Groundwork

Two things before I get started: 1) I plan on blogging the 7^th & 21^st of each month.  2) If you want to be notified whenever there is a new post, click on the “Posts(Atom)” button at the bottom of the page and follow the instructions.  It is an RSS feed that will send a notification directly to your email.

I’m not sure if I have ADD or Dyslexia.  Or maybe I have an undiscovered disease, like “Mid-lexia.”  It’s a condition where a person always seems to “wake up” in the middle of a story in progress.  It’s a constant exercise of waking, looking ahead, grimacing at the future, and then struggling to back peddle in order to discover the cause of this unsavory sequence of events.  It’s not unlike waking up on a loosely constructed raft, playfully drifting down a large river.  Then suddenly realizing it is headed toward a raging waterfall.  Does this sound familiar?  Maybe it’s not a disease at all.  Perhaps “Mid-lexia” is how reality plays out, but most people don’t take the time to look at it, or don’t want to look at it.

The Matrix is, in part, about “Mid-lexia.”  Neo wakes up in the middle of a story that has been ongoing for years.  The Wachowski brothers (or Sophia Stewart) did a good job capturing lives in the state of waking up to reality and trying to figure it out.  Unfortunately, their conclusion at the end of the third movie was a bit convoluted and unsatisfying.

The TV show, Lost was another beautiful example of “mid-lexia.”  When people are blasted out of their routine, they become aware of a much bigger story going on around them.  But again, the writers finalized the series with a big disappointment.  The entire program was riveting up to the cheep and unsatisfying last episode.  It was a complete and utter letdown.  It was some type of new age - we’re all really dead - but don’t realize it - moving onto the next state of reality - type thing.  There was no real answer.  Zero payoff.  Nothing.  A cheese puff with no cheese.  They may as well have said, “…And it was all just a dream…”

In addition, they also threw in the notion of a coalescence of religions.  Very apropos.  (Look at the symbols in the room at the end, particularly the stained glass window).  It is apparent to me that individuals, who suggest that all religions can just meld together like a happy little bridge club, don’t really understand the religions they try to group.  All religions discriminate and all are exclusive in some form or another.  Don’t think so?  Even a Unitarian Universalist discriminates against those who are singular in their beliefs.  Even relativists are disdainfully absolute with absolutists.  I digress.  Whatever the case may be, Lost’s ending was at the very least, vacuous.  Like, The Matrix, it was good at identifying the problem, but did not provide satisfying answers.  But it is perfectly fitting for our time.

Both the writers of The Matrix and Lost didn’t resolve their stories because they couldn’t.  Many others cannot put the pieces together either.  Teachers sit around a scratch their heads at the behaviors that manifest their ugly little heads.  Parents throw up their arms in despair.  People watch the news and ask, “What the hell is going on?”  There is so much confusion in our thinking today.  It appears that we are in a tailspin toward total chaos, and I desperately want to do my part to uncover how we got here.

(Side note):  Some skeptics scoff at anyone who seems overly concerned with the problems of the world.  With the wave of the hand they dismiss it as alarmist.  “Here comes Chicken Little,” they say.  It’s a nice way to discredit someone and avoid dealing with real concerns.  I think alarmist types are just as kooky as anyone else, but, based on my experience, I would have to error on the kooky side rather than be grouped with “the anesthetized masses.”  But a person doesn’t have to be either alarmist nor aloof, just, Awake.

(Side Side note): “Uniformitarianism.” is typically used in scientific circles.  It is a notion that the universe has remained constant throughout all time.  It is necessary to support the theory of Evolution.  This principle can be applied to the sociopolitical realm as well.  You can hear people say, “The economy is down, but it will recover.”  Or, “Politics will ebb and flow, but things will basically remain the same.”  Or, “We’ve had catastrophes, but we’ll always recover.”  It is comfortable to believe that life will always be “business as usual,” a notion kept by people with a drink in their hand and their back to the waterfall.  They sink back into the easy chair and start clicking the remote.  They’re looking for shows that will please their itching ears.  Status Quo is much more palatable than a world that requires our discomfort in order to do what is right.  Like Cyper from The Matrix says, “I don’t want to remember nothing.  Nothing.  You understand?” I, on the other hand, am not satisfied to remain in the little pod of goo and be a battery for the “machines” or any human entity.

