I haven't written anything in a long time. Partially because I just didn't have much on my mind, but mostly because I've been so busy. The last year has been mostly taken up with work, school, and being shut in for most of the year due to the pandemic. I was so unhappy at work that I was looking to leave, and just happened to get an email about a scholarship to Providence's medical assistant program and thought what the hell. After jumping into that, I ended up in the ER with a spontaneously collapsed lung. And then after that, a global pandemic hit. But somehow, I managed to pass all my classes, graduate, and pass the national accreditation exam and am officially a medical assistant! In all of that time, though, I've felt spiritually dead. Most churches and other places are closed. My time has mostly been full of school work and studying. And with a few exceptions, the way people have acted has made me doubt the goodness of human beings. There just doesn't seem to be room for truly spiritual people.
About a week ago, for example, a caregiver at work killed themselves by jumping off of the top of the parking garage. Providence didn't really address the incident beyond a short email that was never even sent to my department. But everyone knew about it, and it's been on my mind a lot. Who knows why they did it (part of it was apparently work related according to a note that was rumoured to have been left behind), but it makes me think about how many people out there are suffering. How many are labouring under the weight of depression or some other form of mental illness? How many people are unable to cope with the omnipresent stresses that they experience on a daily basis, whether from abuse or privation or some limitation on their life that makes life difficult to bear?
And it makes me think how sick our society is and the inhumane ways we treat others, whether through conditioning or because it gives us some advantage in our lives. The poor and houseless. BIPOC. Women. The mentally and physically ill. The elderly. LGBTQ+ people. People with disabilities. Those who fall outside of our homogeneous social groups. Etc. It's diseased all the way through and I'm honestly not sure it's even curable anymore. The world that we've created isolates us. It pits us against one another, whether out of bigotry or competition. It turns our relationships into transactions and feeds off our vitality like a vampire, leaving us tired and drained and empty inside, and making any sadness or despair we may feel that much deeper.
It's also built upon the exploitation and oppression of various segments of society and physically destroying our planet in the process. And it doesn't take people's health seriously, treating access to care of any sort as a commodity. Is it any wonder that people are increasingly unable to connect with one another and find no meaning in their own existence or hope for the future? I know that there's not much we can do as individuals to save the world or prevent someone who is determined to end their life from doing so, but besides working with others to try to make the world a place worth living, we can strive to connect with, respect, and love those close to us. And I hope I can do a better job of that, too. But if I'm being honest with myself, I feel like I'm just as self-absorbed and cynical as the rest of the world. While I glimpse the goodness and desire to strive towards it, I'm caught up in the same rat race, working all day at a job I don't love so I have enough money to keep a roof over my head and spending the rest of it trying to keep myself sane and get a modicum of enjoyment out of being alive.
It's a depressing thought, but I don't treat people much better. I'm always stressed and feeling stretched thin. I'm short with people because they're short with me, trapped in the same cycle of acting and reacting negatively, making the mental ruts deeper and deeper and harder to get out of. And like many others, I self-medicate with things like alcohol and Netflix, doing whatever I can to escape my own life through distraction and imagination. Truly spiritual people seem like an endangered species that's confined to a few secluded habitats, monasteries and hermitages that house the last of those who have the courage and strength to truly renounce this world to strive for a better one. And as much as I wish I were one of them, I can't seem to work up the courage or the strength.
Monday, November 30, 2020
Sunday, October 4, 2020
10/4/20
Pope Francis just released a new encyclical that, among other things, highlights the contradictions inherent in the modern institution of private property and the suffering and inequality it engenders. While in practice, the institutional church has long been geared towards the support of power and oppression and covering up abuse and has lost much of its moral authority, the theological and historical basis of Christianity itself has always been a universal call to the common good and solidarity with the poor and oppressed.
Maybe it's just because I agree with it and find it close to my own political point of view, but I think the encyclical itself is surprisingly good and filled with much of that universal call to fraternity and the common good. It calls for justice; for a radical change both in thought and the material ways we create and distribute wealth; for us to envision a new, more socialized humanity; and for us to "aspire a world that provides land, housing and work for all," harkening back to the early community of believers mentioned in Acts 2 and 4. I think this part in particular demonstrates that:
While I think it has some weak areas, such as its lack of inspiration from women and little in the way of addressing the way they and others are often marginalized by the church and world in general, it goes a long way towards summoning the heart of the gospel into our present consciousness. It points to ways that others are being harmed by the world we have created, letting greed and impersonal market forces dictate how people are treated more so than love and compassion.
It also highlights the material forces that facilitate this and condition our own hearts and ways that we think and act, making us care more about ourselves than our neighbours and turning a blind eye to their suffering. It holds a mirror up to us that, if we're honest, reflects back to us our own failings and shows us that more often than not, we are the priest passing the wounded man by. That we, collectively, are complicit in the existence of this world dominated by things like exclusion, greed, and markets and the compulsion to accumulate and consume rather than produce and share.
I think it's a fitting tribute to Saint Francis on his feast day.
