We Are the Most Lied-To, Gullible Populace on the Planet

Wowsers. This book of Noam Chomsky’s, Failed States, is just chock full of facts that show up our media and our government as a pack of liars.

The list of atrocities committed by our own government (like the 1985 bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, which was actually committed by the CIA, a known fact at this point, though the media never bothered to correct the perception they created by passing along the government’s story that it was a terrorist) just boggles the mind. Presidents from both parties over the years have protected the oil companies’ interests in the Middle East with crime after crime against civilian populations over there. Some of them we’ve never heard a word about, some we’ve heard about but with a twisted slant to blame it all on terrorism. Wherever, in the Middle East, South America, or Asia, real democracy has flowered, we’ve stamped it out in favor of fascist regimes (like that of Saddam Hussein, who was put in power by JFK in the 60s) willing to cooperate with our interests.

If you want to know the facts about what’s really going on in the middle east, get this book. Like they’re stamping on our mail these days, those words of one of my cousins however many times removed and however imperfect himself, John Adams, “Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.” We need to wake up as a country and deal with the fact that we are living under a long-term fascist regime that started long before any of us were born, right back to the founding of our country, which purports to value freedom but which only gives it lip service, and which is actually set up to benefit the few, the super-rich, who head these multi-national corporations. It started with cotton. Now it’s oil.

The primary obstacle to progress for us as a species is America and our corrupt government. This is not a partisan issue, either. The Democrats are just as complicit, though BushCo, with its clumsy handling and constant underestimation of our intelligence, has certainly taken it to new heights, or should I say lows?

Please, let’s stop acting like mushrooms, kept in the dark and fed a load of BS. Let’s seek the truth, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Illuminati or reptilian hybrids. It’s got to do with money and power.

The Wolf Totem Speaks

For those following the entheogenic discovery journal, tryptamines in the intense phase have been completely mastered.  At the end of this period, a wolf totem appeared to announce both a shift in paradigm as well as switch to more traditional shamanic entheogens such as phenylethylamines (peyote, mescaline) and sub-intense ritual tryptamines (psilocybin).  I have realized that animal spirits are an even more fundamental, universal way of connecting to the shamanic experience than ritual magic is.  By realizing the high degree of social structure and communication that most animals have, one attains a variety of shamanic tools for the purpose of bringing back a boon from non-linguistic, non-ego, primal states of mind attained through shamanic ritual.  One also sees through working with animal totems that there are a variety of beings that make up the human mind, and that some of these parts of ourself are of one mind with the animals around us.

Here is what the wolf said to me:

The wolf comes to announce that we must hunt for our visions.  You may hear his call sound throughout the hills, reminding us that who we are is very small, but who we are together is very big.  We are many.  We are one.  We light the skies with our eyes and paint the canyons with our howls.  Let us seize upon this chance for change, dive into it.  Tear it to pieces.  There is only fear when darkness and thunder strikes, that we may lose our way and separate from the pack.  We will never fear if we don’t forget who we are.  Together let us move.  Let us be wise and follow the seasons.  See the flight of the ravens and eagles, and track the footsteps of the deer.  Let us be fierce and strong, protecting what is ours.  This land is mine I call, and I shall feed off it and lay down in its hollows.  The others don’t belong here any more.  We must make our young strong enough to fight.  Let them know who they are and feel the blood beat strong in their veins as they run by the moonlit lake.  The dark world of vision and the blinding light of snow split have split my nose.  I peer into to this world and the next.  Let us sing and cry, “Take seize of change.  Bolt forth to life.  Know you are worthy to be called to run with me.”

