Category Archives: philosophy

Reading for understanding

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Madness is not the only danger in books. There is also the danger that something may be understood that can never be forgotten.

Having finished The Torah for Dummies, I’ve started on How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (who wrote the original) and Charles van Doren.

One of the very first concepts introduced – before I even got one Kindle dot into the book – is the difference between reading for information and reading for understanding. This is something I have written about before, as I have been introduced to the subject by the Catholic scholar A. G. Sertillanges, and before that more briefly by Ryuho Okawa, founder of Happy Science. Apart from them, and a reference to Sertillanges statement on the blog One Cosmos, I don’t think I have seen or heard this anywhere. Or if I did, it was well before I was ready for it, for no trace remains.

When I wrote about this myself a while ago, I compared the first to someone filling a container with a liquid, for instance pouring juice into a glass. The second sort however expands the container, for instance making the glass taller so it can hold more juice. The first is ordinary, the second is miraculous. But then, we are humans so miracles are not uncommon. At least not for those who wake up to the divine heritage, so to speak.

What Mortimer Adler writes about here seems actually to be an intermediate level of mind change, perhaps. The first change is just in the content of the mind, and the third change in its size. But to introduce another metaphor, you could say that reading for understanding puts more tools in your toolbox. I would say that expanding the capacity of the toolbox itself is yet another level, but let that rest for now. I think his brief introduction simply combines these advanced forms of reading (or listening, on some occasions).

His point is that if you understand perfectly what the author says, your mind and the author’s mind are of the same mold. You don’t understand more afterwards, you just know more. This is not the same thing! You need some knowledge to understand, but you don’t understand better infinitely as you pour on more knowledge. Past a certain point there is no noticeable gain in understanding by adding more and more examples.

When you don’t understand a book (but it presumably is understandable, which can not be taken for given in these days with self-publishing), you need to put more work into it. You can ask someone else to explain it, or read a book that explains it, but if they do so too well you still have not understood the original. When you by your own effort understands a book you did not, you have acquired new understanding. Your mind has leveled up, so to speak: You have a new way of thinking or seeing things that you did not have before. This is a pretty awesome thing to have happen to you.

(Also, this is mostly why I write these days. You have Google right there, you can know anything on Earth. What I want is to give you a glimpse of a different and hopefully higher perspective, another angle, a new dimension. The wonder and the glory and the stars in the sky. Still very much a work in progress, obviously.)

Mortimer Adler stresses that the author needs to have superior understanding compared to you. That is certainly true in a limited sense, namely within the context of the book. However, for the “mid-level” (one more tool in the toolbox) reading, you may well be the superior in a broader sense. Let me show this by an example:

If I were to write a book about the Norwegian language, I would be superior to most of my readers. I am, at the very least, a master of my mother tongue New Norwegian, the western and rural version of Norwegian, to the point that I feel confident mainly poets and highly trained academics can wield it better than I. However, the reader of my hypothetical book may be a world renowned linguist, fluent in more than a dozen languages from different language families and written in different scripts. By any sensible third party this reader would be my superior and have a vastly deeper understanding than I. Just not in the topic at hand.

This is just an example. What I really mean is that a person does not need to be a higher spirit, so to speak – a greater genius – simply in order to have an understanding you don’t. This is what I mean by saying that such learning adds to your toolbox.

In contrast to this, there is a third level. This is the one Sertillanges and Okawa writes about, the High Spirit, the Genius. What they do is open up our very capacity for new understanding. They add new dimensions to the container. You may have been fascinated by teachings that you found could make your glass taller, but you had no idea that it could also increase in radius. Then suddenly you see this, and everything changes. Nothing can quite become the same again.

So what M. Adler writes about is indeed reading for understanding, as opposed to just reading for information. But what I speak of in the last few lines is to read for revelation. And usually this does not even happen, but rather one just reads and the revelation presents itself. When the student is ready, and not before. Still, some places you are more likely to meet it than others.

Opium of the masses

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Behind those eyes…

I want to expand something I tweeted today: Trying to not think about death, we also fail to think about life.

The most obvious meaning of this is the literal opium of the masses, drugs, and by extension alcohol as the most popular of them. This is not exactly evil; but it is a sad state to be in, that one feels the need to numb oneself even at the cost of one’s health.

The existential fear, the sense that life is meaningless, bothers many people today. Those who feel it most keenly are probably those who flee most desperately, thus the drugs and the drink. In a sense, such people are not far form religion, if the can overcome their fear. And arguably, religious people may not be far from drugs and drunkenness, should they lose their faith.

But literal drugs are not the only, and probably not the most common, escape from thinking about life, death and the meaning of it all. Most of us are able to find refuge in entertainment. For some it is necessary to have as much sexual activity as the body can reasonably keep up with; for some an entertaining book is enough. For the majority, it seems that TV is doing the trick. You sit down in front of the box and tune out. Going to bed, you wonder briefly where your day went, but then forget about it.

