WORD OF THE DAY! 1/22/13.

The Great Chain of Being
noun
1. Philosophy. The scala naturae (Latin, literally: "ladder or stair-way of nature"), is a classical Christian and Western medieval concept detailing a strict, hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by God.

EX. Today's comic is, to my pleasant surprise, based on lyrics from Kanye West's No Church in the Wilds feat. Jay-Z and Frank Ocean. The lyrics appear to be a beautiful perversion of The Great Chain of Being, which is better described as a pyramid as it attempts to prescribe a hierarchy to the universe with the lowest animals on the bottom, followed by more complex animals, with animals like lions higher up, followed by humans, then angels, then God at the top. It actually reminds me of a question I've heard posed in several different ways, but also eloquently by Terry Pratchett's DEATH in The Hogather (go read this book or watch the film):

"Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape."

My question, when it comes to philosophy, is would you rather be ashamed of humanity or be proud of it? Do you supress it or progress it? Would you rather be the falling angel or the rising ape?

Also, "Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaccee!"

WORD OF THE DAY! 12/8/11

absolutism [ab-suh-loo-tiz-uhm]
noun
1. the principle or the exercise of complete and unrestricted control in government.
2. any theory hold that values, principles, etc., are absolute in value and non-relative, dependent, or changeable.

EX. The absolutism of Truth, Justice and the American Way have been perverted by Superman writers for decades. Some stories, like the one above (which I own), works and some don't.

STUFF I THINK ABOUT! The Clockwork God

deism [dee-iz-uhm]
noun
1. belief in the existence of a God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation. (distinguished from theism).
2. belief in a God who created the world or the Universe but has since remained indifferent to it.

Time to get a little heavy, but I hope I can entertain you with an explanation for my current belief. From childhood to about the age of twelve, I was a Christian. After finally reading the Bible and attending church, the seed of doubt was sewn after I was encouraged by an educator to question and even disprove a story from the Bible. His intention was probably to inspire us to question the validity of the entire King James Bible, but not our religious beliefs. Unintentionally, he set me on the path of all intellectuals who come to my conclusion. I had never experience a Revelation or felt as if God had directly interacted with me (as some people believe he speaks to them). By the time I started high school, I found that upon logical analysis, that the processes described by Christianity that created the Universe and other dogma, from angels to Hell, to the Devil to Jesus, and so on. The straw that broke the camel's back was a combination of the fact that so many people in the world are not Christian and, a rather disturbing belief shared by many Christians, that non-Christians are doomed to Hell. The idea that a perfectly righteous and humble person would be sent to Hell for merely being Buddhist or Hindi or Islamic. This simple idea and my own frustrations were enough to set me on the path of flip flopping between Atheism and Agnosticism.

Eh, close enough?

Today I am a diest. I believe in one God, karma, the human soul, and the afterlife but I also believe that the Universe is incredibly old, incredibly vast and Natural Laws dictate the way the Universe has formed and operates. I do not believe in Jesus or other supernatural beings or presume to know anything about the afterlife, prayer, churches, or that God punishes/rewards anyone in this life. It is important to know that, while I believe in these things, I don't begrudge anyone their own beliefs. My general philosophy, on morality, is do no harm unto yourself or others, unless to prevent the harm of yourself or others. I believe that the human purpose is to progress and spread throughout the Universe.

An important part of being a diest is that you believe in science and a compassionate, but hands-off God.

The hands-off God sets diests apart from other monotheists. The best analogy for the hands-off god is The Clockwork God. A diest believes that, much like a clockmaker making a clock, God set up all the natural laws and components of the Universe to be logical and then started the Universe. From that moment, he has just watched as the Universe swelled from a few simple bits of matter and energy into a seemingly infinite Universe, much like you might watch the gears and listen to the ticks of a well-made clock. There is no room for supernatural beings, like Jesus or angels, in this Universe. This God is infinitely complex and knows everything, yet the Universe had no need for his intervention. Neither does mankind, as we have all the tools available to us to create society, laws and progress without his intervention.

 The best example in literature or film that I can think to compare The Clockwork God is Dr. Manhattan in Alan Moore's The Watchmen.

Dr. Manhattan begins his life as a simple watchmaker's son but, after the creation of the Atom Bomb, his father sets him on the path of becoming a physicist. He becomes a very successful scientist, but seems to be destroyed in an accident involving a complex energy experiment. Yet, soon after, his conscience's willpower forces him to construct a new body.

 He is changed into his world's first truly super powered super hero. He is, more or less, turned into a new God. He is indestructible, immortal, and can create, change or destroy matter with the ease that we might blink. He is also all-knowing, all-seeing and, if he wished, omnipresent. At first, he tries to play the role of a super hero or savior. Yet, the more he tries to help humanity, the more he becomes disaffected by them and realizes that he has left them behind. And, eventually he does.