Song of Anat

Please abandon fear. Realize that everyone is divine. We all live in a world spun of language, imagery, and sheer vibration emanating from us that we embed in every vase, wall, plant or animal around us. These beings, the company we keep in our heads and in the world we choose to live in, are fabricated out of the music of our hearts. The song we sing from the center of our skulls, deep in the pituitary, pumping out serotonin, neuroepinephrine, dopamine like a giant umbrella of psychedelic eminence, radiating pastel skies, rage, sadness and joy in undulating protrusions. Not only does this song ring in our ears as sound, but sings in our eyes as light, and our nose as smell. Hormonal waves ripple emotion and physical throbbing through our bodies in cycles of minutes, hours and years. We do yoga all day, how we hold our spine, whether we look down in command, surveying our creation in confidence, or look up in awe, mothered by the great divine. Small to large we are a continuous pole of vibration living in a world of vibrating beings, some made by us, some made by others. We are also made by others, and our children spiritual and physical make others. We are one and we are many, carving each other with our song. Remember we are free to move. We are free to be crazy. We are free to smash myths. We are free to give sex to all beings, as many or as few as we desire, to sing of love as we please. We are also free to break morals, to lie, to cheat, to take without permission from those screaming in pain. Or instead, we are free to plant love, to raise all up to be the radiant stars of divinity they are but have forgotten. The cultural symbols of the past drift through us like seaweed along with our personal song waving through the waters of life we shroud ourselves in. Despite your habits and your wrappings, your bonds, remember your freedom. Sex is rhythm, work is rhythm, breathing is rhythm, let your song and your love be pure. Rise queen. Rise king. Take to your throne as lord of the universe. You are god. Sing into being a world of beauty. Your lover is waiting for you to remember who you are. Break through that wall, overcome that hurdle, abandon that fear, cut loose those chains. Remember who you are. You are god. Sing loudly. Sing strong. Sing peace. Sing so no one lies in any gutter, no one falls in any fear, no one trembles afraid, unloved. To let a soul go down unloved is the only sin I know, because you failed as the lord to not create beauty and peace. To let such wrong blacken your world is to throw down your crown and roll in the despair of amnesia. A divine being powerless to sing love deep into the four directions? I love you and I miss you so much, my great one. Arise and take your crown. Dispense your song and dance your dance. Beat the drum of your world loudly, for you are god.

Ayahuasca papers

Holy Guardian Angel:
DMT 1:
I have recently begun a spiritual path involving the use of the sacred plant ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic vine, originally from South America, containing dimethyltryptamine, DMT. DMT is one of the most powerful hallucinogens known to man. DMT, like other hallucinogens, is thought to act at the serotonin receptor, which it does. But this does not explain the effects of hallucinogens in full. For example, recent studies show that LSD when attached to the serotonin receptor does not behave the same intra-cellularly, when attached, that serotonin does. Therefore, it can be pretty much said that the way these drugs work in the brain remains a mystery, except to say that they significantly alter brain chemistry to make ecstatic states highly possible.

DMT is considered to be the prototype of the tryptamines, which are the defining genus of the pure hallucinogens. DMT is found in virtually every type of living creature. All manner of flowering plants, grasses, sea life, reptiles, coral, fungi, and a remaining plethora of species, have members that contain significantly large amounts of DMT. DMT is said to be virtually everywhere, certainly in every highly structured organism. Our brains, in fact, are flooded with DMT. The irony of this is that since DMT is a Schedule I substance in the US, this should imply that our brains, being in possession of significant amounts of DMT, a Schedule I substance, are de facto illegal to possess or use according to the US government, which is not a surprise.

My work with DMT may be divided so far into three stages.

Stage I:

The first use of it precipitated the vision of a goddess. I’ve had goddess visions on numerous hallucinogens before, initially marijuana, then LSD, ketamine, salvia divinorum and psilocybin mushrooms. The view of a pan-gaian goddess emanating all life in psychedelic glory is actually a fairly common trip report. No doubt, this is responsible for the heavy presence of the female life-giving archetype in early mythology. It is also telling that the Christians, though they tried to impose a patriarchal ideology on people of the world, found it necessary to include Mary as the divine mother archetype, so as to satisfy the longing and necessity for the goddess. Myself, I have seen most ecstatic states as unified in a female figure. This was no different except for being more intense, and more filled with the sensation, as is commonly reported with DMT, of being in the presence of a true being.

