FAITH: Consciousness seems to be derivative of feedback among aspects that are spiritually qualitative with aspects that are empirically quantitative. In a way of thinking, the qualitative experience of consciousness is what we will to make of it. I suspect the same may be said of what we make of our perspectives of the Field of consciousness (aka, God). In a way, to have faith in the field of Consciousness is to have faith in a potential for the extension of one's own consciousness. If one perceives God to be an Ogre (or an Allah), one greases the way to an horrific, alternative reality. If one considers God to be mainly interested in caring, one proceeds along a path of pursuit of fulfillment. Norman Vincent Peale was on the mark regarding faith in an innate power of positive thinking,
REGARDING SAM HARRIS AND THE END OF FAITH AND THE MORAL LANDSCAPE: I'm reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. He wants to commit moral values to pure reason, entirely divorced from God or religious traditions. I suspect a fundamental rift, an unbridgeable chasm between measuring apples versus oranges. I suspect his model does not quite succeed in facing up to quite a number of key concerns.
ONGOING PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION: Some main problems for civilized beingness (and they are not problems with final solutions, to be unraveled by scientists!) pertain to: (1) how to slough off indecent aspects of old belief structures; and (2) how to accomodate cherry picked aspects of changing belief structures with an ever changing, decent, sustainable civilization (even if it should become prudent for civilization to organize into fuzzy, overlapping, competing, and cooperating compartments and hierarchies).
VALUE OF BELIEVING: Most people "really" don't believe, literally, in models or sacred texts; rather, they commit their identities to the value of "believing that they believe," i.e., living as if the texts or models were worthy or true (at least, cherry picked aspects of them). They entertain a tending-to-fulfilling FAITH/belief in the qualitative Goodness of being, whose cause and effect are not reducible to quantitative measure. They stand with Faith that Beingness is essentially Good. (Could it be "good" or moral to believe that beingmess is essentially -- scientifically -- irrelevant to goodness, not good or -- Islamically -- less than good?) In this way, we retain means to communicate among ourselves in respect of more or less common and traditional contexts of reference, without which we would have few signposts by which to make ourselves appreciated or understood. We would lose touch with our past, and we would lose an emotional aspect of meaning among ourselves. The stories are only the means to convey a higher shared spiritual experience and truth. (Maybe even God finds them entertaining.)
INSPIRATION: Absent a notion of God, in respect of what unifying or highest value should people be inspired to come to reason together about moral concerns, to try to inculcate values that are more commonly shared, hence (somewhat artificially so), more "objective"?
TRANSITIONAL COHESION: Insofar as our shared niche or context of being changes, what social values can remain worthy, to guide members of a society across transitional, often fundamental, changes in our contexts? What values tend to last beyond harsh changes in contexts?
SOCIOPATHIC DECEIVERS: What in Harris' model can protect those who accept his notions from political sociopaths who feign values only for personal gain, seeking to let no harsh crisis go to waste?
GANGSTER FUNDING: What in Harris' model can defend the moral values of a conscious agent of free will against the scientific presumptuousness of a mob or community, which may often be funded or targeted for being undermined by sociopaths?
INDIVIDUAL V. GROUP: Harris seems not always to remember that what leads to an individual's scientifically measurable pleasure and "well being" may be artithetical to exemplars needed to sustain a humane, decent, family-friendly civilization for man, woman, and child.
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Obama's regime, like many, is evidence that leaders will abuse the trust of followers, for shallow purposes.
DICTATE: Apart from precluding devaluation of our niche, who is any one of us, even Harris, to dictate, scientifically, what each and every one of us must do?
THINNING OF BIODIVERSITY: Does not Harris' model fail to respect appropriate "wildlife management" within the evolving field of possible variations among expressions of species of autonomous consciousness?
ITSELF RELIGIOUS: Does not Harris' model, in itself, entail religious devotion for favoring the present human form, over other species, even over our own evolutionary possibilities?
ACCULTURATED ATTACHMENTS: Does his model run too roughshod over acculturated sensibilities to sacred parables, which remain meaningful to traditional sensibilities?
ANARCHY: Does his model try to break the establishment, to establish a new religion or metaphysics, while pretending not to, and accord no receptivity to the unfolding efforts of previous metaphysicians?
BURNING KNOWLEDGE: Does his model commit worthy insights from previous metaphysicians to the ash heap?
