Triangulating Cain

January 13th, 2013   by   Andrew

This is a response to Sabio’s conversation on his post “Pre-Adamites“.

I thought this was too long to just leave on his site as a comment. Since it’s his conversation (and I’m not too active on this site these days), I’d prefer any further comments to be written on his site.

 

Re: The Mark of Cain

Interpretations abound. That’s literature. Genesis stories are particularly difficult because they are so tight and short. You can do anything you want with them. Here’s my fun with it (sorry this is long, but I hope it’s worth it to someone).

The last time you were so mad you yelled at someone, what did your face look like? Cain was so enraged, and so certain about being wronged, he killed his brother to prove he was right.

When you are deeply angry, do people want to look at you? People naturally don’t even want to be around angry people, let alone angry people that are always right. Some angry people feel so certain about how wrong the world is, they have to prove and argue and even willfully, violently demonstrate just how right they are.

Anger disfigures your face.

Let’s look at wikipedia – ” “mark” in Gen. 4:15 is ‘owth, which could mean a sign, an omen, a warning, or a remembrance. In the Torah, the same word is used to describe the stars as signs or omens.”

God (as a character in a story) marks Cain so that no one else will kill him, supposedly. It could also be a prediction – no one’s going to kill Cain, and maybe that’s because Cain is willing to quickly escalate his side of revenge to the point of taking life. He might even go further.

It could also be just a sign to others – don’t do what this guy did; it’ll get us nowhere. And don’t mess with him; it’s not worth it.

In Genesis it doesn’t explicitly say God was thinking about Cain’s best interests, or protecting Cain. He could very well have been thinking about everyone else that would have to deal with this dangerous individual.

When God finds what Cain has done, he first predicts Cain’s fate:

“When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.”

Cain immediately casts himself as the victim in all this. He blames everything else but himself, and fears his vulnerability:

“My punishment is greater than I can bear! Today you have driven me away from the soil, and I shall be hidden from your face; I shall be a fugitive and wanderer on the earth, and anyone who meets me may kill me.”

God can’t believe his anthropomorphic ears. Are you kidding me? When you feel wronged, your wrath is not proportionate to what you think has been done against you. Anyone that kills you won’t just equally be killed, which is bad enough. Your line will want to destroy their whole family!

“Not so! Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.”

It does not say here the source of the vengeance. It does not say by My anthropomorphic hand. Let’s not put words into God’s anthropomorphic mouth.

Only after this does God “put a mark on Cain so that no one who came upon him would kill him.”

Cain’s anger and (self-)loathing made it almost impossible for anyone to be around him long enough to even want to talk to him, let alone kill him.

They would get the hell away from him as fast as possible. Haven’t you known people like this? Haven’t you avoided people like this?

One of Cain’s descendants is Tubal-Cain, a smith of bronze and iron. Tools. Weapons. Cain’s motivation to hurt others when he doesn’t get his way, and his descendant’s knack for war, create a dangerous cycle of willful and asymmetrical (unequal) revenge.  That leads to society-ending consequences. Even in a semi-nomadic society before legal systems and ‘governing authorities’.

One of Cain’s descendants is Lamech. Lamech tells his wives quite openly:

“I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-seven fold.”

It’s now out of control. Lamech is even more wilful, more vengeful and more dangerous than Cain. Someone slaps him and he wipes out their village!

Some might say God ‘marks’ Cain to stop the cycle of revenge immediately. The forgiveness angle, maybe. I think it’s better to look at this as a prediction. Cain’s attitude and motivation ‘mark’ him. No magic needed.

Cain, supposedly, becomes both city-builder and cast-out wanderer. He just can’t get relationships with work and with other people right. Why’s that?

Well, look back at his sacrifice to God (as a character in a story). Cain puts in a half-ass effort to collect some twigs and berries. And this is to his God, supposedly.

