Craziness and/or religion

Is the monster inside you growing bigger and bigger? Religion can help! Probably. At least some religions.

Some time ago said something impolite but true: People are stupid and crazy. By this I mean that throughout history, or even today, most people are not very bright, and not entirely sane either.  Even in our enlightened (?) age, there is hardly a soul that does not harbor some phobia or addiction or obsession or fetish. For some of us, these don’t hamper us much in ordinary life, and tend to diminish over time. (Or we outgrow them.) Not everyone is so blessed, though: Many people live in severe suffering even if they don’t have bodily pain.

I believe we should see the world’s religions in this light. To refer to one of them, there is a story of some people who were entrusted fairly large amounts of money while their boss was abroad. Unfortunately, one of them buried his part of the money, then dug it back up when his master returned.  This did not go over well:  “Why didn’t you at least place your money in the bank so I could get it back with interest!”  One interpretation of this is simply:  If you don’t know what to do, listen to someone who knows better than yourself.

Organized religion is basically some people recognizing that there are others who are saner than themselves, and taking their advice. (And then someone finds a way to make money from it. But let us skip that part today.)

So basically, people don’t become stupid and crazy from religion. Rather, they are already so stupid and crazy that they see their religion as an oasis of insight and peace by comparison. This holds true even if the religion is rather disturbing as seen by a more enlightened soul.  For instance, it is unlikely that anyone goes to listen to Reverend Jeremiah Wright with the thought: “I need to dumb down, I need to become more crazy. This guy should help.”  Rather, if they feel affected that way, they are unlikely to ever come back. His regulars are people to whom this guy is a paragon of sanity.

The same understanding applies to history. Old religions, such as the first books of the Old Testament, contain some pretty bizarre stuff. Like the commandment to kill any couples that have sex during menstruation, to take a well known example. If you think that’s bad, keep in mind that to sentence someone to death Moses required two or three reliable witnesses, that is to say adult men of good repute.  The notion that people at the time lived in a society where unfriendly adult men of good repute witnessed your menstruation and your sex is rather more disturbing than the law itself.  In what kind of bizarre world would this be a problem in the first place?

The world really was bizarre back then. High school history books don’t go into this, which may be for the best concerning the stability of mind among their readers. But civilization back then was a new thing and was basically still experimental. Like a beta version, you know. Not very refined, lacking features, and prone to crashing.

There are several such seemingly absurd passages in old religions. God hates shrimps? Cows are holy? Or oaks? Blood from heifers take away sins? And yet we can have confidence that to people at the time, these doctrines were a great relief from the craziness that was tumbling around inside their heads. “OMG there is a cow, is it evil? What is the purpose of cows in the cosmic order of things? What will happen to me if I don’t find out?”

What is considered crazy varies not only with the times but also somewhat with geography. For instance I noticed this while reading the recently translated book Change Your Life, Change the World by Japanese author Ryuho Okawa.  It contained much general spiritual reflection and modern, sensible ethical advice.  It also included a couple paragraphs about how souls of aliens from the Pleiades had recently begun incarnating in human bodies and would prepare for the upcoming mass immigration from their home planets of aliens in physical form.  Then the usual exhortations toward love, wisdom, self-reflection and progress resumed.  I can only assumed that this must be unremarkable to the Japanese audience, where Mr Okawa has numerous bestsellers and is consulted by leading politicians.  (A recent prime minister there, by the way, was called “the alien” by his friends, and his wife had been abducted by Venusians.  Neither of these were part of his decision to step down recently.)

So, religion has been a steady influx of sanity in a world where complete hysteria was the usual order of the day. It still is, but an increasing part of the populace is getting more sane than their priests. Thank the Light for that! So does that mean we should abandon the concept of organized religion and leave it to the shrinks to clean up the remaining insanity?

Well, as an individual, you should probably not stick with a religion you consider less sane than yourself. But in that comparison, don’t be too quick to overestimate yourself, as people often are. If you are still unable to control your body when influenced by anger or lust, fear or disgust, then you’re still in kindergarten and need to work on your sanity.  The fact that some insane behavior is common in your culture does not make it sane.

