Brain Gag

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Re: http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Gaia_hypothesis
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GAIA:  Dawkins' gag reflex may have led him to miss that the originator of the Gaia hypothesis is not theorizing about a myth and then expecting to prove it in any quantitative sense. Yes, the originator employed a tongue in cheek metaphor. But there is nothing unscientific about his observations concerning temporary set points for apparent homeostasis and then following those observations up with proposals for trying to ascertain an underlying explanatory model. That's just Science 101! To the extent any temporary pattern is sustained to observable measure, it's purely trival --- hardly controversial --- to say the observation is founded in substantive based fact. The effort to observe, note, measure, and understand the physical correlations is hardly metaphysical --- despite the poke with a name, Gaia, that sets off gag reflexes among all who, like Dawkins, abhor mythological connotations. What's in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? I doubt Einstein tried to quantify the awe he felt from thinking about the cosmos. I can't begrudge folks who enjoy the mystery and like to discuss it in literary terms and qualitative metaphors. It's only when they try to quantify that which can only be qualititative that I take it to be crap. Otherwise, its either music or noise, but not crap.
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I have seen and enjoyed the Python witch scene several times. People often react in strange and emotional ways when their fundamental beliefs are challenged or poked. I think even scientists will eventually have to come to terms that their cherished (hardly indifferent!) pursuit of a Theory Of Everything is fundamentally flawed, and that, whatever the nature or character of the meta-protoplasm out of which our cosmos emerged, that character is necessarily still with us. Otherwise, the walking contradiction of indifferent scientism being used to advocate mores about which we ought not be indifferent will dress scientists out in rather silly fashion.

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More and more, it strikes me that many of the people of Greece and Rome, even as far back as 600 B.C., were far, far more educated and enlightened than most modern folks would ever dream. The philosophers well knew the difference between rational and speculative pursuits and myths. They gave lip service to pagan myths only in respect that they knew their myths were the glue to hold their societies together. (Though it was despicable that Socrates paid with his life for not giving enough lip service!) While they tended to apprehend that there does abide a reconciling meta-protoplasm, many despaired when they found they were unable to link to it in any quantitative, scientific way. However, it's not just common religions any myths that suffer that infirmity. The same infirmity applies to every social and economic creed that tries to be more than trivial. They're all based in unconfirmable, religious-like faith: communism, keynesianism, republicanism, gangsterism, capitalism, warmism, and gag-reflexism. Sociology is presently rocked because a noted sociologist was recently outed for having long fabricated his data. Try writing law or history "scientifically." In every important respect by which we live our day to day lives, we proceed based on faith in unquestioned and usually subconsciously accepted myths and unfolding fads! Try appreciating those myths in any way that is purely quantitative as opposed to qualitative.
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Apart from Judaism, think about the religions and myths that were prevalent before Christianity. In Carthage, the baby roastings during worship of Moloch. In Asia, the search for hope in the hopelessness of a chain of suffering reincarnations, just to finally achieve release in the nothingness of nirvana. In Europe, the pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans may have been the best of the myths, but they didn't offer much of an idea of progress, either in the here-and-now or the hereafter. And don't forget the bloodthirsty god concepts that came later, in the Middle East form of Allah and the New World forms of Quetzalcoatl, Tezcatlipoca, Yum Cimil, and Ixtab. Then look at Scientism's take on unguided Darwinism: There's no "progress" in it. So, why do adherents of scientism so often call their politics "progressive?" Apart from using Gaia-worship and collectivist-plundering as conveniences to mask selfish-immediate-gratifications at expense of country and generations to come, what's progressive, hopeful, good, or redeeming about "progressive" politicians?
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I don't consider Christianity in a vacuum, but prefer to consider it in the context of the poison stews it has had to contend among! Neither do I ridicule physicists because early practitioners may have thought matter fell more swiftly as it came nearer to ground out of love for Gaia.  Neither do I ridicule chemists because early practitioners were alchemists.  On comparative basis, it seems fair to say that Christianity, in respect of practitioners' attempts to apprehend the character of their relationship to the Holism, even if in large part based in allegories and myths, did much "to progress" cultures to curb them from rampant nihilism and bloodletting and towards decent civilization and respect for individual dignity. Jesus did not say to force converts or children to him, but he said let the children come.  That's vastly different from practitioners who sponsor Moloch or Allah.  At least, when Christianity was not being challenged by heresies reminiscent of previous dead-end myths and later self-worships in the forms of communism, national socialism, and secular humanism. But for the Christian Crusades, what would have been preserved of Byzantine Rome? Where would the Muslim onslaught have ended? I think a substantial quality of truth and goodness may well abide in the Christian tradition, head and shoulders above most other social traditions.   Apart from Christianity, what religious or philosophical tradition accords more respect for the separate freedom and dignity of each person?!  If Christianity perpetuates unsustainable inconsistencies and prejudices, I think it better to try to resolve those than to leave a vacuum that would suck back all the poison stews of the past. In a qualitative sense, history quite convinces me that godless scientism would suck back those poison stews.
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We should hardly need another round of Stalinism or National Socialism to prove the point. Yet it appears we are well on the way to another round of blowback from crap-worshipping, collectivizing, self-entitlementarianism. So long as decent civilization is desired, I don't see any alternative apart from inculcating decent reverence for higher, qualitative aspects of the meta-protoplasm. After all, don't even secular humanists want a moral code founded in principles of higher reason?   Do so-called "non-religious," rational folk postulate principled bases for higher reason, apart from material-based science, or merely subservient to material-based science?  Do they test their "principles?  How so?  Are their principles falsifiable?  Steadfast?  Reliable?  Inspiring?  Favorable to decent and sustainable civiilzation?  Why?  Why not to a goal of supermen, everyone else be damned?  Or do they simply advocate doing howsoever they please?  If their moral code is "reasonable," to what aspect of existence is its reasonableness to be attributed?   How can human beings who are not inculcated to respect a moral code be trusted to be at liberty within any society that wishes to call itself decent?

