Jesus was the man who was God born incarnate.
The zen master asks, "Does the butterfly think the philosopher or the philosopher think the butterfly?
The relationship between God and man is a covenanted one. Grace is the action of God. God freely gives of his love and we receive. God is the prime doer.
But the God of Biblical proportion is Omnisicient, Omnipotent, and Omnipotential and absolute, alpha and omega. So that means that there is divine reality. God created the heavens and earth. God is the heaven's and earth. All is God stuff. God is imminent and emimnent and all such words and transcendent and elsewhere and present, all and beyond. It's God. God is.
Life is matter and energy and as we mature spiritually we move from seeing the solids to the energy and the web of light that is life. We experience the Godness of stuff and existence and ourselves and our love.
The question of existence is 'do we exist?" What is reality? Are we imagining this or dreaming this? Are we the dreamer or the dream?
The Jesus story. Jesus is the baby then Jesus is the man. Jesus lives.
It's the most incredible idea that God came down. A key story in the Bible is Jesus washing the feet of the disciples. On earth prior to Jesus ,leadership was only top down.
In the normal conventional earth social reality, shit falls down on the little people and the littlest gets the greatest shit. It was the reality of the Christian world before Jesus. It's military rule. It's Herod and Caesar and the Chinese Emperor.
By contrast in the Jesus story God humbles himself to be a baby.
In all the other God is either separate or if man becomes God he raises himself to be a God and transcends this world.
But Jesus said the Good News was with his death ,reality, which had been rather and sordid, became immensely different. The death of Jesus was the enlightenment of creation. There was darkness then there was light. The light is in all creation now. A switch was thrown and never thrown back.
The death of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus, was the God becoming God moment of light throughout the universe. The experience of Christ Consciousness is like Samadhi or Nirvana or mystical rejuvenation or enlightenment or rapture or transcendent bliss. It's pure Joy. It's in effable . Christians have collectively described this with all manner of miraculous experiences and real behaviours with extraordinary otherworldly gifts. Not only is it something personally experienced, it's also been well documented and evidenced so much so that it's just another everyday event to anyone but the rulers of this world. There is love and fear. The rulers of this world are so afraid, so terrified, so inhuman that they killed god and to this day continue to kill God in denial of God, love and light. Straw men.
There's fear and love. Jesus is love. Fear is absence of love and absence of Jesus. A dark hole.
Jesus and his followers are in a spiritual war on earth individually and collectively. Evil and Good. Right and Left. Wrong and Right. Up and down. Odd and even. It's an intrinsic dilemna for the individual, a moral and ethical dilemna and a community and world spiritual war..
Choose Jesus or don't choose Jesus. Choose God or don't choose God.
Interesting.
That said Christ Consciousness is like a state one comes and goes with, that second sense of feeling alone and not alone. I can reach for God but God must reach down to me. It's a dance. It's a love match. I hug God . God hugs me. It's the song of song.
In the Sistine chapel God and Adam touch. Christ is the light in between. Jesus Christ is the Word.
The Holy Spirit is the interface.
When Jesus was baptized by John, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove upon him. Jesus said, 'the advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything" The Name of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ the Word.
The spiritual is the lightness of being.
There's a 'gravity' here, a 'graveness', we are weighted down in this world by the deathness of this place But "Yea though I walk through the valley of the Shadow of Death, thou aren't with me."
Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life."
We are reborn in Jesus. As Christians we become intimately aware of our immortality. Reborn we do not die at death. We pass through death to new life. That is the God news of Jesus Christ.
Hallelujah!
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Thursday, September 21, 2017
Sunday, September 17, 2017
Why is the Bible Important to Christians?
It’s Sunday morning. I woke with a sore back. That’s better than yesterday. Yesterday I woke at 4 am with a sore mind. My sore back is from lifting good stuff and doing good work. I guess my sore mind comes from that too. No good deed goes unpunished by this government. My job is to focus on the blessings not the curses. Only my back hurt this morning. All my other body parts were in good working order. I slept in till 830 am and Gilbert let me. and what a blessing that was.
Now I’ve not been to church in weeks. I say I’m a winter Christian because summer and fall I’m usually at sea sailing, or camping in the woods. This year I was on my lawn chair out back lot enjoying the sun and reading a lot. I read the Holy Bible most days. I talk with Christian friends and do Christian service. I’m praying all the time and meditating some.
The Holy Bible is a source of comfort and wisdom for me. I began reading it as a child and studied it seriously in various theological institutes and courses. It’s a part of all church services no matter how “liberal”. I learned in theology that one should not ‘cherry pick’ the Bible for phrases to support one’s own position but rather see it as a gestalt.
There’s an ‘old testament’. It includes the Torah or Jewish Bible and prophets. Jesus was Jewish. His first disciples were Jewish. The writers of the Bible were Jewish. The translators, not necessarily. Neither were the interpreters. Christianity is a ‘universal religion’. It’s open to all. It’s inclusive and not exclusive. According to the Pew Report, as of 2010 Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on earth.”
Once a ‘word of mouth’ religion with many writings over time the Holy Bible became the collection of writings of the church. The Bible was a collection of the ‘books’ or ‘writings’ of the Christian church with some ‘books’ such as St. Thomas being considered questionable as the orthodox Christian religions have rejected the ‘gnostic gospels’ as being ‘outside’ the mainstream that continues till today. The Councils of the Church through the years have addressed these ideas and come to a consensus of truth, or orthodoxy.
Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Mathew 5:17.
To me that means that the Torah and the writings of the prophets are still important. I love the Psalms which are the Songs of David and quoted by Jesus. The Holy Bible of Christians is divided into an Old and a New Testament. Testament simply means ’tale’ or ’telling’. The Old Testament comes before Jesus and the New Testament comes after Jesus. It begins with the four Gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. These give witness to the life and death and teaching of Jesus. The latter parts of the New Testament are the stories of the Apostles, the leaders Jesus surrounded himself with while he was alive, and the writings of St. Paul, the Rabbi who converted to Christianity and along with the apostles started the first churches. Paul, as well as being a Jew, was a Roman citizen and a tent maker. Only the rich could afford tents and travel so Paul was part of the then ‘tent-setter’ group and travelled all around the Mediterranean of the Roman Empire of the day.