GANGSTER LOGROLLING: Does his model accord too much worship or respect for eventual statist or oligarchic usurpations?
ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM: Does his model entail eventual servitude to a supreme programmer, destined to set too many parameters for what is politically acceptable to our notion of well being?
IGNORE INTUITION AND REPLACE WITH EMPIRICISM: Does his model disrespect all intuitions of roles for meta arch types and guiding determinants that are beyond the empirical measure of the community, but not beyond the intuitive empathy of individuals?
MORAL DETERMINANTS: Regarding genes-conditioning-economics-technology-philosophy: none has a monopoly for determining sustainable and decent morality. None is mathematically convertible into the others. Such terms are not amenable of quantitative formulization for weighing the "best" moral sum for a society as a whole with any sum for its members.
CIRCULARITY: Does Harris' concept of "well being" really escape moral circularity?
UNDERMINING PARENTS: Does it foment replacement of tradition minded parents with scientific bureaucrats, for the appropriate rearing and genetic treating of children?
ENTITLEMENT V. LICENSE: When it comes to how best to sustain a decent civilization, do not libertine and libertarian "moral scientists" too often display too much concern for what material earth should be (and should entitle), and too little concern for what human society should be (and should license)?
STATE WORSHIP: Does Harris' model worship or serve state or scientific legalism, to set or enforce new parameters of acceptable social behavior, in replacement of religious models for acceptable moral parameters? Are not at least some religious models for acceptable social and familial behavior based on traditions of marriage and responsibility for child rearing that have been generally tested and found successful for eons?
CONTINUITY OF PURPOSEFULNESS: Does Harris' model disrespect that there abides a continuous capacity for the expression of purposefulness in every unfolding perspective of consciousness, not just the human form?
FORCED DOGMA: Does his model pretend, by "scientific proof," to authorize any person's dogma, by force and numbers, to reprogram and re-educate every other perspective of consciousness, to fit within limits that are acceptable to a philosophy of moral specifics that any such person and his gang may find acceptable?
DOES SCIENTIFICALLY LEVERAGED MIGHT MAKE RIGHT: Suppose a person (or maximum leader) has been warped so as to experience measurable well being by harming others: Is that which enhances his well being then "scientifically moral"? Unless the masses reserve a god given right to refer to higher insight, will not he who wins the war write the "true" moral science?
EXCEPT IN TRIVALENT RESPECT OF DEMOCRATIC OR REPRESENTATIVE PARTICIPATION, HOW CAN A SINGLE BIVALENT SCIENTIFIC FORMULA PRETEND TO TREAT THE INTERESTS OF BOTH THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY FAIRLY: How, scientifically, are the qualities valued by an individual to be weighed against the qualities purportedly valued by the community? Who decides? By what model can moral science make a testable, empirical accounting of these kinds of apples and oranges, parts and wholes, natural organisms and artificial constructs?
MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUDITING: In what way and to what extent may scientific tests for "well being" (by using magnetic pulses directed at the skull?) be a variant, even if more sophisticated, of the auditing that is done by Scientologists?
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY AUDITING: Can a formula for adding the well being of the members of a society translate into an evaluation of the sustainable well being of the society itself?
META REFERENTS: In respect of archtypes of metaphysics, pertaining to such archtypes' appreciations of purpose and preference, may there be a "real" referent for those ideas which best prove themselves in the test and competition of their unfoldment of the manifest?
BOTTOM LINE: Is Harris' "scientific morality" much more than the old, non-empirical, non-measurable, non-convertible utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, dressed up with techinques for collecting quantitative data regarding blood chemistry, brain synapses, and magnetic pulses?
******
Gore Vidal deploys his immense vocabulary to circumvolute truth beyond retrieve. I’d rather read Sam Harris. He has a serviceable vocabulary, and he is briefer and more direct about his purposes. Interestingly, Harris chastises religious moderates, but would replace them by mediating science with spirituality, to oust the influence on spiritual concerns of all religious based traditions. In his love for establishing a science of morality, Harris seems not far from spiritual auditing, as by Scientologists. See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070910204944AAH6wyd. However, is it justified to limit faith to a “science” of the moral landscape? Ask: Have the gaggle of psycho-scientists really shown themselves worthy of being entrusted to establish the kind of communally assimilated, secularly enforced, and scientifically based social Norms that are friendly to decent, sustainable, family based civilizations? Indeed, what civilization devouring abNormalities does the psycho-gaggle not tolerate?