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OCTAGRAMMATON:  I propose a new variation on the old tetragrammaton (maybe call it The Octagrammaton: "I am emotive reason that I am emotive reason." If a higher moral code abides that cannot be proven logically or quantitatively, then why should we not seek to appreciate it qualitatively? On the other hand, if it does not abide, then there is no reason to pursue or not to pursue anything -- even crap.

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HOMEOSTASIS:  Regarding unfolding patterns of evolution and world homeostasis: Is it purely a matter of trivial definiton, that those random happenstances and patterns that are favored to endure will endure, or does some aspect of a Holism function to conserve and confer its favors, by somehow loading the dice? Is it mere happenstance that those genes and cultures that value the endurance of their country and progeny will tend to endure? Or may it make more sense to conceptualize a circular or digital kind of feedback process being underway, whereby a Holistic Perspective dances across a fuzzy buffer with Paritcularistic Perspectives?   After all, it makes little sense to recognize that the whole is more or other than merely the sum of its parts, but then to go further and say that there is and can be no relationship between them.  May there abide a circular, quantum-digital, two-step process, whereby the Holism rationally apprehends existential stimuli from its Parts, qualitatively adjudges its emotive appreciation, and transmits its feedback across a synchronizing and conserving buffer? Thereupon, may its Parts rationally apprehend such response as stimuli to them, for them to qualitatively adjudge their emotive appreciation, thus transmitting their feedback to the Holism ... back and forth ... apprehending the is, appreciating the ought ... unfolding meaningful communication across the buffer? On one side of the digital buffer, is-ought-is for the Holism; on the other side, is-ought-is for the Particular Perspectives ... rational apprehension, emotive appreciation.

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How patterns are availed, chosen, or favored may relate to how evolution is guided, even as Bayes Theorem appears to work indifferently in respect of complex systems.  As a new thing is birthed from a previous environment, it must not so alter the environment that was necessary to its birth as to destroy its potential to endure ... if it is to endure. It must not, by multiplying, endanger the conservational synchronicity of the system that nurtures it. To endure, it must express strategies that will average out any adverse tendencies it may effect. So, we have white lillies balanced against black lillies. Trivially, that which endures will tend to be synchronously compatible with the homeostasis of its environment. However, is this really a happenstance triviality, or is it byproduct of a guiding aspect of consciousness?