Stage II:

The second stage was a surprising one. I again saw the same female deity, but this time I began to interact, not just linguistically and visually, but moreover had tactile hallucinations in the form of feeling touch upon my skin and feeling interaction, culminating to the point of actual intercourse. It was seeming like the pulsing motion was the writhing of a female engaged in the act of copulation. It was very satisfying and rewarding to be embraced by the universal in this way. It was the visual representation of yoga, or at least the suggestion that this was a truly yogic path of tantric union.

Stage III:

The third stage was very interesting.

Phase III was interesting because of its cinematic movement in three parts. Act I was focused on enjoying the mindspace. I immediately fell into the psychedelic mind-space with cartoon dancing, curvilinear lines, fractal, resonating, recursive patterns. All this is common with any hallucinogen, but multiplied by several factors with DMT. I experienced the onset of this mind-state with a great “Aha!” I had a moment of self-discovery, wherein I realized that I so like this mind-state, that I pursue it - often. I find it intrinsically rewarding to be in this special mind-state, this cartoonish landscape of my own mental creation. I often point out to people who need experience and guidance with tripping that the way to view the trip is as a show projected on the back of your eyelids, projected by yourself. It is important to maintain an internal monologue and a narrative about what you’re seeing and why you are seeing it, to prevent a loss of ego and subsequent psychosis.

Act II was focused on beginning to understand that this mind-space was a projection, and it was the same being I felt I had interacted with earlier. I began then conversing with this projection, which is so often experienced in the DMT realm as a being. In conversing with the being, I asked why it presented itself as a woman. It answered rather coyly that it was because that was the way I liked it. I began to realize that what this really meant was that I was the one seeing certain curves, certain lines, certain writhing motions as necessarily feminine. These were actually simply lines, curves, and colors, and that the interpretation of them was entirely up to me. I began to see that what I had seen as sexuality was nothing more than a series of lines and a sort of protuberance that was pulsing energy. It could be seen as a mouth, a vagina, a writhing female, or simply as some sort of hallucinogenic love volcano. The latter is what I settled upon with joy. I see too that I project myself in certain ways to others, perhaps as projecting endless love and energy in a somewhat seductive and sensual way. Then at the end of this act two, with the realization that the internal being or internal temple is none other than myself, I began to notice certain phenomena that led to further awareness.

In watching these patterns emerge, I occasionally form a negative thought. This negative thought would result in colorful planes of animated, cartoonish reality being fractured into broken, dull-grey/brown shards of broken mirror falling to the ground in pieces. It was clear that there was a connection between those negative thoughts and the destruction of this treasured mind-space, as this was contrasted with positive thoughts causing the generation of joyful, colorful inhabitants of this mind-space. I began to see the clear connection between the projection I was making and my own thoughts. My satisfaction or dissatisfaction with this projection was entirely under my control, as this projection was entirely under my control. Whereas I began to see in act II the internal temple is a projection, in act III the connection between my thoughts and the enjoyment of this internal temple became obvious. In act III, I began to see that my internal temple and its enjoyment is in fact nothing more than directly related to my self - my projections, my thoughts, and my self-control.

Stage IV

Again I felt the presence of a female figure. This time, as I tried to impose upon it my conceptions of last time, such as that it was my own mental projection, it was shattered by seeing it radiating everywhere. I began to think of its projection as male or female, and I realized its feminine voice to me, not so much feminine images anymore, was coming from my own head for convenience. Perhaps Jung is right in saying that creative voice for a woman is a man, the animus, and the creative voice for a man is a woman, an anima. Deep inside the unconscious, the repressed self, it would be logical that a male would, in order to fulfill a male identity in society, repress whatever his image of the female self is and put it into the unconscious, so that it becomes in fact the voice of that whole world.