Maybe it's just because I agree with it and find it close to my own political point of view, but I think the encyclical itself is surprisingly good and filled with much of that universal call to fraternity and the common good. It calls for justice; for a radical change both in thought and the material ways we create and distribute wealth; for us to envision a new, more socialized humanity; and for us to "aspire a world that provides land, housing and work for all," harkening back to the early community of believers mentioned in Acts 2 and 4. I think this part in particular demonstrates that:
ENVISAGING THE SOCIAL ROLE OF PROPERTY
118. The world exists for everyone, because all of us were born with the same dignity. Differences of colour, religion, talent, place of birth or residence, and so many others, cannot be used to justify the privileges of some over the rights of all. As a community, we have an obligation to ensure that every person lives with dignity and has sufficient opportunities for his or her integral development.
119. In the first Christian centuries, a number of thinkers developed a universal vision in their reflections on the common destination of created goods.[91] This led them to realize that if one person lacks what is necessary to live with dignity, it is because another person is detaining it. Saint John Chrysostom summarizes it in this way: “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood. The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well”.[92] In the words of Saint Gregory the Great, “When we provide the needy with their basic needs, we are giving them what belongs to them, not to us”.[93]
120. Once more, I would like to echo a statement of Saint John Paul II whose forcefulness has perhaps been insufficiently recognized: “God gave the earth to the whole human race for the sustenance of all its members, without excluding or favouring anyone”.[94] For my part, I would observe that “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property”.[95] The principle of the common use of created goods is the “first principle of the whole ethical and social order”;[96] it is a natural and inherent right that takes priority over others.[97] All other rights having to do with the goods necessary for the integral fulfilment of persons, including that of private property or any other type of property, should – in the words of Saint Paul VI – “in no way hinder [this right], but should actively facilitate its implementation”.[98] The right to private property can only be considered a secondary natural right, derived from the principle of the universal destination of created goods. This has concrete consequences that ought to be reflected in the workings of society. Yet it often happens that secondary rights displace primary and overriding rights, in practice making them irrelevant.
Rights without borders
121. No one, then, can remain excluded because of his or her place of birth, much less because of privileges enjoyed by others who were born in lands of greater opportunity. The limits and borders of individual states cannot stand in the way of this. As it is unacceptable that some have fewer rights by virtue of being women, it is likewise unacceptable that the mere place of one’s birth or residence should result in his or her possessing fewer opportunities for a developed and dignified life.
122. Development must not aim at the amassing of wealth by a few, but must ensure “human rights – personal and social, economic and political, including the rights of nations and of peoples”.[99] The right of some to free enterprise or market freedom cannot supersede the rights of peoples and the dignity of the poor, or, for that matter, respect for the natural environment, for “if we make something our own, it is only to administer it for the good of all”.[100]
123. Business activity is essentially “a noble vocation, directed to producing wealth and improving our world”.[101] God encourages us to develop the talents he gave us, and he has made our universe one of immense potential. In God’s plan, each individual is called to promote his or her own development,[102] and this includes finding the best economic and technological means of multiplying goods and increasing wealth. Business abilities, which are a gift from God, should always be clearly directed to the development of others and to eliminating poverty, especially through the creation of diversified work opportunities. The right to private property is always accompanied by the primary and prior principle of the subordination of all private property to the universal destination of the earth’s goods, and thus the right of all to their use.[103]
The rights of peoples
124. Nowadays, a firm belief in the common destination of the earth’s goods requires that this principle also be applied to nations, their territories and their resources. Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere. As the Bishops of the United States have taught, there are fundamental rights that “precede any society because they flow from the dignity granted to each person as created by God”.[104]
125. This presupposes a different way of understanding relations and exchanges between countries. If every human being possesses an inalienable dignity, if all people are my brothers and sisters, and if the world truly belongs to everyone, then it matters little whether my neighbour was born in my country or elsewhere. My own country also shares responsibility for his or her development, although it can fulfil that responsibility in a variety of ways. It can offer a generous welcome to those in urgent need, or work to improve living conditions in their native lands by refusing to exploit those countries or to drain them of natural resources, backing corrupt systems that hinder the dignified development of their peoples. What applies to nations is true also for different regions within each country, since there too great inequalities often exist. At times, the inability to recognize equal human dignity leads the more developed regions in some countries to think that they can jettison the “dead weight” of poorer regions and so increase their level of consumption.
126. We are really speaking about a new network of international relations, since there is no way to resolve the serious problems of our world if we continue to think only in terms of mutual assistance between individuals or small groups. Nor should we forget that “inequity affects not only individuals but entire countries; it compels us to consider an ethics of international relations”.[105] Indeed, justice requires recognizing and respecting not only the rights of individuals, but also social rights and the rights of peoples.[106] This means finding a way to ensure “the fundamental right of peoples to subsistence and progress”,[107] a right which is at times severely restricted by the pressure created by foreign debt. In many instances, debt repayment not only fails to promote development but gravely limits and conditions it. While respecting the principle that all legitimately acquired debt must be repaid, the way in which many poor countries fulfil this obligation should not end up compromising their very existence and growth.