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FAVORED:   The word "favored" may be used either to recognize the upshot of a random or force-directed result or of a willed and chosen result. A result may be favored or, if you Will (or prefer), determined by random or directing forces, or by a determining decider. The fact that one uses the word "favored" or the word "determined" has no effect in itself -- other than some folks may prefer to substitute words to serve a conceit for being rigorous or "scientific." Is that conceit "earned" as a result of random or directing conditioning versus some spiritual demerit?   Earth "favors" life. Unfoldings are "determined" by random or directing forces or by directing wills. The meaning one takes is affected by one's purpose, point of view, and context. One can't very well ascertain a complete or intended meaning merely from use of the word "favored" or "determined." Nor by a word games with "rigorous" systems of scientific or mathematical terms (just ask Bertrand Russell). Context, point of view, and purpose will always intrude.

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INTENTION: Does one mean "intention" in the sense of will beyond material forces, or only in the sense of delusion of will beyond material forces? If the latter, why should it gag anyone to use "intention" in the same sense with Gaia? By the way, Earth is merely one among many complex systems. The notion of homeostasis may be applied to all of them. Indeed, were the idea applied simply to the balanced preservation of ocean salinity, what fussy scientist would raise an eyebrow?

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SYSTEM: By definition, a "system" consists of features, forms, and patterns of which at least some will (Will?) tend to be conserved. Such patterns may be conserved by constant recruitment and replacement, by vibrating fluxes, or by looped conservation or static feedback. A complex system of back and forth tends to be conserved complexly. Earth abides as a complex system, encompassing myriad and changing sub-complex systems. Homeostasis of a sort may apply to any system of "favored" patterns that "happens" to abide as a complex system. Moreover (there's more?), what tends to conserve features of a complex system may relate to features beyond the system's apparent boundaries, which themselves may relate to even more conserving complex systems, each one having conserving influence (will is conserved, constrained, and buffered within cones of potential experience and degrees of freedom?), the extent of which may not easily be apprehended. And so on.

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CHEMISTS AND CHRISTIANS: I try not to ridicule physicists because early practitioners may have thought matter fell more swiftly, out of love for Gaia, as it fell nearer to ground. Neither do I ridicule chemists because early practitioners were alchemists. I try to avoid that because I suspect ridicule oftens marks an unserious word game, played by unserious or insecure players.

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WHOLE AND PARTS: Much confusion obtains in respect of wholes and parts. To me, it makes little sense to recognize or postulate that a whole is more or other than merely the sum of its parts (a cow or living cell or even an atom has properties and potentials that consist of more than merely the sum of the properties and potentials of its organs), while failing to recognize that, NEVERTHELESS, the whole and the parts still relate to one another.

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OUGHT AND IS: It's amusing how Dawkins, et al, preach (either expressly or impliedly) how people "ought" to think beyond reverence for a meta-entity. They care deeply that no thinking person's thinking should be clouded by cares. They emote for the objective, while posturing as if they abhor the emotive! We flux between seeking objective insight and then reveling in the "aha moment" (Eureka!) when we receive it! Evidently, its ok to be emotional, so long as one properly holds the words blessed by objectivists in one's mouth. As far as daring to say out loud that there may abide an innate dance in the cosmos between the indifferently rational (the "is") and the caring emotive (the "ought"), that's a big no no. Rather, we must ratiocinate a model that explicates the cosmos in terms of only one or the other --- either measurable substance or immeasurable consciousness. But why?

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(1) Fans of explicating all in terms of measurable substance hope to gain traction by honing in on GRAVITY as "the aboriginal given," by which to measure and explicate all that can be meaningfully explicated. Their regressing problem is that some quality of consciousness resists being entirely reduced to the quantifiable.

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(2) Fans of explicating all in terms of an immeasurable field of CONSCIOUSNESS as "the aboriginal given" confront their own problem: Insofar as consciousness (observer effect) interpermeates every expression of substance, they have no hope of perfectly explicating any non-trivial phenomena under any complete, consistent, and coherent model.

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(3) Fans of a DANCE of consciousness between the Field and its Particular Perspectives encounter no more problems than either set of monad aboriginalists, neither do they add problems or diminish true science. (True science does not attempt scientifically to explicate "the aboriginal given" or preach that it should not be preached). Fans of the "back and forth" between the holism and its parts do, however, add a belief-basis for inculcating meaningful, self-fulfilling, civilizing, empathy. (It's like my test for when to object in court: Freely object when it costs nothing, there's no down side, and it feels right.)