There are many things, from computer games to sports, that tend to absorb us. While immersed in these things, we don’t really think much about what we are doing, what we should do, and what we should have done. So these things allow us to continue our unreflected life. Not that they don’t have good sides too. Actually, I suppose some may think of distraction as one of the good things. I don’t, obviously, but clearly there are health benefits to exercise, and computer games train the brain. Social activities are also good for your health, especially your mental health, which is often the weakest link in the chain anyway.

There are many things people consider important, and even feel obliged to put their thought and effort into. Earning money, of course: Bills don’t pay themselves, at least not in America. It is a bit easier here in Scandinavia. Then there is the keeping of the house, whether it is cleaning or maintenance. And the car and the garden and probably other possessions as well. The more we buy, the more time goes into just maintaining it all. And having done so, we feel obliged to use the things we have put so much time into.

In the end, we more or less drift through life, rarely stopping to wonder whether we are on our way toward our goal, or even whether we have a goal. Immersed in all these things we are almost asleep. And I won’t deny that religion can also be one such “busy-ness” to distract us.

But to some of us at least, that is far from the case. The supposed comfort of religion is a puzzle to me. For me, religion has been like a fire alarm going off in the middle of the night. A cause of terror and struggle to overcome deep sleep. But most of all an intrusion of reality destroying my comfortable dream. Until recently, the most important word in my religious vocabulary was “Hell”. That was what it boiled down to. I felt that my life in this world was good, and could have been even better, if I did not have this threat hanging over me. If not for fear of judgment, I could have done so much more. I could have enjoyed myself without restriction. I did not fear death as much as the things that come after death.

Things have changed a bit. I now believe in a happiness that runs through this life and the next, and this is the joy of giving, of being helpful, of spreading hope and courage and understanding. I have not really achieved much in that regard, but this new life makes sense to me now. I still distract myself, sometimes just out of habit, but the gravity of the old world is losing some of its grip, and another gravity is pulling me upward. So that is good, as far as it goes.

I can very much understand those who want to keep sleeping. But the truth is that the house is on fire: Not only our own life, but everything we hold dear in this world is like the picture in a kaleidoscope, bound to fall apart and change into unfamiliar forms at the slight shake of a hand. Our house, our job, even children and grandchildren for those who have those… All that has form is sure to come to an end. Even the human race, even Earth, even the visible universe is heading toward dissolution. It will be utterly forgotten like the last dream of a child that dies before daybreak.

I am sorry, but this is what science tells you. But if you get drunk, you can forget it. Or if you wake up, you can experience eternity while you are still in time.

I think everyone who has family or friends, have at least a vague feeling that these souls are more worth than anything in the world, even if we can forget and take them for granted. Deep down, we know. When everything shakes, and the picture of your world shifts into something unfamiliar, you realize that one human soul is more than the whole world, more than the planets and the stars in the sky. Eternity lies behind those eyes.

After the golden age

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Collect the small moments that make you smile, that make you feel warm inside, that make you think “I am glad I did that”. They may not show up in your budget or even in your obituary; but when you go to die, they will make a world of difference.

I realized this spring:  I have pretty much stopped warning people about the economy, as I routinely did before. It is too late for that.  Instead, I will concentrate on the gospel of finding happiness in small things. Because small things is all most of you will be able to afford in the coming age.

The age of growth is over in the USA and its closest allies.  But there are still those who just dig in and hope for the golden age to return. It won’t.

“Our golden age has ended; so say our analysts.” A familiar phrase for those who played the strategy game Civilization. Based on thousands of years of history, the second version of the game incorporated the idea of “golden ages” for each civilization. There certainly seems to be something to it. In any case, the US and its best friends had a glorious one, better than any time in known history. So let us not be bitter. All things that have form come to an end; strive diligently!

***

Riches come and go; customs and fashions change; the values of one generation differ from the next; even languages drift over time. But there are many joys that have existed since the dawn of history. Already Aristotle wrote glowingly about the greatness of friendship. It is just as great today, and for the time being at least, we have a rare ability to make friends all over the world. This is amazing. But to be able to visit a friend or invite a friend or a few, to listen to them talking and see their smiles (and occasionally frowns), is just as great as it was more than 2000 years ago.

The beauty of nature is still available to most, thought it is not right outside the door for all. But even a park can be a place of beauty, yes, even a backyard. Flowers grow even indoors, and the clouds in the sky are still free.

Do you remember when you were a kid and enjoyed a blank piece of paper and some crayons? (Well, unless you grew up in the age of computers, I guess.) Crayons are still affordable for pretty much everyone in the English-speaking world, long may it last! You may even be able to get your hands on some good watercolor sets. I can’t count how many hours I spent drawing and painting when I was a kid, although I have less than no talent for it; in fact, I may literally be brain-damaged in that regard. I still enjoyed it, and if I could, so can you.