And what does he want to do? He can do anything! So, he wishes to create his own Universe. The only thing that Dr. Manhattan does not know is what this new Universe should be and this is only answered through his interactions with humans. He realizes that humanity does not come from within, it comes through one's connections with others.

Yet, this more of a brilliant metaphilosophical approach to The Clockwork God hidden in the covers of the most critically acclaimed graphic novel of all time than a true depiction of the concept. In reality, I believe that God's existence is impossible to understand or comprehend, at least in this mortal coil. Perhaps, in the afterlife, or perhaps not.

So, what can be taken away from this? Read or watch The Watchmen and try to look at your religious beliefs with some scrutiny but don't get too hung up on it. In my opinion, what's most important is that you do whatever you want in the beautiful world we live in but try not to hurt others in your pursuits.

"Belief in a cruel God, makes a cruel God."-Thomas Paine

SATURDAY MORNING WATCHMEN?

STUFF I THINK ABOUT! CARTOONS 1

Inadvertently, my parents created a monster. A monster who craved the neon glow of the boob tube as it softly hummed a song of secular idolization. A monster fed on the box's fantasy and plastic morality that guided it to the pestilent fields of adulthood. A monster who could not be turned off, though his most comforting companion could be. The monster was me.

I bet you're wondering what I am getting at here, right? Sure, lots of us hip youths raised in a consumer culture spent their childhood watching cartoons. They even make the comment that they were raised by television. I make no such wild claims as to call video my father and audio my mother. I do, however, contend that my relationship is stronger than the average bear. Cartoons weren't a tool to babysit me nor were they an escape from the abuses of an adult world; for I required neither from the 4:3 screen that adorned every room I spent more than an hour at a whack in. Cartoons were my friends.

Not imagined friends. They were very real to the innocent mind of a little boy in desperate need of someone that was familiar. A military brat carted from country to country I paid my dues. The only friends I could see every day, and every where, were those of the 2D variety and they never changed on me (at least when I was young enough to still care). Cartoons were something I could depend on. 

Cartoons don't ask anything of you. They're simple and beautiful things that came in three varieties when I was growing up. At first I just needed the family friendly adventures of a Disney Afternoon but I wanted more. Then came Nicktoons and I bled orange. Finally, came the Cartoon Network, the only true Cartoon Network. Some cartoons taught me how to live and others kept me living.

They fed into my reality and affected the way I looked at everything. I didn't dream about real people that often. I dreamed of eating contests with super powered monsters and being the 4th Ed and playing chess for the fates of world alongside the Jetsons. Reality had a very tenuous grip on me and dreams called to me all the time. I walked along a razor. One slip and I would slide into the valley of talking animals and super powers to never return.

Cartoons taught me who I was but not who I am.

END RANT?

STUFF I THINK ABOUT! SOCKS 1

Enlightenment comes in many forms. Sometimes it comes in the form on apple striking your head, or tripping over a pokeball, or in the middle of bath (forcing you to leap up and run naked into the street yelling “EUREKA!”). Life is funniest when the jokes on everyone, but everyone thinks it’s funniest when the joke is on you. Mundaneness can illuminate the obvious but it takes a fire to illuminate the oblivious.  

I thought there were left socks. For as long as I understood the concept of socks and was old enough to put them on my feet, I have silently made a distinction between which socks, in a pair of socks, is the left and the right partner. Now, some of you might already be silently judging me for my foolishness but let’s break down my reasoning as a child.

The reasoning behind my logic was simple. I have a left hand and a right hand. I also have a left glove and a right glove. I have a left foot and right foot. I also have a left shoe and right shoe. It stands to reason, that they would design a sock for the left foot and a sock for the right foot. I internalized this decision, never sharing it with anyone because, to me, it seemed too mundane a think to mention. Furthermore, no one ever observed me looking at my socks to make the distinction. Even more so they could’ve noticed me take a sock off and put it on the other foot when I, foolishly mistaken, believed it to be on the wrong appendage. Perhaps it was my obsessive compulsive order or something else. Before I elaborate further on the “something else” I should probably explain how this epiphany came about.

It began during a lovely evening at the bonfire, celebrating the birthday of one of my lady friends, in a hundred degree weather. I was as jovial as jonquils as I threw conversation across the flickering of the pretty pyre and perpetrated small jest at those closest to me. I am not quite sure what the context of the conversation was, it could’ve very well been vulgar, and I made the statement, “It is like how you can never find the left socks you have lost in the wash.” Internally, this was a fine simile. Instead, it left my friends perplexed. I tried to explain the analogy, but was stopped. “There are no such things as left socks.” I stared at them, then at my feet, I had just put out a small grass fire with my custom leather Chucks and had been feeling victorious, yet as my foolishness was revealed I felt the sting of realization.

I wanted to stand up, toss my chair into the fire, then to rip the shoes of my feet and toss them in the fire, and then, delicately, to rip the socks from my feet and throw them at the heavens before running into the trees and howling a primordial howl of shame, confusion and, goats that I would trip over.