127. Certainly, all this calls for an alternative way of thinking. Without an attempt to enter into that way of thinking, what I am saying here will sound wildly unrealistic. On the other hand, if we accept the great principle that there are rights born of our inalienable human dignity, we can rise to the challenge of envisaging a new humanity. We can aspire to a world that provides land, housing and work for all. This is the true path of peace, not the senseless and myopic strategy of sowing fear and mistrust in the face of outside threats. For a real and lasting peace will only be possible “on the basis of a global ethic of solidarity and cooperation in the service of a future shaped by interdependence and shared responsibility in the whole human family”.[108]
While I think it has some weak areas, such as its lack of inspiration from women and little in the way of addressing the way they and others are often marginalized by the church and world in general, it goes a long way towards summoning the heart of the gospel into our present consciousness. It points to ways that others are being harmed by the world we have created, letting greed and impersonal market forces dictate how people are treated more so than love and compassion.
It also highlights the material forces that facilitate this and condition our own hearts and ways that we think and act, making us care more about ourselves than our neighbours and turning a blind eye to their suffering. It holds a mirror up to us that, if we're honest, reflects back to us our own failings and shows us that more often than not, we are the priest passing the wounded man by. That we, collectively, are complicit in the existence of this world dominated by things like exclusion, greed, and markets and the compulsion to accumulate and consume rather than produce and share.
I think it's a fitting tribute to Saint Francis on his feast day.
Thursday, July 2, 2020
7/2/20
I enjoyed this recent article from bell hooks, which connects Buddhism, love, and social engagement. I think that what she's talking about is what led me to become politically and socially engaged in the first place. I think in many cases, developing compassion, empathy, and love will naturally inspire one to address the suffering of others when possible, and that many of the ways love is expressed coincides with what we'd label ‘leftist’ political and social movements precisely because such movements are often motivated by love and a desire to protect and uplift others. They're less focused on 'me' and more on 'us' in the sense of all of our lives and predicaments being interconnected.
Love compels us to move away from things like greed, selfishness, and competition and towards generosity, compassion, and cooperation. That's at least why I was drawn towards social engagement and more to left-leaning politics, because that's where love and compassion directed me. A mind suffused with love, for example, will see someone struggling with injury or illness within a system that makes it difficult for them to afford and access care and be inspired to help, whether through charity or through supporting a more accessible and universal healthcare system.
That doesn't mean I think that only people who are politically active or on the left end of the political spectrum are capable of love, only that I see why she connects love to the end of domination, and how that tends towards movements and ideas that we associate with the label 'leftist' today. Alternatives to capitalism. Universal healthcare. Addressing climate change. Gender equality. Black Lives Matter. Etc. Because much of that domination is rooted in fear and anger and greed. Systems and institutions and cultures have been built to protect what we have from others and to maintain positions of privilege for certain segments of the population, and love compels us to confront and end those things because of the suffering they engender—from sexism and racism to imperialism and militarism and the profit motive.
Love is also a key component of most spiritual traditions, and it suffuses their soteriology. And I'd even go so far as to say that, after studying and practicing in multiple spiritual traditions myself, a truly spiritual person who follows the underlying message of their respective faiths will necessarily be empathetic, inclusive, and ultimately, intersectional in their politics, but more importantly in their actions, as a result of the presence and development of love regardless of what their politics are. I think this can be seen from the lives and works of people of faith like bell hooks, Giro Seno'o, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, Paul Tillich, Malcolm X, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gustavo Gutierrez, MLK Jr., Rachel Held Evans, and countless others. As Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr puts it:
Love moves us to act against suffering and injustice, because love motivates us to try and heal rather than harm. Love moves us to swim against the current of what she terms "dominator thinking and practice," which "relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp"; and that conversely, "Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness" and through that "we are healed." And that love can be expressed in many ways, not just in the realm of the political. It can be expressed in any number of daily personal interactions and small acts of kindness and generosity.
Love compels us to move away from things like greed, selfishness, and competition and towards generosity, compassion, and cooperation. That's at least why I was drawn towards social engagement and more to left-leaning politics, because that's where love and compassion directed me. A mind suffused with love, for example, will see someone struggling with injury or illness within a system that makes it difficult for them to afford and access care and be inspired to help, whether through charity or through supporting a more accessible and universal healthcare system.
That doesn't mean I think that only people who are politically active or on the left end of the political spectrum are capable of love, only that I see why she connects love to the end of domination, and how that tends towards movements and ideas that we associate with the label 'leftist' today. Alternatives to capitalism. Universal healthcare. Addressing climate change. Gender equality. Black Lives Matter. Etc. Because much of that domination is rooted in fear and anger and greed. Systems and institutions and cultures have been built to protect what we have from others and to maintain positions of privilege for certain segments of the population, and love compels us to confront and end those things because of the suffering they engender—from sexism and racism to imperialism and militarism and the profit motive.