I began to see that the entity itself wanted no further impositions of concepts by me as to it being local, everywhere, god or goddess, male or female. I began seeing even the silliness of the hallucinations earlier, which had been pleasant, as being somewhat tiresome and not exactly what this being had in mind. Any imposition of my self, imperfect as it was, was not welcome upon such perfection. It is I who must become perfect to dance with it. I began to sense that what I was facing would be best described as Crowley’s Holy Guardian Angel. He refers to this concept that in self-work one encounters as a guide, a voice speaking back to oneself, that is going to take you by the hand and lead you on your spiritual path.

I had already learned that how I think about myself and others and how I interact with myself and others is going to affect the spiritual tone of this path, its chance of success, and the place of its final destination. DMT is not only the spirit molecule because it is everywhere, the skeleton key of consciousness, but furthermore it is the journey, the trip one takes, when you die and the brain is flooded with DMT. Life flashes before your eyes and you face a projection of everything you’ve ever made yourself to be and stand in judgment before your Holy Guardian Angel — the true self you were meant to be. This experience can be painful for some or pleasurable for others depending on the kind of life lived. Playing with DMT is meeting one’s judgment early, being taken on a journey to the gates of the underworld, while one still has a chance to act upon what one sees and to change.

The HGA began to show a certain gray, indiscriminate face, straight, indescribable to any detail of it’s beauty, a face better than any backside or writhing motion. I asked, “What is it you want me to do?” I saw the world as it is, a pink-fleshy mandala of chattering teeth and random motions, indescribable fractals of human flesh juxtaposed in fractals of suffering and activity. Even the punctuated frivolity and joy was pointless in its absurdity. The whole fleshy landscape was distracting, twisted and mammothly unnecessary. I began to see that what she wanted was for me, or me and my wife together, to shift the world to meet her gaze, to turn that wheel. I felt the earth move beneath as there was a fierce grinding, the scrape of one tectonic cog against another with brutal resistance. The world changed by turning the wheel from what it is now to what it should be. I felt the tremendous force, and resistance and work involved in that, down to the core of the columns of the earth, but I knew with certainty it had to be done as commanded. The rewards of being in that perfect place, face on to everything, make it clear that it is the place you, me, we, the earth are meant to be in.

Sheepish Pope says “Sorry ‘Bout All That”

HA! As if. No, I think the Catholics are going to have the hardest time with this whole dead-Jesus thing. I said that creed over and over as a kid. It doesn’t hem and haw about the resurrection.

But it seems the protestants, or at least some of them, are being pretty flexible. My husband just came home from work, and guess what? He spoke with about ten Christians from a variety of sects and it seems that at their Wed. night sermons they were all told by their respective preachers about the discovery, and that it’s okay, that they never really believed in a physical resurrection, and they actually used the word “metaphor” (and while they were talking about things, they never said that evolution couldn’t be the process God used to make us), and they were suddenly curious about the difference between “agnostic” and “atheist,” and just what did he believe, anyway? (Just yesterday, in the course of patient management, he discovered from one of the counselors that he and I are known at the national level among televangelists to be “notorious atheists.”) He had really frank discussions, open-hearted, open-minded, and it seems a new day is dawning, at least in this town.

Of course I’m not saying he’s open-minded about theism. At some point you have to make up your mind, and we have. No, just open-minded about their ability to change and the possibility of the existence of a historical Jesus.

And I have to say that I’m really glad to suspect that he did exist (not that I think the events of the gospel are real…those are clearly ripped off from earlier myths…poetic license and all that).

When I was a girl I was in love with the man. My first holy communion was like a wedding. I was going to be a nun (until my hormones kicked in, that is). I wanted to be a saint. I’m not kidding.

And it wasn’t to get to heaven.