Abel gives the best he had, and he was glad to do it. When measured beside his brother, Cain blames his brother for his own half-ass efforts, and takes out his hurt on his brother. How’s that for a sacrifice, God?

Well, it’s still a pretty bad sacrifice and doesn’t get him anything he really wants.

The signs are in the stars for Cain, supposedly. But he hasn’t set his sights on them. He can only blame them for being so far out of reach. Surprising really, since it’s all written right in the expression on his face.

God, I suck.

 

- – -

Sources:

Genesis 4 - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+4&version=NIV

Mark of Cain - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_and_mark_of_Cain

Some ideas from J. Peterson’s discussions of Genesis

- Redemption talk - http://ww3.tvo.org/video/185862/jordan-peterson-redemption-and-psychology-christianity

- the nature of evil – http://ww3.tvo.org/video/163167/big-ideas-jordan-peterson

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Beyond Belief, god, myth, psychology, story | 1 Comment »


The Last Idols of God

June 28th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the conclusion to the series God: From Magic to Motivation

I want to use two illustrations in this post that I believe offer a way for God-centred religions to get unstuck and survive the current change in aesthetics, away from a language of magic to a language of personal responsibility. These two stories talk about what I call The Last Idols of God. They are both very old stories.

[Note: this is a fun rant and a personal working-out of ideas. Treat it as such.]

1. Authority

There is Muslim story about a man that found he could not believe in God. He confided in a religious teacher. The religious teacher was not troubled at all by what this man said. Instead, he asked the man about what personally motivated him.

“What is most important to you in this world? What is it that you live for?”

“My nephew!” said the man quickly. “He is so bright and curious. I want nothing evil to happen to him. I want to make sure he has the best life has to offer!”

“Go then and treat your nephew as you would your God,” said the teacher. “Do everything in your power to raise the child well. Be an example to him, and make the world a place that will give him everything he needs to live properly.”

The man went away feeling much better, adopting a new attitude towards his life.

This is my retelling. I have lost the original story (or any supposed ‘authoritative’ one). However, the religious teacher in the story was not in any way bothered by the man’s unbelief. It isn’t a threat to the teacher or to the teacher’s religion. It isn’t really a problem at all.

The religious teacher addresses what motivates the man instead of promoting some kind of magic to believe in. He asks the man to identify and explain the embodiment of his motivations. What he finds is that the man’s personal god, the embodiment of what has implications for his behaviour and attitude, is in someone other than himself, something that requires no magic or complicated belief!

At no point does the religious teacher say to treat the child as authoritative. It isn’t a matter of giving the child what the child wants. Instead, it’s a matter of accepting a responsibility.

Gods need no magic and need no authority.

Our personal motivations can still be important to us, but it is time that we stripped them of all authority over our behaviour. Instead of simply confirming our motivations, or letting them rule, we can be honest with ourselves by openly admitting to them and accepting responsibility for how they make us behave.

2. Agency

The boys are brought up to be in fear of the masks the men wear in their rituals. These are the gods. These are the personifications, the powers, that structure the society. The boy, when he gets to be more than his mother can handle, the men come in with their masks, or whatever their costume is, and they grab the kid. He thinks he’s being taken by the gods. Taken out to the men’s new ground, and he’s beaten up and everything else.

But in New Guinea, there is a wonderful event where the poor kid has to stand up and fight a man with a mask. He’s fighting the god. The man let’s the kid win, takes the mask off, puts it on the kid.

Now the mask is not there defeated, and simply said, “This is just myth.” The mask represents the power that is shaping the society and has shaped you, and now you are a representative of that power.

You’ve broken past the image as fact, and understand the image as metaphor. And you are to represent what the metaphor stands for. ~ Joseph Campbell

This ritual reveals how God (the mask) is a construction. It is not a thing that creates but instead a thing created by us. This does not mean it is not real. It does have implications for behaviour (the boys react two ways after all – with fear and with fight). However, it is not the mask that has agency.