Love is also a key component of most spiritual traditions, and it suffuses their soteriology. And I'd even go so far as to say that, after studying and practicing in multiple spiritual traditions myself, a truly spiritual person who follows the underlying message of their respective faiths will necessarily be empathetic, inclusive, and ultimately, intersectional in their politics, but more importantly in their actions, as a result of the presence and development of love regardless of what their politics are. I think this can be seen from the lives and works of people of faith like bell hooks, Giro Seno'o, Dorothy Day, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thomas Merton, Oscar Romero, Paul Tillich, Malcolm X, Thich Nhat Hanh, Gustavo Gutierrez, MLK Jr., Rachel Held Evans, and countless others. As Franciscan friar and author Richard Rohr puts it:
If we are going to have truly prophetic people who go beyond the categories of liberal and conservative, we have to teach them some way to integrate their needed activism with a truly contemplative mind and heart. I'm convinced that once you learn how to look out at life from the contemplative eyes of the True Self, your politics and economics are going to change on their own. I don't need to teach you what your politics should or shouldn't be. Once you see things contemplatively, you'll begin to seek the bias from the bottom instead of the top, you'll be free to embrace your shadow, and you can live at peace with those who are different. From a contemplative stance, you'll know what action is yours to do—and what is not yours to do—almost naturally.
Love moves us to act against suffering and injustice, because love motivates us to try and heal rather than harm. Love moves us to swim against the current of what she terms "dominator thinking and practice," which "relies for its maintenance on the constant production of a feeling of lack, of the need to grasp"; and that conversely, "Giving love offers us a way to end this suffering—loving ourselves, extending that love to everything beyond the self, we experience wholeness" and through that "we are healed." And that love can be expressed in many ways, not just in the realm of the political. It can be expressed in any number of daily personal interactions and small acts of kindness and generosity.
Friday, December 6, 2019
12/6/19
God is a concept that people pack all kinds of ideas into. Some see it as representing a conscious, all-powerful being. Some see it as analogous to nature, the universe, the ground of being and existence and the mysteries that it contains. Some see it as a delusion. It can mean many things to many people. To me it represents the second, and beyond that, I don't know. I like the way Jesus talks about it, however.
He speaks of God as compassionate (Luke 6:36), which comes from the Hebrew word for womb-like love. He says that the clean of heart will see God, and that peacemakers will be called the children of God (Mt 5:8-9). He's very clear about God and how our relationship with God is mirrored in our relationship to each other. Just as the rain falls on everyone equally, so too does God's love (Mt 5:43-48). It's a more immediate, experiential, and relational understanding of God as a unifying force and ground of being in which we all share our existence. Beyond that, it's all angels and pinheads.
Do I think a lot that's said about God is contradictory? Yes. Do I think a lot of it is untrue? Yes. Because these ideas and writings are the product of evolving human thought and experience over many centuries, and they're trying to express something that's ultimately inexpressible and incomprehensible. But it's also not as illogical as people make it out to be, as science itself is full of paradoxes and contradictions that make no sense to us, from the illusion of time to the bubbling cauldron of empty space. For example, let's take the idea that God is all good, powerful, and knowing.
Many have argued against the existence of God, for instance, on the grounds that human beings encounter things we generally find evil, such as pain and suffering. So the logic goes, if God is all-powerful and allows evil to exist, then God isn't good and unworthy of being called God. God is basically evil for allowing bad things to happen. And if God doesn't have the ability to remove evil from the world, then God isn't all-powerful and not worthy of being called God. God is basically impotent or irrelevant so why think about it? The 'problem of evil' is something everyone from Voltaire to Bertrand Russell have used to ridicule the belief in God. But others, like Leibniz, argue something interesting, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. How can that possibly be?
I've thought about this a lot myself, and I've become partial to one answer: that we live in the best of all possible worlds because we sit in between the world of perfect order (pre Big Bang) and the world of perfect disorder (the entropy at the end of the universe), and it is in this present middle that our existence is possible. Because at both ends of this spectrum time loses its meaning, and change is impossible as there's either static order or the chaotic, logical conclusion of entropy. And this could be a logical foundation for the claim that God is all-good and all-powerful, if God is the reason or mechanism of this state of reality and we assume existence is better than nonexistence, since God's power and goodness brought the possibility of existence itself into being, is being itself. And to intercede too much would destroy the laws that govern and make possible this reality and our existence within it.
In essence, to make the world as perfect as possible (i.e., the most conducive to creating and supporting conscious beings capable of choice), the world has to be as such. A perfectly orderly universe free of the things we see as evil, things like aging, illness, death, accidents, harmful actions, etc., would be effectively static. Nothing could change or grow, and there could be no choice in any meaningful sense. A completely chaotic world would prevent the necessary order needed for the formation of galaxies or the evolution of life.
So the middle way between these two is our causally-conditioned world that's ordered by natural laws and also subject to the underlying chaos of quantum level uncertainty, which together allows for the order necessary for life and the freedom and flexibility of choice. Things can grow and change, and consciousness can arise and be self-aware and make choices. However, that means that the things we see as evil from our POV are simply necessary components of this existence and constitute the best of all possible worlds, because the causes and conditions for this 'best possible' world are so complex and messy and must be allowed to play out on their own. If we were made perfect in a perfectly ordered world, we'd be little more than puppets.