The Old Testament is preempted by the teaching of Jesus. It is an older version of the truth.
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14. 6.
I loved the matter of fact way a Theologian said, “The Jews were wrong then and they remain wrong today.” What he was referring to was the fundamental rift between the Old Testament and New Testament. Christians see Jesus as the Messiah or God/Man which the Old Testament speaks of but the Jewish authorities rejected him and with the Romans, the ruling world empire of the day, killed ‘Son of God.’ Today the Jews continue to believe that Jesus was a prophet and his teachings were summarized in the ‘teachings of Q’, a source of wisdom sayings which appear to overlap with the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, especially Mark.
The fact is, much of what Jesus said, is common sense and spiritually un original, except in it’s godliness. Prophets and religious leaders including Zarathustra and Moses and others have said similar things. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, the law of divine retribution or karma, is in one of it’s various form central to all great religions. Ecumenicalism is about finding the ‘similarities’ in various religions and focusing on these rather than the differences, yet the differences count, since to name a thing one must scientifically speaking have ‘sensitivity’ and ‘selectivity’. Fraud is best maintained in generalities. In the 60’s it was called ‘drug talk’ or ‘tarot talk’ because as long as anyone didn’t refer to money, drugs, sex or action everyone could be ‘free and love’. As long as someone else is paying the bills, it’s easy to ‘love one another’. This is the difference between adolescence and adulthood and was for a long time the difference between men and women as until recently the female and children of society were cared for and protected by the men. The Devil is said to be ‘in the detail.’
So each division in the history of religion and specifically in the church revolve around one key factor. Jewish men were ‘circumcised’ as children. a tribal genital mutilation of boys. St. Peter and St. Paul in the early days of the church when Christianity was seen not as a new ‘religion’ but as the ‘new’ Judaism, a ‘universal’ religion versus the ‘local’ Old Testament, tribal Judaism, debated circumcism. The decision was that Christians did not need to have their male genitalia tampered with to be spiritual. Jews to this day believe otherwise.
Muslims like Jews believed that Jesus was a prophet, Muslims, Islam, believe in the genital mutilation of men, called ‘Khitan” or circumcision. It is not mentioned in the Qur’an but in the Hadith. The Muslims in contrast to Jews and Christians also believe and practice genital mutilation or circumcision of female children. However it is less widely held as a requirement of Islam than male circumcision.
Catholics and Christians don’t disagree on children genitalia but Catholics insist the Pope is the direct descendant of St. Peter. When Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire made Christianity the State Religion he became the head of the church as well. Later the role of Spiritual Emperor for the World Catholics remained even though the Pope’s earthly territory had been shrunk to only the tiny state of the Vatican by various wars and invasions. In Anglicanism or the Church of England the Queen is the head of the Church since King Henry VIII rejected the authority of the Pope and made himself head of the Anglican world Church.
The Catholic Church has the most centralized contro,l even more so than the Orthodox church. When Constantine moved his seat of power to Constantinopolis, today’s Istanbul, the first major political division of the Church took place, with Roman Catholicism headed by the Pope in the Vatican. The Eastern Orthodox Church is headed by a Holy Synod. It is the second largest Christian church. Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have Bishops as leaders but whereas leading Bishops are chosen to ’select’ the Pope in the Catholic church, in the Orthodox church government is by the Holy Synod (council) and each Bishop is considered equal though a head bishop or patriarch is somewhat equivalent to the ‘arch bishops’ of the regional Catholic churches. This first ‘East West” split of Christianity occurred in 1054 ad.
In the Anglican or Church of England begun by King Henry VIII there is a Synod but the Archbishop of Canterbury, is representative of the Queen and akin to the patriarchs.
The first division of the Christian churches in the West or Roman Catholicism were political and territorial with Germany separating from Papist Vatican rule. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation of the church given rise to the division today called ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ , the first principle of reformation being ’the proper source of authority in the church.’ Protestantism rejected the notion of Papal Supremacy.
Protestantism is now one of the three major divisions of Christendom after Roman Catholicism and Othodox. They do not have a central human authority or structural unity. The Holy Bible and the local Church tend to have primacy in Protestantism which accounts for 900 million adherents and nearly 40 % of Christians worldwide. Since the initial ‘territorial or political separations’ from Rome, the subsequent Protestant divisions have been more to do with biblical interpretation and theological divisions.
A major division between Martin Luther and the Pope in his day was the belief in ’transubstantiation’. These divisions are really deep and superficially they look like any family argument to an outsider over time. Organizations and religions and countries and all human endeavour beginning with family and divorces contains the humanity of emotions and especially anxiety. Jesus said over and over again. “Do not be afraid”. Yet obviously even the leaders of the churches had their share of humanity. It’s been said that Anxiety is ‘measure of your distance from God but equally a measure of your humanity’.
Transubstantiation refers to the ‘conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ.” Eucharist is the central rite or ritual of Christianity.
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat, this is my body.” Matthew 26:26
This occurred a couple of thousand years before quantum physicis and modern interpretations of ‘reality’. Dualism, the idea of the separation of matter and spirit was central to Plato and much philosophy and thought prior to Jesus. Even today ‘blood’ is powerful and in medical science divisions like ‘genetics’ compete with the influence behaviour or of ‘environmentalism’.
The questions comes down to the crux of whether one believes we are ‘material beings living in a spiritual realm’ or ‘spiritual beings living in a material realm.’
The power of the priest and Pope was central to the ‘transubstantiation’ process given that the ‘bread’ became the body of Jesus with his touching and saying so but later Christians felt that there did not need to be an intermediary between Jesus and oneself. Hindus have little difficulty with the notion of transubstantiation because of their and subsequent Buddhist concepts of the nature of creation are fundamentally different from the west philosophically. They perceived reality as dualistic, but not so much as matter and energy or matter and spirit, but as ‘true or false’. Moksha is the ‘false reality’.
When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment in the Law, he said.
“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40.
