The Reality of Paganism

It is odd that the world has given up paganism as a serious theology,
which it was once. Now not a trace is left, of any explanations. Yet
paganism was unsurpassed in explaining the world in one respect. In
this paganism has never been surpassed. Paganism communicates how
genetics determines everything. Modern science every few years comes
up with research results indicating the power of genetics to explain
behavior, and after a nervous giggle, the western mind forgets the
entire event. Completely. But a couple of millenia ago, there was no
reason to deny that man was not an autonomous creature. Having your
life determined by a drunk deity, a cranky blacksmith, a jealous
woman----explained the observed world in a quite competent manner.
Paganism was empirical. The gods were like your crazy neighbor only
the god had real power to control events, not jsut, like your
neighbor, chatter. What else could one conclude?

And we gave up a workable view of human events, for......monotheism?
What is that about?
How could we have gone from a theory that explains the evidence, for
one that expects man to improve himself, a hopeless waste of energy in
most cases. Well yes, there is a reason that monotheism works----it
provides a mechanism to accomplish a certain kind of progress, but not
the progress that religion describes, rather, on a large scale, the
progress of religion is the efficiency of change on a large scale. But
what a hard sell, if anyone looked at the facts. And yet monotheism
did prevail in the west. Perhaps the reason for the triumph of
monotheism is that the intellect of man reached a certain stage of
progress in a human economy. Not the stage of effective control of
human behavior, the intellect of man cannot claim that, but---the
intellect of man can claim the goal of rational behavior is a workable
goal. It is the ability of the human mind to tout the advantages of
rationalism, that explains the triumph of monotheism. For the god of
the monotheists, is, possibly, just that human intellect, which claims
to be able to understand, ---everything. The triumph of a sole god is
the triumph, of a world transparent to human understanding. Maybe.

Sampling Ordinary

Here's a quote from an online mag called seedmagazine.com. I present
this as a nice example of ordinary thought. Let's get this straight:
we love ordinary. Ordinary is what keeps our world safe from, like mad
maxine types, and lets geezers walk in the park without worrying about
someone snatching their camera. That does not mean that for a few
there are not alternatives to ordinary and so I present this sample of
what a few could get beyond.

A Writing Revolution
Analysis / by Denis G. Pelli & Charles Bigelow / October 20, 2009
Nearly universal literacy is a defining characteristic of today's
modern civilization; nearly universal authorship will shape
tomorrow's.
Nearly everyone reads. Soon, nearly everyone will publish. Before
1455, books were handwritten, and it took a scribe a year to produce a
Bible. Today, it takes only a minute to send a tweet or update a blog.
Rates of authorship are increasing by historic orders of magnitude.
Nearly universal authorship, like universal literacy before it, stands
to reshape society by hastening the flow of information and making
individuals more influential.

End of quote. Reshape society, perhaps. But make individuals more
influential? eeh. What we are looking at with what this author is
calling universal authorship is -----more chat. More chatter is
necessary, because humanity, all the folks on the planet, is getting
bigger, and for this unit to continue to function while it is getting
larger, man's cerebral functions need to increase, so an individual
becomes more sensitive to the needs of the whole, (yes, less
influential as an individual, not more...) An individual as a cog in
something larger must be fine-tuned to function more efficiently,
transfer energy more efficiently. Increasing the cerebral dimension
is one way this could happen, increasing the proportion of yellow
circuit to red and blue (to use the terminology of a temporary map Jan
Cox once made up.) This map assumes the reader has some appreciation
of the mechanical quality of the ordinary human intellect.

Do I know what I just wrote above is accurate? No. Anyway it would be
the tiniest glancing sliver of a larger complexity. Let me guess
though, that someone glimpsing certain bedrock realities, and
wondering about escape routes, might do well to treat superficial
(widely agreed upon opinions) appearances as questionable and that
understanding might be a hard, but unique, path to --- a startling
vista.

Edgicating

What a delight is a sprinkle of rain on a desert extent. What sweetness in the unexpected shift in humidity, but here you could say shift in altitude, shift in melody, shift in perspective... because the point here is a picture of one's first intimations of a world that before now, existed for one merely in literature. This world existed in literature but the thinness of this plane does not explain how appealing the accounts, how persuasive for some the pictures drawn in the literary accounts of mysticism.
This literature is typically by someone who before was -- parched -- and who,  after having this sprinkle, was changed merely in that he had something new to chat about. And chat they do, bulging library shelf after bulging shelf, on and on with a drier and drier tongue.
These accounts have the appeal of an account of foreign travel, with this exception. Most accounts are by those who never got that this glimpse, was merely a peek through a portal, not a certificate of some accomplishment.  This glimpse could for those thirsty to learn give a clue, but who fits this category.  Who can suspect that what happened to them was not of their own doing.  Who understands this artifact (memory) found out of its setting, means the start of a barefoot trek through a harsh landscape.
Or we could say, for some, but not most, this sprinkling weather event, is a hint that one must invent irrigation.

