ideas

You are currently browsing the archive for the ideas category.

The cross on the grassy knoll

October 20, 2008 by chet

Isn’t religion one big old conspiracy theory?

My dad was in town for a couple of days and one night he told us about something he’d heard on late night AM radio. It was about an archeologist who “re-discovered” some ancient stones from Mesopotamia sitting in a British museum. The stones were covered in script that no one could read. So he started working on translating them.

After years of hard work he finally had a breakthrough and began to understand what he was reading. And it wasn’t about kings and warriors and conquests. It was about aliens and dying planets and genetically engineered workers mining precious minerals from the soil. And how the two ruling aliens were brothers and they worked different parts of the earth until they had a falling out. One of them engineered his workers to procreate so that he wouldn’t have to replace them all the time.

WTF!? At one point G interrupted him and asked if he has started smoking pot. lol.

No, he isn’t. But he tells this story with the same vigor and certainty as a stoner relating how he was chased down a hallway by an elephant-sized pumpkin muffin. “It happened man. I was there.”

Of course he couldn’t remember any names, but I thought that it all sounded very “scientological”. Turns out it’s not. It’s just yet another guy who has come up with an “aliens created humans” story. Only this one has been debunked by all the other smart people who’ve come along and translated the Sumerian language.

This all led us into a discussion on what difference it really makes if it’s true or not. So what possible difference would it make in your daily lives if your race was actually a creation of aliens? If the aliens are still among us and we can’t see or experience them then it doesn’t matter. Life as we know it goes on.

“But we don’t know” he says.

“So what.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? Don’t you deserve to know?”

Hrm. Let me see if I’ve got this right. The aliens, if they exist, have no direct impact on the course of my life. Indirectly they have an impact in the way that I modify my life in the way that I perceive them … or don’t.

Um … just like god. God has no direct impact on my life. Though there can be indirect influence based on how I perceive god and how I choose to reflect that perception in my life. Which really isn’t influence at all but rather my own free will choosing god as my excuse to do what I want to do. Right? Maybe.

So, if this aliens-genetically-engineered-humans-to-mine-gold-for-their-dying-planet is just a galactic conspiracy theory isn’t god also?

Hrm. This could explain why I have such a viscerally negative reaction to conspiracy theories (and to the idea of god).

Tags: , , , , , ,

Why do people vote Republican?

September 28, 2008 by chet

Perhaps this will explain … http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html

I still don’t know what to think about this. I’ll have to digest it more before I write up my thoughts. Stay tuned.

Edit: Here’s another piece of the puzzle; an opinion piece in the NY Times by David Brooks titled “The Class War Before Palin”.

This country must naturally be made up of very different people; educated, uneducated, poor, rich, etc. But when we two political parties have a lock on the system so that they are the only two parties it is a travesty for them to become the party of the educated vs the party of the uneducated.

Don’t we deserve better than that? Just take a look at the other times in history when the uneducated have overwhelmed the educated in social and political realms: the 1960′s Chinese Cultural Revolution
and the 1970′s Iranian Revolution.

Both events began with a political/social figure grasping for power by utilizing the easily inflamed prejudices and intolerances of the uneducated masses. But what was once a “base” soon just became an angry mob and the results were great cultures brought low. Only now, 30 to 40 years later are bot cultures starting to recover.

Tags: , , , , ,

Lead by example

August 27, 2008 by chet

Tonight Bill Clinton said, “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.”

This really speaks to me as it is one of my own personal philosophies. It guides how I behave and what I share about my feelings around topics like politics and religion. When I was a child my parents tried to raise me as a Baptist. I went to Sunday school while they went to “big people” church. Eventually, I convinced them to take me out of Sunday school and let me accompany them to “big people” church. The reason is because I thought the Sunday school people were crazy. They kept talking about things I should feel but I never did.

For better or for worse that experience has framed my relationship with the church and with people of the church. Hypocrisy was more the rule than the exception. I would hear a lot on Sunday about how people were suppose to behave and believe. But then during the rest of the week I’d see how they really acted and really believed.

Eventually I had no choice but to turn my back on the church. I can’t pretend to believe in something that isn’t real. Something that pretends to be what it isn’t. That’s not authority to me. That’s not leadership to me.

It took a long time but eventually I found the leadership, the guidance I was seeking. And now it guides my life in perfect harmony with the idea that example is stronger than words. And it has nothing to do with the christian church.

To those folks out there that like to talk about how great their religion is I say, “really!? show me!” Don’t talk about it. Do it. Live it. Your example will shine brighter than your words.

Run Away

January 16, 2007 by chet

What a great idea! This guy sets up his camera, sets the self-timer for 2 seconds and then runs away from the camera as fast as possible.

Joseph Goldstein on Karma

January 24, 2006 by chet

From Joseph Goldstein’s Insight Meditation …

The Buddha identified karma as volitional activity. That is, each volition in the mind is like a seed with tremendous potential of the same way that the smallest acorn contains the potential of a great oak tree, so too each of our willed actions contains the seed of karmic results. The particular result depends on the qualities of mind associated with each volition.

Greed, hatred, and delusion are unwholesome qualities that produce fruits of suffering; generosity, love, and wisdom are wholesome factors that bear fruits of happiness.

The Buddha called the understanding of this law of karma, the law of action and result, the “light of the world,” because it illuminates how life unfolds and why things are the way they are. The wisdom of this understanding allows us the freedom to make wise choices in our life.