The Deadmau5 Lesson on Religion’s Future

March 9th, 2012   by   Andrew

Possibly part of the (eventual) conclusion to the series God: From Magic to Motivation

An article on the site Genealogy of Religion entitled The Magic of Religion got me thinking about the future. It also got me thinking about music, fiction, what is and what should be.

Deadmau5 (Dead-mouse) is a DJ from the Niagara Falls area. While hanging out on some internet forums, he told a story about finding a dead mouse in his computer tower. He got to be known as ‘that dead mouse guy’. He then adopted the handle for himself (and modified the spelling).

While doing some work on 3D computer graphics, he built a mouse-head helmet. He tried out the helmet as part of his DJ show and people seemed to love it. They danced more and the parties got bigger and better. The light shows got bigger, and the concerts got bigger. The helmet itself now has LED lights. Words and images scroll over the helmet making the show all the more fantastic or “unreal”.

He’s constructed a loose story around the Deadmau5 thing. A character based on his cat, Meowingtons, has overpowered Deadmau5, hacked his beats and stolen the mouse mask. It’s all a fiction, creating a place of wonder, fun and excitement. And people dance to it.

Deadmau5 is kind of a scrawny, wiry guy. I’ve heard he’s addicted to Coca-Cola. When he comes on stage he waves to the audience and holds up the mouse mask to great rolls of cheers. When he lowers the mask on his head, the music starts and the magic begins. People bounce and smile and dance for hours. At the end of the night, the helmet comes off. People leave the concert feeling exhausted, exhilarated, and feeling part of something beyond the ordinary reality of life.

How can religion can play such an important role in our history and our personal lives if based on fiction? It’s been suggested:

Groups that dance and chant together seems to have some kind of fitness not found in groups that don’t dance and chant together.

Religions are in the business of reality management – motivating people to behave in effective (or at least predictable) ways, regardless of the accuracy in their portrayal of reality. Religions, like fiction, are in the business of making up what should be.

Interestingly enough, two of the world’s oldest cultures have changed a lot recently and now seem poised to dominate the world’s next century. Both have given the world physical disciplines. For example, Tai Chi comes from China. Yoga comes from India. Both of these physical disciplines can be done in groups or individually.

The future of religion might look a lot like the past. The groups that dance and chant together, that consciously participate in what might be fiction, in order to effectively transform what is into what should be, they will have a fitness that outperforms groups stuck on insisting their story is correct reality.

Maybe if the west had a more physical discipline instead of a more metaphysical pursuit, it would have a different fitness for today’s challenges.

Before I started this series of posts, I was thinking of doing a series on quirky new religions based on fictions – Disney-ism, Jedi-ism, Dude-ism, Matrix-ism. I think I want to get back to that. They might be more influential on our future than we can now imagine. And they might have just as much influence as the secular habit of going to the gym to work out alone.

The knowledge that Deadmau5 is just a guy, and not some computerized mouse, doesn’t wreck the fun or the enchantment. People will play along if he keeps them dancing, and as long as he continues doing innovative stuff. In terms of checks and balances, I’d imagine it’s just as important that Deadmau5 doesn’t take himself too seriously either. At the end of the night, after all, he does take off the helmet and reveal that he’s just a guy.

This says little about morality, I guess. But it says something about aesthetics, and what we can be motivated by.

What do you think?


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A Brief History of Motivation, and Possibly, God

February 2nd, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: from Magic to Motivation

The word motivation appeared in written form in 1873, the same year Winchester made a rifle that was later given the nickname “The Gun that Won the West.” There was also a financial panic in that year followed by a depression. Banks failed, then businesses. People were under the illusion that things were fine until they had to face how fragile reality can be.

Motive is a bit older. It was part of Middle-English in the 1300s for that which moves a person to behave a certain way.

The Latin word motivus is usually cited as the most likely source, and it dates back even further. It generally is used to mean the same thing – what makes you do something or makes you move.

Technically speaking, the word God that we use today in the west never appeared in the original religious texts, of course. It’s an English word with roots in other languages, and in ancient ways of thinking.

According to some sources, the roots of our word God, and the words used in the ancient texts, could be from the Sanskrit hu or hamu, which meant to call upon, or to invoke,  to implore. In other words, inspire action.