Another area of debate in the church has been surrounding the idea of the ‘prime mover’. This is expressed in the ‘faith’ and ‘work’s and ‘grace’ debate. If God is first and first mover then ‘GRACE” the love of God saves us. Salvation in Christianity is the saving of the soul from sin and death. Sin was the description of the world as not perfect. St. Paul said in this life, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Today’s ideas of ‘addiction’ and ‘habits, good and bad’ all focus on this central premise of ‘imperfection’. The word to ‘sin’ came from archery where the archer wanted to hit the bullseye every time but simply didn’t for a variety of reasons. Newton and other physicists and ultimately Quantum Physics looked at these relationships just as Einstein and St. Augustine both considered ‘time’. With Grace we are saved because of God’s love whereas with ‘works’ we are saved because of human’s work.
The disciples asked Jesus “‘ Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:25-26.
Since Luther in the 16th century Protestantism has grown and divided while maintaining a lose association under the heading of “Christian". Some are local or community churches while others are world wide. Some of the main Protestant Christian churches are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Mennonite, Adventist, Reformed, Evangelical, Non denominational and more. All Christian churches refer to the Holy Bible, most importantly the 4 Gospels, or ‘good news’, the stories of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
An area of debate in the church and religion in general is the ‘divinity of Christ’. The Christian God is said to be a Trinity, ‘three in one’ God, best taught to my mind by St. Patrick. It’s not specifically a teaching of Jesus in the Bible though it’s implied as he says “I and the Father are one” and promises the “Holy Spirit”.
Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever - the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
Dr. James Houston of Regent College talked of this as the Personhood of God, three persons in one. My friend Bernie while alive loved to pray, “Holy Spirit Come”.
To become a Christian as with all religions, one can be born in a Christian family or raised Christian. Christians baptise or christen their babies with sprinkling of water or immersion in water as John the Baptist first Baptised Jesus. Once christened or baptized a Christian remains a Christian for life unless they renounce their relationship. It’s a bit like being a member of a Country. Unless you renounce your ‘citizenship’ you can always return. It is not uncommon in all religions for the youth to leave the family and family religion only to return to the religion with having their own family or matuation.
For a person who has not been born and christened or baptized as a child the way to become a Christian is to walk into a church and observe. I call this being a ‘church tourist’. Christians invite others to attend their church like they do inviting people to go to the movies with them. Christianity is not a ’secret society’ but a welcoming religion. Christian services are great entertainment and everyone is welcome to attend and observe. They are the source of the greatest music with the likes of Bach and Elvis and countless others getting their first experience of music in the church. The ’sermons’ are often great lectures, like those of Dr. Peter Elliott or Dr. Carl Ridd when he was alive or Dr. James Houston. The key to understanding a sermon is that you don’t have to agree with it but rather it, like any ‘lecture’ forms the basis of discussion and is by nature ‘thought provoking’.
I often tell people to explore churches and other religious organizations much as you would when picking a cafe or night club. For young men I say ‘hang out’ at the church with the highest density of beautiful women. For young women I say choose to return to the church with the highest density of handsome young men. For those with small children perhaps return to a church with lots of small children. These people are principally neighbours and it’s a spiritual club no different than the local gym is a ‘physical club’. Spirituality is however much more comprehensive than a mere gym. It’s also relatively ‘free’ at first, as everyone is invited to attend and the old church adage was to ‘put a buck ‘ or even 25 cents or a penny in the basket when it was passed around. Ultimately when one chooses and becomes a member of a church they voluntarily contribute and are encouraged to by the board who pay the rent at the church and physical taxes and tuitions and salaries. Some churches remain small and poor while other churches become ‘mega church’ major corporations of great wealth. Neither is ‘better’ in a spiritual sense anymore than a martial art sensie with a few students is less than a major dojo with many franchises. Such discussions of size refer more to quantity than quality. Personally I’ve liked little and large churches.
To participate more specifically in churches there are classes and ultimately baptism or formal joining with the church membership in some ceremony. Historically this often meant simply saying “I believe in Jesus Christ” as the name of Jesus Christ which is derived from the words “God within and God Will Come Again” is itself considered holy and transformative. Yahveh the name of the Jewish , God the Father, meant “I am, that is who I am”. Hence, the beingness of God, the creator. The third person is the Holy Spirit.
Various councils over the 2000 years of Church history and the individual churches have come up with a legalistic formulation much like the ‘articles of faith’ which one signs whenever one gets new software from Apple or Microsoft. I don’t read the whole agreement and sign ‘i agree’ without consulting a lawyer. There is the possibility that Apple or Microsoft have slipped in a line ‘you will give your left kidney and testicle if you agree’. I have faith at this time and joining a church have considered overall the ‘details’ but even while I’ve not ‘agreed fully’ with some details I’ve ‘agreed in principle’ as I do with Microsoft and Apple, a couple of human companies not even known for their holiness.
When I join a church or any club or even accept software I am today making such decisions. But ‘joining’ comes after being a ‘tourist’ and people join churches because they like the people. Churches are the ‘people’ especially the more local, community and independent churches which are commonly formed today around someone with a Bible who says let’s get together and talk about this Holy Book. Then because they want a place to meet as they grow in numbers they get into renting then owning spaces and developing schools and more. Ultimately in the past groups of Christians created hospitals, universities and whole nationstate and even continued world empire. Some might say we’re seeing the third Christian empire today.
Being a Christian then comes with study and association. It’s about community and consideration.
“I believe.” It’s a joy for me to say this today.
Thank you Jesus Christ. Thank you Lord God. Holy Spirit Come!
Now I’ve not been to church in weeks. I say I’m a winter Christian because summer and fall I’m usually at sea sailing, or camping in the woods. This year I was on my lawn chair out back lot enjoying the sun and reading a lot. I read the Holy Bible most days. I talk with Christian friends and do Christian service. I’m praying all the time and meditating some.
The Holy Bible is a source of comfort and wisdom for me. I began reading it as a child and studied it seriously in various theological institutes and courses. It’s a part of all church services no matter how “liberal”. I learned in theology that one should not ‘cherry pick’ the Bible for phrases to support one’s own position but rather see it as a gestalt.
There’s an ‘old testament’. It includes the Torah or Jewish Bible and prophets. Jesus was Jewish. His first disciples were Jewish. The writers of the Bible were Jewish. The translators, not necessarily. Neither were the interpreters. Christianity is a ‘universal religion’. It’s open to all. It’s inclusive and not exclusive. According to the Pew Report, as of 2010 Christianity was by far the world’s largest religion, with an estimated 2.2 billion adherents, nearly a third (31 percent) of all 6.9 billion people on earth.”