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WHO CAN KNOW:  I can hardly sense how even God, if God exists, could "know" or "feel" whether he has free will or moral responsibility. But I suspect he finds solace in functioning as if he does. And therein lies the full faith and trust upon which our very communications and currency are necessarily based.
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EVOLUTON OF PHYSICAL UNIVERSE, MATERIAL GAIA, AND CONVENTIONAL WISDOM:  Over the unfolding of space-time (gravity), may even what are thought to be the most fundamental of "overarching scientific principles" --- even the speed of light --- slowly or suddenly change and evolve, consistent with homeostatic preservation of an unfolding evolution of even some of the most fundamental of patterns?  Thus, may even those fundamentals that are conventionally thought of as based in "substantively objective and indifferent science" be subject to slow or sudden phase changes or morphologies?  From a standpoint or purpose of trying to apprehend or appreciate the evolution and inter-communication of complex patterns and systems, such speculation often may not now be testable but may, as events unfold, later be confirmed in specific instances.  For such cases, to persist in belief that all is derivative of indifferent physics is to express a kind of FAITH, more so than a known fact of beingness.  Not all that is reasonable to apprehend, appreciate, believe, or pursue --- in respect of will, intentionality, ought-ness, signification, causal transfer, communication, purposefulness, point of view, and context --- need be limited to "science" in order not to be unmeaningful crap.  Thus, to what extent might a process of homeostatic FEEDBACK between the holism and its component patterns and parts be most fundamental to any expression of beingness?
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HOW DO PATTERNS KEY ON, RECOGNIZE, AND REACT WITH ONE ANOTHER TO CONSERVE INFORMATION:  As in a kind of conical, dervish dance, the only forms and patterns Are The Patterns That Exist — in present manifestation and potential flux — in respect of the field and the cones of consciousness ... as the field and the cones rationally apprehend and emotively appreciate one another. Consciousness, itself, is of a dimension that is beyond the dimensions we relate to quantitatively in space, time, matter, and energy. With respect to our quantitative dimensions, Consciousness is formless, yet its foundational beingness is empathetically intuitive, indeed, self evident. That which we quantitatively and qualitatively believe in and desire tends to synchronize with the beliefs and desires of others, to produce fads, even long lasting civilizations, sometimes even philosophies of spirit that abide surpassing time.  Without some meta means of modeling, what could possibly be idealized or expressed as "fact"?
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SCIENCE:  It's not that relations between patterns-in-themselves key to recognize and change one another. It's that a dance of consciousness communicates in respect of changing, fluxing forms and patterns.   Ultimately, science, i.e., predictability in unfolding relations among patterns, is not based in mere substance or matter-in-itself, but in the fluxing purposes of inter-communicating perspectives of consciousness, as communicated in the logos of changes among fluxing patterns.  Exchanges of forms, fortunes, fads, and fables change with such trends in purposes and pursuits as are expressed in a dance of consciousness between its field and its particular perspectives.  It makes little sense to speak of meaning, even in potentials of the forms or patterns of substance or science, without implicating art and an artist, at least in potential.  It makes little sense to communicate of art, even in potential, without implicating an artist, at least in potential.  It makes little sense to communicate of apprehensive consciousness of "the is," without implicating appreciative consciousness of "the ought."  Meaningfulness necessarily implicates a dance that entails both the "rational-is" and the "emotive-ought."  There is no science of ought, per se; ultimately, there is only the intuitive, self-fulfilling, empathetic-service of ought.
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EVOLVING HOMEOSTASIS OF LOGOS:  As purposes and pursuits as expressed in a dance of the field of consciousness and its perspectives change, so also will the forms, patterns, sciences, and laws that serves as logos for their inter-communications of apprehensions and appreciations change ... to unfold successive new homeostases.  Old patterns will then fall out of existential relevance and cease to represent recognitions of one another.  A pattern that comes no longer to be sponsored to represent as a placeholder for intercommunication of consciousness and to be sensed as such becomes no longer a pattern.  Whatever meaning may theretofore have been considered to associate with its locus in space-time or its beingness in matter-energy would then either transmute into a new pattern or dissolve into a BLACK HOLE of the otherwise irrelevant void.