For instance, we are aware that phobia – irrational fear – is not quite sane. But pretty much nobody thinks of the opposite, irrational lack of fear.  Here in Norway, for instance, it is quite common to fearlessly have unprotected sexual intercourse with white people. We are also adopting the American way of eating (huge portions), without fear of the unpleasant lfiestyle diseases that follow. Taking some advice from old-fashioned religion could have prevented all of this “quiet insanity”.

That is not to say that religions should not upgrade themselves. They have certainly done that before. Whenever you run into one of those people who get obnoxious about how the Bible is God’s Unchanging Word, just ask if you can assume that he really does greet the brethren with a holy kiss, and literally wash their feet. Chances are he does not, because no matter how much it is God’s Word, we quietly ignore it when it gets icky. Or insane.  This was a natural process until recently, when some people – mostly in America – regressed.  Contrast this with St Augustine, one of the church fathers who lived around the onset of the Dark Ages. He rightly argued that the pagans would think we were fools if we interpreted the Book of Genesis literally. This is still sane advice. Certain other religions could have something to learn too.

I am still not convinced that we’ll increase the sanity factor of religion by including UFOs though. At least not here in Europe. (Your UFO experiences may vary, in which case you may want a religion that has a clear view on how to deal with extraterrestrials.)

The chimney sweep?

You know, the one who gave me one night’s warning as to his arrival?

Didn’t show up. I was home all workday and saw neither hide nor hair of him, as the British say.

I am still not irritated. I got a good deal of reading done, and my boss was quite understanding.

But I think it would have been appropriate to at least put another paper slip in my mailbox explaining why he could not come and when he will come instead, if ever.

If you get in a situation where you have to break an appointment, or simply discover that you have forgotten it, what do you do? Do you call, send an email, write a letter, or just hope nobody notices?

Religion and/or insanity

If you cry because you did not understand other people’s feelings, it may be repentance. If you cry because other people don’t understand your feelings, it is more likely depression.

My only curious reader (I can see on my bandwidth log that the rest of you are out there, but evidently not curious enough to comment or mail me) has another question worthy of a small essay.

How do you tell the difference between a religious/spiritual experience and insanity or a hallucination?

First off, hallucinations are optional. There are certainly people who see lights or shapes or hear voices from beyond, but these are just the form their revelation clothes itself in. You just said it was a spiritual experience, right? Our senses are not our spirit, even in ordinary life. The blind is no less spiritual than the seeing, and old people may gradually lose their hearing but their spirit is unchanged. So the form in which the revelation imparts itself is not important. In fact, having high-resolution visions can scare people or puff them up, neither of which is the purpose of revelation.

What is important is a change of heart. And in that regard, I have to say that there is no objective distinction between the outbreak of religion and insanity, except that they have opposite direction.  In fact, there is every year in every western country (and probably elsewhere too) numerous people who go insane and who personally believe that their insanity is religion.

It is necessary that you see yourself objectively from outside in order to establish whether your experience is spiritual or just insane.

First off, insanity is incoherent. This is more or less its calling card. Religion, on the other hand, should be coherent. It should make the pieces come together and increase the sense of meaning and purpose.

Next, religion causes the will to serve. You may remember the famous line from Milton, where he lets Lucifer say that it is better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven. So if your spiritual experience causes you to think that others should serve you, then you may have had a meeting with an evil spirit, I suppose. Or you may just be insane.  In either case, it is certainly not a glimpse of Heaven you have had. For if you had, you would know the value of serving, of helping others, that it is its own reward and needs no other.

Generally, someone who knows of Heaven only from hearsay may think that if he is good and humble here on Earth, he will get his reward in Heaven. This reward, whatever it is, should then consist of something else than being good and humble.  But someone who has glimpsed Heaven in some way will know that to serve (which is the combination of goodness and humility) is actually Heaven itself.

But certainly it can look like insanity for people around you. The old way of hoarding stuff, seeking status, and using others for our own pleasure is pretty much the norm, so you will look strange and your old friends may shun you.