For those who enjoy listening to music, the golden age has definitely not ended. There may not be much good music created lately, but the music from the past is still around, reaching centuries back for those so inclined, although some prefer to stop in the 80es or 60es. Your taste may vary, but there sure is a lot of music in this world! And should you want to make your own, there are various instruments that don’t require a huge expense, at least not until you reach the level where you want to perform in public. And if it is the day before payday, hopefully you still have your singing voice!

If you have read this far, you are definitely good at reading, so you may want to borrow a book at the library or from a friend. Be a friend and lend someone a book, if they are not known for vandalizing them at least. And there are books you may want to buy, when you can afford them, because they are worth reading not just twice, but many times throughout your life and in generations to come as well.

I will not go on and on, but if you don’t hate people, there is no reason to live and die unhappy. This world is a good place and every day the sun rises again, even the days when you can’t see it. Be calm, be friendly, forgive mistakes as you also make mistakes, create something, give a gift or a word of appreciation, and live with light in your heart. It is cheap and your happiness will last for this life and, I believe, into the next.

 

Are we happy now?

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“My emotions were almost unbearable.”  I have been in such a place, and I don’t want others to stay there longer than necessary.

When I warn against emotional advertising, or casual sex, or socialist envy, it is not because I crave that you agree with me or acclaim my opinions as being right. My purpose is simply to increase the happiness of those who read me.

I mean, I have other interests too. I am not a Buddha or some such, living only for the benefit of the world. Mostly I am minding my own small things. But if I bother to write about more general things, this is why. I try to pick something that is not so far out that ordinary people cannot “get” it. On the other hand, it should be non-obvious enough that not everyone has “got” it already.

People generally crave attention, acceptance and acclaim. Their map of reality needs to be verified by others. “Since others agree with me, I must be right!” For the same reason, people tend to only read books and newspapers that agree with them, listen to radio programs that agree with them, and so on. The need to belong to a group of like-minded people is so strong it might well be an instinct. And the best part of it is when you can get others to accept your way of seeing it, rather than the other way around.

But that is not what drives me. I am not part of a group. And I rarely hear from those who read me, well except for my old friend, who anyway seems to do quite well on her own. In terms of getting attention, it would be far more efficient to spend time on a dating site: Even if I never even got to second base, I would get a lot more excitement than here.

The other day, I read this in a newsletter: “A baby is born with a need to be loved – and never outgrows it.” This was evidently considered words of wisdom or truth, and I agree that it is probably a fact for most people. But as I have told in the past, we are not supposed to be children all our life. At some point we have to give more love to others than we receive from others, otherwise the amount of love on Earth will dwindle and go dry.  Sometimes it seems this has already happened. In the striking mental image by Ryuho Okawa, a society without love is like a hospital filled with patients crying in pain. Where are the doctors and nurses, who can give care and prescribe treatment that actually leads to healing?

But it is not just old age or a sense of obligation that drives me, I would say. I am still receiving love, and lots of it, but from the Light, from God or Heaven. This is my experience. I am receiving constant love and attention and advice from Above. You may be convinced that all such things are fantasies and only exist in my head. Then ask yourself: If you were hungry and you decided to fix this by fantasizing about food, how long would you survive? A number of weeks, perhaps months if you were a fat American tourist. But I dare say that your imagination would wear pretty thin after a couple of days already.  But I have lived this way for many years. So either the Heavenly Light exists, or the need for love and attention does not. In either case, you probably have to adjust your worldview dramatically, if you are an ordinary person.

Please do. And you don’t need to report back to me when you find a wellspring of happiness that never seems to go dry. You don’t need to remember my name or tell others about me. Just pay it forward. I have plenty.

4th dimension of foolishness

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Why don’t we use our empty heads to reflect on what we did? This is known to work well against the third dimension of foolishness. I am not sure what, if anything, works against the fourth, for I have only seen it hazily – if at all – like a mirage of some faraway thing that is rightly below my horizon.

Since it is April Fool’s day anyway, let me tell you my theory about the fourth dimension of foolishness. Don’t stake your soul on it, of course, for I am still largely a fool myself. As a hopefully less foolish man once said: “Try [or evaluate] everything, keep the good.”

The first dimension or level to overcome is ignorance. No matter how good your intentions, if you are ignorant there is not much you can do. Or worse yet, misinformed. You need to have knowledge of the truth to get started in the direction of wisdom, or anything worthwhile really.  I suppose without true knowledge you may still hold some careers, such as teaching, in a society where teaching falsehood is highly respected. After all, sooner or later you WILL find out that some of what you have learned was just plain Not True. But overall, learning is better than apathy. Once we have learned something, we can start to test it.

The second dimension is stupidity. This is basically a lack of processing power in the brain.  Even if knowledge is given to you, you cannot do much about it, because your brain is not able to hold more than very simple thoughts. It sucks to be stupid, but at least you were born like this, you had no choice. Well, you have the choice of spending a lot of time. If you are only moderately stupid, you can come far if you just keep going. You may have to read a book ten times where I only need to read it once, but in the end you will understand it deeply. You may not get the joke until everyone has gone home, but feel free to laugh anyway. Even if you cannot achieve much, it is still better than to achieve nothing.

