that we are very enthusiastic inferrers and theorists. Conspiracy theories, truthers, birthers are some of the more extreme manifestations, but we all have to do a lot of reading between the lines just to survive as social beings. What is a soap opera but the carefully and gleefully managed reveal of social facts that are not, in timely fashion, apparent to the participants? Some people are more skilled at all this reading and inferring than others are. Extroverts enthusiastically wade into this murky unknown, while introverts regard it as hostile territory, and tend temperamentally to populate the scientific ranks, struggling to find certainty in an uncertain and largely invisible world.

What becomes treacherous about all this is the over-enthusiastic inference of things that are not there. On the social plane this can be over-sensitivity to slights and oversights. But it can also be religion- the natural inference of sociality to inanimate phenomena. Animism seems the most natural human condition, anthropomorphizing everything around us from insects to mountains, and putting ourselves into subtle social relations with it all. The rise of patriarchy seems to have prompted a massive shift from animistic patheism to father-centric monotheism. The theological object is no more real, however, for being consolidated and blown up out of all proportion. It is still an over-enthusiastic inference of sociality / personhood put on the void. Smarter theists have given up trying to explain particular aspects of reality via crackpot theology, such as electricity or evolution. Yet "everything" is still somehow fostered, created, or underpinned by this phantasm, much as prostate health is "supported" by the latest herbal supplement or hemeopathic nostrum.

What's the harm? On the social plane, over-inference leads to a lot of drama, but is quite finely tuned and bounded by actual, empirical, interactions (though our politically partisan echo chambers breake this model). It is how we evolved to deal with each other. On the philosophical plane, it has been disastrous, giving us centuries of bad ideas, intolerant theologies, and mis-directed energies. Think of all the monks and nuns praying away in their cloisters to non-existent deities for undeserving patrons. And today we are still living in a world at war over religious differences, all based on imaginary inferences created out of the template of our social assumptions and desires.

• Words for the unnamable.
• Lessons from the soaps.
• Ghost-busting.
• What's wrong with experts? What is right?
• Summers heads towards a full employment policy.
• Total mental breakdown.. making us safer by cutting the coast guard and other safety agencies.
• If work doesn't pay, people won't work.
• Manufacturing idiocy.
• Is economics a corrupt cabal?
• What it is.
• Our internet bites.
• Monopolies and rent hurts workers.
• Swamp? How about government by lobbyist?
• Finance wins, not workers.