Exceive

Whatever: CUSP

Some people thinking about what it would be like if the Moon actualy were made of cheese.

The entire problem is mixing of contexts, categories, paths of understanding. Our culture is fixed on the idea of One. One King, One God, One Country. One Vision.

The problem here is One Truth. There probably is One Truth, but human experience is simply too big to fit in a knowable One Truth. Most people muddle along in their multiple inconsistant truths and suffer the occasional cognitive dissonance. Some work harder and attain a delusion of One Truth. There are few things more toxic than that delusion.

Here’s a real easy and familiar example of One Truth not being enough: Sunrise. We all know how it really works, the whole rotating spherical planet thing. But if you go out early in the morning you see another truth, the bright circle rising from the edge of a flat (or hilly or mountainous) surface. I don’t know about you, I have no problem with the two very different versions of reality, and when the Moon is also visible I sometimes integrate them mentaly, picturing how the three are positioned. But mostly, the rotating sphere truth is good for doing astronomy and understanding where sky things will be in the future and thinking about space travel. The other truth is good for everyday life and art.

Back to the topic: evolution and intelligent design creationism. The big problem is that evolution is a lousy myth. No characters, just an endless parade of creatures where no individual matters, only the statistical efficiency of reproduction in slight variations. No forward moving plot - the popular idea of “evolving toward” is not part of the theory. No resolution. No way of giving life experience meaning by metaphor. The beginning is outside the scope of the theory, the end is too. The story moves far too slowly. Evolution is a cold, hard story with only two things going for it: 1) it is true, and 2) it is useful for understanding organisms.

The fact (and there is enough solid science backing it up that it is FACT, scientists call it theory because scientists don’t call anything a fact, theory as sure as science gets - Thog’s Theory of Special Gravitation* is also a theory) that it is true is a problem. Evolution is an inadequate path of understanding for human existance. If there is One Truth, either evolution is false or human existance is understood only in a cold characterless and plotless way.

ID Creationists want evolution to be false so that human existance can be understood through a better myth, one in which there is at least a character, an “intelligence”. If they are honest and not just biblical literalists in disguise, they don’t even care what that character is, as long as there is one.

The other side, backed by evidence and science, fight back against the wrong delusion. The real delusion, shared by both sides, is the idea of One Truth. The idea that a myth is only a fabrication of ignorance, that we are too smart to need myth, that man can live by bread alone.

God created this glorious world, as surely as I woke up this morning, as surely as that shining disk rose above the edge of the world. But that is not scientific truth, that is not something I can back by evidence. If there is only One Truth, one path to understanding, then I cannot know that and for me to say it is dishonest. I am not being dishonest.

Noah built his ark, as surely as you will someday have to stand up for what is right and preserve what is important against the consequences of bad things others do. Did it happen in a historical, scientific sense that can be verified by evidence? The question is a matter of trivia, the answer probably “no”. Is it true? The truth is defined by your character. Are you Noah?

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* Thog (the name may not be entirely accurate) formulated this theory before the Creationist earth existed. The theory is:
Where we live, if something isn’t being held up, it falls down.

Art & Leisure

I asked Mr. Huang why every one of his carvings of vegetables have insects or animals with them? He said, “To draw the dragon, you have to paint the eyes. The immobile leaf needs to have some moving things on it. Beside, animals and plants are in harmony in the universe.”

There are two ways of supporting a politician: as a representative, and as a leader.

A representative is there to vote the way I would. If we disagree, he’s not doing his job for me and that’s that. When I disagree with someone I consider a leader, I revisit my position. I may not change my mind, but I do give weight to a leader’s position.

I consider Russ Feingold a leader. Not that it matters in this case - he’s saying what I think, but probably saying it better than I could. In general, though, I very often don’t agree with him. Which is good.

The Congress Is Not A ‘King’s Court’

The Rude Pundit
“Talking about peace and economic justice at Coretta Scott King’s funeral is as natural as talking about, say, Catholicism at the Pope’s.”

That’s not rude at all.

This is an image search experiment. You either sketch on the page, or select an image you already have, and the system looks for something similar on Flickr.

retrievr - search by sketch / search by image

The technical logical problem with the “let it get bad enough that the sheep grow canines” idea isn’t that the sheep won’t grow canines for a long time. That’s just the practical problem, and the history of Germany, Russia, Iran, … suggest it is a real big one.

The logical problem is the same fallacy the Creationists like to use: evolution doesn’t answer this question (well, not until you read the part where it does) therefore YHWH created the universe 6000 years ago. The neocons are imploding, therefore the Democrats are going to win. There are many third ways, many of them quite ugly.

If Democrats keep doing the Republican-Lite thing, the other options include the grownups reclaiming the Republican party or a third party emerging. Or, particularly if people catch on to exactly how easy it is to steal an election when you own the computerized ballot boxes, we could end up with a revolution (a real one with destruction of political order and infrastructure, resulting in the ascendancy of violent extremists and thus many bad things, not a liberation of an already well-functioning political order and infrastructure from outside interference, like we had in 1776) or a USSR-type collapse.

I will not be entirely surprised if we go the way of the USSR before 2015, for the same reasons: massive corruption and arrogant ideology unchecked by effective political opposition, resulting in military overreach, economic collapse, and a complete rejection of the national mythology. I think we can, and probably will, pull it together, but by “probably” I mean “better than 50/50 chance” not “almost certainly.”

It isn’t always darkest before the dawn. Sometimes it is darkest before the clowns eat your brain.

Not all that easy, really. Atheism is a rather recent idea.

Somebody wrote, under the name “just some guy”:

…god, in whatever form people have created it, it just a pathetic projection exercise…

I agree that god is largely a projection of the worshipper - but when worship is working, it is a projection of the best of the worshipper, and maybe soemthing more. It seems to me that the character of every other person that one knows is mostly a projection, and that it is only through long intimacy that the reality of the other person can ever come through. I believe it is similar with God.

My wife and I have a costume shop.

The Halloween after 9/11 (well, actually a few days before) a TV station sent a reporter and camera to do a story on patriotic costumes.
Reporter interviewed us, asked if there had been a surge in demand for patriotic theme costumes. Nope. A few extra fire fighters, but nothing else. Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty hadn’t even gone out, and other years we’d had one or two of each go out. Asked about any 9/11 theme costumes. A couple of calls asking about (but not requesting) Bin Laden masks, which we refuse to carry. At the reporter’s suggestion, we called some of our mask suppliers - they weren’t making any, so we couldn’t sell them if we wanted to.
Reporter interviewed three couples who came in. All the interviews went pretty much the same. Looking for patriotic costume? No. Is that because you thought they’d be sold out? No. Is that because you are afraid it would be laughed at? No, just didn’t think of it. Are you going to now? No.
So, of course, the story was all about how patriotic costumes were the in thing this year and lots of people were renting and buying them. It was obvious the story had already been mostly written and the point of the exercise was to get some video and sound, not to find out what was happening.

We didn’t complain. Free advertising, and they used the bit where my wife said we refused to deal with Bin Laden masks or terrorist costumes because we are about fun, not hate. Which was important to us.

I am happy about the elections, but it is a happiness akin to what I would feel about my wife buying me a Ferrari for Christmas using our joint credit card. And I have yet to look under the hood to see whether the engine is internal combustion or hamster wheel.

Remember, they had elections when Saddam was in power, too.

By the way, where’s Osama? Cool as elections in Iraq are, Osama in a jail cell would be even cooler.