Folly adds a new dimension, namely the moral dimension. The fool could have learned the truth and understood it, but preferred not to. Perhaps he did not like the truth, or perhaps he already thought he knew all he needed to know. To have the chance to be wise, and reject it, that must be more bitter than never having had the chance in the first place!

Now we have looked at three angles:  The fact outside us, the mind or brain, and the soul or will. But I believe there is a fourth dimension, which is spiritual. We may call it “destiny”. Or rather a subset of destiny, a kind of capacity for wisdom. Or the lack thereof.

The Catholic philosopher and professor, James V Schall, mentioned in Another sort of Learning that very few are truly wise. I don’t remember but he may have quoted someone on that, however I think this is obvious once you have lived and observed for a while. Even teachers have teachers (to quote Schall again, I think): There are only a few in history who bring much truly new into the world, and I mean new things that stand the test of time in some meaningful way.  The rest of us are more or less riding their coat tails, or at best trying to combine a couple different perspectives.

I could write about this in great detail, because the voice in my heart has a lot to say, but I am not worthy to be a teacher, so I will try to keep this at the level of a letter to a friend.

In Christianity, we take for granted that there is an enormous gap between Jesus Christ and the best and wisest of Christians who have ever lived. I tend to agree, though some think St Francis came closer than the rest of us. In any case, why is this difference? Is it Jesus holding some portion of his divine wisdom back, or is it our capacity to receive it that is lacking?  (That’s a rhetorical question, of course.)

But religion is really too solemn a topic for a fool like me to say something with authority. Definitely so for a religion that I take seriously. At least in theory.

Even if you are not a Christian (your loss!), it is still very rare to see someone rise to the level of their master.  How many Buddhists have become like the Buddha? How many Confucians have approached his level? The most remarkable succession I can think of is how Socrates was followed by Plato, and Plato by Aristotle. They were all remarkable for their era and even by today’s standards, yet they were also strikingly different in some ways, despite being teacher and student one after the other.

One would think that those who come after have an easier time, being able to “download” from their teacher not only the thought itself, but the way to think properly. Certainly even if we exclude those Great Teachers who made claim to divinity, or were assigned divinity by their followers, there must be many who were followed by great geniuses that had decades in which to absorb their teaching and then exceed it. But this rarely happens, if at all.

This is where I believe that the shortfall is not one of IQ as such, but of a deeper and more fundamental capacity, which I conveniently place in the spirit realm since I don’t know of all that many other invisible higher realms.

But I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the tower of song.

-Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song.

Alone in a cocoon

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If your wife looks like that when cutting vegetables, you should probably give thanks that she does not think you are an imaginary person.

I have made it around halfway through the free online book, “Butterflies are free to fly”. Now reflecting on the spiritual autolysis. Following the butterfly metaphor, the author is now in his cocoon, breaking down the structures of his larval stage (when he was a human adult.)

What has actually happened, it seems, is that he has descended into the heresy of solipsism. Hopefully he will emerge from it when his cocoon phase is over.

In a sense, solipsism is the natural conclusion of the ego lifestyle. It is the belief that only I am real. The universe is all in my head. Other people don’t exist, or have their own universe where they too are alone.

We tend to think of solipsism as the philosophy of the sociopath, the criminal without a conscience. After all, if other people are not real, why not enslave them, rape them, kill them and eat them? After all, nothing is “bad” or “wrong”, as the author repeatedly tells us. I am sure it could be an interesting experience. And so would death row, hopefully, since the imaginary society in your head is unlikely to share your enthusiasm for post-coital cannibalism. (Unless you are a praying mantis.)

Of course, not all of us would want that. My sims are very happy imaginary people. But my opponents in the RPG Oblivion are not. I have to say my desire for setting bullies on fire has kind of disappeared over the last couple years, but it was an important motivation for playing RPGs until my midlife transformation at least. And there are many Sims players who build walls around their sims and watch them slowly starve to death, or set their house on fire and remove the doors, or take away the ladders while the sim is in the pool. So, I am not sure solipsism is suitable as a general teaching.  Of course, the Butterfly book is not aimed at the general public, but it is freely available.

That said, the intense lonesomeness of the spiritual path is a well known phenomenon. Let me see if I can find a YouTube video I saw recently where Ken Wilber brought up this. Ah, here: “Ken Wilber on the aloneness of the spiritual path.”

Of course, for Ken Wilber this is not the only reality. He famously says that Spirit has three “faces”, aspects or modes: I, It and Thou.  The first aspect, I AM, is the subjective experience of being the observer without which my universe would not exist. If I was not here to see it, it would not exist for me, and I cannot really know of anything outside myself as seen from this angle.