Intuitively, the ONLY reason consciousness — whether human or meta — would be concerned with the scientifically (empirically) Quantitative would be to avail informational placeholders (as measurable signposts), with which to remember and relate to the Qualitative aspects of associated perspectives of consciousness (such qualitative aspects running gamuts of astonishment, from the painfully tragic to the orgiastically comedic to the boringly indifferent). Thus, faith in a qualitative, “dynamic Meta field of psychology” seems both essential to, as well as beyond, faith in a quantitative, “psychological neuroScience of the moral landscape.” Even so, a loyal opposition is essential to test that which is of value, and Harris sets forth the opposing landscape, brilliantly.
*******
I have not yet seen Harris to do a comparative analysis, to ask: Suppose mankind were to replace all traditional religions with science based economics, politics, and morality? Does logic, experience, or history suggest such an exclusive promotion of science would render our world more humane and less at risk? Harris discounts the horrific results of Marxist and Statist attempts in such nations as Germany, Russia, and China, characterizing them as being more based in religion than in science. Perhaps he feels true, scientific, dialectic materialism has not yet been tried. If so, he risks much on an untried notion.
Regardless, ask: Can science really repeal the ongoing march and unfolding pursuit of competitive fulfillment through agencies of change, replacement, violence, and death? Has any social experiment in morality based in science yielded other than millions of deaths, misery for the masses, and belligerance abroad? Is Harris' hope and faith that mankind would fare better under supervision based exclusively in science borne only out of long, personal conditioning for preferring lab based solutions, under unreal assumptions of all other variables being equal, or is his faith "really" based in logic, experience, and history?
Is not the real battle of morality one that is between the morally empathetic (social Conservatives) versus those (Rinos and Dinos) who are united in taking advantage of the morally empathetic (Rinos, by overlording greed, and Dinos, by entitlement mongering)? Is not the real battle of morality between those who believe in Morality In Relations Among Citizens Within A Society versus those who believe only in material based survival of the fittest, most tricky, and most weasely? Can we really know, in the unfolding turmoil of things, what "causes" some to be morally empathetic to higher purposefulness,while others remain riven purely in materialism? Is not the real battle to intuit God, to engage in battle between religions based on a caring God versus religions based on a monstrous mobster, bartering, material-divvying God? Is not the real battle for existential Consciousness to pursue coming to terms with itself?
REGARDING SAM HARRIS AND THE END OF FAITH AND THE MORAL LANDSCAPE: I'm reading Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape. He wants to commit moral values to pure reason, entirely divorced from God or religious traditions. I suspect a fundamental rift, an unbridgeable chasm between measuring apples versus oranges. I suspect his model does not quite succeed in facing up to quite a number of key concerns.
ONGOING PROBLEM OF CIVILIZATION: Some main problems for civilized beingness (and they are not problems with final solutions, to be unraveled by scientists!) pertain to: (1) how to slough off indecent aspects of old belief structures; and (2) how to accomodate cherry picked aspects of changing belief structures with an ever changing, decent, sustainable civilization (even if it should become prudent for civilization to organize into fuzzy, overlapping, competing, and cooperating compartments and hierarchies).
VALUE OF BELIEVING: Most people "really" don't believe, literally, in models or sacred texts; rather, they commit their identities to the value of "believing that they believe," i.e., living as if the texts or models were worthy or true (at least, cherry picked aspects of them). They entertain a tending-to-fulfilling FAITH/belief in the qualitative Goodness of being, whose cause and effect are not reducible to quantitative measure. They stand with Faith that Beingness is essentially Good. (Could it be "good" or moral to believe that beingmess is essentially -- scientifically -- irrelevant to goodness, not good or -- Islamically -- less than good?) In this way, we retain means to communicate among ourselves in respect of more or less common and traditional contexts of reference, without which we would have few signposts by which to make ourselves appreciated or understood. We would lose touch with our past, and we would lose an emotional aspect of meaning among ourselves. The stories are only the means to convey a higher shared spiritual experience and truth. (Maybe even God finds them entertaining.)
INSPIRATION: Absent a notion of God, in respect of what unifying or highest value should people be inspired to come to reason together about moral concerns, to try to inculcate values that are more commonly shared, hence (somewhat artificially so), more "objective"?