This is a very emotional experience for the child, and a brilliant example of how to incorporate disillusionment into the regular culture of a community. Disillusionment is becoming a common and life-defining experience shared by individuals today. Instead of focusing on ‘confirmations‘, god-centred religions need to celebrate these moments of disillusionment. Otherwise, they will continue to lose followers because of the destruction of trust and attachment involved in these emotional experiences. Kids are going away in fear, fight, flight and disinterest. They are walking away from community involvement in apathy or angst.

From time to time, I’d imagine, the masks that were passed from generation to generation would have to be fixed, altered, or remade. The masks, being constructions and having no magical agency in today’s language, are not immune to revision. They need constant maintenance and updating. I think we’ve reached a point where the masks must either be completely transparent or remade by each generation. This means we must remove agency from the make-up the mask. Our motivations are powerful enough already; the last thing we need to give them is their own power to act.

The mask in the New Guinea ritual does not win, after all. It is the child that wrestles and overcomes fear that wins.

 

Call to Change

The religious have been duped by bad arguments about what makes a God, or a motivation, worthy of worship. To be worthy of worship, a God does not need to exist at all, in some material sense or rational argument. Existence alone could actually make it unworthy.

Only within the bounds of the human imagination, collectively and individually, can we actually construct a God (a cultural embodiment of the motivations that should rule over us) that is worthy and inspirational. There may still be problems with inconsistency or incoherence, but that is the nature of story. That is part of dealing with the flux of new information available. Life resides in the very act of addressing new information.

Only an unknown, unreal and fictitious god (or gods) can now fit this role. No other god can survive the common experience of disillusionment which god-centred religions must address.

I don’t think this is a terrible or disrespectful way to look at religious commitment. People have dedicated themselves towards making the world a better place through adopting many kinds of stories. Instead of fixating on the inaccuracies of sacred texts, the incoherence of magical aesthetics or the probabilities grounding someone’s beliefs, we can instead focus on the consequences of the beliefs. How does a person’s beliefs, how does a person’s motivations, or how does a person’s God even, make them behave?

The last things we should give to our personal motivations is either some kind of sacred agency or some kind of supreme authority over how we collectively behave. These are the last idols of God (for now…).

The world itself wears no masks. We are the makers of masks. We are the ones that wear the masks.

God-dominated religions, if they wish to survive the continued rationalization and technologization of culture, need to abandon their last idols of God, particularly authority and agency.

What do you think?

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Belief, Beyond Belief, ethics, irony, psychology, Religion | 18 Comments »


Disillusionment, Adjustment, and Fish

June 28th, 2012   by   Andrew

I want say that I’m sorry I haven’t been getting out to many other people’s sites lately.

I miss the conversations, and the influence others have on me.

A couple of things have come up.

A new job.
A new house.

I was hoping to wrap up the series God: From Magic to Motivation. There are still a few posts I am hoping to get to, but I don’t know when I will get to them. I have very little skill when it comes to seeing into the future. Things like ‘personal writing time’ look terribly bleak.

Priorities invade.

Life invades.

I’m going to post a conclusion to the series I drafted up early on. It contains two short ‘stories’ that I think reveal how to deal with:

The disillusionment of religious beliefs, experienced by more and more people, and
The adjustments in motivations being experienced in workplaces, communities, hierarchies

We seem to be moving to a more connected and more inter-dependent, trusting world-community. How will that work?

This title sounded important to me:

The Last Idols of God

 

Maybe in a month’s time I will find my way back, finish the series, get to some other posts. Here are some titles I was working on:

WLC Confirms My God – It’s not what you think…

Is Being Rational a Virtue? – Looking at Rationalism as an Emotional-Aesthetic Commitment

Ultimate Complexity, Cultural Regeneration – is there such a thing as Ultimate Complexity? Can we survive a fragile world-culture?