Furthermore, when we look around, we see a causally-deterministic world. God is said to be omnipotent, yet we perceive a world where things follow physical laws. Anything can happen, yet only certain things do. Miracles, things which tend to defy scientific explanation, seem few and far between, which got me thinking that maybe God doesn't work in the ways we sometimes assume. Events appear to require causes, so perhaps miracles are simply events with causes that we're unable to perceive, God being the mechanism of all causal relationships.
We're not just puppets within a pre-deterministic world, though. Or at least that's not how it seems to us. We intend. We make choices and experience the results of those choices. We exhibit self-agency. Somehow God's omniscience allows for this. How so? One way is, maybe God is the totality of the infinite number of possibilities that exist in the quantum world. From God's point of view, all possibilities are. But paradoxically, when all possibilities are, nothing effectively is—there'd be no order, no continuity, no being as we know it. Yet out of God, this infinite, chaotic all, comes a casually-deterministic world where both order and intention can play out and unfold, from the Big Bang (creation out of nothing and everything) to the ever-present now. It's almost as if God limits their infinite potentiality so that our finite actuality can manifest itself, making space for us within this totality.
With this act of creation and self-limitation, then, much like in the Kabbalistic doctrine of tsimtsum, God is able to create the only world in which history is possible, one in which we're able to evolve and grow and help complete and perfect the world through acts of charity and loving-kindness. God isn't a cause separate from its effect, nor is God some kind of celestial tyrant; God is more like Paul Tillich's "ground of being manifest in existence," which I think also corresponds to the Kabbalistic saying, "God is the Place of the world, but the world is not God's place." Paradoxically immanent yet transcendent.
In addition, there are many in the scientific field, from Albert Einstein to Julian Barbour and Carlo Rovelli, who suggest that time as we know it is an illusion, with some arguing for a timeless world (Barbour) and others arguing that all moments of time exist together from the standpoint of physics (Rovelli). The latter I find especially intriguing. We experience time flowing like a river towards the future. Events seem to happen in one direction, into an unknown and as yet uncreated future. But while we see time flowing forward from our limited POV within time and space, and experience the future in, well, the future, from the standpoint of a being or consciousness aware of the wholeness of all the universe (or the universe itself, all of which can be called God), time doesn't really flow as all things simultaneously exist in a 'block universe,' allowing for what we'd classically refer to as omniscience.
I don't know if such a being exists and if they are conscious of us and care one way or the other, but it's not inherently illogical to posit one, although it may be improbable or unnecessary. And to be honest, I can't really fault 2,000-5,000 year old tribal cultures for not always expressing such ideas coherently and logically-consistently without the benefit of science and the same level of history of logic, philosophy, and science we're privy to, but rather their own ancient observations and imaginations about reality. Modern generations have no such excuse, however, and I think we have to get rid of a lot of our irrationality and prejudices. But I also believe there are some things we can know from experience and intuition. That doesn't mean I think this proves that God exists, or any other kind of religious claim, only that we may on some level sense or know things about reality we can't quite intellectually understand or prove but can experience in some way, which we then attempt to articulate into words, hence much of religion. And I find it fun to think about that.
The world isn't perfect per se, because unpleasant things happen. But I find it incredible that it even exists considering everything we do know about the craziness of the universe. And I think our conscious interactions with it all are equally as incredible. I sometimes wonder if the universe itself is conscious and what that might mean. And I don't pretend to know or understand what the truth of it all is, but I definitely find enjoyment in contemplating what it might be like and why it could potentially be the best of all possible worlds even though we feel like it could be immeasurably better. Maybe it could be. And maybe it's our job to make it so.
He speaks of God as compassionate (Luke 6:36), which comes from the Hebrew word for womb-like love. He says that the clean of heart will see God, and that peacemakers will be called the children of God (Mt 5:8-9). He's very clear about God and how our relationship with God is mirrored in our relationship to each other. Just as the rain falls on everyone equally, so too does God's love (Mt 5:43-48). It's a more immediate, experiential, and relational understanding of God as a unifying force and ground of being in which we all share our existence. Beyond that, it's all angels and pinheads.
Do I think a lot that's said about God is contradictory? Yes. Do I think a lot of it is untrue? Yes. Because these ideas and writings are the product of evolving human thought and experience over many centuries, and they're trying to express something that's ultimately inexpressible and incomprehensible. But it's also not as illogical as people make it out to be, as science itself is full of paradoxes and contradictions that make no sense to us, from the illusion of time to the bubbling cauldron of empty space. For example, let's take the idea that God is all good, powerful, and knowing.
Many have argued against the existence of God, for instance, on the grounds that human beings encounter things we generally find evil, such as pain and suffering. So the logic goes, if God is all-powerful and allows evil to exist, then God isn't good and unworthy of being called God. God is basically evil for allowing bad things to happen. And if God doesn't have the ability to remove evil from the world, then God isn't all-powerful and not worthy of being called God. God is basically impotent or irrelevant so why think about it? The 'problem of evil' is something everyone from Voltaire to Bertrand Russell have used to ridicule the belief in God. But others, like Leibniz, argue something interesting, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. How can that possibly be?