Once a ‘word of mouth’ religion with many writings over time the Holy Bible became the collection of writings of the church. The Bible was a collection of the ‘books’ or ‘writings’ of the Christian church with some ‘books’ such as St. Thomas being considered questionable as the orthodox Christian religions have rejected the ‘gnostic gospels’ as being ‘outside’ the mainstream that continues till today. The Councils of the Church through the years have addressed these ideas and come to a consensus of truth, or orthodoxy.
Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Mathew 5:17.
To me that means that the Torah and the writings of the prophets are still important. I love the Psalms which are the Songs of David and quoted by Jesus. The Holy Bible of Christians is divided into an Old and a New Testament. Testament simply means ’tale’ or ’telling’. The Old Testament comes before Jesus and the New Testament comes after Jesus. It begins with the four Gospels: Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. These give witness to the life and death and teaching of Jesus. The latter parts of the New Testament are the stories of the Apostles, the leaders Jesus surrounded himself with while he was alive, and the writings of St. Paul, the Rabbi who converted to Christianity and along with the apostles started the first churches. Paul, as well as being a Jew, was a Roman citizen and a tent maker. Only the rich could afford tents and travel so Paul was part of the then ‘tent-setter’ group and travelled all around the Mediterranean of the Roman Empire of the day.
The Old Testament is preempted by the teaching of Jesus. It is an older version of the truth.
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14. 6.
I loved the matter of fact way a Theologian said, “The Jews were wrong then and they remain wrong today.” What he was referring to was the fundamental rift between the Old Testament and New Testament. Christians see Jesus as the Messiah or God/Man which the Old Testament speaks of but the Jewish authorities rejected him and with the Romans, the ruling world empire of the day, killed ‘Son of God.’ Today the Jews continue to believe that Jesus was a prophet and his teachings were summarized in the ‘teachings of Q’, a source of wisdom sayings which appear to overlap with the words attributed to Jesus in the Gospels, especially Mark.
The fact is, much of what Jesus said, is common sense and spiritually un original, except in it’s godliness. Prophets and religious leaders including Zarathustra and Moses and others have said similar things. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, the law of divine retribution or karma, is in one of it’s various form central to all great religions. Ecumenicalism is about finding the ‘similarities’ in various religions and focusing on these rather than the differences, yet the differences count, since to name a thing one must scientifically speaking have ‘sensitivity’ and ‘selectivity’. Fraud is best maintained in generalities. In the 60’s it was called ‘drug talk’ or ‘tarot talk’ because as long as anyone didn’t refer to money, drugs, sex or action everyone could be ‘free and love’. As long as someone else is paying the bills, it’s easy to ‘love one another’. This is the difference between adolescence and adulthood and was for a long time the difference between men and women as until recently the female and children of society were cared for and protected by the men. The Devil is said to be ‘in the detail.’
So each division in the history of religion and specifically in the church revolve around one key factor. Jewish men were ‘circumcised’ as children. a tribal genital mutilation of boys. St. Peter and St. Paul in the early days of the church when Christianity was seen not as a new ‘religion’ but as the ‘new’ Judaism, a ‘universal’ religion versus the ‘local’ Old Testament, tribal Judaism, debated circumcism. The decision was that Christians did not need to have their male genitalia tampered with to be spiritual. Jews to this day believe otherwise.
Muslims like Jews believed that Jesus was a prophet, Muslims, Islam, believe in the genital mutilation of men, called ‘Khitan” or circumcision. It is not mentioned in the Qur’an but in the Hadith. The Muslims in contrast to Jews and Christians also believe and practice genital mutilation or circumcision of female children. However it is less widely held as a requirement of Islam than male circumcision.
Catholics and Christians don’t disagree on children genitalia but Catholics insist the Pope is the direct descendant of St. Peter. When Emperor Constantine of the Roman Empire made Christianity the State Religion he became the head of the church as well. Later the role of Spiritual Emperor for the World Catholics remained even though the Pope’s earthly territory had been shrunk to only the tiny state of the Vatican by various wars and invasions. In Anglicanism or the Church of England the Queen is the head of the Church since King Henry VIII rejected the authority of the Pope and made himself head of the Anglican world Church.
The Catholic Church has the most centralized contro,l even more so than the Orthodox church. When Constantine moved his seat of power to Constantinopolis, today’s Istanbul, the first major political division of the Church took place, with Roman Catholicism headed by the Pope in the Vatican. The Eastern Orthodox Church is headed by a Holy Synod. It is the second largest Christian church. Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have Bishops as leaders but whereas leading Bishops are chosen to ’select’ the Pope in the Catholic church, in the Orthodox church government is by the Holy Synod (council) and each Bishop is considered equal though a head bishop or patriarch is somewhat equivalent to the ‘arch bishops’ of the regional Catholic churches. This first ‘East West” split of Christianity occurred in 1054 ad.
In the Anglican or Church of England begun by King Henry VIII there is a Synod but the Archbishop of Canterbury, is representative of the Queen and akin to the patriarchs.
The first division of the Christian churches in the West or Roman Catholicism were political and territorial with Germany separating from Papist Vatican rule. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation of the church given rise to the division today called ‘Christian’ and ‘Catholic’ , the first principle of reformation being ’the proper source of authority in the church.’ Protestantism rejected the notion of Papal Supremacy.
Protestantism is now one of the three major divisions of Christendom after Roman Catholicism and Othodox. They do not have a central human authority or structural unity. The Holy Bible and the local Church tend to have primacy in Protestantism which accounts for 900 million adherents and nearly 40 % of Christians worldwide. Since the initial ‘territorial or political separations’ from Rome, the subsequent Protestant divisions have been more to do with biblical interpretation and theological divisions.
A major division between Martin Luther and the Pope in his day was the belief in ’transubstantiation’. These divisions are really deep and superficially they look like any family argument to an outsider over time. Organizations and religions and countries and all human endeavour beginning with family and divorces contains the humanity of emotions and especially anxiety. Jesus said over and over again. “Do not be afraid”. Yet obviously even the leaders of the churches had their share of humanity. It’s been said that Anxiety is ‘measure of your distance from God but equally a measure of your humanity’.
