What is the opposite to love? A brief inquiry into everyday dichotomies

The human mind is said to work in dualistic terms (figure/ground, up/down, movement/stillness). So it is natural that sometimes we extrapolate from this and commit a bit of over-generalisation to other spheres of life. In ancient ages, it was thought that cold was just the opposite entity to heat, and it was also thought that darkness was the opposite entity to light. However, nowadays we know that cold is not something but just the absence of something called heat. Darkness is just the absence of something called light.

The same can be said of love and life. Hate and death are not the opposites to love and life but just the absence of the things we call love and life. It might not be good news for for writers drawing for this popular notion of opposites but it paints a more realistic view of our world.

“Isn’t it a beautiful paradox that death can only be perceived by those who are alive? Just as there are no opposites to love, there are no opposites to life.” Librarian no Chronist and other Stories

 

 

Brief reflection on debates of religion vs atheism. Intellectual battles or co-operation

There have been quite a lot of debates that till now it should be evident. For every argument for or against the existence of God there is another counter-argument for or against his existence. Whenever an argument for or against the existence of God is left without its counter-argument, it’s not because of the argument presented but because of lack of debating skills by one of the sides. Why is this so?

Because:

1- Atheists’ arguments are based on reason.

2- Arguments coming from religion are based on faith.

There is an interesting relationship between faith and reason. Reason implies that the existence of faith is unnecessary while faith is in many ways a negation of reason in the sense that faith belongs to a higher level viewpoint and reason belongs to a lower level viewpoint. So basically, they both deny each other. I shall put an analogy of this relationship:

Who will win in a fight against a literally indestructible rock versus a lance that destroys anything that it touches?

Answer: the premise of the question is illogical and thus, no logically satisfactory answer can be offered. The existence of the indestructible rock denies the existence of the lance and viceversa. So a universe where both objects exist would not be a logical one. In other words, you either believe in the existence of the lance or in the existence of the rock but you cannot believe in the existence of both if you are a logically consistent person.

In a similar way, the same approach can be taken towards the religion vs atheism thing. The main difference here is that, rather than stating that both stances are inconsistent, all that is left to do is acknowledge the basic difference between faith and reason: they deny each other. You cannot have a consistent debate when both premises negate each other. In an ideal setting where both debaters are equally educated in the art of  debating, for every argument for or against the existence of God there will always be a counter-argument for or against the existence of God.

One of the best things to do in order to have fruitful debates between religion and faith would be, for both atheists and believers, to acknowledge that, unless they accept that faith and reason pretty much deny each other and thus, no further debate should be conducted regarding who is right and who is not. Instead, debates could be re-oriented towards humankind and how both atheists and believers can co-operate (yes, co-operation is the keyword) for the sake of a better future for the humankind. And here’s where debates would start. And this time, they would be fruitful debates rather than I-am-right-you-are-wrong-like intellectual battles.

The Carpet Makers: a brilliant analysis on the nature of power, religion and belief

There is a planet where everything revolves around making carpets. There are the actual makers, the merchants that transport them, the wives whose hair is taken to make the carpets, the concubines to “make” either a future carpet maker or future wives of carpet makers, etc. Each carpet maker makes one carpet but the whole process of making it takes a whole lifespan.

Using the money his father gave him, the young carpet maker buys the material he needs to make the carpet, marries a woman with nice hair and takes a concubine to produce future carpet makers or wives of carpet makers. Once the carpet is finished (usually when the carpet maker is an old man) he sells the carpet to a merchant (for the Emperor’s palace) and gives the money to his son who must consider take a wife soon. And this story is the neverending story of that planet.

Interesting thing is that the Emperor gets overthrown but the people in the planet are not aware of it and they keep making carpets for their God-like Emperor. Years later the rebels find the planet. And afterwards, they find another planet that does the same thing. And another… They find out an indefinite amount of planets spending their lives around carpet-making. And the carpets are not actually meant for the Emperor’s palace…

The book is about fundamentalism, religious beliefs, holding opposite beliefs (cognitive dissonance), the nature of power and the portrait of a man-made God that overthrows himself.

Blogger as Artist. Attention-Seeking Culture or Information Sharing Attitude?

It is a fact.

In the Western societies, we are encouraged to aim for those ideals like fame, success and power.

Especially fame, since it can easily bring the other two along.

Fame is measured in the amount of attention one receives. Back then, attracting attention with such an ambitious aim was beyond the reach of the average individual. But internet came, and with it, the social networks and the blogs. I will leave the social networks for now just to focus on blogs.

A blog is thought to be a personal (yet open) space where an individual puts any type of content he wants to share.

The common aim of a blog is sharing information, hence their open nature.

