Ah, sweetness

**For those who don't follow the comments section, here's part of a response to a recent comment, and some expansion:

Surely you don't begrudge others from all organized religions from feeling content, even happy because of their beliefs? You can't be that bitter?

Got nothing to do with being "bitter." Just as I don't begrudge someone from getting drunk or high in the isolation of their own home or among friends, people can take comfort in their religious delusions. It's when they foist it on others - children and non-believers (think Santorum, Dobson, etc) - that makes them begrudge-able. Any bitterness is sweetened by the clear fact that this organization and its influence in the world is rapidly sinking into impotence.

The fact that a delusion offers "content, even happy" feelings does nothing to convince a true "seeker." It's "truth" we seek, not "truthiness" (as Colbert would put it). And so far, all I've been able to discern that is "true" is what I wrote in a recent song ["Choppy Waters" http://youtu.be/t15Ql0jU7x4]:

"There's no one in charge,
You're a runaway barge,
And mostly you're on your own."

At this late date, the conclusions I've come to are expressed in words at the end of the song::

"Here's a little bit of wisdom I've seen:
From time to time and storm to storm
There's a little bit of peace in-between
That's the time to float [another song]
Make love in your boat
And do it like it's gonna be your last
Next storm run-in you could be succumbin'
And nothing exists in the past."

Chronicle

**I've been asked when it was that I started blogging about my disaffection and break from Christian Science. You can start by looking at my archives from 2007. Pretty much everything I've had to say on this blog has to do with my disengagement from all beliefs in a divine principle, spirituality of all sorts and the delusion of "spiritual healing."

I'm pretty much over the ranting, but am willing to engage with others who may be sensing that the "spiritual" ground on which they stand may be dissolving into its "native nothingness." (haha.)

These days I am happily retired from full time work and spend most of my time writing and producing original music, which is the closest thing to my most natural abilities. You can chck up on that work at these websites: RamonaStGeorge.com and moppoville.com.

I also work part-time at a cool technology store that I am not allowed to identify.

Sorry about that…

** Although I get email notices about comments to this blog I have often been too busy to do the followup work of even publishing them. I took the time today and while I still can't get free to comment on the comments, I do appreciate them - even the stupid, nasty and fact-deficient ones. Hope to get back soon.

Foundations of a deluded life

** I’ve commented that my re-reading of the "Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov left me underwhelmed (or only just whelmed in spots). I had read the books as a young teenager but I’ve been wondering why it had occupied a special place in my adult psyche. The re-read at this time so much later in life has cleared that up for me.

It’s all about mental power.

The trilogy posits two “Foundations” as the basis of a new world order. The First Foundation was meant to develop physical power, the evolution of “science” if you will. The Second Foundation’s purpose was to develop mental power. As much of a lover of physical science as I always was, the prospect of power that could be exercised without physical components was startling to me as a youngster. If you tend to feel inadequate, as many teens do, the idea of wielding power just by thinking has great appeal. Even so, the idea lay dormant for many years.

In my mid-30s, I came across Christian”Science,” and learned that it purported to use “mental science” (in those very words) to accomplish wondrous feats in the physical world. Of course, the idea of “healing” through mental power was enormously appealing. and the fact that one could develop this power by studying the writings of its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, seemed a way for me to get out of the grip of helplessness and hopelessness that accompanied the emotional disasters of two failed marriages and the impending disaster of a third relationship. Mix in the insecurities and craziness of my advertising career and I was caught in a perfect storm of conversion.

It took only ten years but I rose to some prominence in the “movement” and not only became a “teacher” of this “mental science” but a writer and public speaker on the subject. In 1989, following the needless death of a child under my “care,” began another ten-year period of intense denial and magical thinking. However, my own “foundations” of belief started to crumble, hardly noticeable at first, but increasingly as reality started to impinge on me. With the political shenanigans at the headquarters church where I worked, and my eventual expulsion from their employ and subsequent forced retirement, the dismantling of my life as a Christian Scientist became more visible to me and others. Much of that disintegration is chronicled here and need not be rehashed. The point of this post is to recognize a little-suspected component of the great delusion that wasted a good part of my life.

Sci-fi travels

** I’m almost finished with the third book in the “Foundation” trilogy by Asimov. I was curious to re-read these for several reasons. The first time I read them was when I was about 12-14, so I wanted to know how much I would remember. Precious little, it turns out. In fact, I wonder if I even read the “Second Foundation.”

Another reason was to compare the vision of the future from a 1950s perspective with today’s reality. Not even close. There’s still plenty of “paper,” phones (although some have video). Spaceships come and go via nuclear power and “air taxis” flit freely about cities.

Having read a bit more science fiction in the interim I was interested in comparing past visions of the future with present expectations. Of course, today’s version of the future sounds plausible enough, based as it is on present technology and social organization. But much of what I’ve read places little emphasis on physical technology but tends to deal with psychological and sociological matters. In fact “Anathem,” by Neil Stevenson, takes place in a world of primitive physical technology – a world of secular, low-tech monasteries. I think today’s science fiction is dealing more with ideas than with gee-whiz gadgets.

Along the way, I note that Asimov, though widely respected – almost revered – wasn’t such a good fiction writer, at least by the standards of other writers like Dick, Card and Stevenson. A good story, plausible, interesting characters are much in evidence compared with Asimov’s cardboard cutouts.

