Journal II: God

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Sunday, October 31, 2010

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Chére Simone,

Timely speaking, I just got back from another journey, cet fois, we went to God. Relax, I'm not a renewed man with a purpose and a cleansed mind. But for technicalities I can say I encountered God in my trip.

Being that said, and just to prolong the hype, I shall give you some context first. The voyage's main intention was having the voyageurs encounter themselves, and if possible, their raison d'être. To their bad chance, they were dealing with a penguin who spends too much time with himself, talking and discussing with all of his other selves. As for the raison d'être... well, that's a subject for a longer trip, I thought at least. (A trip i've been living and postponing at the same time, all the time)

Anyway, I knew I still had to found something, something lower than deep, that perhaps didn't lie at the bottom de moi même. Maybe, like most things that construct me, first I had to think it, then make it exist, so to finally feel it. Plus, I was willing to make an effort, those days I had too much of a gray sky above my head and a disgust for everything.

So, like I always do, I did things ma façon. Silence may be fine for those who can't almost hear the voices in their heads, but mine are bitching loud and clear. So, I spoke to them. I asked for advise and deep analysis of what was really wrong with me. What was I doing about life, and from that which aspects were the one failing? Anyway, the WhitePenguin, the ComfrontationPenguin and the CarePenguin had an agitated discussion of what was going on.

Given the confidentiality of the rendez-vous, I can't really get into detail, but know that their agreements were able to heal I'mthePenguin.

Having that done, now we had to find God, his amour infini, and how it affects us. You know my relationship with God has become better with time, but we weren't in those terms, neither did we planned to be. But again, for the exercise's sake I made an effort.

First I had to define why the concept of "the infinite love of God giving me strength" gave me the jivies. And it had something to do with the fact that I related it directly to the image of a mythological god that is almighty and creator. And let me tell you something, that's precisely the face of God I've had a very hard time dealing with, I dislike it not only because it is without logic, but it also defies rational thinking, as well as it gives people excuse for doing the most stupid things for the longest time. (if offended, close this blog and go read some more ancestral gibberish, fundamentalist).

Anyway, what needed to be done was to make a clear delimitation of the things I accepted about God, and the things I didn't. While I'm fully aware that it all comes in the same package, I think it's rather stupid to dismiss it all just because part of its content (and fallacious).

My definition of God was that it was a collective concept, inserted in the intangible strings of culture, and thus impregnated in any person connected to such network. This concept is so global and powerful that it really doesn't matter is such Universal entity as "GOD" exists, if it has such a power within society and the bases of culture, then it is as real as it gets because, and only because, all we ever do as humans nowadays are social constructions.

So, this huge construction plays a main role in all aspects of human history and relations. And most of the doctrines that study it, include a message of love, and ultimately achieving peace. Peace and love, I can relate to and accept, thus I can coexist with this dens fabric of cumulative anecdotes and ideas, called God.

And so, because of my definition of God, it can't have any power or scope outside the fabric of society, thus it is not a creator, it has no infinite power, and can certainly not end the world with a blink of an eye. So I had to make a partition of the mythic God and the spiritual-loving God. One is confined to myths, stories, and the most reactionary of moral systems. While the other is an ever changing stream of hope and benevolence to humans. (Still doubting the point of my partition?)

Anyway, this was what I already thought. The people guiding this journey to Godville were religious, and I associate them with the spiritual God. So, when imposed with the task of thinking of the "infinite love given to you by God" it was a clash of concepts. Why? Because no fabric of social constructions can possibly become tangent strength, or make you feel loved if it is a collective, yet independent collection of personal believes. Or at least so I thought.

Then they came to me, the various times when people confess giving up, and finding strength in prayer, and in the love of God. And also the huge efforts people do to give love and praise to an invisible entity, to feel a purpose, or something else. And so I thought, that this God network is not only present in the ideas of people, but also in their affections. (naturally their affections are within their ideas, but I didn't though the relation was so close.) People feel safe with this network of love, because it is there.

Now, I don't mean that A's prayers and love to God will transfer trough the air particles to B, because B feels lonely and sad. What I mean is that B has to develop a sort of "self-esteem" system for when B needs it. And this "self-esteem", meaning the love the person feels from God, can only be made with the assurance of this love network; which is normally constructed by the rituals and traditions suggested by various doctrines.

And so it made sense, and at last I was able to make peace with the religious aspect of the journey. It was at that moment when I found God, wandering the forests.


how?

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in , , | Posted on Saturday, October 30, 2010

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This is somehow as we imagine it... but how?

Evolution through natural selection seemed so obvious, so understandable, clear and awesome. I even made (make) a strong judgment and criticism towards those who don't believe in evolution (don't ever let my philosophy prof. ever see I used the word believe, but you get my drill). I was told in class that evolution is a fact, as clear as that the earth spins around the sun, and I don’t argue that. I do believe in Dobzhansky’s statement “Nothing in Biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” But the ‘How?’ is the one currently intriguing me deeply.

I find it both uncomfortable and beautiful that I’m having these types of questions whose answers are not to be found in textbooks, and that when I google them, I find parts of the answer in the latest issue of Science or Nature. I like talking to my friends about the confusion, the new ideas, the classes, etc. and doing our political speeches defending the existence of a class that we want to take (and are supposed to take) in 7th semester.