Transubstantiation refers to the ‘conversion of the substance of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ.” Eucharist is the central rite or ritual of Christianity.
“While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat, this is my body.” Matthew 26:26
This occurred a couple of thousand years before quantum physicis and modern interpretations of ‘reality’. Dualism, the idea of the separation of matter and spirit was central to Plato and much philosophy and thought prior to Jesus. Even today ‘blood’ is powerful and in medical science divisions like ‘genetics’ compete with the influence behaviour or of ‘environmentalism’.
The questions comes down to the crux of whether one believes we are ‘material beings living in a spiritual realm’ or ‘spiritual beings living in a material realm.’
The power of the priest and Pope was central to the ‘transubstantiation’ process given that the ‘bread’ became the body of Jesus with his touching and saying so but later Christians felt that there did not need to be an intermediary between Jesus and oneself. Hindus have little difficulty with the notion of transubstantiation because of their and subsequent Buddhist concepts of the nature of creation are fundamentally different from the west philosophically. They perceived reality as dualistic, but not so much as matter and energy or matter and spirit, but as ‘true or false’. Moksha is the ‘false reality’.
When Jesus was asked what is the greatest commandment in the Law, he said.
“'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40.
Another area of debate in the church has been surrounding the idea of the ‘prime mover’. This is expressed in the ‘faith’ and ‘work’s and ‘grace’ debate. If God is first and first mover then ‘GRACE” the love of God saves us. Salvation in Christianity is the saving of the soul from sin and death. Sin was the description of the world as not perfect. St. Paul said in this life, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
Today’s ideas of ‘addiction’ and ‘habits, good and bad’ all focus on this central premise of ‘imperfection’. The word to ‘sin’ came from archery where the archer wanted to hit the bullseye every time but simply didn’t for a variety of reasons. Newton and other physicists and ultimately Quantum Physics looked at these relationships just as Einstein and St. Augustine both considered ‘time’. With Grace we are saved because of God’s love whereas with ‘works’ we are saved because of human’s work.
The disciples asked Jesus “‘ Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:25-26.
Since Luther in the 16th century Protestantism has grown and divided while maintaining a lose association under the heading of “Christian". Some are local or community churches while others are world wide. Some of the main Protestant Christian churches are Lutheran, Presbyterian, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Mennonite, Adventist, Reformed, Evangelical, Non denominational and more. All Christian churches refer to the Holy Bible, most importantly the 4 Gospels, or ‘good news’, the stories of Jesus, by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
An area of debate in the church and religion in general is the ‘divinity of Christ’. The Christian God is said to be a Trinity, ‘three in one’ God, best taught to my mind by St. Patrick. It’s not specifically a teaching of Jesus in the Bible though it’s implied as he says “I and the Father are one” and promises the “Holy Spirit”.
Jesus says, “If you love me, keep my commands. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever - the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”
Dr. James Houston of Regent College talked of this as the Personhood of God, three persons in one. My friend Bernie while alive loved to pray, “Holy Spirit Come”.
To become a Christian as with all religions, one can be born in a Christian family or raised Christian. Christians baptise or christen their babies with sprinkling of water or immersion in water as John the Baptist first Baptised Jesus. Once christened or baptized a Christian remains a Christian for life unless they renounce their relationship. It’s a bit like being a member of a Country. Unless you renounce your ‘citizenship’ you can always return. It is not uncommon in all religions for the youth to leave the family and family religion only to return to the religion with having their own family or matuation.
For a person who has not been born and christened or baptized as a child the way to become a Christian is to walk into a church and observe. I call this being a ‘church tourist’. Christians invite others to attend their church like they do inviting people to go to the movies with them. Christianity is not a ’secret society’ but a welcoming religion. Christian services are great entertainment and everyone is welcome to attend and observe. They are the source of the greatest music with the likes of Bach and Elvis and countless others getting their first experience of music in the church. The ’sermons’ are often great lectures, like those of Dr. Peter Elliott or Dr. Carl Ridd when he was alive or Dr. James Houston. The key to understanding a sermon is that you don’t have to agree with it but rather it, like any ‘lecture’ forms the basis of discussion and is by nature ‘thought provoking’.
I often tell people to explore churches and other religious organizations much as you would when picking a cafe or night club. For young men I say ‘hang out’ at the church with the highest density of beautiful women. For young women I say choose to return to the church with the highest density of handsome young men. For those with small children perhaps return to a church with lots of small children. These people are principally neighbours and it’s a spiritual club no different than the local gym is a ‘physical club’. Spirituality is however much more comprehensive than a mere gym. It’s also relatively ‘free’ at first, as everyone is invited to attend and the old church adage was to ‘put a buck ‘ or even 25 cents or a penny in the basket when it was passed around. Ultimately when one chooses and becomes a member of a church they voluntarily contribute and are encouraged to by the board who pay the rent at the church and physical taxes and tuitions and salaries. Some churches remain small and poor while other churches become ‘mega church’ major corporations of great wealth. Neither is ‘better’ in a spiritual sense anymore than a martial art sensie with a few students is less than a major dojo with many franchises. Such discussions of size refer more to quantity than quality. Personally I’ve liked little and large churches.
To participate more specifically in churches there are classes and ultimately baptism or formal joining with the church membership in some ceremony. Historically this often meant simply saying “I believe in Jesus Christ” as the name of Jesus Christ which is derived from the words “God within and God Will Come Again” is itself considered holy and transformative. Yahveh the name of the Jewish , God the Father, meant “I am, that is who I am”. Hence, the beingness of God, the creator. The third person is the Holy Spirit.
Various councils over the 2000 years of Church history and the individual churches have come up with a legalistic formulation much like the ‘articles of faith’ which one signs whenever one gets new software from Apple or Microsoft. I don’t read the whole agreement and sign ‘i agree’ without consulting a lawyer. There is the possibility that Apple or Microsoft have slipped in a line ‘you will give your left kidney and testicle if you agree’. I have faith at this time and joining a church have considered overall the ‘details’ but even while I’ve not ‘agreed fully’ with some details I’ve ‘agreed in principle’ as I do with Microsoft and Apple, a couple of human companies not even known for their holiness.