Another aspect it “IT IS”, the overwhelming scale of the world and the realization that I am such a tiny little part of it, my body roughly halfway between the size of a virus and the size of Earth, the planet itself only a speck of iron dust circling a nearly average star in the outer reaches of a galaxy among billions of other galaxies. Being one with the universe is being an extremely small part of it. In order for the ordinary human to find life worth living, the vastness of the universe has to be held at bay.

The final face of Spirit is “THOU ART”.  This is in essence the classical God, the Thou who art in Heaven but for some reason appear in our life, the overwhelming presence of the Other which can be experienced with as strong a reality as my own, or more so.  I personally suspect the reason why so many people never experience the Presence of God is that they have never experienced the absence. But I may be wrong. In any case, once one has experienced this overwhelming presence, it becomes possible to see this “face of Spirit” in other people as well.  By then you are well and truly out of the cocoon.

Having these three experiences of the three faces of Spirit is different from the starting position of having none of them, of just thoughtlessly accept that other people are kind of real because everyone is treating everyone else as real the same way they treat me, more or less.  Usually however we have a healthy dose of egotism (without which we would not survive the early years where all we can do is receive). Egotism accepts that other people are kind of real, just not very important. First me, then others if it benefits me. So that is different from seeing, in the words of Mother Theresa, that “every person you meet is Jesus in disguise”.  Or in other words, the Divine in the flesh.

So I guess there is a reason why most insects in their pupal stage are immobile, while butterflies are free to fly.

Why some people are happier

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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!

Two green lights

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Good thing I am not actually a teacher! Even so, I was only a couple steps from the grave. So I may as well share the lesson (while I remember it…)

On my way home from work, I passed a street crossing with traffic light. As it happens, here in Kristiansand it is not unusual that the pedestrians and one group of cars get the green light at the same time. I disapprove of it, but this used to be a fairly small town until recently, so people are probably happy to have traffic lights at all.

Be that as it may, one of the drivers (probably not from around here) put the petal to the medal, or something like that, accelerating impressively. If I had stepped out as the green light recommended, both of us would have received a much reduced quality of life for a while onward. In my case quite probably a reduction to zero.  Luckily I was more aware of the situation than him, this time. At other times it has been the other way around, although probably not often.

I don’t hold it against the guy, he saw the green light and went ahead. There is no reason to believe that he was thinking to himself: “Self, someone might step out in that street and not only will you get blood all over the car, you will probably face a couple years behind bars, ruin your career and risk that your wife runs off with the mailman while you’re there. But it is all worth it for the glory of helping Evolution create a race of lightning fast pedestrian, through the amazing power of Natural Selection.”

No, we can safely assume that he simply saw the green light and thought, or rather felt without needing to form it into words: Driving now is MY RIGHT.

And this, dear congregation, is how bad things happen to be done by good people. When two people Have The Right to do something that is bound to collide.

This is obviously not restricted to traffic, although it gets very concrete there. But it appears on so many scales, from the clash of civilizations to “the homicidal bitching that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat”, to quote master Leonard Cohen in his aptly named song Democracy.

Many years ago, a young friend in the Christian Church here in Kristiansand had a revelation. And because it was so clear to him, and he did not try to make a long sermon from it, I remember it still.  “When two people meet in court, almost always both of them think they are right.” That’s it, exactly. Both of them had the green light.  Of course there is the occasional smooth liar who knows he is wrong but hopes nobody will find out. But that is not the rule.

For this reason, when someone loses in court, or in some other arena of conflict solving, they tend to become bitter and lose faith in society and fellow humans. In many cases they begin to be surrounded by a demonic aura, figuratively speaking. They are not only in a bad mood, but actively try to infect others with the same mood, not only through their words but through their tone of voice, facial expression and body language. In their suffering, they actually become a force for evil in the world.

I cannot honestly say that such a fate is better than death. It is, in one way: As long as you live, there is hope.  But the hope is very small for such people, who have lost a collision of the soul.

I wonder if I would have been like that if I had walked out in the street today and survived, perhaps minus the use of arms and legs.  If I would have spent the rest of my earthly life bitter and hateful, waiting for that evil, evil driver to go to hell and burn and burn for ever and ever. All the while being in Hell myself even in this life, burning and burning with the fire of hate and the poison of bitterness.

Luckily for all involved, none of that happened today. May it not happen to any of us.

Paladins, celibates and other abominations

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Moderately abominable paladin: Not so gay, but very very celibate.

One shall read much before the eyes pop out. I recently read an article by Dennis Prager.

This Prager fellow is spoken of with the greatest respect by my conservative friends, one would almost expect him to be some kind of hero of our time. Well, I suppose this may be the case under some circumstances.

In any case, it is strange how pieces of puzzles fall together as one lives one’s life, an effect often called “synchronicity” these days.

***

Does anything ever begin? But we can make a beginning on the day when I was quietly reading Dante’s most famous work, the Divine Comedy.  Now in the (so far slowly) declining years of my body, I am reading up on some timeless classics which every civilized person ought to know, but which I don’t. I mean, I am so busy now that we have all this spare time, so there just hasn’t been time for the pillars of western civilization. This includes Dante who pretty much defined the folk theology of the late Middle Ages. Some of his concepts, like the circles of Hell, have become part of common speech.