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SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST TO REPLICATE:  Unless one defines, trivially, that which "happens" to survive and flourish as "the mightiest," might is neither what tends to survive or flourish, nor "the fittest."  What is fittest is that which happens to be most appreciated by consciousness as being then and there essential to the living logos for giving expression to a compelling, unfolding story, that can be interpreted from various compelling perspectives.  Only by identifying with life forms as avatars is  consciousness able to sort out that which is good for the story from that which is bad for the story.  Our apprehensions and appreciations are what, in sum, feed back to drive the holism to synchronize, reconcile, and confer favor.  We play a role and responsibility for participating in the unfolding determination and separation of the good from the bad.  That determination fluxes, yet it conserves a general direction over the broad sweep of space-time.  It's not might that makes right.  It's applying empathetic intuition to help express a compelling story that makes right.  For this, actions often speak with more effect than mere cants or beliefs.  Thus, even bacteria play supporting roles.  Thus, evil is not sought, except as necessary to banish, while good is sought, in order to flourish.  Those patterns for avatars that are not appreciated tend over time to fade from relevance, even existence.
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META CORRELATION:  Substance Avatars are upshots of a dance between each particular perspective of consciousness and the holistic perspective of consciousness. Substance Avatars do not enjoy reality independent in themselves. Each particular perspective is both other than the sum of any substance-based avatar, as well as not necessarily abiding in any one-to-one correlation with any avatar. Meta-consciousness is some “thing” other than the Substance and Information that is recorded with any substance-based avatar or Sum Of such avatar’s Substantive Parts. An avatar’s demise as a substantive organism transmutes the substantive sum of its parts. However, a correlative aspect of its life-cone-of-informational-experience may well be preserved in some respect of the general field of consciousness, subject to being tapped into at meta levels.
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BUFFERED AND OVERLAPPING HOLONS: Intuitively, different perspectives of meta-consciousness, in some buffered aspect or fashion, must abide separately (in meta-digital feed-back), else there would be no substantive patterns expressed with placeholding-capacity to represent and signify the back and forth of recognition, communication, exchange, or transmutation with one another, as patterns. However, separation in space and/or time of substantive avatars need not be precisely coordinate — in perimeters of flesh or contours of brain — with coordinates of perspectives of meta-consciousness (or mind). Yes, substantive avatars signify that such meta-separateness abides among Perspectives of a dance with the Holism. However, because such meta-perspectives are not substantive, substantive separations of patterns need not correlate with separations in meta-perspectives. Rather, our substantive avatars may be entangled so as to respond coordinately, spookily, even when not proximate in space-time. Even if separate at a meta layer, meta perspectives may be entangled or encompassed within overlapping, higher levels, sets, or classes. Substantive significations simply cannot be applied quantifiably to express how particular, meta perspectives of consciousness may organize or flux. Rather, the meta organization and fluxing is of a quality which, with substance, can only be empathetically intuited, apprehended, and appreciated — not quantifiably measured or statistically constrained. Intuitively, the relationship of particular perspectives with the holism of consciousness is real and qualitative, but not quantifiably coordinate with substantive significations. While substantive interfunctioning is quantifiably measurable, its significative meaningfulness beyond the measurably trivial is qualitative. The consciousness that associates to identify with your body and brain may know it is so associated, but does not reliably know the quality of other perspectives of consciousness. Rather, you know the quality of your acquaintances only intuitively (rationally) and empathetically (emotively). Mind is not limited to substantive patterns; rather, interfunctioning of substantive patterns fluxes in order to communicate qualities of apprehensions and appreciations among perspectives of mind. Apart from such function, substantive patterns have no beingness-in-themselves.