And of course, for most of us, the spiritual experience is a pretty brief thing. So we will be left in a kind of in-between state of mind, where the old nature, the small self, tries to reassert itself. In most cases it succeeds, at least to some degree and for some time. Few are those who turn suddenly from sinner to saint, although it has certainly happened.

So in short, the religious or spiritual experience is not measured by its intensity or its display of visions or voices, but by its ability to turn our life toward a much higher purpose. If that does not happen, there is every reason to question it.

Is that even legal?

When I came home from work late in the afternoon, there was a message in my (physical) mailbox from the chimney sweeper. He is coming tomorrow between 8 and 12 to sweep the chimney.

I am not sure how this is in your various countries, but here in Norway, the sweeper is working for the authorities. This makes a certain sense, since the firemen also are, and this guy is basically a more humane alternative.

That said, half a day’s alert is just crazy. Later this month, I am supposed to be in Oslo for a day, which could well cause me to stay two nights at hotel (if I am well enough to travel in the first place). There might also be private reasons for me to not check my mailbox every single day.

Leaving that aside, I usually work on workdays. (Surprise, surprise.) Tomorrow I have a telephone meeting that was scheduled some time ago. Unless this chimney sweeping is finished before 10, these two events won’t happen on the same day.

I am also supposed to have a fire resistant soot container ready for the occasion. I am not sure what exactly that is supposed to be. A steel bucket perhaps?  They had those in my childhood. I am certainly not likely to find one here over the course of the night.  As it happens, even if I had a car, the shops were closed when I found the message, and will still be closed when I begin waiting for his arrival.

Well, I can’t say it irritates me. If he freaks out because I have not magically prepared the mysterious container, I might be a little irritated. I just have to make the best out of it. But dear reader: Please don’t be that kind of person, because it is dumb, or more exactly thoughtless.

Repentance is awesome

This guy has a lot to repent. Then again, so had I.

Rabbi Steinsaltz writes in his book The Thirteen-petalled Rose that God created repentance before He created the world. That may sound absurd, but in the view of the Rabbis, repentance does not just bring us back to the same state as if we had not transgressed, but to a higher state.

Obviously you cannot take this to mean that we should look for opportunities to sin so we can repent. Nothing good can come from that. We are already human, after all, so there is absolutely no need to go out of our way to make mistakes. To err is human, so any one of us will find something already in our life if we reflect on ourselves. This is certain to be true.

The purpose of self-reflection and repentance is not to depress ourselves. Repentance brings joy and gratitude. Of course it does not feel good right away when we look at ourselves and think “What the hell have I been doing?”.  If we can feel sadness at such a time, it is a grace, a gift from Heaven. But if we can repent even if we feel nothing, that is also a grace. In any case, no matter what we feel, when we realize the error of our ways, the Truth will set us free. Though sometimes we have to pent and repent until it sticks.

So yeah, I’ve been repenting. It is awesome. I am very grateful that the escalator of repentance was created, whether it was before or after the world.

***

If we go to bed and mysteriously cannot sleep, it may be a message from our subconscious that we need a timeout, to “commune with my heart on my bed” as the King James Bible says.  In the past, when there was no electric light and the night was long, it was common to wake up in the middle of the night and lie in silence for a while. This is a good time to look back on the day if we have not already, and ask ourselves :

Was my day worthy of my aspiration for life and eternity? Did my mind point steadily toward my goal like a compass needle?

Humans are beings who make mistakes, so there is a good chance we made some.  Some are small, some seem small until we get a good look at them and go OMG what the Hell was I thinking?? And if we realize that and don’t defend ourselves, then we will definitely be closer to the Light than when we started, even if we experience some sadness along the way.

Why some people are happier

I am happy to be alive! says Pollyanna, in the anime “Ai Shoujo Pollyanna Story” (Love Girl Pollyanna Story). You have probably heard about Pollyanna, it is almost a common noun in English. But is a Pollyanna born or made?

My one courageous commenter asks me what I believe is the reason why some people are happier than others. This is a main interest of mine – after all, almost all westerners want to be happy – and I have written about it occasionally for years. This seems like a good time to present my current view, which has developed a bit over time.