While reading my Dante, I found a drive-by reference to “Orlando” and his horn. This sounded vaguely familiar, but something was off. Could Orlando be, apart from a place with an airport, also the Italian name for Roland? Wikipedia sure thinks so. And Roland was someone I vaguely knew from my childhood. Well, not in person, but from the Norwegian folk song “Roland og Magnus Kongjen” (Roland and Magnus the King), also known simply as Rolandskvadet (song of Roland, see also the much longer French “Chanson de Roland”.)

No points for guessing why that particular song lodged in my memory.

Over the next days, I spent some hours reading up on medieval literature. I realized that the peers of Charlemagne’s court were the original paladins, which spawned not only a deluge of romance stories but also some legends that are more comparable to modern superhero stories or the Greek and Norse mythology. These men were seen as larger than life. Though at least some of them were real men from history, they were transformed into archetypes as the centuries passed. Legend became myth.

What does this have to do with Dennis Prager?  Less than he thinks, I would say. He referenced my beloved paladins in his article “Judaism’s Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism (and then Christianity) Rejected Homosexuality”. In this, he argues not only that the paladins in Chanson de Roland were gay, but that celibate men (and women) are less than human.

I can defend myself, but I would encourage Mr Prager to keep his hands off my paladins. It’s bad enough with the yaoi fangirls writing gay paladin fiction without a renowned Conservative adding fuel to the fire.

***

Now, I don’t think people and their works are generally pure good or pure evil. I like to think I am more nuanced than toddlers, people with borderline personality disorder, and American political bloggers. (I will assume, despite frequent anonymity, that these are three distinct groups.)

And Mr Prager’s article certainly has its good points, and is a welcome – maybe even necessary – contribution to the debate. In particular, someone had to point out that the ancient world was not like USA in the 1950es. Young people today may not know, but the world where Judaism first appeared was horrifyingly alien. Civilization was still young and somewhat experimental. Notably, women were literally treated as slaves: Not in the sense that hubby went from the dinner table straight to the couch without doing the dishes, but in the sense of being shipped off to some unknown house around the age of 9, there to be brutally raped and put to hard work, and harshly beaten if the work did not please their husband / owner and his family. Boys were somewhat better off, but were still subject to sexual abuse by older men on a regular basis. You may remember from history class that in ancient Greece, there was an elaborate system in which men of the upper classes would induce barely pubescent boys to love in the physical sense as well as the more romantic adoration or idealization. This was less regulated in other cultures, but the man-boy love association was a staple of coming of age in early civilizations.

From the dawn of civilization, religion has sought to exert a civilizing influence on human sexuality, among other things.  (Food being probably even more prominent.) In Bronze Age religions, this sanctification of sexuality took the form of temple prostitution and also public religious rituals of a sexual nature. In other words, rather than have the men roam freely and rape anything that couldn’t fight back, the Bronze Age religions encouraged them to instead visit the temple and have sex with one of the temple priestesses or cute boys (or sometimes sacred eunuchs) residing there.

Dennis Prager is, understandably, horrified by this practice. So was Yahweh’s prophets, and there are several references to these things in the Bible, some oblique and some pretty explicit. But if you  travel with your mind back through time, you will realize that the Bronze Age religions (usually centered on fertility goddesses) did what little they could to tame the male beast. In the stone age, people had lived in tribes where everyone knew everyone and most people were related. With the break-up of the small tribe, people were cast into a world of strangers, and the male libido, no longer under mom’s wakeful eyes, went wild. We have been working on getting this creature integrated in civilization ever since.

Be that as it may, a new age dawned in the Middle East with Judaism. Marriage already existed, but it was mainly a matter of ensured paternity, not a mutual union. Men were still visiting prostitutes as a matter of course. You will find this mentioned casually in the early books of the Bible. Judah impregnated his son’s wife thinking that she was a prostitute, and thus begat the lineage that would lead to King David and ultimately to Joseph of Nazareth. Samson, the Biblical hero who redeemed himself by killing himself along with a couple thousand infidels and a public building, had a well documented habit of sleeping around, which was fine as long as he stuck with prostitutes and did not get attached to them. When he fell in love with Dalilah, things turned nasty. But sleeping around was OK. Sometimes a man got to do what a man got to do.

The prostitutes are still among us, but they are not employed by the churches.  And the boys are definitely not accepted. (Contrary to some liberal media, the altar boys are generally not there for that purpose.)

Judaism, then, moved the “sacredness” of sex out of the temples and into the home. The sacred union of man and woman was now not a temple ritual, but marriage itself, which had before had a function more akin to slavery.