TRANSITIONAL COHESION: Insofar as our shared niche or context of being changes, what social values can remain worthy, to guide members of a society across transitional, often fundamental, changes in our contexts? What values tend to last beyond harsh changes in contexts?
SOCIOPATHIC DECEIVERS: What in Harris' model can protect those who accept his notions from political sociopaths who feign values only for personal gain, seeking to let no harsh crisis go to waste?
GANGSTER FUNDING: What in Harris' model can defend the moral values of a conscious agent of free will against the scientific presumptuousness of a mob or community, which may often be funded or targeted for being undermined by sociopaths?
INDIVIDUAL V. GROUP: Harris seems not always to remember that what leads to an individual's scientifically measurable pleasure and "well being" may be artithetical to exemplars needed to sustain a humane, decent, family-friendly civilization for man, woman, and child.
POLITICAL EXPERIENCE: Obama's regime, like many, is evidence that leaders will abuse the trust of followers, for shallow purposes.
DICTATE: Apart from precluding devaluation of our niche, who is any one of us, even Harris, to dictate, scientifically, what each and every one of us must do?
THINNING OF BIODIVERSITY: Does not Harris' model fail to respect appropriate "wildlife management" within the evolving field of possible variations among expressions of species of autonomous consciousness?
ITSELF RELIGIOUS: Does not Harris' model, in itself, entail religious devotion for favoring the present human form, over other species, even over our own evolutionary possibilities?
ACCULTURATED ATTACHMENTS: Does his model run too roughshod over acculturated sensibilities to sacred parables, which remain meaningful to traditional sensibilities?
ANARCHY: Does his model try to break the establishment, to establish a new religion or metaphysics, while pretending not to, and accord no receptivity to the unfolding efforts of previous metaphysicians?
BURNING KNOWLEDGE: Does his model commit worthy insights from previous metaphysicians to the ash heap?
GANGSTER LOGROLLING: Does his model accord too much worship or respect for eventual statist or oligarchic usurpations?
ROAD TO TOTALITARIANISM: Does his model entail eventual servitude to a supreme programmer, destined to set too many parameters for what is politically acceptable to our notion of well being?
IGNORE INTUITION AND REPLACE WITH EMPIRICISM: Does his model disrespect all intuitions of roles for meta arch types and guiding determinants that are beyond the empirical measure of the community, but not beyond the intuitive empathy of individuals?
MORAL DETERMINANTS: Regarding genes-conditioning-economics-technology-philosophy: none has a monopoly for determining sustainable and decent morality. None is mathematically convertible into the others. Such terms are not amenable of quantitative formulization for weighing the "best" moral sum for a society as a whole with any sum for its members.
CIRCULARITY: Does Harris' concept of "well being" really escape moral circularity?
UNDERMINING PARENTS: Does it foment replacement of tradition minded parents with scientific bureaucrats, for the appropriate rearing and genetic treating of children?
ENTITLEMENT V. LICENSE: When it comes to how best to sustain a decent civilization, do not libertine and libertarian "moral scientists" too often display too much concern for what material earth should be (and should entitle), and too little concern for what human society should be (and should license)?
STATE WORSHIP: Does Harris' model worship or serve state or scientific legalism, to set or enforce new parameters of acceptable social behavior, in replacement of religious models for acceptable moral parameters? Are not at least some religious models for acceptable social and familial behavior based on traditions of marriage and responsibility for child rearing that have been generally tested and found successful for eons?
CONTINUITY OF PURPOSEFULNESS: Does Harris' model disrespect that there abides a continuous capacity for the expression of purposefulness in every unfolding perspective of consciousness, not just the human form?
FORCED DOGMA: Does his model pretend, by "scientific proof," to authorize any person's dogma, by force and numbers, to reprogram and re-educate every other perspective of consciousness, to fit within limits that are acceptable to a philosophy of moral specifics that any such person and his gang may find acceptable?
DOES SCIENTIFICALLY LEVERAGED MIGHT MAKE RIGHT: Suppose a person (or maximum leader) has been warped so as to experience measurable well being by harming others: Is that which enhances his well being then "scientifically moral"? Unless the masses reserve a god given right to refer to higher insight, will not he who wins the war write the "true" moral science?