Improvisation’s Lesson for Religionists and Overly-Materialistic Rational Academics

A New Ataraxia – Redefining what ‘Authority’ is, how it is treated, how it is used, Building Trust and Responsibility Despite Living in Uncertainty

 

I’d also like to work on a new series about how to actually read literature (and sacred texts), evaluate what’s being said without getting bogged down into too literal or too authoritative of a mindset.

I haven’t got all the workings figured out. I’m thinking a little about Northrop Frye, science fiction’s role in the new mythos, creativity as a team-driven exercise vs. an individualistic process,  and how we react towards new information.

My head’s a mess. Maybe one of these days I’ll organize my thoughts into something coherent…

Salut, mes amis, et merci pour tous les poissons!

À bientôt!

 

 

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Beyond Belief, dragons, ethics, god, myth, Philosophy, psychology, purpose, Religion, Science | Comments Off


Empathy to the Deserving – Sunday Vid, Sort Of…

June 25th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

I’m not going to embed or link to video today. This post is about a video, though.

I want to say something about the bus monitor Karen Klein and what’s happened because of a video made on a school bus. It says something about our empathy, what triggers our empathy, and what doesn’t trigger our empathy.

You might know the story. A grandmotherly bus monitor was singled out by a few thirteen-year boys. She was taunted, made fun of, and brought to tears. It was all captured on video, and put on Youtube.

People reacted.

Outrage. Emotional pain. Feelings of powerlessness.

A man in Canada, after seeing the video, thought this bus monitor deserved a vacation. Who deserves treatment like that anyway? Something should be done to make things right.

From that idea came the initiative to go further. Hey, this is 2012. There is enough of us connected, and emotionally attached to the situation. Certainly we actually can do something about it.

He started collecting donations.

He couldn’t change the fact that the thirteen-year-old boys had done something really stupid. He couldn’t change the torment the bus monitor went through or the public display that she had become. But with some help from other like-minded people, he could change things. He could at least get enough money together to give her the vacation she deserved after having to go through that.

Of the millions of viewers, a small percentage seemed to be willing to participate in his vision. And from those viewers that wanted to do something, contributions have poured in (continue to pour in?). Apparently the guy that set up the vacation account has collected enough to send maybe more than 120 bus monitors on the vacations they may very well deserve (if my math is off, please correct me).

If the job of bus monitor is really about enduring abuse similar to what was on the video, then certainly more than just this one bus monitor deserves a nice vacation. I mean, she can’t be the only one that has gone through this kind of abuse.

Sometimes a vacation break can put things into perspective, remind us of what’s important.

Apparently the boys have been reprimanded. One has written what I think is a sincere apology to her. The others may be following that example by now.

The parents of the boys probably feel terrible. It’s not like they wanted the world to look on their children in this way.

Thirteen-year-old boys can be really annoying. We’ve been trying for thousands upon thousands of years to turn thirteen-year-old boys into non-idiots – functioning, positive members of society. We have made up initiation rites, tribal dances, hunting parties, high school, all in the attempt to get them to smarten up.

They keep finding chances to be idiots.

Maybe it’s part of the hierarchy they find themselves in. If they feel empowered by treating others this way, then why would they even consider behaving any differently? What possible motivation could they have to change, when they seem to be enjoying themselves so much at the time, bringing discomfort to someone else?

Thirteen-year-old boys probably know how it feels to be bullied as well as any one of us.

A lot of internet video is watched alone. Our technological lifestyle has turned us into audiences of one. We are millions strong, all doing the same thing, isolated. the video of Karen Klein never really changes focus. She is almost always in middle of the shot, targeted, isolated. And in our audiences of one, when we see that experience on video, we feel it as much as watch it.

I’m really glad to know we live in a world where people can connect so immediately, and more importantly initiate action to make things right. Even if only a small fraction of all the people that saw the video did actually overcome the bystander effect, at least someone is trying to help someone. Giving Karen a vacation doesn’t solve the problem, but it shows that some people are willing to reach out, put some small effort into changing things.