This is pretty much as far as we have come even today. It has taken its sweet time. Kings and the upper class used to have courtesans and concubines well into the middle ages, if not modernity. (It was usually more discreet in recent years.) The teachings of Jesus Christ about not even ogling other women have few adherents even 2000 years later, but I feel sure its time will come as well. We are talking about changes to basic human behavior, so millennia may be needed to complete the transformation.

***

It is an irony that the focus on homosexuality in the past century has sounded the death knell for the kind of deep affection between men which was idealized not just in the medieval paladin literature, but well into the cowboy age. A bond of love that is not sexual, but intimate in the ways of the soul. When modern liberals read about love between men in ages past, they naturally suppose that they are seeing gay characters, but this is not necessarily the case. Certainly I would have wished that at least conservatives would still be able to recognize this, but even that time may be over.

It is, incidentally, the same with children. Today, a father cannot even bathe his own children for fear that he may be imprisoned as a child molester, should he ever have a fall-out with his wife.  Women can still be affectionate toward each other and children, long may it last.

***

The sanctification of marriage necessarily means that any other lifestyle becomes suspect. Prager is not the first to bring up this. I was still young when I first read the Rabbinical saying that “a man who is unwed after the age of thirty is under God’s curse”. Certainly this was also the prevailing attitude of the Christian Church, and one of the reasons why I slipped out of there. (I still think of myself as a Christian, but not a Churchian, unfortunately.) Even if a man was celibate in word and thought (this was supposed to be possible, albeit only with divine intervention), he was still depriving a woman of a husband. This was a sin, unless one had a really good excuse.

Prager brings up the point that single men commit almost all coarse crime, like violence and drug crime. He seems utterly unaware of the possibility that the causation could be the other way: That most women would hesitate to marry a notorious criminal. (Many of them have girlfriends, though. I guess these are not the marrying type.) Even so, I think he may be onto something. Having a wife waiting for you at home may really make you less likely to do something that could get you imprisoned or dead. Conversely, the need to constantly impress new girls may be a powerful force to push young men into crimes.

That’s still a bit from assuming that being single means you have given your heart and soul to the powers of Death. It may be the Rabbis who think so and not Prager, but this is hard to say for sure from the text of the article.

Is a bachelor actually only half a human until he finds the woman who will make him complete?  I think that is the case for some. One of my friends, a good and admirable young man (though less young than when I first met him) certainly seems very troubled by it. Another is more quiet on the topic, but still hatches plans to get hitched. A third… actually, I cannot remember if there is a third. I think the rest may be either married (or nearly so), or still young, or… non-mainstream in various ways as regards their intimate behavior. And even among those, there are some who feel incomplete.

Not I. Well, perhaps a little. Like 98% complete or some such. I enjoyed hanging out with my female best friend a couple times a year, as I did ten years ago.  But being half a human? Dear complete humans, no offense, but don’t you already have your work cut out for you to keep up with the happiness I have been given, no matter how much sacred sex you have in your marriage? You better amp it up already.

And may Light have mercy on us all if I actually were to level up to my supposed human potential. ^_^

Roland set horn to bloodied mouth, and blew it in his wrath;
rent was wall and marble stones for a distance of nine days’ march.
-Roland & Magnus the King.

So, King Magnus, did the earth move for you too? ^_^

Happinesses

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Once I see the pleased looks on everyone’s faces, I become happy as well. It is better than beer and Danish pastries!

I don’t remember if I came across Happy Science when I searched on Google for “happiness science”, but I know it was just around that time. Most people who look for such a thing are probably unhappy, so unhappy that they seek a change in their life. Certainly I read that this is a common reason for coming to Happy Science (the Japanese sect of that name).  For me, however, it was the opposite. I was wondering: Why am I so much happier than my friends and random people I meet?

These days, you can even read about people’s feelings on their blogs and “social media” like Facebook or Twitter. This has really brought home to me the fact that many people, perhaps most people, are unhappy. And not only evil people, but nice and friendly people who you would think fate would reward with joy in their hearts, even in the midst of the trials of life.

There are differences, of course.  The old are happier than the young, except for the very old who suffer massive breakdown of their bodies and brains. Married men and divorced women are all happier than unmarried men, with divorced men the unhappiest of all. The middle class is happier than the seriously poor, although happiness does not increase with money from there on up. Europeans are happier than Americans, and people in northern Europe more than those further south. The happiest of all are the Danes, but then again they start the day with a beer. I wonder if they would beat Norwegians if you could find enough sober Danes to run the survey on them… Well possibly. They have the pastry, after all!

And now I come to the point. For my search was not in vain. I believe I have learned what caused me to be bursting with joy most of the time when I am not sick and getting sicker.  No, it is not pastries, but we’ll get to them soon.

Ryuho Okawa may have pointed out something obvious, but I had never heard it before:  Happiness comes from having read many books, more specifically books by high spirits (great souls, geniuses in the classical sense). Having done this, high spirits in Heaven (or your subconscious) can draw near to you, and their being close brings happiness.