The word might have had some help from the ancient Persian Khoda, or possibly the Hindu khooda, which meant God. Khoda may be from the older Ahura, or Ahura Mazda, meaning Wise/Great Lord.

Some sources suggest the word Elohim may have come from something with the original meaning of power. I’m going to cherry pick with this next one, but YHWH might have a subtle enough nuance to it to mean something like an action that intimately reveals the nature of the one who is doing the acting.

Roughly then, we are talking about what has power over you, the “thing” that makes you do something, the action that reveals intention.

This isn’t very thorough research. I don’t know Sanskrit or any ancient language. I haven’t found anything yet in the ancient languages that comes closer to our present-day definition and use of motivation. Three hours of playing around with a search engine and cross-checking a few different sources. Maybe I found what I was looking for, a common problem in religion, language, research and information.

I wonder what our world would be like if Elohim and YHWH weren’t translated into Dios or Jove, but instead Motivus. Would the world be any different now?

I have so much to learn.

If motivus (what makes you act) could be the more common understanding for what we mean by a god (what has implications for your behaviour), maybe we could strip our ideas of (most of) the supernatural elements usually associated with the word. We could strip the assumption of authority that we give to our motivations. We could face up to, wrestle with, and even manage what really motivates us collectively and individually.

A fellow blogger uses the title Questionable Motives for his site. He is driven by gnu atheism and the desire to change people’s minds before we take the world over a brink from which we can’t return.

Samir Selmanovic has referred to religions as “God-management systems” (two posts where I use this phrase and comment). I’ve heard some people refer to their religion as a “movement” rather than a belief-system. Maybe it’s time to question what moves us, and practice personal motivation management. It might have helped avoid the international economic collapse of just a few years ago.

Instead of giving motives any authority, shouldn’t we constantly, consciously question motives – both our own and those of other people?

What do you think?

What's my motivation?

- – -

I’d like to dig a little more and see if the hu in Sanskrit is related somehow to the hu in Ahura.

Sources and further links:

Dictionary.com

a brief etymology of the word God, and summaries from several sources.

a slightly more thorough etymology from a more evangelical site (citing the further source the Catholic Encyclopedia, like the above site).

A fun English/Sanskrit translator

Some notes on the Hebrew and some other notes too

Wiki for Elohim

Wiki for YHWH

A look at motivation in psychological terms

some more fun motivation posters on guns

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Signalling

January 26th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: From Magic to Motivation

Have you heard of the book Shantaram?

It’s a story about an Australian escaped convict and slightly reformed heroin addict who, while on the run, falls in love with India.

I still haven’t made up my mind whether I like it or not. There are several good ideas in it, but the style of writing didn’t always sit well with me. Maybe I shouldn’t be in a rush to evaluate it, but allow it some breathing room and silence.

After living in India for a while, the narrator takes a trip on a train with a friend. He tries to explain the meaning behind the Indian’s head wiggle. Here is a youtube clip that tries to capture the head wiggle.

No discovery pleased me more, on that first excursion from the city, than the full translation of the famous Indian head-wiggle.

Most of those who entered the open carriage greeted the other seated or standing men with a little wiggle of the head. The gesture always drew a reciprocal wag of the head from at least one, and sometimes several of the passengers. I watched it happen at station after station, knowing that the newcomers couldn’t be indicating Yes, or I agree with you with the head-wiggle because nothing had been said, and there was no exchange other than the gesture itself. Gradually, I realised that the wiggle of the head was a signal to others that carried an amiable and disarming message: I’m a peaceful man. I don’t mean any harm.

Moved by admiration and no small envy for the marvellous gesture, I resolved to try it myself. The train stopped at a small rural station. A stranger joined our group in the carriage. When our eyes met for the first time, I gave the little wiggle of my head, and a smile. The result was astounding. The man beamed a smile at me so huge that it was half the brilliance of my own friend’s, and set to such energetic head waggling in return that I was, at first, a little alarmed. By the journey’s end, however, I’d had enough practice to perform the movement as casually as others in the carriage did, and to convey the gentle message of the gesture. It was the first truly Indian expression my body learned, and it was the beginning of a transformation that has ruled my life, in all the long years since that journey of crowded hearts. (107, some editing by me)

I was really taken by the little passage of cultural adoption. Because of the way my mind works, I had a vision of trying this out around my small town in Canada. And then I thought of what might happen if people tried it elsewhere, like on a New York city subway. How would they react if a stranger made eye contact and wiggled their head a little?

