Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Medium Articles

The following is a clickable reading list that maps out this blog’s more recent articles, the ones I've been posting on Medium, and this list will be updated as I add new ones. I’ve tried to arrange the readings in a logical order so that the more general, central, or background readings come before the others in each category. The older articles can be found here.














































































































 

God's Funeral
























































The Absurdity of God

































































































































Eastern Religions and Mysticism




The Absurdity of Godlessness





































































History



































































Ethics

























































Popular Farces
































































Movies and Television

















The Art of Writing


The Comical Sex Act













Political Travesties

The Theistic Priming of Oligarchy 




















































































































































































12 comments:

  1. Any easy and quick way of making these clickable? I know, I know...I'm way lazy!

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    1. There's no easy and quick way, but I suppose this list would be more useful if the entries were all clickable. I'll get to work on it but it could take a while.

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  2. No worries! I mean, I can always Google!

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    1. Actually, it's already done and it didn't take too long.

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  3. Hey there, I don't know if you remember me. I've been out and about. I've actually been reading through your musings again on my kindle and the philosophy group that meets at my house is going to discuss some of your writings this month. I need to put your newest posts on my Kindle and it's probably about time to donate again.

    I am trying to imagine how a conventional mental health professional, say a psychologist or social worker, would be impacted if they had internalized some of your ideas. Can you sense what I am asking? How would might such a professional, assuming he would a prototypical liberal scientistic atheist or Atheist+ person, how might he be impacted if he discovered or (more likely) fell into this kind of outlook?

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    1. Sure, I remember you. I took the Donate button down but I'll put it back up for a while when I put up the next pdf through Scribd. I'll try to get that done within a week or so.

      There's actually a branch of psychiatry called existential therapy that's based on the philosophy of existentialism. Here are some links:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existential_therapy

      http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Existential_Psychotherapy

      I don't know much about it, but I'd expect it to be far outside of the mainstream. The main approach is to bypass the mind and alter brain functioning with drugs. Plus, existentialists tend not to have specific advice on how to live, since they say a person's freedom to choose is absolute to the point of being solipsistic.

      But to address your question, I've had some run-ins with science-centered atheists and they generally aren't pleasant. Scientistic folk look down on all of the humanities, including philosophy. Here's a link, for example, to the comments on one of my articles which someone put on an atheist group at Reddit.

      http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAtheism/comments/190tic/should_atheists_mourn_the_death_of_god/

      There's a lot of reflexive hostility among atheists who lump philosophy in with theology. For example, the negative comments on that article at Reddit all stem from casual misreadings and ignorance. But it doesn't matter: any challenge to atheism is a challenge to science, in their minds, since science implies atheism, and science is beyond reproach; indeed, technoscience is the almighty source of progress. Any melancholy speculation about how atheism and reason generally make happiness difficult if not impossible for people with intellectual integrity is as rotten as the worst sort of fallacious argument for theism, in their view.

      So I'd expect a science-centered atheist who's a social worker would compare my writings to savage, tribal superstitions that hold back human progress. Technoscience alone makes everything better, and any contrary opinion is irrational and archaic. Meanwhile, I believe this scientism is embarrassingly untenable. In fact, my article next week will return to the issue of scientism and specifically to the role of speculation in knowledge.

      But if you're asking how such a person might change were my writings to persuade him, he might feel like he's losing his religious faith. There's an emotional commitment to technoscience, a trust in its connection with progress. Were that trust to waver and were the atheist still to reject theistic religions, I assume he'd be forced down the existential well to suffer good, old fashioned anxiety. That anxiety is the burden of adulthood in the existential sense, the beginning of wisdom.

      And this has been known for thousands of years. It's the esoteric teaching of all the major religions. That's why the religious insiders withdrew from popular society, to become ascetic monks. Anxiety is the pain of knowing that most worldly human behaviour is farcical.

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  4. Hey, just found your blog. Good stuff, although I hope at some point you reevaluate your body of work and edit it into a concise and consistent flow. I feel like a lot of the subtlety is lost among a wall of disjointed asides and (relatively) banal introductions, as each post basically assumes the reader's mind is a tabula rasa.