EXCEPT IN TRIVALENT RESPECT OF DEMOCRATIC OR REPRESENTATIVE PARTICIPATION, HOW CAN A SINGLE BIVALENT SCIENTIFIC FORMULA PRETEND TO TREAT THE INTERESTS OF BOTH THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COMMUNITY FAIRLY: How, scientifically, are the qualities valued by an individual to be weighed against the qualities purportedly valued by the community? Who decides? By what model can moral science make a testable, empirical accounting of these kinds of apples and oranges, parts and wholes, natural organisms and artificial constructs?
MORAL AND SPIRITUAL AUDITING: In what way and to what extent may scientific tests for "well being" (by using magnetic pulses directed at the skull?) be a variant, even if more sophisticated, of the auditing that is done by Scientologists?
INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY AUDITING: Can a formula for adding the well being of the members of a society translate into an evaluation of the sustainable well being of the society itself?
META REFERENTS: In respect of archtypes of metaphysics, pertaining to such archtypes' appreciations of purpose and preference, may there be a "real" referent for those ideas which best prove themselves in the test and competition of their unfoldment of the manifest?
BOTTOM LINE: Is Harris' "scientific morality" much more than the old, non-empirical, non-measurable, non-convertible utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, dressed up with techinques for collecting quantitative data regarding blood chemistry, brain synapses, and magnetic pulses?
******
Gore Vidal deploys his immense vocabulary to circumvolute truth beyond retrieve. I’d rather read Sam Harris. He has a serviceable vocabulary, and he is briefer and more direct about his purposes. Interestingly, Harris chastises religious moderates, but would replace them by mediating science with spirituality, to oust the influence on spiritual concerns of all religious based traditions. In his love for establishing a science of morality, Harris seems not far from spiritual auditing, as by Scientologists. See http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070910204944AAH6wyd. However, is it justified to limit faith to a “science” of the moral landscape? Ask: Have the gaggle of psycho-scientists really shown themselves worthy of being entrusted to establish the kind of communally assimilated, secularly enforced, and scientifically based social Norms that are friendly to decent, sustainable, family based civilizations? Indeed, what civilization devouring abNormalities does the psycho-gaggle not tolerate?
Intuitively, the ONLY reason consciousness — whether human or meta — would be concerned with the scientifically (empirically) Quantitative would be to avail informational placeholders (as measurable signposts), with which to remember and relate to the Qualitative aspects of associated perspectives of consciousness (such qualitative aspects running gamuts of astonishment, from the painfully tragic to the orgiastically comedic to the boringly indifferent). Thus, faith in a qualitative, “dynamic Meta field of psychology” seems both essential to, as well as beyond, faith in a quantitative, “psychological neuroScience of the moral landscape.” Even so, a loyal opposition is essential to test that which is of value, and Harris sets forth the opposing landscape, brilliantly.
*******
I have not yet seen Harris to do a comparative analysis, to ask: Suppose mankind were to replace all traditional religions with science based economics, politics, and morality? Does logic, experience, or history suggest such an exclusive promotion of science would render our world more humane and less at risk? Harris discounts the horrific results of Marxist and Statist attempts in such nations as Germany, Russia, and China, characterizing them as being more based in religion than in science. Perhaps he feels true, scientific, dialectic materialism has not yet been tried. If so, he risks much on an untried notion.
Regardless, ask: Can science really repeal the ongoing march and unfolding pursuit of competitive fulfillment through agencies of change, replacement, violence, and death? Has any social experiment in morality based in science yielded other than millions of deaths, misery for the masses, and belligerance abroad? Is Harris' hope and faith that mankind would fare better under supervision based exclusively in science borne only out of long, personal conditioning for preferring lab based solutions, under unreal assumptions of all other variables being equal, or is his faith "really" based in logic, experience, and history?
Is not the real battle of morality one that is between the morally empathetic (social Conservatives) versus those (Rinos and Dinos) who are united in taking advantage of the morally empathetic (Rinos, by overlording greed, and Dinos, by entitlement mongering)? Is not the real battle of morality between those who believe in Morality In Relations Among Citizens Within A Society versus those who believe only in material based survival of the fittest, most tricky, and most weasely? Can we really know, in the unfolding turmoil of things, what "causes" some to be morally empathetic to higher purposefulness,while others remain riven purely in materialism? Is not the real battle to intuit God, to engage in battle between religions based on a caring God versus religions based on a monstrous mobster, bartering, material-divvying God? Is not the real battle for existential Consciousness to pursue coming to terms with itself?