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FORESIGHT AND EMPATHY MAKE GOOD AND MAKE IT SO: Is it just another definitional triviality to recognize that those avatars (tokens in a game of consciousness raising) that represent and express the best intuition, vision, foresight, and support-enlisting empathy will tend to be those avatars testing out as “most fit” to represent, survive, and replicate? It should hardly seem controversial to suppose that those perspectives that exhibit foresight and wise empathy will likely prevail over those that do not. Yet, is the idea more than merely trivial, in that foresight and empathy are qualities that are more than or beyond mere quantitatively measurable substance. While foresight and empathy equate to a tendency for survival success, they also implicate consciousness. That is, they implicate that those substantive avatars that express the best foresight and empathy in respect of their contexts will be the substantive avatars, forms, and patterns that will tend to prevail within a complex, homeostatic system of tokens marking interactions in a game of communication of interests among perspectives of consciousness. On a sweeping scale, the civilization that prevails will be the civilization that best coordinates the foresight and empathies of its citizens. If we want a civilization that fosters decency, freedom, and dignity, we can self-fulfillingly raise consciousness to make it so. By the quality of our participation, we have power to make decency, freedom, and dignity "the good" -- for our times or for our progeny.

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THE GOOD: Like every other relationship, that which is definable as "the good" is not definable as a thing-in-itself or a simple principle that is correct for all seasons and situations.  The Good will depend on an intuitive-empathetic dance. It is subject to constant, continuous, participatory evaluation and reevaluation. It may be borne out of a dance or crucible of love and loneliness, wisdom and anomie, courage and uncertainty, and fear and loathing. Yet, a parent or governor who would teach his children or citizens The Good must teach them respect for principles that facilitate decency, dignity, and freedom. However, the principles, guideposts, words, and logos that best illuminate such a path change with the bends, seasons, and context of the path, to necessitate judgment for when or where the principles should be extended, reshaped, or excepted. I know of no quantifiable principle or law that can be taught as "good" for all seasons and situations.   Not every culture will be suited for democratic republicanism under a principled rule of law as opposed to rule of regime.  As an electorate becomes less fit to rule itself, it will more likely need or turn to a despot, who will dramatically alter its laws and fluxing checks and balances.  The poor quality of American public education may have already contrived to such a result.  At best, one can guide a child to play with contexts, in hope the child will learn judgment to extend the play in foresight and empathy, with respect to a general need for Mind to engage in freedom of imagination.  And that seems to be what the dance is mainly about.

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PROBLEM WITH LINEAR THINKING: It's not possible to freeze a dynamic, complex system in order statically to account for every part of it in an exhaustive and mutually exclusive way, much less to factor every such part with a number for comparative measurement. In part, this is because every complex system is simultaneously in flux, even as it is being measured. Moreover, every partly measurable complex system, in infinite regression, is affected by feedback in its own relation to a more encompassing complex system, which could not be factored without extending the range and definition of the system under analysis. Moreover, even the most encompassing, measurable system imaginable -- the substantive universe -- is qualitatively affected by the non-substantive, non-measurable reality from which it originated and with which its reality is dependent, perhaps even synchronously derivative. Thus, judgment-from-contextual-experience and intuitive-empathy-from-soul are requisite to have much hope of divining the direction and oughts of the non-measurable qualitatives that in fact obviously do affect the unfolding of the-manifest from the-fuzz-of-potentialities.
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PROBLEM WITH EXCLUSIVELY LINEAR THINKERS: Until they have a model for quantifying factors that relate to an event or thing, the thing does not exist to their regard, except insofar as their capacity to ignore it. They have little faith and therefore essentially no skill or intuitive empathy for the myriad of fluxing factors that entail with any system that has not been reduced to a simplifying model, however necessarily incomplete that model may be. What they can't model or haven't quantified with respect to a system, they deem themselves qualified to banish to the realm of the non-existent.
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Auguste Comte --- “If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts, it is equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theories. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them."
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Problem is, many aspects of relations among parts, sums, and wholes defy, perhaps forever, easy recognition or measurable interpretation. Yet, it is often qualitatively obvious that such events and things do exist within the realm of the-unfolding-expressed. Having a linear thinker advise us that such-and-such ought not be there, when it quite obviously is, tends to be of not much help when, despite information that is mainly or only qualitative, choices still must be made. In essence, Linear Devotees wish to reduce every person's Dignity to a number, so that no one can abide as someone to be reckoned with, as opposed to being reduced to a calculation or switched to occupy a number.
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DANGER in entrusting power to such persons is this: Having little regard for human dignity, they are not in the least shy to ignore qualitative human concerns in order to hammer quantitative facts to fit theories. In other words, their higher guide consists in their self interests and computational modeling. When the only higher morality is reduced to some silly formula, such as the greatest good for the greatest number, or, from each according to his ability and to each according to his need, then all talk of human dignity and the qualitative is committed to the flames of metaphysics. Oddly enough, this kind of anti-religion transmogrifies into its own religion: self made hell on earth. Libertineism and Libertarianism often have little to do with liberty, but much to do with soul enslavement.
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