But in our western culture, almost everything gravitates around attracting attention upon ourselves, that is why, sites like Youtube, where an individual can be heard (synonymous with attracting attention) are so successful. The blogsphere is not an exception.

There is a blurry line between sharing information and seeking attention from others.

This leads us to the dilemma of the artist.

It is well known that, not only today, but always, artists of any kind have struggled between their love towards what they do and their desire to spread their work (to be known). These two forces are often exclusive respect to each other, meaning by that how easy is to get lost in seeking attention by spreading information that one ends up spreading nothing but the truth of one’s desperate attempts of being known, reckognized, remembered. And in some broader sense, that is just an attempt to escape the truth of our own fleeting nature. Our mortality.

It could be said that another aim of most artists is keeping their works away from time, at least for a while. The intention of putting ideas on permanent containers does not seem to have other reason, and also it could be seen that for the love of humanity, you should share the best of you, your beloved work, with everybody, otherwise you are doomed to die in a sort of spiritualist selfishness. Some kind of aberration of the concept of artist. After all, knowledge implies the idea of sharing. Information is a layer of knowledge.

The dilemma lies here: what is more important, getting your information spread far away or doing what you love?

That dilemma is the dilemma of this blogger.

The Dice Man: Western Path to Freedom

George Cockroft. Luke Rhinehart. Who is who. Author or character, it does not matter.

Regarding social matters, this is one of the very very very few few books (I can count them with one hand) that is literally outspoken and seems to know no limits.

The character, Luke Rhinehart is a successful psychiatrist that is bored with his life. He complains about lack of novelty except by brief moments (he says isles) of “ectasis”. Luke is a psychiatrist but he is well-read in Western and Eastern philosophy, politics, comedy, history, religion and psychoanalysis amongst other areas. He concludes that the only way to gain novelty (uncertainty) and change is by giving up his freedom on some dices. Here’s is where things get really, really interesting.

Symbol of freedom

The premise is simple:

1 – Assign an action to every number of the dice.

2 – You MUST do any of the actions.

3- Roll some dice and if for example it turns out 3 and you assigned 3 to give hugs randomly you must do so.

Luke starts with “limited” within-the-box actions but he soon goes on for more “freedom” and things get out of control.

Maybe the most incredible thing is that the author is actually the first “Dice Man”. He wrote the story based on his first experiences and his explanation of the concept in a lecture to his horrified students.

Comparing the 70s (when the book was written) and our current age, I would state that few (if no works) have been written with the openness, simplicity, outspoken character, society-representative and originality that “The Dice Man” was written with.

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Jiddu Krishnamurti .

You can read it here for free

Ted Chiang Series 4 (Part 2) – Understanding of God: Its Presence, Its Absence

As I already said, with this second part, the Ted Chiang Series come to an end.

Part 1 stories were about scientific understanding (emergence of patterns and determinism in the scientific method).  The next two stories come from a religious standpoint where God is an axiom, or rather, understanding of God is the core topic.

The are three differences in both stories: one is, the nature of the realization about a God-related truth, in the first story, this revelation is metaphorical while in the second is literal, the second difference is the presence of God, in the first story, God is absent but in the second story God is present (through his avatars, the vengeful and frightening angels), the third difference is the degree of the revelation, it is more general in the first story and more drastic and absolute in the second one.

Ancient model of the universe

1 – Tower of Babylon

French cover

Extract of "Tower of Babylon"

can be summed up as an attempt by the ancient Babylonian men to reach the sky, or rather, God’s kingdom in Heaven. Ted Chiang’s model of the world is based on the Babylonian geocentric model of the universe where all the celestial spheres orbit around Earth.

Read it here for free

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 – Hell is the absence of God

Extract from "Hell is the Absence of God"

It is a world where God, his angels, Heaven and Hell are literally real. Angels spread the Word through “visitations” where supernatural “miracles” (not always good) occur. The story is not about believing in God (there is no point) but about devotion and the eternal question of why righteous people suffer. Only those who love God can go to Heaven, the rest go to Hell, a place below our world where God is absent (hence the title). There are two interesting aspects of this story:

1- There are not non-believers but there are non-religious people. The protagonist is the latter.

2-  Most readers (me included) made the assumption that the religion in the story is Christianity. Ted has even been criticized for  “trite antichristian propaganda” and his story described as  “God’s a jerk” story, big deal”. The fact is that the word Christianity or Christ is not  even in the story (I searched).

The background of this story is the Book of Job. Ted thought that the end was not fair and that it missed the point of teaching that sometimes bad things happen to good people.  The end of  “Hell is the absence of God” is a direct response to the last part of the Book of Job.

Read the story here for free.

 

 

 

 

Story of Your Life and Other Stories (covers)

Is the title of the book that collected most of  Ted Chiang’s short stories.  Below I post some of the different covers of the book.