When I join a church or any club or even accept software I am today making such decisions. But ‘joining’ comes after being a ‘tourist’ and people join churches because they like the people. Churches are the ‘people’ especially the more local, community and independent churches which are commonly formed today around someone with a Bible who says let’s get together and talk about this Holy Book. Then because they want a place to meet as they grow in numbers they get into renting then owning spaces and developing schools and more. Ultimately in the past groups of Christians created hospitals, universities and whole nationstate and even continued world empire. Some might say we’re seeing the third Christian empire today.
Being a Christian then comes with study and association. It’s about community and consideration.
“I believe.” It’s a joy for me to say this today.
Thank you Jesus Christ. Thank you Lord God. Holy Spirit Come!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Brain, Mind, Soul, and Self
There is a 'reductionism' a foot which says that we are merely our brains. We are the neurosynapses and the chemical reactions of bits of neurotissue.
The difficulty with 'reductionism' is it's so appealing to the lazy, perverse and stupid. It denies 'reality' and is fundamentally psychotic but it's happy as only a good cabbage can be. Dumb down all messages and they appeal to the masses. The oldest propaganda is 'reductionism'.
The brain is a truly amazing organ. Lizards have them and the lizard brain manages eating, sleeping, fighting and fornicating all with very rudimentary capacity. The functions of the lizard brain are well demonstrated in the range of 98% by computer programs. Even mammalian rat brains can be reduced to fight or flight, reproduction and pleasure seeking, pain avoidance. Similiarly computer programs can match most of what rats might do. But rats and monkeys and higher animals aren't so 'simple' as we might think. Every day we learn of vaster implications of the minds of monkeys in grioups and dolphins and whales. Who would have guessed the profound power and complexity of whale communication and 'song'.
How does utilitarian reductionism explain the 'art' of animals and the 'play' of advanced life forms, let alone the genius of man.
Keep it simple, stupid can so easily become Keep it Stupid, simpleton. We believe our own explanations because rationalization and intellectualization likes to winnow away conflicting arguments and focus on the 'evidence' that supports a 'limited' perspective. We overlook the 'whole' for the parts.
So here we are with brains that neuroscience now shows has as many neurons as imaginable with an infinitely higher number of connections between these neurons. These interconnections include an on and off and slow or fast switch to each of them. Couple this with the idea of anatomy where we learn that there are indeed 'areas' of the brain where mostly certain things happen. Unfortunately for the reductionist the evidence is now overriding that this is like saying that French people are in France without considering all the French people that exist around the world. Add to this the idea of neuroplasty and we see that the brain, say 'feeling disgusted about something' can have that located in a 'broca' geographical location but if there is damage to that location, or just profundity, then the 'function' of 'feeing disgusted about something' may be outsourced to another area.
A 16 year old who lost half his brain, by 25 was functionally normally as the heterogeneity of the rest of his brain took over the lost functions previously lateralized. This is not as easily done, sadly, for the old brain which has been 'pruned' by age and choice. The capacity exists which is why the future holds such promise for stem cell research and regenerative cures.
Now the brain is further a soup of hormones, proteins and sugars. The overall functioning of any part of the brain is superbly modulated by the master chefs 'sauce' that surrounds and permeates all aspects of the brain. Amazing, isn't it? Truly miraculous!
The potentiality of this 'creation' is so astounding that knowing the exact time of 'big bang' from physics and the actual length of man's existence on earth we can with certaintly say that 'evolution' by all known explanations could not possibly in the time allotted have created as much as the 'idea' of humanity let alone the extraordinary complexity and synchronicity of the brain.
Just as there are fixed geographical anatomical areas and neuropathways with chemical communications at synapses modulated by the soup of communicators, there is further a 'grid' electrical phenomena that results in quantum change potentiality. This 'grid' is 'aura like' and the evidence of the electrical nature of the brain is seen in the Electron encephalogram. Further this electrical grid is modified even more by the magnetic grid which is seen by way of the fMRI, functional Magetic resonance instruments. So there's the forces of electricity and magnetism combined with issues of locational and geographical specialization but also generalizations. These areas of specialization and generalizations are themselves sky scrapers of communication tissue layers with their own set of nodal junctions in the superhighways of the brain coupled to a 'google earth' like display of every other interconnecting track. To date we're only getting an idea on the 'superhighway's and haven't a clue about the countless deer track communication channels that parallel these freeways we have a vague inkling about.
There are 50 neurotransmitters which we know. Every day we learn more. Dopamine alone is associated with receptors which are named , D1, D2, D3 and still counting.
So 'reductionism' is a product of the paranoid delusions of those arrogant in their fear as to actually think we can know the 'whole' from the parts. This we can, in part, but only in so much as we appreciate the holographic 4 dimensional chess game nature of this thing we're considering.
The humble have long ago accepted the idea of a 'higher power'. This is where the notion of 'mind' arises.
We have an organ, the brain, but that organ is akin to a hand or foot. The organ doesn't create the 'intention' or 'plan' or 'strategy'. The organ is not 'self aware'. The brain is by no means the mind. What fool would think the 'foot' is the source of all the play and significance in the game of football, soccer or rugby.
The emperor has no clothes. Very devious cunning men and women have been selling you particularly a bag of goods which is to say the least, 'bull shit' or to the politically correct, "cow shit". The brain is not the mind and it's certainly not the self and it's no more the soul than the foot is a soccer match.
Wake up.
The Mind is understood to be interconnected with the community and reality internally and externally to which the brain exists in. A marvellous science fiction thriller had an evil scientist removing the brain of a lover, putting it in a petrie dish and connected by leads to a feed back loop. There was this poor 'creature' thinking thoughts of love and living in the memories while the girlfriend looks on at the petrie dish and wonders how ever they'll be able to get the 'brain' back into a 'body' so that the 'mind' will be connected to reality. It was evident she still loved him and he her. The brain can't love in that sense since it only lusts at best.
We have countless evidences now of 'brain death' with electrical discontinuation and the persistence of the 'mind' and 'awareness' and 'memory' and 'experience' while in a state of 'coma'. I dream when I sleep. I'm not 'turned off' even though my brain is turned off.