    Anyway, I have a few thoughts you would probably be interested in pondering from multiple angles. The thrust of the argument is that we are nearing the end of Scientism as a valid strategy for society due to its inability to deal with its own literal and metaphorical pollution.

    You've noted that Scientism is based on a Cartesian duality that assumes universality of Truth and normative logic, but the end game of our society dictates the destruction of economic and social norms that gave rose to the ideology in the first place.

    And then of course global warming is the ultimate nightmare; cutting into modern science's Achilles heel with repeated vigor as the days go by.

    It's pretty clear you're keen on the trespasses that Scientism makes, but it'd be interesting to see your take on what it means for the near future. I can state more details (including how scientists themselves are on the forefront of this understanding) if you're interested. Cheers.

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    1. I'm glad you found my blog, Mikkel. I think maybe my best overall summary so far is "The Rant Within the Undead God," which I wrote for another blog. You can find it up at the top of this Map of the Rants, in the Summary section.

      It's interesting that you focus on Scientism. I'd say the deeper problem is just philosophical naturalism, which is philosophy's set of more neutral generalizations about the scientific picture of reality. Scientism is a quasi-religion for science-centered folks who aren't so self-aware. Scientism actually denies the legitimacy of normative questions, at least on the surface, while presupposing pragmatic values and the supremacy of science in all cognitive areas.

      My main goal here is to explore a more honourable philosophy/religion that builds on naturalism and deals with the resulting existential predicament with more personal authenticity (less self-delusion).

      I agree many of my blog writings have disjointed asides, because they're written as philosophical rants, not as polished academic pieces. I sort of go where my muse takes me. But I wonder how you'd prefer the intros to read. I try to make each article now more or less independent even though they all hang together.

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    2. Well it's a good thing you didn't write it as an academic piece or I imagine that 90% of your readers would have never gotten through the first paragraph.

      I have read through quite a few of your essays now. My main critique is that there are many times that you pull in too many extraneous references to current society (oligarchy etc) that contribute nothing to the substance of the essays and in fact often derail the unfolding conceit. On the flip side, now there are some amazing pieces you've scattered around the essays on a huge range of intellectual discourse but they are encapsulated. I'd say that 90% of the time I thought you made a weak argument, with obvious counterpoint, a different essay revealed you understood the counterpoint precisely but stated in a different context.

      The sum of the experience is that I'm still not exactly sure what your point is. Perhaps you are still grasping with clear synthesis and that is why rants are so valuable!

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    3. Actually I just stumbled upon the essays that (I think) clarify your brand of existentialism by pulling in aestheticism as self creation. This is literally what I'm working on with my partner in physical form. Here in NZ we're creating a tea house that aims to teach people basic skills in many physical arts and then combine it with a medley of professional and amateur art as aspirational and inspirational.

      Several of our interests are about science as art and have a decidedly mid 19th century-early 20th century flair. They praise knowledge but in the form of physicality and aestheticism instead of prediction or control.

      The hope is that it will be safe harbour for reassessment of self and a place to lean on others to gain insight to go through the horror and uncertainty that entails.

      The motto is a quote from Wilde, "Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force.

      There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine."

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    4. See my Aug 2 replies to High Arka in the comments of "Horror for the Codes of Creation," for a shorter summary of my viewpoint. It's true that I'm still exploring these ideas, so it's a work in progress. Also, you might want to keep an eye out for a novel I'll be self-publishing soon on Amazon. It's the first of what I expect will be a series. The first book is set in a zombie apocalypse scenario, but the other books will get into science fiction and fantasy, and my philosophy and mythology will shape the backgrounds.

      Your tea house sounds quite interesting. I take it your philosophy of tea drinking differs significantly from the Japanese one, which seems to emphasize form in a Taoist or Confucian way. Yes, I suppose Wilde was not at all one to conform to social expectations. I should probably study his philosophy and write something about it.

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  5. Thank you for sharing your work...I'm a bit dumbstruck now but will post again should I have anything coherent to write...CLMara

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