I've thought about this a lot myself, and I've become partial to one answer: that we live in the best of all possible worlds because we sit in between the world of perfect order (pre Big Bang) and the world of perfect disorder (the entropy at the end of the universe), and it is in this present middle that our existence is possible. Because at both ends of this spectrum time loses its meaning, and change is impossible as there's either static order or the chaotic, logical conclusion of entropy. And this could be a logical foundation for the claim that God is all-good and all-powerful, if God is the reason or mechanism of this state of reality and we assume existence is better than nonexistence, since God's power and goodness brought the possibility of existence itself into being, is being itself. And to intercede too much would destroy the laws that govern and make possible this reality and our existence within it.
In essence, to make the world as perfect as possible (i.e., the most conducive to creating and supporting conscious beings capable of choice), the world has to be as such. A perfectly orderly universe free of the things we see as evil, things like aging, illness, death, accidents, harmful actions, etc., would be effectively static. Nothing could change or grow, and there could be no choice in any meaningful sense. A completely chaotic world would prevent the necessary order needed for the formation of galaxies or the evolution of life.
So the middle way between these two is our causally-conditioned world that's ordered by natural laws and also subject to the underlying chaos of quantum level uncertainty, which together allows for the order necessary for life and the freedom and flexibility of choice. Things can grow and change, and consciousness can arise and be self-aware and make choices. However, that means that the things we see as evil from our POV are simply necessary components of this existence and constitute the best of all possible worlds, because the causes and conditions for this 'best possible' world are so complex and messy and must be allowed to play out on their own. If we were made perfect in a perfectly ordered world, we'd be little more than puppets.
Furthermore, when we look around, we see a causally-deterministic world. God is said to be omnipotent, yet we perceive a world where things follow physical laws. Anything can happen, yet only certain things do. Miracles, things which tend to defy scientific explanation, seem few and far between, which got me thinking that maybe God doesn't work in the ways we sometimes assume. Events appear to require causes, so perhaps miracles are simply events with causes that we're unable to perceive, God being the mechanism of all causal relationships.
We're not just puppets within a pre-deterministic world, though. Or at least that's not how it seems to us. We intend. We make choices and experience the results of those choices. We exhibit self-agency. Somehow God's omniscience allows for this. How so? One way is, maybe God is the totality of the infinite number of possibilities that exist in the quantum world. From God's point of view, all possibilities are. But paradoxically, when all possibilities are, nothing effectively is—there'd be no order, no continuity, no being as we know it. Yet out of God, this infinite, chaotic all, comes a casually-deterministic world where both order and intention can play out and unfold, from the Big Bang (creation out of nothing and everything) to the ever-present now. It's almost as if God limits their infinite potentiality so that our finite actuality can manifest itself, making space for us within this totality.
With this act of creation and self-limitation, then, much like in the Kabbalistic doctrine of tsimtsum, God is able to create the only world in which history is possible, one in which we're able to evolve and grow and help complete and perfect the world through acts of charity and loving-kindness. God isn't a cause separate from its effect, nor is God some kind of celestial tyrant; God is more like Paul Tillich's "ground of being manifest in existence," which I think also corresponds to the Kabbalistic saying, "God is the Place of the world, but the world is not God's place." Paradoxically immanent yet transcendent.
In addition, there are many in the scientific field, from Albert Einstein to Julian Barbour and Carlo Rovelli, who suggest that time as we know it is an illusion, with some arguing for a timeless world (Barbour) and others arguing that all moments of time exist together from the standpoint of physics (Rovelli). The latter I find especially intriguing. We experience time flowing like a river towards the future. Events seem to happen in one direction, into an unknown and as yet uncreated future. But while we see time flowing forward from our limited POV within time and space, and experience the future in, well, the future, from the standpoint of a being or consciousness aware of the wholeness of all the universe (or the universe itself, all of which can be called God), time doesn't really flow as all things simultaneously exist in a 'block universe,' allowing for what we'd classically refer to as omniscience.
I don't know if such a being exists and if they are conscious of us and care one way or the other, but it's not inherently illogical to posit one, although it may be improbable or unnecessary. And to be honest, I can't really fault 2,000-5,000 year old tribal cultures for not always expressing such ideas coherently and logically-consistently without the benefit of science and the same level of history of logic, philosophy, and science we're privy to, but rather their own ancient observations and imaginations about reality. Modern generations have no such excuse, however, and I think we have to get rid of a lot of our irrationality and prejudices. But I also believe there are some things we can know from experience and intuition. That doesn't mean I think this proves that God exists, or any other kind of religious claim, only that we may on some level sense or know things about reality we can't quite intellectually understand or prove but can experience in some way, which we then attempt to articulate into words, hence much of religion. And I find it fun to think about that.
