“Like all stories of creators who bring life from the dead, his story began with a struggling butcher, who chased a gray cat, caught it, took off its studded collar, and slit its throat.” The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia

a lifelong suspension of disbelief amongst knights of faith

also, what makes magic realism different than science fiction.

in philosophy
Søren Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling — Abraham as more than the knight of infinite resignation, as the knight of faith, facing down the absurd, and furthermore willing it

in philosophy / philology
Crispin Sartwell: End of Story: Toward an Annihilation of Language and History — references Job and Abraham (à la Kierkegaard) as examples of loss of telos / loss of plot / loss of a “sense of narrative coherence” (18)

in sociology
Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority — cites the Abraham story as an example of the age-old “dilemma” of obedience (preface)

in song
Bob Dylan: “Highway 61 Revisited” — “God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son.’ Abe said, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on.’”

in fiction
Neil Simon: God’s Favorite — Job modernized and made comical

in philosophy / anthropology
René Girard: Job the Victim of his People — Job as scapegoat (not yet read)

in psychology
C.G. Jung: Answer to Job and Edward F. Edinger: Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung’s Answer to Job (not yet read)

other disturbing lessons:
Cain and Abel (in fiction: East of Eden by John Steinbeck)

David and Bathsheba and Uriah (in fiction: God Knows by Joseph Heller)

the prodigal son (As a child I objected to the prodigal son getting a feast while the “good” son gets no reward. As an adult I’m frustrated that my brain is stuck believing “prodigal” means someone who has gone away and now returned. I always have to concentrate to land on the right definition.)

I like the poetry of it, the sound of it (the repetition). It’s also a nice callback to Genesis. “In the beginning” then God spoke “Let there be light.” So, quite literally, mythologically speaking, in the beginning was the Word of God. Also, there’s a part later in John chapter 1 about the “Word became flesh,” and sure he means Jesus, but it just sounds really interesting and mysterious– words becoming incarnate.

But I digress. (I began with digression in fact.) The book I’m reading provides this translation “In the beginning was the ratio, and the ratio was with God, and the ratio was God.” Apparently ratio is another translation of the Greek “logos,” more commonly “word.” I guess this makes sense word-root-edly speaking if you consider words like “analogy” and “logic” and, on the other side, the Latin-by-way-of-French “ratiocination.” All three words imply reasoning via comparisons, i.e. ratios.

I digress again. My though upon reading that version went this direction: What would it mean to the passage if we translate it a different way? And how did John mean it? And what other translations could there be? Well, it turns out a lot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos. I quite enjoy discovering heavy words.

“Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science”

good point and faulty analogy?
“Just as the individual man cannot live without having some theory of the meaning of his life, and is always, though often unconsciously, framing his conduct in accordance with the meaning he attributes to his life, so too associations of men living in similar conditions—nations—cannot but have theories of the meaning of their associated life and conduct ensuing from those theories. And as the individual man, when he attains a fresh stage of growth, inevitably changes his philosophy of life, and the grown-up man sees a different meaning in it from the child, so too associations of men—nations—are bound to change their philosophy of life and the conduct ensuing from their philosophy, to correspond with their development.” p. 61

unexpected use of mathematical analogy?
“Christ recognizes the existence of both sides of the parallelogram…”
“The divine perfection is the asymptote of human life to which it is always striving, and always approaching, though it can only be reached in infinity.”

“Conclusion”
“And, indeed, what sort of ethical doctrine could admit the legitimacy of murder for any object whatever? It is as impossible as a theory of mathematics admitting that two is equal to three.// There may be a semblance of mathematics admitting that two is equal to three, but there can be no real science of mathematics. And there can only be a semblance of ethics in which murder in the shape of war and the execution of criminals is allowed, but no true ethics.”

“Evil Cannot Be Suppressed by the Physical Force of the
Government”

social contract theory
“And it cannot be proved, as the champions of the state maintain, that the destruction of government involves a social chaos, mutual spoliation and murder, the destruction of all social institutions, and the return of mankind to barbarism. Nor can it be proved as the opponents of government maintain that men have already become so wise and good that they will not spoil or murder one another, but will prefer peaceful associations to hostilities; that of their own accord, unaided by the state, they will make all the arrangements that they need, and that therefore government, far from being any aid, under show of guarding men exerts a pernicious and brutalizing influence over them.”