1) Genetic foundation for happiness.  Whether you call it evolution or intelligent design, you have the same dilemma: Humans know about their mortality, and if they really want to, they can kill themselves. Therefore, there are limits to how much depression you can pile up on them before they quit. Conversely, if people tend toward extreme happiness, they don’t invest a lot of thought and energy in improving their situation. In the extreme case, this could threaten their life, as in not gathering food for the winter.  Before it gets that far, they are anyway unlikely to procreate, since they are happy without sex.

So basically, there is a range of possible happiness that will let you survive and reproduce. If your genes take you outside those limits, those genes are lost.

Modern society has widened that range, since depressed people can now be medicated, and people who live without concern can get food for free.

2) Physiological changes. Conditions in early childhood can change a person’s capacity for happiness, as well as for other emotions. Malnutrition is an example, but physical abuse in childhood and low levels of contact can also cause the brain to not develop to its potential.

3) Psychological conditions. Apart from the physical changes to the brain from extreme life conditions, there are the “software” changes to the growing mind from various experiences in childhood, and to some extent even later. A good childhood may not save you from a depression that comes from brain chemistry gone wrong, but it will push you toward the upper reaches of happiness if you’re average at the outset.

4) Lifestyle. Poor people are less happy than others, but rich people are not much happier than ordinary workers, and the middle class does not become happier as it becomes richer. Once you have the basics – I have seen the phrase “$10 000 a year” bandied around, but I suppose this will change as the dollar falls – other things than money count more.

The employed are happier than the unemployed, even adjusted for the income. (In some European countries, the difference is not all that huge. If you have several children, you can earn more by being unemployed.)

Married men are happier than unwed men, with divorced men the least happy of all. Married women are happier than unmarried women, on average, but unlike the men women often become happier after divorce.  Having children does not at all add to a couple’s happiness, actually it detracts just a little, but losing them causes great unhappiness, whether it is to death or separation. People who have many different sex partners are less happy than those who have one, but happier than the involuntarily celibate.

People who have many friends are happier than people who have few friends, but it is a diminishing return. Having no friends or very few is bad, but the difference from 30 to 300 is not all that great. Still, every little Facebook friend adds to your happiness.  There is a reason for this, but I don’t remember if I have written about it.

5) Choices. While you can not always choose to be employed or married, you can usually choose whether or not to read. People who read a lot of books are happier than those who don’t. Both quantity and quality of the literature seems to have an effect here.

Religious people are generally happier than others, with Buddhists seemingly the happiest of the bunch. Among the religious, attendance at church / synagogue / temple etc is a pretty good indicator of happiness and also of longevity, if other things are equal.

People who meditate are happier than people who don’t meditate. This is the case even if they don’t attend a temple or profess any particular religion.

People who are physically active, especially outdoors, are happier than those who just sit there. This may conflict with the part about books, but it helps to not have a TV. People who don’t have a TV are happier than those who have. TV is particularly bad for married people.  There is a reason for this too.

Optimists are happier than pessimists. People who force themselves to smile become happier than those who don’t. People who keep track of their blessings and of the good things that are done to them become rapidly happier, people who keep track of bad things that happen to them and especially injustice done against them become rapidly unhappy. These are things you can partly do something about, by keeping a gratitude diary etc.

But the single greatest source of happiness is the decision to make others happy. Those who each day look for opportunities to be of help to others, without asking for anything in return, are certain to become happier over time, and their happiness is a lasting one. On this both religion and science agree.

There are some things that could have been added, but I think this alone is enough. There is definitely a trend in it, and I hope you see this. Even if you are dealt bad cards at the start of your life, there will be many chances to throw away a card and pull a new and better. So no matter who you are, you can eventually have a winning hand, having achieved lasting happiness in this life on Earth.

***

I must admit that it was largely by accident I became as happy as I am now. I made some right choices, but I did not do so because I knew this would bring me happiness. On the contrary, it was my surprise at my own happiness that caused me to start looking into the science of human happiness.  But if I can help someone, anyone, choose the path to happiness on purpose, I would delight in doing so. The more happy people in the world, the better!

Mind to mind

Are you a bioluminiscent girl in real life too?