And it wasn’t about his alleged sacrifice (which is now being interpreted metaphorically as God having taken on the suffering of a human life, which, if you think about it, is much more painful than a quick crucifixion).

No. It was what he taught.

See, I was one of those kids who rescued bugs out of spider webs (I’m sure none of the spiders starved…I lived in Florida), painstakingly picking off the sticky bits of thread ’til the little thing could fly away. I hated suffering, other peoples’ even more than my own. I really hated injustice (still not fond of either). And I just couldn’t understand why people wouldn’t be nice to each other.

So the words of Jesus made me love him. (I’m lucky enough to have found a man just that kind.) I’m totally open to (and happy about) the possibility of once again honoring his name.

But I still do not believe that mind came before matter. One of his co-workers, when asked why she believes, even now, that there is a god, that mind was the source of matter and not vice-versa, responded that she just doesn’t WANT matter to have come first. But we know what I say about that sort of thing: wanting something does not make it so.

See, here’s the crux of the whole god/no-god thing. If you keep the god concept then you allow for magical thinking (it would be pretty magical for a non-corporeal mind to exist, outside of time, and create matter out of nothing, don’t you think?), like this thing in Jacksonville. Instead of working to erase the underlying problems that lead to crime, the city held a prayer rally.

And this sort of inaction goes on every day, everywhere, but nowhere so much and so often as here in America.

Worse, the god-concept poses the concept of god’s will, and the delusion that one could possibly know what that is. We are so easily misled by the ego or what’s even less conscious than that, our animal urges. How many people have died now at the hand of someone who imagined he was doing the will of god or allah? My husband himself saw a patient (unfortunately she didn’t accept treatment) who thought she was being tested by God (a real Abraham complex) and shot and killed her two grand-daughters.

When I say religion can be toxic, folks, I’m not kidding.

It’s also been very good medicine for some people, especially addicts.

But I don’t take my neighbor’s insulin, and I wouldn’t expect you to take my medicine.

Matter, for all we know, has always been here, expanding and contracting in an endless series of bangs and crunches. For all we know, each time consciousness arises given sufficient complexity. Or maybe this is the first time. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we are here, we are free, and we are all suffering humans struggling to survive and cope and maybe even achieve some small measure of joy.

I know love helps a lot. Jesus taught me that. I forgot it for a while, and then my husband reminded me. (I’m pretty thrilled now that they might be friends again.)

I don’t know how long it’s going to take the rest of the world to achieve the sort of amiable acceptance my husband found at work today. I’m pretty sure most of my town at least will be following suit (they do seem to toe the line, so if this is the official story, well, cool). I’m pretty sure our lives might, in a sense, be getting better. I’ve felt somewhat like a hostage in my own home with the prevailing intolerance.

But my husband’s practice is going to be pretty busy, I think. He’s been trolling the blogosphere, taking the pulse, as it were. There are clearly a large number of fundamentalists who just can’t accept this. The level of hardheadedness and idiocy they’re displaying isn’t very heartening. Maybe they should go to church and hear what their pastors have to say about it.

Of course if they’re Pentecostal, they’ll insist the Devil planted those bones. He’s sure got a big collection, what with the dinosaurs and all.

Sexism, Racism, Nationalism, Xenophobia, and the PTA

The objectification of women is just one example (albeit one of the worst) of the process of creating an Other which a person can then feel free to use, abuse, or simply hate. It’s for some reason part of human nature. Probably part of our Stone Age brain, evolved when tribes really did need to be wary of people outside of the tribe. But now it’s much less acceptable to hate people for being part of another “tribe” (read “race”). So it’s easier to make it about a person’s sex. I mean, there are some real differences between men and women, so it’s easy to justify the perception of otherness. But of course we’re all people. (The same regrettable process underlies the rampant hatred of homosexuals.)

In North America the native peoples, in their own languages, always referred to their own nation with a word that meant “The People.” (Of course, the names we’ve given the nations usually came from their enemies. “Navajo,” for example, is the Hopi word for “head basher,” because that’s how the Navajo killed the Hopi when they fought.) They recognized their own People-hood, but not that of outsiders.