There is nothing inherent in the head wiggle itself that commits the wiggler to being peaceful or meaning no harm. An observant and motivated tourist, with either good or ill intent, could quickly catch on and adopt the simple waggle. And yet, the act of copying seems to gain our trust. Being one and the same on something with someone still seems like the surest way people can tolerate each other, trust each other. Doing the same, thinking the same…

When the narrator arrives at his friend’s home village, he is given another test. He is not allowed to enter the village until he pats the father’s belly.

He lifted his shirt with a graceful, artless flourish, and patted at his hairy pot-belly. He eyes glittered as he spoke to me, waggling his head all the while in that seemed to be an unnervingly seductive leer.

“He wants you to pat his tummies,” my friend explained, grinning.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh yes.”

“Tell him I’m flattered, and I think it’s a fine tummies. But tell him I think I’ll pass.”

The father’s grin widened, and he raised his eyebrows several times, in encouragement. he still held the shirt up to his chest, exposing the round, hairy paunch.

“Go on. A few pats only. It won’t bite you, my father’s tummies.”

Sometimes you have to surrender before you win. Surrender is at the heart of the Indian experience. Glancing around me, on the deserted track, I reached out and patted the warm and fuzzy belly. (115, some editing by me)

Can you imagine patting a complete stranger’s belly in public in order to signal that you are worthy of a community’s trust?

Continued here.

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Signalling Continued

January 26th, 2012   by   Andrew

Part of the series God: from Magic to Motivation

Human beings have an infatuation with eyes. My wife likes my eye crinkles. She says she’s always been attracted to eye crinkles. Sometimes when I’m with her I bunch up my face and exaggerate my moods. She pats me on the head and tolerates me.

Some research suggests our infatuation has to do with reading motivations in each other and making sure the social group is acting as a cohesive whole. We look someone in the eye as if it could be a good test to see if they are lying, but we can get lost in a coy bat of an eyelash and a disarming wink. We look loved ones in the eye. We look adversaries in the eye. We watch the outsider and avoid the outsider’s glare.

When I finished school, I wasn’t terribly motivated. In order to find a career, I took a chance on a meeting with a job-hunter. He was real firebrand, full of ambition and certainty. He sat me down in his office before his enormous desk and then sat in his comfortable chair to size me up. At one point my eyes fell from his penetrating stare and I realized his desk was on a rise in the floor. He proceeded to tell me how he wouldn’t stop until he had something for me. He’d wring the very necks of my competition. I was overwhelmed, starting to believe he really would do it. He really meant it.

While giving him some background information I mentioned my father was once a minister. Immediately he asked me:

“Then you know the Lord?”

I balked and fumbled through how I was raised in a church, but not from a tradition that talked that way. He pressed on.

“But, you know the Lord?”

He called his assistant (his wife) into the office and she led us through a moment of prayer. It was one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve ever known, and I knew then I would not trust him. I left saying I would call him with my decision. I never did. I had this terrible feeling; I didn’t know what he was capable of.

He may very well have been able to find me a dream starting-position in some organization. He certainly had the will to do it. But I felt a powerful urge to keep away from him. I didn’t trust that motivation.

The Jains of India have always been small in number but high in reputation, due in part to the high cost of of commitment to their religion. Their efforts towards not being governed by ‘earthly motivations’ has given them a disproportionate number  in high positions of finance, accounting, trade and commerce.(link to a google book). Apparently a lot of Indians trust Jains with their money. Would you trust your financial advisors more if they looked you in the eye and explained their religious oaths?

Over 400 million dollars in rare stones can be traded from one hand to another, as it were, each day in New York’s Diamond District (according to the wiki). An incredible amount of trust is placed in those hands. The diamond dealers are an exclusive community, knowing each other’s families for generations. It is believed many transactions there have finished with only a smile, a handshake and a traditional blessing - mazel und brucha (good luck and good blessing). Could large corporations work under such relationships and good trust?