Com’on John, are you getting a little carried away?  The Matrix is just a movie.

Is it hard to believe that there are powerful people out there who are never satisfied?  Can you imagine people who want it all and will stop at nothing to get it, who believe everyone is expendable?  Heck, I knew people like that in high school and at the “Christian” colleges I attended. These powerbroker types are on my street, at work, and in my church.  They’re everywhere.  Just look through history.  Watch the news.

(Side notes ended).

So, as I was saying, I want to do my part to uncover how we got here.  The confusion in our world is due to the journey away from rationality and reason.  Once that is gone, everything else crumbles.  Sit back and listen to other people talk sometime.  They might as well be saying, “blah, blah, blah.”  We throw around axioms (basic propositions assumed to be true) like terms of endearment.  They are full of relative meaning, which is relatively meaningless to everyone else.  Our airwaves are filled with pop psychology and pop theology and pseudo-hybrid-eclectic-hedonistic-infused-psycho-spiritual-philosophy.  It’s like eating a fart.  It has no substance, and it leaves a bad taste in your mouth.

Do we ever think of the implications of what we say?  Here’s one:  “As long as it makes you happy…” What?  Are you kidding me?  Have you ever been around someone whose moral guide is “Happiness?”  They’re either a baby or a criminal.  Both of them need their hand smacked.  Our prisons are filled with spoiled brats who never learned restraint. (So is the government, for that matter).  So, to make themselves “happy” they take whatever they want: a purse, a car, a body, a life.  Don’t you think they think it makes them happy?  What do people actually mean when they say happy? I’d guarantee you that criminal’s thought their crimes would make them happy at the time.  I believe Hitler was trying to make himself happy.  I believe Charles Manson was doing what made him happy when he raped his first young man, in prison, with a knife to his throat, or when Sharon Tate’s baby was ripped out of her stomach.  “As long as it makes you happy?”  Are you kidding me?  Do people think of where their words lead? 

(Side note: Someone might say, “As long as it makes you happy…and it doesn’t hurt anyone…” OK, now we’re talking about morality.  Where exactly does that morality come from?  And why should I accept your morality?  That opens up another whole can of worms.  More on that later).

Back to the topic, where do the axioms come from?  Where do we get our pop philosophies?  I dare you to start digging.  It’s like pulling up an ivy vine.  The more you pull, the further the root travels.  When you get to the end of it, you are in a completely different place than you imagined.  I’ve had conversations like that.  The more it progresses, the more the conversation twists and turns until I don’t even know what we’re talking about anymore.  It’s like we don’t even have the same vocabulary.  I converse for 30 minutes before I realize that my counterpart and I have virtually no common ground upon which to stand.  There is a reason for that.  It is imperative that we look beneath.  What is the foundation upon which our confusion is based?  Only then can we talk intelligently.

As I sort through hundreds of my scratchings that I intend to post, I realize that I have to establish a common vocabulary and common epistemology (theory of knowledge).  Do we exist? Can we really know anything?  Are their absolutes?  However unqualified I am to unpack all of these philosophical quandaries, it is crucial that I lay some groundwork.  Otherwise people will back into the no man’s land of relativity where a person can always escape behind statements like, “We can never really know…” or “You can have your own truth, I’ll keep mine.”  Ironically, that is one of those underlying principles that lead to a large waterfall.

Relativity, like much of philosophy, is a word game.  One interprets and reinterprets, hypothesizes, analyzes, synthesizes, and reinterprets again.  It is often what people do when they get caught in the act of steeling a cookie from the cookie jar.  They just try to talk until they get the desired outcome.  ‘I misunderstood…she gave it to me…I thought you meant no cookies while you were in the room…I forgot…’ Kids squirm to get out of trouble, and so do philosophers and kings and immoral men.  If you talk long enough, anyone can make a molehill out of a mountain.  You can call “up,” “down.”  You can debate over what the meaning of “is” is.  You can make God into a Myth.