7 comments:
Obama lives to undermine the Western ethos. If he senses he can do enough damage to that, he will readily trade being a one term President. Imagine Stalin sending agents to undermine America by telling sugar plum stories to our children. He fancies himself Patton, marching like sugar plums through our credulity. What could excite a despot more? Will our schools ever teach the story of how Obama won hearts through lies followed by treachery? When you have no regard for the dignity of your fellows, but only for your materialistic cause, all is permitted. Obama has been successful because America's good will had grown soft, decadent, pink, and silly. Obama's rampant, ruthless willingness to run interference for his ambition with his smiling lies and to throw all opposition under his bus Is The Compelling Evidence of his dark, smothering heart. He has no regard for anyone he deems out of alignment with his empowerment and his purposes. His purpose is nothing more than to reduce all others to serve at various levels of choirs, as his stepping boys, whiteys on bottom, of course. He has no other purpose. He and Gaia are one.
Neophytes tend to expect that political differences are mainly in good faith, merely entailing different beliefs about how to facilitate better lives for more citizens. Among Conservatives, that may be the case. However, no politicians are funded to run under a conservative label, as such. Rather, almost all run under a label that stands for the leveling of the masses (usually parasitic Prog Dinos) under elites (often Oligarchic Servants for Rinos) for ruling them.
However, Progs and Oligs have no desire to preserve a system that avails influence and opportunity to a vibrant middle class. That is, the differences between the political labels that actually show up on ballots are not about facilitating better opportunities for most citizens. The differences are about which class should take the biggest bite out of the middle class (the class that seeks neither to rule nor to be ruled): the class of parasitic Progs or of wolfish Oligs. The middle class will remain ineffectively represented unless it realizes in time that it is being served up as dinner.
If dinner continues uninterrupted, the immediate aftermath will be a return to old serfdom under technologically new nobles. Despotic Chinese capitalism depends on innovations stolen from free minded societies. The rise of Islamism depends on sociopathic Sheiks buying up western politicians. Despotic Capitalism and freaking, mind-subjugating Shariah both depend on corrupting and eating the heart out of the American free man, from the inside out. It's about the values, stupid. The Enlightenment was good while it lasted, but it made a wrong turn when people mistook it for replacing assimilated spiritual empathies with minutia-regulating legalism, pretending to accord equal tolerance to every imaginable depravity under Gaia.
How is stimuli fom the wider field that different --- causally, quantitatively, empirically --- from stimuli from the consciously expressed words of another person? Or, if not so different, then doesn't that indicate that the feedback of consciousness extends to the wider field itself?
On the other hand, if, and insofar as, stimuli from the words of another person does somehow present differently, qualitatively, then doesn't that indicate that the consciousness of such person is somehow apart from the mere quantitative stimuli of indifferent nature?
In other words, if indifferent and unconscious nature accounts for all, then why does consciousness abide anywhere? Alternatively, if consciousness does somehow abide apart from nature, then how can its complete explicaton be reduced to a merely quantitative account of nature?
Suppose neurologists, by targeting magnetic impulses at locations around or in skulls, became able to influence the thoughts and actions of conscious beings. Would they thereby be on a path for reducing consciousness to explanations grounded entirely in the quantitative? Or would they face an implicated and infinite regress: what controls and accounts for each of their decisions about whose skull to target, where, and how? What consciousness "decides" those questions --- if not consciousness from a wider field?
Consider the brain of a person who is contemplating morality in respect of what is needed in terms of mores and laws in order to sustain not just an individual person's immediate gratification or "well being," but the preservation and well being of a decent civilization for his progeny. Ask: what causes him to remain so stimulated, if not ongoing feedback from his wider field of participation among a continuous flux of other agents or perspectives of consciousness? In other words, is there not an intuited implication: that a fluxing quality of consciousness pervades the wider field, beyond the merely quantitative aspects of nature?