Nationalism still seems to hold sway. The same sort of men who objectify women (and, in private, I’m sure, other races) have no trouble seeing the citizens of “enemy” nations (religions?) as less than human. One man littering Bloggernista’s blog with belligerent posts insists that we ought to be bombing Iran (he’s got a rooster as his avatar…you think he knows he’s a cock?). In case you’ve forgotten what bombing does to people, watch this video from Christmastime again, and please note two things: one, those Iraqi faces don’t look like evil terrorists to me; two, there’s grieving on plenty of American faces, too. (Do we really want to get involved in another war? Who in their right mind would say we ought to be bombing Iran?)

Of course terrorists have long been good at seeing enemy people as less than human. How else could they do what they do? But surely everyone knows that two wrongs do NOT make a right. An Israeli leader whose name I forget once said to the Palestinian terrorists, “I don’t hate you for what you’ve done to us. I hate you for what you’ve made us become.” I don’t want America to become (though I fear it’s too late) monstrous. I don’t want to be a bully on the global stage. I don’t know how to make our leaders understand that it breaks my heart (and makes me really angry) to have my tax-dollars spent to kill innocent people, or even to deny them their liberty. Yes, we do have a real enemy in the terrorists. But going around the globe bombing cities? How does this protect us? The only profit from this goes to the corporations that make the bombs and that rebuild afterward.

Sigh. Sometimes I get really sad for the world. It’s such an amazing place. And the role we play here could be one of responsible, loving community, community with our human and our non-human neighbors. I get juiced when I observe nature, when I share a cup of tea with a friend, when I stare into my husband’s eyes. But some people seem to get juiced when they watch planes drop bombs on our enemies, when they read headlines about atrocities, when they watch a flag wave over a pile of rubble. What has to happen to a boy to make a man turn out like that? That’s where we need to focus our attention, I think.

Before, dear reader, you imagine that I think this is only a male problem, let me freely acknowledge that there are some really messed up women, too. (Ann Coulter is a glaring example.) I’m a housewife with kids in elementary school, and I see women at school assemblies, and hear talk about them from those same friends over tea, who seem to thrive on conflict, though at a much smaller than national level. Same reason many marriages don’t make it. What makes someone feed on strife? Personally, it gives me indigestion.

Good information on Ganja

Doing some research on pain relief my husband came across this ganja website, with some excellent information from a PhD’s dissertation about the cannabinoid system (the receptors for cannabinoids in the brain). Marijuana really IS good for you, and seems to be a big part of a lot of processes.

Interdependence

In order to really understand the necessary change of mind for progressing into a stable and sustainable and reasonably peaceful future, there are a few ideas that need to be grasped. One of them is interdependence. There are obvious reasons a global understanding of interdependence is necessary in the political sphere. Understanding interdependence on a cosmic level brings myriad benefits as well, not the least of which is an understanding of one’s true value. And as a human being, able, if so inclined, to see the universe as it is, you’re very important, indeed. For the first time, on this planet at least, the universe is self-aware. For are we not a manifestation of the universe? And with these brains and the knowledge of astronomy and physics and biology and anthropology that they’ve amassed we’re able to grasp what’s going on here. And even steer it, if we all agree to work together.

I have pretty high hopes for humanity. But we’re having a difficult birth. Gaia’s labor pains must be immense. (For any religious folks reading, that was poetry, so don’t go calling me any kind of theist.) The future could be truly wonderful, if we’d unite as a species. If we don’t, if we continue to fail to recognize how much we need each other, I’m afraid we may be creating a centuries-long nightmare. Or, if some crazy nations start lobbing nuclear weapons at each other, the nightmare could last for thousands of years.

I read recently some article disparaging Iran’s leaders for having apocalyptic ideas. The author seemed completely unaware that American leaders share the same crazy ideas, albeit from a different book.

