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Archive for June, 2008

Jun 21

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Underlying Reality Beneath It All

As I have gotten older and had a chance to catalog my dreams, I’ve noticed that each dream, though bizarre and individual in narrative, are beginning to self-assemble. It’s as if I am given only brief, random glimpses into another life – a life that keeps on moving even when I’m not around. This is not a normal life and perhaps the oddity of it all comes from our conscious attempt to make sense of the nonsensical. However, over time, recurring geography, architecture, people, machines, and themes all overlap into something more cohesive than random.

I doubt all of the pieces will ever completely fall into place, but I do wonder what it all means. I guess it is easy to dismiss as meaningless and silly the though of meditating and focusing on these dreams. But at one time it also seemed silly and meaningless to focus a telescope on a dark section of sky. If there is something to be seen, surely we can see it. Of course, we could not see it and the film on these night-long, telescopic exposures revealed the most amazing and wonderful things. Distant galaxies, quasars, pulsars, supernovae – these would all be hidden from sight without astronomy’s patient meditation on the heavens. And, taken apart, these cosmological phenomenons all seemed utterly mysterious and random – it’s only when we realized that there was an underlying reality beneath it all, did it begin to make some sense.

I’m sure we are still many millions of years away from really understanding it, but perhaps there is a psychological parallel to our cosmological discoveries. Many great thinkers have already said that the greatest frontier left to conquer is the mind. Who knows what amazing and wonderful things await us there. Here is the latest glimpse from that bizarre world, my dream from last night…

I was in someone’s backyard, somewhere in some suburb somewhere in the United States. We sat at a picnic table discussing the demon. I had requested a mandala tattoo from the tattoo artist that had a studio there in the backyard. He asked his assistant to begin. Before I knew it, the tattoo covered my entire left arm including the palm of my hand. I had to explain that my career would not allow such things. The artist seemed disappointed, like she had done me some favor that I was not happy about. She searched for a way to strip off the first few layers of skin to remove the tattoo. I asked her to complete the mandala anyway. I was weak. The mandala had to be complete before I could fight the demon.

I had a piece of raw chicken with an embedded switch that vibrated when the demon was close. I clicked the switch to the highest level of sensitivity. I was sitting next to the tattoo artist. He seemed worried and he watched the chicken to check the vibrations. We noticed that the chicken stopped vibrating – I think the batteries ran out. Then we ran into the house and saw the flying demon approaching in a flying limousine. My weapon was a samurai sword. He was too fast and I could not hit him – no matter how hard I tried. He bounced around like Nightcrawler from X-Men.

I did go to sleep reading Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse, so perhaps this dream makes perfect sense.

Jun 21

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Summer ’08 Reading List

Most of these books are new to me. Instead of re-reading the classics – again, I’ve decided to pick up some new books – even some fiction.

Jun 15

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Black Tide of Occultism

I’ve been thinking about a conversation I had last summer. Some friends and I were discussing Richard Dawkin’s book, The God Delusion, with Rupert. As always, Rupert’s ideas are well thought out and always seem to come out of left field – at least to me. This got me thinking… There are people everywhere that quietly practice their religion and seem very happy and truly believe. Then there are others that are discontent unless they are spreading the word to others. I don’t mean “spreading the word” in a benevolent sense but in a militant sense. When I was an undergraduate, these were the guys that ranted all day long at the student center about how we were all going to hell. It seemed that unless we accepted their point of view, we were condemned for all time to fire and brimstone.

Of course, there is a problem with this approach to converting others. First, there is no one point of view in any religion. In Christianity, there are literally hundreds of differing denominations and theologies. The same is true in Hinduism, Islam, and every other world religion. Even though each of the world’s major religions has a book (or set of books) as its theological source, there is usually no universal agreement on what the truth is.

Some call this a crisis of faith since believers are unsure what to believe. Out of this crisis has arisen a very literal approach to interpreting The Bible, The Koran, The Vedas, etc. As if a literal approach is even possible in books written thousands of years ago chock full of allusions and metaphors. Nevertheless, this simple-minded approach has taken hold. I can’t say I understand it completely but I guess in a world of chaos and shifting sand, it’s comforting to try and find some immovable cornerstone anchored to truth. At the very least, it’s one less thing you have to worry about.

However, as Newton warned us in his 3rd Law, to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This opposite reaction has emerged in the West as a response to radical Christianity and radical Islam … radical atheism. Working hard to further a political agenda just as bizarre as creationists, the true believers of radical atheism are just as dedicated to obscuring reality. Composed of Nobel Prize winners and scientists from all walks of life, Richard Dawkins leads at the vanguard. This ideology has already taken deep root. This is especially true in American, where this is an opposite reaction to radical Christianity.

The idea that religion is the root of all evil is not new. Religion has certainly be used for evil things, then again so has science. Religion did not give us the atomic bomb, tomahawk missiles, or machine guns. In The God Delusion, Dawkins has somehow overlooked these points. Science is not always right – not always good. Of course, this this is not the first time very smart people have tried to use science to further a political agenda. I’m reminded of a conversation that Freud had with Jung:

“Once he said to me: we have to turn the theory of the unconscious into a dogma, to make it immovable. Why a dogma, I replied, since sooner or later truth will have to win out? Freud explained: We need a dam against the black tide of mud of occultism.” (from C.G. Jung Speaking, ed. by William McGuire, and R.F.C. Hull, 1978)

I doubt Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennet would be proud to have Freud as their movement’s ideological ancestor, but Freud’s comments about occultism mirror exactly the views of today’s atheists. I can sympathize, too. When I read news about another American school teaching “Intelligent Design” I feel that “black tide of mud” rising. What Dawkins is fighting for is rationality and free thinking. It’s hard to argue with that. His approach is making as many enemies as converts though. People sign up on his web site proclaiming their new found atheism in the same way that people come forward at church to be baptized.

I agree with Rupert, this extreme view is an equal and opposite reaction in world without critical thinking, full of irrationality. Any extreme view of reality is always wrong. I can’t decide which extreme view is worse – uneducated, religious nuts jobs or scientific, sociopathic nuts jobs. Of course, in the end, neither view will win. Just as Hegel always predicted, a new view composed of the two will emerge. Who knows what that synthesis will be?

Jun 13

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Psychiatric Drugs Help Skinny People

From the New Scientist, “Yet one culprit is rarely mentioned: the broad range of psychiatric drugs that can cause substantial weight gain. They include drugs marketed as antidepressants (such as amitriptyline, doxepin and imipramine), mood stabilisers (including lithium and valproate) and antipsychotics (including clozapine, olanzapine and chlorpromazine). After 10 years on lithium, for example, two-thirds of patients put on around 10 kilograms. And in December 2006, The New York Times published an article based on internal documents from the drug company Eli Lilly which indicated that it had intentionally downplayed the side effects of olanzapine, which it sells as Zyprexa. The company’s data showed that one-third of patients who have taken the drug for a year gain at least 10 kilograms, and half of these gain at least 30 kilograms.”

Continue reading… Also, see the PBS special FAT: What No One Is Telling You

Jun 11

Changing Kosmic Habits

Jun 4

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Obama Wins Nomination

In what he called a “defining moment for our nation,” Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday became the first African-American to head the ticket of a major political party. Obama’s steady stream of superdelegate endorsements, combined with the delegates he received from Tuesday’s primaries, put him past the 2,118 threshold, CNN projects. “Tonight we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America,” he said. “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.”