The Soul is the spiritual hypothesis of a connection between the self, individually and the multiplicity of selves and souls and greater souls and multiverse souls and all that other 'collective' nonsensical potential of mystery and ecstasy which gives rise to the sense of awe. It's the sacred and the "aha". It's the novelty beyond the 'limits' of reductionism' and stupidity. It's the essence of creativity and laughter and joy and celebration and wonder. It's true art and true science. It's beyond my adolescent understanding of everything that is and will be. I am but a part in a whole and as such I can only see to the extent my eyes are open.
So my world is limited by my pride. The greater my pride the smaller the potential for all else. The humbler I am the greater potential for miracle and wonder.
Reductionists are lying to you because they're either stupid, paranoid or deviously taking advantage of others by selling a crock of politically correct ,non gendered, 'Shit". They're like terrorists who says 'kill the other guys' and life will be a bowl of cherries. We' ve been killing the other guy for tens of thousands of years and life has never be a bowl of cherries for everyman.
There is infinite possibility in even the brain, and the mind is a true wonderland beyond that while the self and soul are beyond infinity, time and all that really matters.
Wake up.
The difficulty with 'reductionism' is it's so appealing to the lazy, perverse and stupid. It denies 'reality' and is fundamentally psychotic but it's happy as only a good cabbage can be. Dumb down all messages and they appeal to the masses. The oldest propaganda is 'reductionism'.
The brain is a truly amazing organ. Lizards have them and the lizard brain manages eating, sleeping, fighting and fornicating all with very rudimentary capacity. The functions of the lizard brain are well demonstrated in the range of 98% by computer programs. Even mammalian rat brains can be reduced to fight or flight, reproduction and pleasure seeking, pain avoidance. Similiarly computer programs can match most of what rats might do. But rats and monkeys and higher animals aren't so 'simple' as we might think. Every day we learn of vaster implications of the minds of monkeys in grioups and dolphins and whales. Who would have guessed the profound power and complexity of whale communication and 'song'.
How does utilitarian reductionism explain the 'art' of animals and the 'play' of advanced life forms, let alone the genius of man.
Keep it simple, stupid can so easily become Keep it Stupid, simpleton. We believe our own explanations because rationalization and intellectualization likes to winnow away conflicting arguments and focus on the 'evidence' that supports a 'limited' perspective. We overlook the 'whole' for the parts.
So here we are with brains that neuroscience now shows has as many neurons as imaginable with an infinitely higher number of connections between these neurons. These interconnections include an on and off and slow or fast switch to each of them. Couple this with the idea of anatomy where we learn that there are indeed 'areas' of the brain where mostly certain things happen. Unfortunately for the reductionist the evidence is now overriding that this is like saying that French people are in France without considering all the French people that exist around the world. Add to this the idea of neuroplasty and we see that the brain, say 'feeling disgusted about something' can have that located in a 'broca' geographical location but if there is damage to that location, or just profundity, then the 'function' of 'feeing disgusted about something' may be outsourced to another area.
A 16 year old who lost half his brain, by 25 was functionally normally as the heterogeneity of the rest of his brain took over the lost functions previously lateralized. This is not as easily done, sadly, for the old brain which has been 'pruned' by age and choice. The capacity exists which is why the future holds such promise for stem cell research and regenerative cures.
Now the brain is further a soup of hormones, proteins and sugars. The overall functioning of any part of the brain is superbly modulated by the master chefs 'sauce' that surrounds and permeates all aspects of the brain. Amazing, isn't it? Truly miraculous!
The potentiality of this 'creation' is so astounding that knowing the exact time of 'big bang' from physics and the actual length of man's existence on earth we can with certaintly say that 'evolution' by all known explanations could not possibly in the time allotted have created as much as the 'idea' of humanity let alone the extraordinary complexity and synchronicity of the brain.
Just as there are fixed geographical anatomical areas and neuropathways with chemical communications at synapses modulated by the soup of communicators, there is further a 'grid' electrical phenomena that results in quantum change potentiality. This 'grid' is 'aura like' and the evidence of the electrical nature of the brain is seen in the Electron encephalogram. Further this electrical grid is modified even more by the magnetic grid which is seen by way of the fMRI, functional Magetic resonance instruments. So there's the forces of electricity and magnetism combined with issues of locational and geographical specialization but also generalizations. These areas of specialization and generalizations are themselves sky scrapers of communication tissue layers with their own set of nodal junctions in the superhighways of the brain coupled to a 'google earth' like display of every other interconnecting track. To date we're only getting an idea on the 'superhighway's and haven't a clue about the countless deer track communication channels that parallel these freeways we have a vague inkling about.
There are 50 neurotransmitters which we know. Every day we learn more. Dopamine alone is associated with receptors which are named , D1, D2, D3 and still counting.
So 'reductionism' is a product of the paranoid delusions of those arrogant in their fear as to actually think we can know the 'whole' from the parts. This we can, in part, but only in so much as we appreciate the holographic 4 dimensional chess game nature of this thing we're considering.
The humble have long ago accepted the idea of a 'higher power'. This is where the notion of 'mind' arises.
We have an organ, the brain, but that organ is akin to a hand or foot. The organ doesn't create the 'intention' or 'plan' or 'strategy'. The organ is not 'self aware'. The brain is by no means the mind. What fool would think the 'foot' is the source of all the play and significance in the game of football, soccer or rugby.
The emperor has no clothes. Very devious cunning men and women have been selling you particularly a bag of goods which is to say the least, 'bull shit' or to the politically correct, "cow shit". The brain is not the mind and it's certainly not the self and it's no more the soul than the foot is a soccer match.
Wake up.
The Mind is understood to be interconnected with the community and reality internally and externally to which the brain exists in. A marvellous science fiction thriller had an evil scientist removing the brain of a lover, putting it in a petrie dish and connected by leads to a feed back loop. There was this poor 'creature' thinking thoughts of love and living in the memories while the girlfriend looks on at the petrie dish and wonders how ever they'll be able to get the 'brain' back into a 'body' so that the 'mind' will be connected to reality. It was evident she still loved him and he her. The brain can't love in that sense since it only lusts at best.