Granted, I’m not a voracious sci-fi reader, but I do think I’ve read some of the best. I’m about to start “Speaker for the Dead,” by Orson Scott Card and I’m in the process of reading Sherri Tepper’s “Grass.” The latter, BTW, is almost Victorian in prose style – almost poetic in fact – with little emphasis on technology.

I’ll welcome further suggestions on good sci-fi.

NOTE: I will follow up this post with some discoveries I made about myself in re-reading the Asimov books.

Guns & Revolution

** The NRA and its apologists claim that the Second Amendment has to do with citizens having weapons to fight an oppressive government. But look at what is happening in the Middle East these days. The rebellions aren't armed conflicts - well, the rebels aren't armed anyway.

In order for citizen uprisings to have a chance at armed conflict they have to be as well equipped as the governments they are trying to combat. But this is never the case. Governments always have more and better guns, more and better-trained troops, better intelligence, etc. Even with a roomful of assault rifles, Mr. Joe Rebel will be no match against even one military tank, much less against one accompanied by a platoon of soldiers, helicopters, satellite communications and observations systems and the whole panoply of stuff we have empowered the government to own and operate on our behalf. After all, we want the most and the best armaments. So if, as Second Amendment evangelists claim, the Constitution allows the citizenry, as individuals, to be armed, it has set them up to be losers in any encounter with the government in power.

That's not the kind of thinking that imbues most of the rest of the constitution. Instead, if the Second Amendment is about local militias, as it clearly states, then it would seem to be providing for states, as governing entities, to defend themselves against small uprisings - maybe by people like today's gun hoarders. It's about states, not individuals. Individuals may be allowed to be armed, but to protect themselves against other individuals, not massed attacks such as would be part of a government's oppression.

In the Middle East, Tunisia and Egypt and Yemen so far, it is not "Second Amendment Remedies" that are working. It's the UNarmed populace taking to the streets, with the aid of the social media.

Face it, people want guns because they're afraid of other people with guns - but only a few people, not whole armies. Their Constitutional arguments don't really address this basic fear.

how does one stage a coup in such a tightly-held organization?

**Hi Anonymous, and welcome back. You are referring to what I called a "coup" in 2004. I was speaking almost figuratively. Two distinct factions had sprung up over the previous ten years. The newer one might be called "liberal," which held that the church needed to tear down the walls of exclusivity and let new ideas, people and programs come in to invigorate the church. And the other was, well, pretty much the opposite. They liked walls because they believed that any change from what the founder had done, prescribed or thought about would cause the fragile structure of the denomination and belief system to fall apart. As it turned out, both of them were right. A lot of big money from the heyday of Christian Science was still around and able to finance programs like the website I was involved with. The old guard raised countless squawks about how the religion was being watered down, but their objections were overruled by the new leadership, which had the cunning and force of will to hedge itself about with the wealth and ingenuity of several key players. I was part of that new guard, recruited for my rebel nature, willingness to be led and the flattery of being brought to some level of prominence in a new venture.

The reason both factions hastened the demise of the "movement" is that both were based on magical thinking, which couldn't withstand the ever-increasing prevalence of more realistic views of the world. The old guard believed that Mary Baker Eddy had invented something so radical that it was unique, and that its uniqueness - and therefore its very life - was preserved only by keeping it unadulterated, i.e. unchanged in the least degree. The new guard had believed that with just a few tweaks, Christian Science would become popular again. People would look past the nineteenth-century world view and see that it was basic christianity for the modern era, heedless of the fact that christianity itself was dying out because of its fundamental irrelevance and corrupted institutions. At the same time, it believed that many of the central tenets and systems should be preserved. So, for instance, it published Eddy's foundational book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, word for word as she had left it 150 years before. The problem is that the book was prohibited from ever being revised after her death - regardless of new information about how the world works. Her view of evolution, for example, was to ultimately blow it off even while admitting that Darwin had a reasonable explanation. Welcome to the two-mindedness of Christian Science. You can call Darwin a perceptive thinker and at the same time deny his validity because ultimately he was talking about the material world, which Eddy taught was essentially unreal. The liberals failed because they really weren't all that liberal, and all the lipstick they could trowel onto the pig of an outdated world view couldn't convince very many people that here was something they could reliably believe in and practice. Especially when it involved abstinence from the health care practices that have become the standard throughout the world.

So the "coup" came about because there were some other well-financed and savvy people (today we would call them tea-baggers) who were willing to take advantage of the succession system in the church and put a couple of its people on the Board of directors. These, in turn, raising the specter of fiscal irresponsibility (the church had squandered millions in its camouflage efforts) worked on enough of the remaining new guarders to turn on their liberal leader and throw her out. Once she was gone it was easy to undo all the innovations she had put in place. The walls went up again and there was universalrecognition that if the movement was going to die out, life for the old guarders should be kept comfortable to the end. We're talking about a very elderly population here, people generally not inclined to change anyway, and fierce about protecting their comfort. So, the world stopped hearing about Christian Science in either its new or its old form, and never missed it. It's just not an idea that has legs (the image of Darwin's fish comes to mind).

Safely inside its cocoon, the members congratulate themselves on their purity and go about their rituals as always. And Christian Science continues to die with each of their deaths.

I hope you see my point in the last several posts. It's not that anybody did anything wrong that caused the demise of Christian Science. Its basic premises cannot stand up to the realities that the physical sciences reveal. It's old. It's creepy. It's delusional. It's not only snake oil, it's snake oil that has far exceeded its expiration date.