Is not a pervasive, fluxing quality of field consciousness a spiritual accompaniment, akin to a religious notion of God, to all that unfolds as quantitative regarding the manifestation of nature? Does not nature, insofar as it is considered purely quantitative, not qualitative, consist only as derivative signposts of the feedback and interfunctioning of perspectives of a qualitatively fluxing field of consciousness? Is not nature necessarily manifested to be dumb and indifferent precisely because it consists only of quantitative information that is stored for the appreciation, communication, and intuitive interrelation of perspectives of fluxing levels and layers of consciousness?
Is not the quality of consciousness beyond the measure of nature precisely because Whatever is the superior source of consciousness (moral purposefulness) is the even more superior source of nature?
So long as common sense remains dead, what hope can there be? So long as common sense remains dead, what lies cannot the corruptocrats sell? Take immigration. A moderately intelligent child, not mal-educated by anti-common sense, would instantly see the problem. But not our elites. See [www.youtube.com].
What we have is unassimilated, perpetual jockeying among befogged, multi culti, special interests. Sam Harris, in The End of Faith, has noted: "If perfect coherence is to be had, each new belief must be checked against all others ... here we encounter a minor computational difficulty ... the number of necessary comparisons grows exponentially ... a computer as large as the known universe, built of components no larger than protons, with switching speeds as fast as the speed of light, all laboring in parallel from the moment of the big bang up to the present, it would still be fighting to add a 300th belief to its list. What does this say about the possibility of our ever guaranteeing that our worldview is perfectly free from contradictions? It is not even a dream within a dream."
Sam Harris knows this, yet has faith that, by replacing faith in God with faith in the “science” of “well being” and “the moral landscape” — presumably to be coerced into law once the science is settled — that we shall better sustain our moral pursuits. Go figure. One need only stumble into any tiny corner of our overly papered legal universe to see that our legislative masters – as short sighted and bereft of decent philosophy as they are – are obviously not discouraged from their legalistic, mumbo-jumbo, modern version of cheap, open-border labor and voo-doo free trade.
Harris imagines there is an objectively correct "answer," as a factual matter, regardless of whether we can know it or not, to various general moral questions, such as: would the world be better off were the U.S. to destroy all its nuclear weapons? In this, my intuition is that he is wrong. I don't think a correct answer "exists." I think the answer only abides, ambiguously, within the field of possibilities --- not within the field of actual nature. I think any "answer," at most, would be good for a fleeting context only. This is because neither we, nor nature, can know how our context will evolve into future permutations of manifestations. Indeed, even if there is a synchronizing, choosing Aspect that interfunctions with nature, I doubt even IT would know (assuming IT is not without power to change IT's mind, depending on unforeseen appreciations of IT's unfolding interaction with nature). This is because that which consciousness/Consciousness appreciates as being "best" or in its well being, depends on that which it chooses, wills, or determines to appreciate --- which is something which it, to the extent it is functioning from an unfolding perspective of consciousness, cannot with certitude predict. Why? Because it knows it can change its mind, if it chooses to do so.
Do you have faith in "America?" Do you believe faith in a concept of America is worthwhile? Can you objectively define what you mean by America, or your faith in it? Regardless, is your faith, and the shared faith of others, in America, worthwhile? Does that faith carry a moral value? How is faith in "Jesus" different? Isn't Jesus a worthwhile, shorthand reference for that which many in our culture associate with the worthwhile? If you went on a crusade to convince certain people to believe America is no longer a good concept, would that be a good thing? Would a similar crusade against Jesus be a good thing, insofar as it would affect our everyday lives?
So many, having shed trust in God, now shall learn to fear having lost faith in faith --- until they learn that our illusion of fiscal substantiveness floats on nothing more than a quality of conscious faith, a trick of suspension of disbelief. Do you have faith in "America?" Do you believe faith in a concept of America is worthwhile? Can you objectively define what you mean by America, or your faith in it? Regardless, is your faith, and the shared faith of others, in America, worthwhile? Does that faith carry a moral value? How is faith in "Jesus" different? Isn't Jesus a worthwhile, shorthand reference for that which many in our culture associate with the worthwhile? If Four Horsemen were to go on a crusade to convince as many people as possible to believe America is no longer a good concept, would that be a good thing? Would a similar crusade against Jesus be a good thing, insofar as it affected our everyday lives? How many times do we feel the hubris of those who want to push aside all faith, except that faith of which they place themselves at center stage --- where, since they (liberally) make themselves their own gold standard, all, and I mean all, is permitted? At least, just before the walls come crashing down.
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