And I think about Darwin, Lamarck, Molecular Biology research, Epigenetics, Science and Nature, and science and nature. And I smile. :)

Autumn time

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Friday, October 29, 2010

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Sitting in an autumn bench, they observed the manipulated paper while chatting about the entities forming the universe. He talked about the 4th dimension and how we can perceive it in one only direction. She added that almost all social constructions are based on that fact: we only see time as a forward vector.

But to know physics, is to know that time is in "both" of the directions. Or at least that's what the normal science has told us so far. And so back to them, in their natural surrounding of dead leaves and blank stares, they proposed how would the world (by world meaning human existence) be if we could perceive time in both directions. Assuming of course uncertainty would have developed into humans in this hypothetical case.

"We'd see our birth and dead at the same time, and everything in between would be a group of independent events without memory, determined solely by chance"

"It would have to work as a perpetual infancy if we were supposed to live for some time, we'd be unconscious entities"

"Maybe we'd be kids at first... and when we finally became conscious... and grew up, in that same moment

"we would die" they both said at the same time looking at the realization in the face with fright. and curiosity.

Them they remained silent for an instant. Thinking, if maybe, we're delusional about not being able to percieve time in both directions. Maybe it's just an instant, in less than a second, and then it's gone.

Or is it all an independent event with no memory, but fake identities and sorrows?

Capturing something captured

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in , , | Posted on Thursday, October 28, 2010

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Does taking bad [i know 'bad' makes no difference, but i'm appealing to pity] pictures from videos count as photograph?

Dark rooms

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Wednesday, October 27, 2010

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Again, thinking about science and knowledge, and the philosophy behind it.

I'll be honest: I'm no philosopher. You caught me, clever fox. If I were maybe I could precise my thoughts about it, and maybe I'd know the book where all these ideas converge and I'd just tell you what to read.

But that's too hypothetical.
So, instead this:

Science, as the method of questioning and creating knowledge based on evidence, has been like finding strange objects in a dark room. Except many people would think that once you know an answer the whole room lights up, it doesn't. When you find an answer, and form a convincing theory of what is in that room, you only have that, a theory.

Then others will proceed to test such knowledge. If nobody finds an inconsistency, then the knowledge stays. But it doesn't mean that it is actually describing the whole phenomenon, or in this case object in the dark room; it only means nobody has yet found a different or more complete explanation.

Something like being blindfolded in an already dark room, and touching around stuff. There are some fluffy things, viscously rough walls, a vibrating wave of air and an tangible feeling you are going to fall any second. There, then you find the technique of semiotics and the resolution that everything is just a network of common thoughts, that or just the string theory. Who knows?
Actually it would be more like making some first assumptions, making inferences and making up the rest to explain you are in a cheap restaurant.

And here comes the importance of making a difference between covering a "map" of the whole room and all the findings and just turning on the lights. The maps may be accurate, but there's always something you probably missed. Now, I'm using light because we are a society based on visual references, but it is rather a silly metaphor for being able to look at the answers of everything with certainty.

It's not just for science, (although the way I see it is all science), in general we're all just feeling unknown entities in a dark room, trying to make sense of it.

Until someone finds an inconsistency.

A toast

Posted by Mrs. Kite | Posted in , | Posted on Tuesday, October 26, 2010

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A toast: [inspired by La vie boheme lyric, and life]

Go with the flow,
fight for the unknown,
and cheers!
Dance as if no one were watching,
sing as if no one were listening,
and live every day as if it were your last.
To days of inspiration,
making something out of nothing,
to going insane, going mad.
To no absoultes, to Absoult
to choice.
To being an 'us' for once,
insted of a 'them'.
To apathy, to entropy,
to empathy, ecstasy

To life!

Let's not forget what is it all about

Posted by I'm the penguin | Posted in | Posted on Monday, October 25, 2010

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" Finally, when we examine the normal science, we would like to describe this investigation like a tenacious and fervent attempt to force nature to enter into the conceptual frames provided by professional education"(T.S Khun 1962)

Should we see science as a cumulative compilation of knowledge that has grown through history? If so, wouldn't we be conceptualizing science as an entity build by history, with a sole destiny from the start? Would that be going against the very definition of science - ask, work and get rid of paradigms-?

In such case that we would only see past discoveries as myths believed by the undeveloped, we'd be discrediting observations and results that, in their time, were well structured science. Plus, by that same line of thought, we'd have to assume much of what we know today are still myths, for much more explanation to the universe and the entities that conform it is needed.

So, what's left?

Observing the periods of time in which some certain school of thought was believed in its own context, while intertwined with future investigation, stood on its own, as well made science. Only in that way could we learn properly about the history of science, and see it as an everlasting project that hasn't reached a limit or peak at this time.

Formal (normal) education insists on lecturing and describing this process as a cumulative sequence that has led to what we know today, when in reality science is not about an accumulation of knowledge, but a process of reasoning, asking questions and working to get reasonable answers, even if these defy established knowledge.



...
So, lately I've been reading T. S. Khun
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