In feudal Japan, the noble and the samurai were expected to give their life at any moment for their lord, at any whim for their lord. What better way to show your loyalty? But almost paradoxically, there was just as strong a presumption that each and every individual was pursuing the attainment of more political power. It kind of makes sense, culturally, to balance the two. If each member of the ambitious classes has a strong motivation to rise in power and authority, then it’s wise to couple that with a complete commitment to hierarchical loyalties. Go ahead and play games of intrigue and deception and confidence, but know that your lord has the right, and the mood, to ask you to commit ritual suicide whenever the wish arises.

There was another way out. The samurai or the noble, when tired of the game of political advance, could say something like:

I will shave my head, renounce the world, and become a monk.

There is nothing inherent to a shaved head that makes a person peaceful or even disengaged from politics. However, a commitment to Buddhism seemed to signal that it was the end of a person’s overt political career. Interestingly, wearing the robes and taking up the commitment didn’t so much signal a renouncement of the world, but a renouncement of the motivations usually driving a person in that culture. I’m a peaceful man. I don’t mean any harm. I don’t have aspirations of power.

A blogger friend of mine has been telling a story of his time on the run through England, Scotland and Europe. He’s making the attempt at squaring things with (his) god and his own motivations, but it’s a tough road to walk. At one point he did some wilderness hiking and came across an American couple, tourists, struggling through the trails. He joined up with them for a short while, but only after he passed a few questions and tests.

“So you believe in the Lord God, and in our saviour Jesus Christ?” she asked, half apprehensive, half relieved.
I thought about quoting Riddick at her – I absolutely believe in God, and I absolutely hate the fucker – but then thought, that would only lead to more hassle. I certainly wasn’t going to tell her the fully story, was I? So I just nodded curtly and walked on.
(Please read the entire passage.  He has a story we have to face up to if we’re going to get anywhere…)

We are constantly trying to find ways to predict other people’s intentions behind their actions. We understand that a person with enough motivation can move the world, turn our world upside down, even threaten everything we hold precious.

But, who is the outsider now? Who is not part of you when literally anyone in the world can access your social group?

I’m convinced more than ever that our simple signals in body language, our little religious questions and tests, and our complicated cultures are too overwhelmed. And the consequences of all this remain in the realm of the unknown. There may not be any simple answers anymore when it comes to building trust and building community.

I think the only answer is the long one that follows the question:

So, what’s your story?

What do you think?

Is the world ready to listen to that?

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God: From Magic to Motivation

January 8th, 2012   by   Andrew

I have a new series of posts in mind.

Nassim Taleb gave some advice to a friend. I am borrowing that advice. He recommended reading Karen Armstrong’s A History of God. (I am also borrowing the actual book; my parents had a copy. Thanks again.)

She understands that religion is mostly an emotional-aesthetic commitment and one that is shared with other people; it becomes a collective commitment. It is not about belief, but about trust. It is not a desire to be fooled by randomness by seeing false patterns (or, as she explains in her Great Transformation, it ceased to be so at some point in the sixth century BC). I am ashamed to say that I was initially reluctant to start reading it because she was not an academic/dropped out of an academic program –not realizing that it is precisely because she is not an academic that there is no single fake bone in her work. I felt guilty and silly at my neglect: the book had been staring at me since 1994. And there is this nagging feeling: How many other people have I ignored based on the same idiotic criterion? (source, #81)

From the jacket of her book:

Any particular idea of God must – if it is to survive – work for the people who develop it. Ideas of God change when they cease to be effective. The concept of a personal God who behaves like a larger version of ourselves was suited to mankind at a certain stage but no longer works for an increasing number of people. Understanding the ever-changing ideas of God in the past and their relevance and usefulness in their time is a way to begin the search for a new concept for the twenty-first century. Such a development is virtually inevitable, because it is a natural aspect of our humanity to seek a symbol for the ineffable reality that is universally perceived.

I think this new concept of God doesn’t need to rely on superstition or on the supernatural. I don’t even think this symbol, however we point at it, needs to be given agency or authority. And if we do it right, I think we will be able to test it.

It’s actually an old concept, something we’ve been wrestling with since we’ve become conscious of our motivations.