But before we get too emotional about this, something more has to be said.

I think we need to ask ourselves why some cruelty has to be seen before we react to it.

Karen is one of us that had a bad experience. Her story is only different in that it was shared – it was caught on video and put on display for the world.

If we only react empathetically to the victims we actually see, then we are only really changing the smallest fraction of the victims of the world.

If we’re going to be emotional and rational about this, then we should think about the people we don’t see.

Our lives are becoming more and more public. We take our cues from our heroes. Modern day celebrities bare all for us, and act as examples. Their lives are incredibly public, out there for everyone to watch. We demand to know everything we can about them.

And we now reflect that, in our status updates, facebook timelines, personal youtube channels, and in the number of details we tick into the record about our loved ones, friends and family.

It has been projected that facebook may reach a billion people soon in 2012. Imagine being technically able to ‘friend’ a billion people. That’s a lot of attachment.

I think there may come a point in time when the pain of every victim of our idiocy is going to be on display.

Some of us seem to react to these things more that others, particularly when we’re emotionally triggered. Some of us even share in the struggle of the experience, and want to make things right.

Are we ready to share all of this with the world?

 

- – -

Aside – I meant to change the background in the image, put the youtube icon there instead. Unfortunately, when it comes to time-management, I’m a life-tard.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in art, Behaviour, Beyond Belief, education, empathy, ethics, psychology, story | Comments Off


Is the Secret to Happiness Anticipation?

June 16th, 2012   by   Andrew

The Optimism Bias - a self-serving bias where a person believes they are at less risk than someone else of having to go through a bad experience.

Or, in other words, we all think we are above the average in almost everything… which could be a statistical problem.

Tali Sharot has done some research and found about 80% of us suffer from the optimism bias. And here’s a tricky thing – You can’t just eliminate or neutralize the optimism bias. Sharot thinks we can learn something from it, and learn something about ourselves too.

Some Notes:

Is the secret to happiness low expectations?

Well, not really. According to Sharot, people with higher expectations tend to feel better regardless of outcomes.

Is Anticipation the key to happiness?

If you think you want something, and if you think you’ll get it three days from now, those three days will be happier than if you get it immediately or wait a long time for it.

The Weekend Effect

People look forward to Friday, even though it is often a workday. But, with Friday comes the anticipation of the weekend. A lot of people like Friday over Sunday. Go figure.

Feelings Affect Subjective Reality, But Also Influence Objective Reality

Stress and anxiety have a direct effect on your health, for example. You change your physical world, your physical body, by what you think about and what you do.

We need to be able to imagine a different reality, and believe we can create that reality.

Otherwise we don’t change things. But at the same time, if we simply leap at things too much, probabilities will very likely catch up to us quickly.

 

This TED talk put a lot of things into perspective for me. Teen angst, for example, is much more understandable now. If a person is upset about something, but feels there is no way to change it at all, then this can create a horrible, all-consuming trap of emotions.

I think this has something to say about religion and religious belief too. Faith, as in belief in magical beings with supernatural influence, isn’t so aesthetically pleasing anymore. The word “faith” itself can cause an almost allergic reaction in people. However, faith as in the motivation to be optimistic, and to be persistent in pursuing what you want, or the belief that what you want is worth pursuing with all your effort, could have some advantages in this game of life.

This means we have to be all the more responsible for our personal motivations, I think, and to that end, more responsible for our personal gods. (Faith gives power to act rather than faith gives justification for getting your way. And with any power comes responsibility, according to Uncle Ben from Spiderman…)

What do you think?

Do you see some advantages to the optimism bias?

Do you see some dangers?

Do you enjoy (or suffer from) the optimism bias?

 

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Beyond Belief, education, empathy, god, psychology, Religion, Science | Comments Off


Hierarchy in the City – Continued

June 10th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

A local minister I know called me a “religious sniper” some time ago. He was referring to my style of picking off religious topics from the vantage point of my website  - never really know where I am or where the fire is coming from, or what the target may be.