Seriously, though…

At my husband’s encouragement, I’ve begun reading Paul Churchland’s book, The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul. We’ve been discussing the ideas he deals with for a while, the current understanding of neurobiology and cognitive processes, but I’ve never actually read the work. But I’ve recently read another book thick with science, Christopher Williams’ Terminus Brain: The Environmental Threats to Human Intelligence (which I highly recommend and may discuss in a separate post), so I thought I ought to quit being put off and go for it.

I’m still in the introduction, but these paragraphs felt worth sharing here (I have a feeling I’ll be sharing a good bit of this book, for educational purposes, ya know):

If we can be so evidently and so wildly wrong about the structure of the universe, about the significance of disease, about the age of the Earth, and about the origin of humans, we should in all modesty be prepared to contemplate the possibility that we remain deeply misled or confused about the nature of human cognition and consciousness. One need not look far for potential examples of deep confusion. A hypothesis that still enjoys broad acceptance throughout the world is the idea that human cognition resides in an immaterial substance: a soul or mind. This proposed nonphysical substance is held to be uniquely capable of consciousness and of rational and moral judgment. And it is commonly held to survive the death of the body, thence to receive some form of reward or punishment for its Earthly behavior. It will be evident from the rest of this book that this familiar hypothesis is difficult to square with the emerging theory of cognitive processes and with the experimental results from the several neurosciences. The doctrine of an immaterial soul looks, to put it frankly, like just another myth, false not just at the edges, but to the core.

This is unfortunate, since that hypothesis is still embedded, to some depth or other, in the social and moral consciousness of billions of people across widely diverse cultures. If that hypothesis is false, then sooner or later they are going to have to deal with the problem of how best to understand the ground of the moral relations that bind us together. Such adjustments, to judge from the past, are often painful. The good side is that they just as often set us free, and allow us to achieve a still higher level of moral insight and mutual care. In exploring the lessons of cognitive neurobiology, I will proceed at all times on this hopeful assumption.

Exactly. That’s my hope as well. That’s my intent, and my goal. I know I can come off brash, even (gasp!) bitchy at times. But my deepest purpose is to help steer world culture in a better direction than the hell we’re headed for. Let’s face it: these days, we need to be thinking about world culture. I don’t mean a monoculture, some homogeneous melting pot. I certainly don’t mean an empire, like with the Romans, goin’ around “civilizing” (meaning romanizing and then collecting taxes) everyone they could conquer. No, I mean a richly diverse planet, where everyone celebrates and nurtures their own traditions, and honors those of their neighbors, but where all have accepted the truth of our mutual humanity, and what that humanity means: that we are one evolved species among many, that our survival depends on remaining adaptable and learning how to live harmoniously with the rest of the world, of which we are an intrinsic part. I sincerely believe that such a future won’t come about unless and until the erroneous hypothesis elucidated above is let go.

Speaking of neurons, I can feel mine getting stronger. I got a simple-system flute for xmas, an inexpensive (and hardy) one made of bamboo, with which to learn Irish folk music. (I’ll be getting an intermediate flute, I hope, in a year or so, when I’ve learned enough.) I’ve been listening to the flute gods tape, and I fell in love with a song, which, now that I’m more intimate with it, I realize is performed a number of times on the tape, by various artists — mostly unknown — each with an individual style so varied that you wouldn’t guess it’s the same unless you knew the song well. I’m working on the first four bars. It’s coming along, and with this practice (which is a lot more fun, and therefore more educative, than the scales I’d been practicing, which, while necessary, were a bit of a bore) I can practically feel the synapses rearranging themselves. (This is partly why I’m doing it — use it or lose it, you know.) Two days ago I was barely aware of my throat, and couldn’t imagine some day being able to use it to articulate the notes in the Roscommon style (my grandmother’s family came from Co. Roscommon, so I figure I ought to learn that one…and it suits me, too…slower, more expressive), which doesn’t use tonguing, just fingering and this sort of glottal thing.