Here are some ideas and titles I’m working on:

God: From Magic to Motivation

My Recent Empathy Fail

Stigma and Introspection

A Brief History of God, and Possibly, Motivation – a look at words and meaning

Religion as (Cultural) Redundancy, and all the more important because of it!
Part 1 – Multiple Conservatives, the Dangers of Optimizing
Part 2 – Separating Church and State, Separating Hero and Nanny

Burqa, Panentheism, Responsibility – an examination of what has implications for our behaviour

Can we Do without Religon? – a look at a Jared Diamond talk

The Myth of Violence - TED talk with Steven Pinker

Wikipedia Shuts Down their English Site, and Vain Denials of the New Reality

Karen Armstrongs Elusive, Stubborn Meme – Three ideas from the book A History of God

Obfuscation

Implications, Relationships, Symbolism

Marvin the Android (from the HHGtotheG), and Being Smart Enough to Pick your Programming

Myth as Reinforcing Critical Thinking – Inspired by Dale McGowan’s family and Santa Claus

William Lane Craig Confirms My God

Science as an Emotional-Aesthetic Commitment
Part 1 – Rationalism as Religion – first thoughts
Par 2 – The Tenets of Rationalism: At First Glimpse
Part 3 – The Narrative Fallacy Revisited 

Skepticism and Associated Learning – a look at how we manage Patternicity

The Myth of Growth – The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function

Ultimate Complexity and Cultural Regeneration – I’ve been Reading Shantaram

Texting, the Literal Written Word, RElationships, “Pron”

Efficient Signalling
Part 1 – Shantaram and Indian Head Wiggles
Part 2 – Signalling as Expressing Motivation, and the Role of Story

The Deadau5 lesson on Religion’s Future

A New Ataraxia  - the inner peace from the skeptical suspension of belief and disbelief, or, not filling holes with ideas just to say the holes are filled.

What do you think?

- – -

(Note: I think I’m developing a potentially unhealthy bro-crush for Nassim Taleb. I want to write a song based on his ideas. Do you know the song “Synchronicity” by The Police? I want to find a karaoke version and put over-top of it a tongue-in-cheek ditty called “Platonicity”  or maybe “Patternicity”… any ideas or help with lines would be appreciated…)

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Another Look at God

September 3rd, 2011   by   Andrew

Chapter 12 of the series Myths and Dragons

1My people, hear my teaching;
listen to the words of my mouth.
2 I will open my mouth with a parable;
I will utter hidden things, things from of old—
3 things we have heard and known,
things our ancestors have told us. ~ Psalm 78

Ok.

Here’s my dragon.

I have found a description of god that appeals to me. It fits, I believe, with our understanding of gods, with how we want them to work, and yet it requires no appeals to anything silly.

But,

My dragon has three problems.

1. It undermines the only premise in the My Theology we play with on this site. If mythology, and storytelling, teaches us anything, it’s that we should not trust what we know as being complete, but instead face the unknown as the disciplined, serving hero, letting the unknown be in charge. And here I go wrecking even my own basic premise! Argh. I guess premises are made to be broken.

2. The vocabulary is hopelessly high-minded and academic. It is too complex to be of any use when actually talking to people. So, it can be dismissed fairly easily. Why give it the time of day, or any consideration at all, if it doesn’t appeal directly to you?

3. It is not tied to any particular or specific culture. So the usual problems remain. Why would you pay attention to anything that doesn’t fit with your personal worldview, especially if you already have things figured out? (Oh, right… because what you don’t know is the very thing that could bring down the walls around you…)

I’d like to try to find a simpler way of saying this, so I’m asking for your help, nudging readers. Are you up for the challenge of making the complex and high-minded simple and accessible? Or, temporarily adopting something that might not fit with your reality?

[emphasis in the passage is my own]

We can separate a thing from the implication of the thing, because we are students and beneficiaries of empirical thinking and experimental method. We can remove attribution of motive and affective power from the “Object,” and leave it standing in its purely sensory and consensual aspect; can distinguish between what is us and what is world. The pre-experimental mind could not (cannot) do this, at least not consistently; could not reliably discriminate between the object and its effect on behavior. It is that object and effect which, in totality, constitute a god (more accurately, it is a class of objects and their effects that constitute a god.)