G.K. Chesterton writes (“In Defense of Ugly Things”): “There are some people who state that the external, sex or physique, of another person is indifferent to them, that they care only for the communion of mind with mind; but these people will not detain us. There are some statements that no one ever thinks of believing, however often they are made.

I suspect this was spot on, throughout the thousands of years before the Internet. Now, however, I have numerous buddies (I can’t really call them close friends, but more so than my neighbors and almost all of my coworkers) who I have never seen even in a picture. These are people I have met on blogs, forums, mailing lists, USENET groups, or in online games. In some cases I don’t know the gender; in some cases I think I know it, but I may be wrong. In most cases I don’t know the color of their skin, the color of their hair, whether they are thin or fat, sometimes even not whether or not they are in a wheelchair.

Let me be honest. If I had actually met them in the flesh, it would almost certainly have colored my impression of what they said afterwards. I’m not really happy about this, but I am still that much human. I might be able to correct my mind to compensate for my prejudices, but probably not exactly. And of course even now I may have some idea about how they look, at least in some cases, on a subconscious level. But by and large, it is indeed a communication of mind with mind.

We live in an age of wonders. Many things that seemed not even miraculous but flat out impossible in the 1930es are now taken for granted. And the Internet is one of them. Actually, the Internet is many of them, and perhaps will be many more in the years that still remain for our civilization.

Sendai Mag 8.9

Too familiar.

Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is an anime about an earthquake. It is more education than entertainment, I guess. It portrays a brother and sister who are caught away from home in a large earthquake.  The sister is in first year of middle school, her brother in third year of elementary school. She is accompanying him to a robot exhibition, but she is not happy about it. While waiting outside, she types on her cell phone: “The world should just break.” And then the earthquake hits.

Earthquakes and tsunamis are part of life in Japan, but usually they are small. A magnitude 8.0 quake in the bay outside Tokyo would be pretty devastating, and unfortunately not completely unlikely. So this is probably a thing that is on people’s minds off and on.

The animated TV series is simple and realistic. It shows that even when the damage is not total, it is just so widespread. Even though there are stretches of road that are OK, they are separated by broken ground, fallen bridges, wreckage and abandoned cars, so you still can’t get anywhere with car or motorbike.  And even when buildings are still standing, they may be so damaged that they collapse later. One of the main characters of the story dies as a result of this.  Other homes are fine, but then catch fire because of a gas leak in a neighboring home. Whole neighborhoods are lost to fire because water mains are broken and fire trucks cannot get around either.

Seeing the news today was eerily familiar. Of course, it was not Tokyo this time, although they got their share of swaying buildings. But then it was not magnitude 8.0 either.  Earthquakes are measured on a log-10 scale, so that 8.9 is not roughly ten percent stronger than 8.0, but closer to 10 TIMES stronger. (That would actually be 9.0, but you get the point.) If this had happened right under a city, it would have been second only to a nuclear attack in devastation. As it was, it happened in the ocean outside, so the greatest damage was wrought by the tsunami, the giant wave.

It must be strange, living with the knowledge that at some point, disaster will strike. Knowing approximately what form it will take, but not which day or year.  Japanese are not the only ones:  Major population centers in California are sure to meet a similar fate. And several volcanoes are ready to blow their top, obliterating the nearby cities.  There is also the small matter of the supervolcano under Yellowstone, which could devastate much of North America right away, and destroy most of earth’s food production for the following decade. I am sure there are other disasters waiting in the wings around the world.

And of course, in the end the most certain thing about life is that we are not getting out of it alive. When Jesus Christ heard about a collapsed building that had killed several people, he asked: “Do you think these were greater sinners than other people in Jerusalem?” I suppose there are a few causes of death that are for “greater sinners”, such as death by alcohol or by fat. Earthquakes are not quite that selective. And in the end, no matter how pious and clever and lucky we are, we’ll have to join those who have gone before us.

But I’m in no hurry. Of course, neither were those on the beaches of Sendai. Some people will look for a meaning in the deaths, but I think we should firstly and mostly look for the meaning in our lives while we still have them.