His comment was meant in light-hearted jest, I believe. Although I appreciate it and take it as a compliment, I don’t think I have the accuracy or precision to be a sniper. Snipers do tend to play a part in urban warfare, but that’s not how I see things right now. War is not a solution. It’s a marketing strategy.

And war is getting really old and making things really fragile. City life depends on trust, enormous amounts of trust. Our entire foundation can still be upturned by a few confident authorities with silver tongues, or individuals motivated by the merest whims.

I think of myself more as waving a shotgun around, hoping I might hit the broad side of some ancient barn. I’m worried about those mischievous, ephemeral spirits of the night, and I’m intent on, metaphorically, keeping them away from my daughter’s bedroom.

However, I’ve come to realize that either choice of weaponry, sniper rifle or shotgun, is actually pretty poor. I have my criticisms of religion but I have to realize that whatever its faults, it’s part of the world’s inheritance right now. It is a part of the house we live in. It may not be the foundation of the house that’s the problem. The problem is (almost always) people’s motivations, or the things that people think should be worshipped.

My intention was never to bring down the pyramid anyway, and any kind of personal firearm would only jeopardize the safety of the people within the building. Regardless of what you shoot at it, a pyramid continues. A pyramid isn’t that fragile and not so easy to deconstruct. Time fears the pyramids more than any god.

Here’s the lesson I’ve been thinking about when it comes to pyramids. It comes in part from Uxmal in Mexico. The lesson is about constructive persistence.

Uxmal is a city of the ancient Maya. The name can be translated as “Built-three-times”. The most dominant architectural part of the city is The House of the Magician, a temple at the top of a pyramid, the newest built on top of the old. The leader of the city built on what he had inherited, just as the last leader did. The leaders come and go. The pyramid lingers.

One intriguing feature of many of the Mayan pyramids is that even though each generation of builders wanted to add something, the older temples often enough remained visible and accessible. The builders rarely destroyed the old pyramid; they built around them and on top of them to make the structure bigger, often with a wider base and higher top.

When we reach new heights, we don’t destroy the old pyramids we’re standing on. We build bigger ones on top.

It doesn’t mean the new temple has to look like the old one, or that it even does the same job as the old one. But the past won’t go away just because someone finds a flaw in the engineering. Those old pyramids of power made it through the past despite being inconsistent, fragile, downright wrong in some places, or in bad need of repair.

We can borrow from all the cultures and aesthetics of the world now, but by doing so we are confirming the pyramids of the past and building on old foundations, making the whole thing more complicated. Whatever steps it takes to build the new and better pyramids, we’ll need to take into account all the new information that is available too.

New pyramids can’t be built from magic, but they can’t be built by firing bullets at them either.

If our future is to remain in the city, then our personal motivations have to be laid bare all the more.  The things that have implications for our behaviour will make such strange bedfellows. We can’t let the ancient motivations rule us with authority anymore. The view from those old temples is too low, too limited. Our motivations demand an even higher point of view.

One thing that does help me sleep easier at night is the thought that pyramids were often enough built as tombs. Pyramids, like cities, are places where gods go to die.

If the whole world is to embrace one big culture, and if everyone is adding to one big pyramid, it might be big enough to lay to rest the most sanctified of our motivations.

[I'll let you have fun with what that might be.]

What do you think?

 

- – -

Some Sources:

Uxmal – Wikipedia

Pyramid of the Magician – Wikipedia. A short retelling of the myth on how the pyramid was built (coincidentally, it has some striking similarities to the myth of Horus, and other hero tales)

Some great photos of Uxmal Ruins

History of Religious Criticism – from rationalevolution.net, a thorough, sometimes thick, outline that starts with the Protestant Reformation and ending with a neat graphic of the 50 most non-religious countries in the world today.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in art, Beyond Belief, ethics, god, irony, myth, psychology, story | Comments Off


« Older Entries