But tonight, practicing those four bars and wanting badly enough to play like the flute gods that I put real effort into it, I became aware that the difference between the low D and the first overblow is largely in the throat, only slightly in the embouchure. Before, I had almost no awareness of my throat at all. It’s like gaining a new sense.

And that’s what I’m hoping will happen for humanity. With science, we can gain a new set of eyes with which to see ourselves, and the world, and our place in it. And one day our descendants will have trouble understanding what it was like for us, before we learned who, and what, we are.

The Toxicity of Religion

I’ve decided to start using this blog. This’ll be the first of many posts, maybe not daily, but frequent. I had been blogging elsewhere, at a new-agey forum that had purported to be a site for cultural activists but which turned out to be yet another place for irrational people to get together and air their imbecilic beliefs and insist that you can’t disagree because everything is a matter of perspective. And while I’m all for acknowledging the perspective of the Other (which I think is the basis of ethics and morality), that doesn’t mean that there isn’t such a thing as right and wrong, or good and evil. Reality and wishful thinking.

I agree with Richard Dawkins when he says, well, just about anything, because we’re on the same reality-based wave-length. But what I started to say with that sentence was that I agree that it’s time for atheists, or, to cast us in a less negative light, skeptics, to come out of the closet and voice our doubts, ask our questions, and risk offending.

As Irshad Manji says in her excellent book, The Trouble with Islam, people need to be willing to risk “ruining the moment.” (Though she’s referring to Westerners desiring to engage Muslims in discussing the problems they’re having with violent extremists.) It’s okay to hurt people’s feelings if it’s necessary to arrive at a rational solution to the problems facing humanity. Feelings pass. No blood’s lost when your beliefs are challenged.

And let’s face it. Humanity is royally f*&ck%d. And religion is the primary cause of our sorry state. It’s toxic to mental health. How could it be otherwise, when “faith” requires such mental gymnastics? A psychiatrist in my close acquaintance tells me there’s a clear demographic difference between the general population and the occupants of the ward. Pentecostals are the largest number. Southern Baptists next. Sometimes a Catholic or Jew. Once a Wiccan, though I’m sure in cities where they’re more common, they’re filling a few beds. But never, not once in his decade of practice, an atheist. Now, the incidence of purely biological pathologies like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia are more or less the same across the religious/non-religious spectrum, but the kind of things that stem from drug abuse, abuse or other trauma — post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder — overwhelmingly afflict the religious. The more fundamental, literalist, extreme the strain, the more toxic. Now, some of these folks are in fact the victims of an incestuous or violent (or both) relative (most often the father). But others have simply had an irrational mindset forced upon them, and can’t free themselves without pathological guilt, which manifests in one or more of the above. For this reason I also agree with Richard Dawkins when he says that raising a child with religion is tantamount to child abuse.

How much more positive, how much more sane, to raise a child to experience the world without the distorting filter of religion. To teach science, not only what is known, but how it’s known, so that s/he may grow up with an inherent understanding that s/he can add to that knowledge, can explore the world and her/his place in it, unfettered by guilt or a disdain for the beauty that abounds here, which is unavoidable when raised to believe that the world is an illusion, a temptation.

And just as importantly, if not more so, with an awareness that every other human on the planet is in a very real way kin. Though experiencing the travesty that is modern culture in America sometimes leads me to cynicism, I try to hang on to hope that humanity will do better than this. That one day (in the not-too-distant future, if I have my way), we’ll have learned the lesson that we’re dying for: that we now have a Creation Story that we can all share. It’s called Evolution, and it’s ongoing. Not a one-time creation, but cosmogenesis. How incredible, to be a part of a living, constantly created universe. As humans, we have a chance to have a hand in that creation. We’ve spent enough time destroying it already.