Note that I use the religious and psychological viewpoints interchangeably. True religion and true psychology are one, as there is only one truth if you go deep enough.  But often we cannot get all the way to the bottom, and then there will be different truths.

So your library is your doorway to years and years of happiness, a life overflowing with joy.  Or at least if you are like me or Ryuho Okawa when he was young.

Another interesting teaching of Happy Science is that humans exist at different spiritual levels, based on the number of dimensions they inhabit. This is eerily similar to the theory of Spiral Dynamics, but actually originated before it.  Unlike Spiral Dynamics, Happy Science uses religious imagery in explaining this.  You may find it easier or harder to understand that way, but let me briefly mention the main levels as seen by Happy Science.

The 4th dimension: Time.  All sane adults and children above the toddler age or so have access to time, in addition to the three dimensions of the material world.  They are aware that their body and their social relations change over the course of time.  A person whose highest aspiration lies within the four dimensions of space and time can be said to live on this level.  Such a person may aspire to physical fitness, or wealth, or popularity, or other things. But their aspiration does not go beyond the boundaries of the material world of space and time.

For a 4-dimensional person, happiness will consist in acquiring more of what they aspire for in this world.  This could be the pleasures of the senses, of which Danish pastries probably come in near the top along with chocolate and sex and any combination of these.  But it could also be some more lofty goal that is still within the domain of space and time.

The 5th dimension is spirituality, or objective goodness.  This is called the realm of the good, because good people go beyond “it is all about me” and begin to see themselves from outside.  By having your highest mind in the fifth dimension, in spirit, you are able to reflect on yourself, as if seeing yourself from outside. Those trapped in the fourth dimension cannot do this. So being able to reflect on yourself is a dramatic breakthrough.

Those who belong in the 5th dimension derive joy from gratitude. When they see the joy in other people’s faces, they become filled with joy themselves. This is an awesome thing!  A large portion of the human population, although probably no more than half, has come to this.  It should be encouraged, for it is still easy to sink down into the world of space and time. Advertising and political propaganda and even some modern education try to drag people down this way, and the joy of being happy together with others is lost.

Paradise, as we normally think of it, is a state of sharing pure-hearted joy with other people.  One must be without hate to enter paradise, and find joy in seeing other people happy. Those who feel joy in seeing others suffer will not last long in paradise even if they get in.

One should bear in mind that paradise is not a place, like another planet, but a state of mind.  We have to get there NOW while we are alive. But if you derive happiness from seeing the smiles of everyone, you are there already.

The 6th dimension is Truth. It is also called the Realm of Light.  Again, this is not some other planet or something, but a state of mind. Those who belong in this realm derive an intense pleasure from learning the Truth. I mean that in a most literal sense.  Their soul thirsts for insight in the same way a body may thirst for water if wandering through dry places for a long time.  To find it is pleasure that spreads from within to draw the body along with it, resonating in the pure joy. It is a feeling that is sensual only by resonance, the body resonating with the mind.  We who belong in this dimension with our highest aspiration go “Wheeee!” when we discover a new piece of truth.  Most true scientists obviously belong here.

The 7th dimension is altruism. This is the realm of saints and bodhisattvas, people who no longer care about themselves except for the good of all others. They eat to live, so they can be of service to others. They learn to become wise, to be of service to others. These no longer do good because the joy in other’s faces make them feel good. Even if they are misunderstood, even if their goodness is repaid with hate or scorn, they don’t falter.  They wish nothing for themselves, except the joy of love, which is the joy of giving.

There are hints of this life in the ordinary, for instance a mother will not throw out a baby who screams, but try to comfort him even if she does not feel like it. But these are just shadows. It is hard to imagine a life of pure giving, the life of a saint.  Even at my age, I only see this from a distance. I don’t really live that kind of life myself, and I wonder if I ever shall. Possibly, if I live long enough. But right now it is pretty distant.

So I won’t go any further than that.  As you see, there are different happinesses for different people.  For some, the greatest joy in life is to eat Danish pastries. For others, it is to be surrounded by happy friends who can laugh innocently together.  And for some of us, it is learning about the hidden things in nature of in the human mind. And then for a few, happiness is entirely outside themselves, in the act of giving unconditional love, or compassion.

(Note that you don’t really move from dimension to dimension, you add them. So even if reading the Wisdom of Solomon makes you want to dance with joy, that does not mean you suddenly dislike pastries, or beautiful music, or friendship. You add new and ever stronger sources of joy to what you have. You grow.)

There are actually different layers within each of these rough groups, of course. So there is a wide range of things that can cause happiness. Conversely, when people fail to live according to their highest aspiration (perhaps because society tells them they should seek something else), they become unhappy. And this is very common today.

Reflect on yourself, what is it that truly makes you happy?  What does this tell you about who you really are? It is still possible to change, while you are alive. But first you need to get to where your heart is, before you can start moving forward. Hopefully that does not mean a massive investment in Danish pastries and beer, or you would probably not have been able to read this entry.