The world isn't perfect per se, because unpleasant things happen. But I find it incredible that it even exists considering everything we do know about the craziness of the universe. And I think our conscious interactions with it all are equally as incredible. I sometimes wonder if the universe itself is conscious and what that might mean. And I don't pretend to know or understand what the truth of it all is, but I definitely find enjoyment in contemplating what it might be like and why it could potentially be the best of all possible worlds even though we feel like it could be immeasurably better. Maybe it could be. And maybe it's our job to make it so.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
11/28/19
Thanksgiving. It can be hard for many to appreciate the mindset of gratitude or thanksgiving when they're confronted by the history of the holiday itself. The mythologized celebration at Plymouth in 1621, for instance, belies the tragic fate of the indigenous peoples of the Americas that unfolded under colonialism, Manifest Destiny, the 19th century policy of native population removal, and countless broken treaties. And Lincoln's creation of a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens" in 1863 was set within the bloody context of what many consider to be the deadliest war in American history, containing within it the hope of some future peace and harmony.
Today, it seems like it's more about food, football, and a prelude to the consumeristic orgy of Black Friday than a recollection of all the things that we're grateful for, mythologized or not. At least that's how it seems to me. But the idea of gratitude itself is something I've grown to appreciate. My life hasn't always been the best, and I haven't always been the best person; but there are numerous people and things I find myself grateful for if I reflect on it, yet I find that I rarely seem to have the time or mindfulness to cultivate that sense of gratitude and appreciation. It's not really a priority in our culture, and it's an easy thing for us to overlook. I'm reminded of the Buddha's words in AN 2.118: "These two people are hard to find in the world. Which two? The one who is first to do a kindness, and the one who is grateful and thankful for a kindness done."
The world can be a harsh and lonely place sometimes, and there are so many people I'm thankful for, too many to list. I just feel terribly grateful at this moment for the many acts and words of kindness given to me over the years. I'm especially grateful for the people who have helped me expand my knowledge over the years, so that I'm not only aware of the somber history that my high school textbooks completely glossed over but my own agency in fighting to change things and right past wrongs. And I'm also grateful for the many people who have entered my life and made it one worth living, including those who sent me such kind messages today.
Today, it seems like it's more about food, football, and a prelude to the consumeristic orgy of Black Friday than a recollection of all the things that we're grateful for, mythologized or not. At least that's how it seems to me. But the idea of gratitude itself is something I've grown to appreciate. My life hasn't always been the best, and I haven't always been the best person; but there are numerous people and things I find myself grateful for if I reflect on it, yet I find that I rarely seem to have the time or mindfulness to cultivate that sense of gratitude and appreciation. It's not really a priority in our culture, and it's an easy thing for us to overlook. I'm reminded of the Buddha's words in AN 2.118: "These two people are hard to find in the world. Which two? The one who is first to do a kindness, and the one who is grateful and thankful for a kindness done."
The world can be a harsh and lonely place sometimes, and there are so many people I'm thankful for, too many to list. I just feel terribly grateful at this moment for the many acts and words of kindness given to me over the years. I'm especially grateful for the people who have helped me expand my knowledge over the years, so that I'm not only aware of the somber history that my high school textbooks completely glossed over but my own agency in fighting to change things and right past wrongs. And I'm also grateful for the many people who have entered my life and made it one worth living, including those who sent me such kind messages today.
Sunday, September 22, 2019
9/22/19
My first time back at church in what seems like ages, and this was today's reading (because of course it was):
I've always liked that last line. It's simple, direct, and hits you pretty hard when you really let it sink in. If you serve wealth, you don't serve God and everything that word represents (think principles rather than persons). And it seems to me the world is such that we're all but forced to serve the latter whether we want to or not. We spend most of our time during most of our days serving the whims of capital/wealth, using our labour to create the wealth that we, in turn, receive only a small portion of in order to live. Our entire economic system revolves around this process, the creation of profit being the summum bonum of capitalism.
It's not even really out of greed that we do so but logical necessity. The system compels us to do so, just as a master compels their servant, under threat of punishment, violence, and privation. If money isn't constantly turned into more money, the system stalls and people lose their means of survival. And this system influences our ethics and behaviour, how we treat one another within this competitive arena, by setting the stage for our relations on the most fundamental level, that of the means by which we materially reproduce society.
It also seems clear to me that, if we want to serve God, which to me represents love, charity, compassion, and a more just and equal world (i.e., the kingdom of God in which "some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last"), then we have to find a way to create a world with less exploitation and competition, less greed and consumerism, a world characterized by the sharing of wealth and opportunity and by cooperation. And to achieve that, we need a new socio-economic system, a new ground of being for our material lives that can in turn nurture our hearts and minds.
Religion isn't something we necessarily need to achieve this. But religion, if it's to be of any use to anyone but the rich and powerful, should be inspiring and radical. It should compel us to be better, to break our shackles and the shackles of those around us. It should compel us to turn away from the things that deaden our spirits and lead us to turn a blind eye towards the suffering of others. And above all, it should be something that stokes the spiritual fires of our heart and fans the flames of love, charity, compassion, and justice.
That's why I enjoy visiting communities like Central Lutheran Church. Communities that truly seek to serve something other than wealth. Communities that speak out against our harmful treatment of the environment and of other people. Communities that acknowledge oppression and seek to educate the oppressors and liberate the oppressed. Communities that care about one another and seek to make a difference in a world far too subservient to the whims of wealth. They inspire me to have hope when things feel hopeless.