Basement dream

I woke up an hour early from a lifelike dream. Well, not like my real life, but it seemed real while it lasted.

In my dream, I was at some gathering at the old school house. Each of us was given a piece of paper with a riddle on it. Supposedly it was random who got which. I quickly solved my riddle, which was four liters (1 gallon) of milk in a large container. Then we went down in the dark basement to find whatever it was. I thought it was a kind of test of courage. I was confident, for I knew the cellar of my old school. Or so I thought. And it wasn’t all that dark.

But in the fridges down there I only found 3 liters of milk, and some of it so old that I feared it was spoiled. Others had not had complete success either: I saw a frying pan which someone was cooking pasta in. The water was cooked away and the pasta would be burnt, if not catching fire altogether. I put the pan in water, as there was no one to be seen.

At this time I was quite upset and angry at the idiots who had arranged the whole thing, made it impossible to complete, and risked the house catching fire on top of it all. I opened a window and slipped out, intending to go home without being seen or seeing anyone.

But outside, I saw that it was still not that late, and I decided instead to go to the shop and buy the milk, even though I doubted the rest of the recipe would come together.  As I crossed the field, I saw there were people, and a large fridge and a counter out in the grassy field. On the counter was a suitable large container, and inside the fridge were four liters of fresh milk. The other people I saw had also found their ingredients. Everything was there, you just had to get out of the dark basement. My hellish mood changed accordingly.

I guess other people’s dreams are not obvious, so let me add that this strikes me as a parable on my own life.  For a long time, I expected to find things to be trivially easy, and when they were not (and other people were idiots on top of it all) I got into a hellish mindset. When I broke free, and yet decided to fulfill my mission even if it would require a sacrifice, I found that everything I needed was in fact made ready for me, just not in the closed rooms where I had expected.

Looking at phones to Desire them?

Vaguely related: If you want to exchange phone numbers or mail address with someone, it is customary to ASK, not knock them down, grab their mobile phone and add your phone number and mail address. But Desire makes blind, as you can see.

I read a review of the new LG Optimus 2X today. It looks to be good value for an acceptable price (by Norwegian standards, people in the 1st world and below may need to save up for a while first). Now if I can avoid referring to it as Optimus Prime, it certainly looks like a candidate.

It seems to be marginally ahead of HTC Desire HD, which I have also considered for a while, but which I hesitate to buy because of the name. You may say this is picky, but would you buy a mobile phone labelled Scientology for instance, if it was not dazzlingly better than the competition? Or “Allahu Akbar” perhaps? All of us have things we are proud of and things we are ashamed of, and they are not the same for all of us. I am not proud of desire. It has caused lots of trouble both for me and others.

And on that note, it would be sorely ironic if I avoid the HTC Desire HD because of the name, but still desire it in my heart. As it happens, my gadget lust has faded a bit since its height a few years ago. A lot of things fade when one live the kind of life I live. But there is still some excitement left, so I’m not buying for a while yet unless my HTC Hero goes down for the count.  Hero, now that’s a name to love.  As the inhabitants of Paragon City say:  “Forget all those postmodernist deconstructionists. Itland is a hero, plain and simple.”

That said, I do intend to buy either a large mobile phone or a small tablet this year if no particular disaster strikes.  The Hero is such a part of my life that I feel rather naked without it. Mainly because it is my only portable Internet connection and e-book reader.  Phone calls and text messages are so scarce that I would hardly notice if those did not work. But being able to read your Twitter and Facebook posts on the potty where they rightly belong is a great boon.  (OK, I actually tend to read them on the bus, but still.)

The Hero is a bit small though. Typing with my big fingers could have been better with just a little more screen space.  I certainly won’t need an iPad for that for many years yet, Light willing, but an extra centimeter would make a good improvement. Reading also benefits from more and better screen. Again, I may prefer a large mobile phone over a tablet or pad, simply for privacy purposes. There is no reason why random strangers should know that you are reading Dante rather than some tabloid or a juicy mail from your lover.

Anyway, I have what I need for now, so I can afford to wait for a while yet. Unless something goes up in smoke, though, it seems pretty certain that my next computer will fit in a large pocket.