(next sentence)
hypocritical condemnation of abstract reasoning? (most of this book is Tolstoy using abstract reasoning to claim things are obvious conclusions)
“It is impossible to prove either of these contentions by abstract reasoning. Still less possible is it to prove them by experiment, since the whole matter turns on the question, ought we to try the experiment?”

The conclusion: Let’s say in this case I grant that God is good and omnipotent and omniscient, and so conclude that this must be, indeed, the best possibility that exists. Then I postulate that the problem is with reality. At its best it couldn’t come up with something better than this? Apparently reality is broken.

ok, let’s go fly kites and cultivate our gardens.

determinism — every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences

fatalism — the subjugation of all events or actions to fate or inevitable predetermination; in variations:

1. That free will does not exist, meaning therefore that history has progressed in the only manner possible. This belief is very similar to determinism.
2. That actions are free, but nevertheless work toward an inevitable end. This belief is very similar to compatibilist predestination.
3. That acceptance is appropriate, rather than resistance against inevitability. This belief is very similar to defeatism.

libertarianism — human beings possess free will, that free will is incompatible with determinism, and that determinism is false

voluntarism — the will is superior to the intellect and to emotion

compatibilism — free will and determinism are compatible ideas

necessitarianism — denies all mere possibility; there is exactly one way for the world to be

optimism — we live in the best of all possible worlds

(this all started with my clicking on necessitarianism and continued with some free hypertext and thought association, which led to Blake once via Democritus and Newton, and Voltaire twice via Blake then Leibniz and also led to the discovery of a demon that sounds very much like a god)

• toujours, déjà (French—Derrida)
• immer schon (German—Kant, Heidegger)
• it’s a bit dodgy to try to define, but basically (and not all-inclusively) what has not happened in the past is past; what has happened at present has always already happened in the present and the future
• To see it used by Derrida in context, read some of Of Grammatology.

“as if“

• als ob (German—Vaihinger, Kant)
• a seemingly very practical philosophy
• from Wikipedia: “In Philosophie des Als Ob, [Vaihinger] argued that human beings can never really know the underlying reality of the world, and that as a result we construct systems of thought and then assume that these match reality: we behave ‘as if’ the world matches our models.”

“thing in itself“

• Ding an sich (German—Kant)
• noumena—the thing as opposed to the physical actuality of the thing as experienced by the senses
• like Plato’s forms?

To read:

• Critique of Pure Reason
• Philosophy of As If
• a lot of Derrida

Take note:

• Noumena is a death metal band from Finland
• The Always Already is an indie rock band from Austin, TX

Vippasana site; book

includes parables, questions and answers from real students, and a great introduction to Vipassana meditation and overview of the 10-day course

notes & quotes:

“Unless we investigate the world within we can never know reality—we will only know our beliefs about it, or our intellectual conceptions of it.” p. 6

“Being sensitve to the suffering of others does not mean you must become sad yourself.” p. 19

“instinctual assertion” of “I” p. 28

“Each of us is, in fact, a stream of constantly changing subatomic particles, along with which the processes of conciousness, perception, sensation, reaction change even more rapidly than the physical process.” p. 29

the cause of suffering is reaction (ch. 3)

attachment p. 46

supposedly it’s more natural and energy-efficient than cremation. I don’t think there’s anyplace in the U.S. that does it yet though. (It was started in Sweden.)

links:

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

http://dethroner.com/2007/04/11/promession-composting-the-dead

http://www.worldwidewords.org/turnsofphrase/tp-pro6.htm

+some good info in wikipedia

+Now I’ve always been interested in the science of it and, of course, the science fiction of it, but what i find most interesting in the Wikipedia article is this section:

Religious traditions

Accounts of miraculous teleportation occur in a number of religious traditions, such as Tay al-Ard (literally “folding of the earth”) in Islam; Kefitzat Haderech (“jumping of the path/road/way,” a Hebrew equivalent of the English expression “short cut”) in Judaism. Teleportation is also known in Tibetan Buddhism.