A god constitutes the manner in which a group or family of stimuli of isomorphic motivational significance reveals itself to or grips the collective, communicated imagination of a given culture. Such a representation is a peculiar mix of psychological and sociological phenomena and objective “fact” – an undifferentiated mix of subject and object (of emotion and sensory experience), transpersonal in nature (as it is historically elaborated “construction” and shared imaginative experience). The primitive deity nonetheless serves as accurate representation of the ground of being, however, because it is affect and subjectivity as well as pure object (before the two are properly distilled or separated)—because it is primordial experience, rather than the mere primordial thing.

…gods should therefore be regarded as the embodiment (what is understood, or expressed, or partially known) of the transpersonal intrapsychic phenomena that give rise to human motivation, as well as those aspects of the objective world that activate those intrapsychic systems. (Jordan Peterson)

What do you think?

Accurate? Meaningful? Measurable? (And no one is going to buy it, I’d bet…)

Here’s my challenge to you –

1. come at this with fresh, unassuming eyes.

2. think about the above description and try to find a way to say it so that anyone who hears it can understand it.

I hope you take on this challenge.

Below, in white text, I’ve included my attempt. It’s still too long. Please make your attempt at the challenge first before highlighting my hidden text.

Here is my attempt to make this description a little more accessible. And yes, I do borrow from Shakespeare to start. It fits with some of the themes of this series and I needed a boost, some help. Hey, did you write a comment yet? Did you even try? You better not be highlighting this without doing your part!

If all the world’s a stage then the subjective players play their parts, hopefully, to the best of their abilities, knowledge and passion. But just as an actor has to ask herself, “What’s my motivation?” I ask you “What’s your god?” And to find a god worthy of worship is to find a motivation worth being ruled by, a compulsion to trust and even act upon.

So, let’s look at some of the characteristics of gods but in terms of human motivation:

A god is an inny as much as an outy – a motivation can be both subjective and objective without cutting them or separating them. A god can be found within individuals as much as outside of individuals. A god is also physical material as much as abstract ideas. Whatever moves a person to action.

A god can be practically anything we have a relationship with – it is transpersonal, just as history and culture and even heirlooms can be transpersonal. There are emotional bonds and shared motivations that produce the relationship.

A god is a source – A god is like the mountain that makes us stand in awe, the wellspring of water that we need to sustain our lives, the psychological framework that we use to understand or rationalize our feelings or behavior, and the ground of being that makes up the complex and only partially known natural world. This possibly “ultimate” source, however, need no will or agency in the sense that we understand these words. It can be filled with “objective” objects that we are subjectively motivated to react to.

A god compels us act – the ‘existence’ of a god must have implications for behavior, otherwise it isn’t a god. Even if it is only what some might consider a projection (and therefore ‘not real’ in the sense of the supposed objective reality) we are compelled to act due to our experiences and our desires to have experiences. For example, in our children we see gods that must be served. They need to be brought up properly and given every opportunity to flourish. We worship and challenge our children and make sacrifices to them constantly, a relationship that sounds awfully similar to a relationship with a god. It has been said that we were created in order to serve the gods who, first of all, needed to be fed and clothed. (Eliade)

A god is the conscious or unconscious “embodying” of our motivations for actions, especially from the vantage point of subjective experience. So, any examination into a god is similar to the question, “What will I be ruled by?” or “What makes me act?” This might begin to explain why people want their god to be all-loving, all-seeing, and all-powerful. That is the ultimate combination for what your own behavior should be motivated by, is it not? What should our motivations spring from if not some source (within us or outside of us) that takes part in an attitude of compassion, knowledge and ability- yet another abstract but inspirational trinity.

And how do you not have a god? I don’t know. Resist anything you feel compelled to do? Refuse to participate in experience? Pop the cultural bubbles? Maybe it’s simpler than that.

Separate objects from their meaning. But keep in mind that even doubt and even process can be turned into gods, if this description of the nature of gods has any accuracy to it at all. And whatever significance you use to separate objects may still be placing meaning upon those separated objects.

[I'm not really happy with my explanation here. I think I might try to get back to this, simplify it and shorten it. I believe it can be done.]

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