Today, for example, their confessional prayer at the beginning invoked our treatment of the environment and the looming ecological crisis and extinctions that has resulted from our greed, negligence, and mismanagement. They used a Native American version of the Lord's Prayer written by Hattie Corbett Enos, a member of the Nez Perce. At the suggestion of nonwhite members of the community, the pastor added her own translational twist to the reading from Genesis, changing words like light and dark, which reflect linguistic racial biases equating light/white with good and dark/black with bad, to make them feel more comfortable and help dissociate dark/black from things that are considered to be bad or evil. And they talked lovingly about members who were sick and dying, as well as those who were moving away.
It felt good just to be there. To be around people who make caring, inclusion, and the doing of good deeds a special part of their lives. People who notice when you're not doing ok even when you say that you're fine. People who want to learn and grow and be better. It felt good because those kinds of people often seem few and far between. Because the world sometimes feels so horrible and unilluminated.
When things seem lost in the murkiest of shadows, it's always nice to find a spark to help rekindle that inner fire.
Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.’ (Luke 16: 1-13).
I've always liked that last line. It's simple, direct, and hits you pretty hard when you really let it sink in. If you serve wealth, you don't serve God and everything that word represents (think principles rather than persons). And it seems to me the world is such that we're all but forced to serve the latter whether we want to or not. We spend most of our time during most of our days serving the whims of capital/wealth, using our labour to create the wealth that we, in turn, receive only a small portion of in order to live. Our entire economic system revolves around this process, the creation of profit being the summum bonum of capitalism.
It's not even really out of greed that we do so but logical necessity. The system compels us to do so, just as a master compels their servant, under threat of punishment, violence, and privation. If money isn't constantly turned into more money, the system stalls and people lose their means of survival. And this system influences our ethics and behaviour, how we treat one another within this competitive arena, by setting the stage for our relations on the most fundamental level, that of the means by which we materially reproduce society.
It also seems clear to me that, if we want to serve God, which to me represents love, charity, compassion, and a more just and equal world (i.e., the kingdom of God in which "some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last"), then we have to find a way to create a world with less exploitation and competition, less greed and consumerism, a world characterized by the sharing of wealth and opportunity and by cooperation. And to achieve that, we need a new socio-economic system, a new ground of being for our material lives that can in turn nurture our hearts and minds.
Religion isn't something we necessarily need to achieve this. But religion, if it's to be of any use to anyone but the rich and powerful, should be inspiring and radical. It should compel us to be better, to break our shackles and the shackles of those around us. It should compel us to turn away from the things that deaden our spirits and lead us to turn a blind eye towards the suffering of others. And above all, it should be something that stokes the spiritual fires of our heart and fans the flames of love, charity, compassion, and justice.
That's why I enjoy visiting communities like Central Lutheran Church. Communities that truly seek to serve something other than wealth. Communities that speak out against our harmful treatment of the environment and of other people. Communities that acknowledge oppression and seek to educate the oppressors and liberate the oppressed. Communities that care about one another and seek to make a difference in a world far too subservient to the whims of wealth. They inspire me to have hope when things feel hopeless.
Today, for example, their confessional prayer at the beginning invoked our treatment of the environment and the looming ecological crisis and extinctions that has resulted from our greed, negligence, and mismanagement. They used a Native American version of the Lord's Prayer written by Hattie Corbett Enos, a member of the Nez Perce. At the suggestion of nonwhite members of the community, the pastor added her own translational twist to the reading from Genesis, changing words like light and dark, which reflect linguistic racial biases equating light/white with good and dark/black with bad, to make them feel more comfortable and help dissociate dark/black from things that are considered to be bad or evil. And they talked lovingly about members who were sick and dying, as well as those who were moving away.
It felt good just to be there. To be around people who make caring, inclusion, and the doing of good deeds a special part of their lives. People who notice when you're not doing ok even when you say that you're fine. People who want to learn and grow and be better. It felt good because those kinds of people often seem few and far between. Because the world sometimes feels so horrible and unilluminated.
When things seem lost in the murkiest of shadows, it's always nice to find a spark to help rekindle that inner fire.
Thursday, September 12, 2019
9/12/19
I'm searching for something.
Something inside of myself solid yet ephemeral.
Something beyond this world yet imminent within every nook and cranny.
A contradiction.
An impossibility that I believe in my heart to be true.
Something deep in the heart of all phenomena that contains within it the seed of all there
is.
Love. Life. Magic.Happiness.
Something with substance underlying the seemingly chaotic waves of change and inconstancy that rule our lives.
A refuge within the storm of conditionality.
A safe haven. A true moment. Meaning. Awakening. God.
The names we give may fall short; but it sings to me all the same.
Something inside of myself solid yet ephemeral.
Something beyond this world yet imminent within every nook and cranny.
A contradiction.
An impossibility that I believe in my heart to be true.
Something deep in the heart of all phenomena that contains within it the seed of all there
is.
Love. Life. Magic.Happiness.
Something with substance underlying the seemingly chaotic waves of change and inconstancy that rule our lives.
A refuge within the storm of conditionality.
A safe haven. A true moment. Meaning. Awakening. God.
The names we give may fall short; but it sings to me all the same.
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