The convenience of convenience

Jan Cox once said that the reason convenience stores were popular is that they were convenient. I am not suggesting I have figured out what he meant yet, but that thought came to my mind when I watched two people walk toward a small shop of this kind.  And it occurred to me that it was convenient for them, because it did not have a lot of stuff they could not afford. I guess I don't yet really understand what Jan meant, only that he never wasted his words.

A Bigger Picture

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=29405

The url above is to a press release from NASA which talks about the results from a satellite that has returned information about the boundary area between our solar system and the galaxy of we are a part. 
These results allow:

"The first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun."

The lack of such a map was not part of my mechanical mental furniture, and yet how wonderful to now hear about something like this: I cannot even comprehend the mathematics that are critical here, and surely my grasp of these words could not be adequate to the reality that the scientists are thrilled about.
The only way for me to evaluate my picture of all this is to go beyond my picture of say, the solar system.
And even then, as one lets new pictures percolate, as this article allows, the fun is the fun of the edge, the fun of the new. The fun of the dimly comprehended which is yet plausible.

Perhaps my sentiments here are an example of what older theological systems called: faith.  Not--- hearing about some clumsy puppet figure and saying well that makes no sense but I will try hard to think it's real.

Perhaps faith is --- just what it was once described as
"the evidence of things unseen."

Perhaps the "evidence of things unseen," is this thrill of a border, a border from which things are just glimpsed, but not outlined in great detail (then it would not be a border.)

I can imagine some NASA person reading the above and thinking, nice lady, she reads our press releases and will probably encourage her congressman to vote more money for science.

No, they missed it.  The scientists are in the same boat I am, different edges, but the same boat.

The Initial Color

It was the Book of Kells that got me studying again the illuminated
manuscripts that we all have seen in pictures. The extravagances, the
bright jewel toned color; the scenes of daily life, daily contemporary
life, to the artists, the monks who labored on the books, are
meticulously crowded into a scroll on a single letter. You could say
art was here in the service of religion as most folks then, even
royalty, couldn't read and learned most from the pictures in these
books,

You could say that, and ignore what you know about the timeless space
the working artist occupies. Same thing applies to this thought:
Perhaps these infinite glimpses crowded into a curlique, are art in
the service of science. For have we not here, a celebration of
objectivity, an objectivity that looks at the human mind, and lays out
the true wonder of such a development, as thinking, in the species.
The letters of thought are there on the page, but in the illuminated
manuscript the words are put into a wider, humbling landscape that
measures the letter with a scientific exactitude. Perhaps, sometimes,
what you cannot say, you can occasionally draw.

Illuminating McCandless

Chris McCandless and his trek into  unknown wilderness, a quest apparently inspired (according to the books and movies on his story) by a need to establish his skills and self-sufficiency, is a story which rings familiar for many people who do not follow his example. They understand they think his motivation. 

The focus on what prompted his journey could be still more precise. He did not put it this way but his mind did not fit his body, there was a continual sense of something at odds, which found some surcease in situations when he was alone. 

Most people feel this disconnect at some time. It is a common experience -- because nobody's mind fits their body. The mind is a common grid which is imposed on people, and part of the imposition is the feeling that it is YOUR mind, when it is not.  Did you make up all the words you use? Of course not, if you had, no one could understand you. You get synced into a previously existing system when you get educated, and although the syncing only works if you believe in your own individuality, in fact the grid you become part of is planet wide and serving purposes which are not necessarily to your personal benefit.

Just like a scratchy shirt label at the back of your neck, from a garment purchased 'off the rack' there is a sense of irritation which is in some people becomes so grave that they persist in looking for peace. This can come from various sources and only very rarely does an individual take the necessary first step for real peace.

That first step is getting a sense of the direction in which the problem lies.  Chris never got that focus; he headed into the unknown physical world, after his graduation from Emory University, and the change of scenery provided some balm, an effect though which he needed to renew. A change of scenery is actually a tried method of keeping the mechanical mind off balance and inspired at the same time. But Mccandless took what is a work trick, as the goal itself. 

McCandless felt that irritation of an ill-fitting mind more strongly than most. But he still was looking in the wrong direction.  He wound up lost and starving in the physical wilderness.  For whatever reasons he did not look inside himself to a possible wilderness there.  He could not question the viability and sources of his own verbal grid.

An trivial footnote to the McCandless story is that for a few years he was a few miles only, from a real work group.  At that time it was called Evoteck Theatre.  Such a brush with possible help is not ironic because most people never find a real path, and if, they do, they do not persevere. The odds were greatly against any hope for McCandless to resolve his unease.  Another writer put it this way: "Many are called, but few chosen..."

Everybody starts lost.  I have no idea why different people go in different directions. I am aware though, that failure or success is not a matter of individual initiative or cleverness. It is not a matter of individual anything.  Most never stumble upon a real way, they just forget the questions.

There remain a very few, few measured in terms of centuries of people, who persevere, and for whom, anything off the rack, is a kind of torture.