My favourite one

Variation of the earlier cover

Polish version of "Story of your Life and others"

About free will, evil and love: Dialogue with an amoralist God

Smullyan is quite an off-beat person. Why?

He started as magician and later on went to become a logician. The most incredible part is that he also became a Taoist (for details of the core ideas of this eastern philosophy click here). It is no secret that Taoist views are rooted on profound paradoxes nor it is secret that Western logicians have been battling against paradoxes like doctors a disease. It should seem that both logic and Taoism are conflicting but apparently, this fellow has managed to keep inner peace.

“Is God a Taoist?” is a dialogue between God and a theist where the latter asks the former why did he bestow free will on humans.  What follows is an explanation of quite a laid-back God who describes the problem of evil, his love for humans as well as a surprisingly simple idea to show why humans need free will.

P.S. Taoists do not believe in divine entities so the title of the dialogue itself can be taken as a sort of paradox, making the title a subtle reference to a core paradox surrounding the idea of free will (this core paradox happens to be mentioned in the dialogue).

You can read it here for free.

Eastern Philosophy: Tao Te King

Chinese kanji for "way". Tao means way.

It starts like this:

“The Tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin.

of particular things.

Free from desire, you realise the mystery

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.”

So even though the book talks about the Tao it tells you that the Tao that can be told is not the real Tao. We are supposed to make inferences of what they say to understand what it is meant by Tao. It is like the allegory of the finger pointing at the Moon, the finger is needed to point at the Moon, it is a means, but the finger is not the Moon. You must make an inference and understand what the finger is actually doing so then you can follow the direction of the finger and eventually leave it and keep going with your inference. And then, you see the Moon.

Paradoxes abound in this book as in no other, yet universal truths also abound in this book as in no other. As I already explained, making a direct review of the book goes against what the book tell us in order to understand it. Themes of wisdom, humility and respect are frequent.

The author? As with many books, the authorship of masterpieces is a controversial topic, but you don’t need to know the author to enjoy a bit of millenarian wisdom.

Read it here for free

Erich Fromm: Psychoanalysis of the concept of God and Learning to Love

Erich Fromm is one of the greatest theorists I have ever come across. He is in my opinion, the best theorist I have ever come across.

His deep insight into the nature of human is opposed to a very easy-to-understand style of writing.

You Shall Be as Gods

Read it online here

It is one of the best books I have ever read about religion. As the cover says, Erich Fromm makes quite an off-beat analysis of the Old Testament. Starting from the Eden he shows how the concept of God goes from a severe father (yes, father) that must be obeyed, to a God that makes promises and thus, limits his power over the man (Noah and the flood myth), to a passive God that has no name and no direct influence over the human being.

Fromm says: “I do not look at the Bible as the “word of God”, not only because historical examination shows that it is a book written by men–different kinds of men, living in different times– but also because I am not a theist. Yet, to me, it is an extraordinary book, expressing many norms and principles that have maintained their validity throughout thousands of years. It is a book which has proclaimed a vision for people that is still valid and awaiting realization. It was not written by one man, nor dictated by God; it expresses the genius of a people struggling for life and freedom throughout many generations.”

This book irradiates humanism and a vision of  individual freedom and absence of dogmatism as few books have ever done. In the eternal debate between atheists and theists, Fromm, silently deposits this book in the corner and leaves. So, yes, a masterpiece.

The Art of Loving

Read it online here

What can I say of this book? A wonderful examination of love. Starting from pointing out the emphasis people put in being loved (passive state) rather than love (active state) and the delusional idea of Mr. Right, Fromm goes on to state false myths such as love being a matter of luck rather than a skill that can be learned, such as love being a a simple “I love you” rather than constant effort, care, and responsibility.

He argues that is not an irrational impulse but a rational power whose correct use requires  practice, requires learning and both theoretical and practical knowledge. So love becomes a skill that can be mastered like craftsmanship. Another interesting concept is self-love as opposed to egocentrism and whose motto “Love the others like you love yourself” has been, according Fromm, misunderstood, as well as the idea of self-sacrifice as the highest act a human being can perform. “Loving oneself means caring about oneself, taking responsibility for oneself, respecting oneself, and knowing oneself (e.g. being realistic and honest about one’s strengths and weaknesses)”.

An excellent, insightful, easy reading that challenges some of the most deep-rooted Western notions of what love means and what it entails.

Humble Beauty

The stream of tears running down my face became an all mighty never stopping flood of liquid pearls, gifts to the existence of such perfect idea, the reason of the perfection which did not need to be shown, the light which needs not to be seen for it to light up things that no one will ever see, those marvelous things whose pure essence remains as long as they are not sought after, casted light upon, precisely written about. The kind of things which remain a secret.