We have countless evidences now of 'brain death' with electrical discontinuation and the persistence of the 'mind' and 'awareness' and 'memory' and 'experience' while in a state of 'coma'. I dream when I sleep. I'm not 'turned off' even though my brain is turned off.
The Soul is the spiritual hypothesis of a connection between the self, individually and the multiplicity of selves and souls and greater souls and multiverse souls and all that other 'collective' nonsensical potential of mystery and ecstasy which gives rise to the sense of awe. It's the sacred and the "aha". It's the novelty beyond the 'limits' of reductionism' and stupidity. It's the essence of creativity and laughter and joy and celebration and wonder. It's true art and true science. It's beyond my adolescent understanding of everything that is and will be. I am but a part in a whole and as such I can only see to the extent my eyes are open.
So my world is limited by my pride. The greater my pride the smaller the potential for all else. The humbler I am the greater potential for miracle and wonder.
Reductionists are lying to you because they're either stupid, paranoid or deviously taking advantage of others by selling a crock of politically correct ,non gendered, 'Shit". They're like terrorists who says 'kill the other guys' and life will be a bowl of cherries. We' ve been killing the other guy for tens of thousands of years and life has never be a bowl of cherries for everyman.
There is infinite possibility in even the brain, and the mind is a true wonderland beyond that while the self and soul are beyond infinity, time and all that really matters.
Wake up.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Over One Hundred Thousand Visits to this Blog
Thank you all for reading, especially for your comments, and feedback. I really do appreciate it and feel very blessed.
There's apparently been over a hundred thousand visits to this blog with something like 130,000 page views.
When I started this blog three years ago I was so excited when someone read my first post. Then I was really really joyful when friends began to join. I think I was moved at ten thousand views. I didn't quite understand it. I have this read out that said people from all over the world were reading my blog. I thought that was incredible. I would look at this map for a bit comparing what I wrote with whether more East Europeans were interested or not.
I added the advertising at some point. I have over many years done pro bono work and given my time freely wherever there was a need. As I've got older and with the economic times as they've been I've tried very hard to be more of a grown up. So the advertising was that sort of thing. As it turned out my blog was 'used' and 'violated' by countless advertisers but I never received a 'cent'. There were a whole slough of conditions. People had to actually buy something or click on an ad or something small printish, beastial and clever.It was interesting. I liked that some machine out there could figure that when I wrote something about pillows people who read it might want a mattress.
I mostly struggle these days to find ways to reduce the incredible tax burden I've been under all my life. The government patronage and free hand outs to their 'favourites' have over time got to me as I've no say in this 'favouritism' yet am indeed the benefactor of all these folk whether they are corporate leaders or streetside bums. All of them treat me with disdain as a kind of 'mark' and at times the 'vote' my taxes gives endorsing government has me wanting to not work. But I love work and mostly what the government does is satisfactory. So I think if I'm trying to make this blog a 'business' and my writing has over the years been a source of income and a 'business'. Perhaps, I think trying to think cleverly like business and government peopole, I'll be able to 'write off' something. Years back an accountant told me about this 'write off' thing. I've been very impressed at how rich people rarely pay taxes because so much of what they do or have is a 'write off'. Similiarly I've been so impressed that government workers can 'hide' the true value of their incredible wealth in indexed pensions, health and dental care, travel allowances and all manner of freebies that added together make them millionaires. I've thought about it a lot but mostly it's not reduced my tax burden anymore than any one else not writing. I just do so much pro bono work in all aspects of my life. "Smart" people "take' and 'stupid' people give when it comes to business and money. The fact is I'm 'envious' of these 'smooth operators' and 'cannabalistic' clever folk. I forget to ask what's in it for me at the bottom line of money and wealth and prestige. I usually am satisfied that what I've done is 'good' and the 'right thing'. Yet I learn such considerations rarely hamper the actions of so many I know.
I also thought about the 'freeware' idea and sharing ideas like we do as scientists so I thought my blog would contribute to 'truth' with my ideas honed from experience having some validity and being valuable for that. It seems that has been the case though I did find that very 'clever' colleagues were using my writing and quotes and such and including them in their cleverly orchestrated books for profit and self promotion. Several have over the years phoned or emailed me and asked for my permission to use material I've shared freely for which they'll profit but that's only told me how many are indeed doing this without acknowledgement. When I look for my material on the internet it's literally everywhere, sometimes in free journalism, with it's own advertising revenue or for profit enterprises. I find that interesting. I've had this happen hundreds of times to date and seen my 'ideas' and even my medical reports as the basis of others very expensive medical legal reports. The fact is I myself am using the 'ideas' of C.S. Lewis, Einstein, Montague, Thatcher and Clinton without consideration of source on a regular basis. Ideas are part of what Jung called the 'collective unconscious'.
The creative copy write is a difficult process given the common ground. I think there's merit in this because 'artists' . mystics, writers and all those other creative people are commonly 'used' by more business minded folk with the agenda of seeking money rather than beauty or truth. The starving artist motif doesn't bother them one bit just so long as they get theirs.
I realize that in the eyes of some of my colleagues in different fields, I'm like an amateur sexaholic taking business away from the street prostitutes who rely on their trade for their income.
I thought about the advertising a lot and procrastinated about doing anything about it. Here were these people putting billboards up all over my various lawns and promising to pay me, and wanting me to work for them. Since then never paid on their first promise I became somewhat skeptical about who was profitting. Somewhere along the chain there were fat cats and I was probably a 'mouse' in their jargon. Now I think they owe me $20 or a $120 but I don't have their industry or machines to go after that at this moment. I've more important things to do like writing this.
The fact is I like writing. I've loved editors and publishers. I've done both but haven't particularly liked it. I 'm apparently good at it. When I've done this stuff for others it's been incredibly well received. As an editor I apparently can kill half formed babies with the best of them leaving only the healthy bits for the reader. I haven't had much of the same desire to do this to my writing runts.
What I like is writing. For decades before it was fashionable I kept journals that no one read. I've thousands of pages in boxes and lost thousands of pages in divorces where the ex's destroyed my writing as so much junk. I've an artist friend whose ex wife burnt dozens of his canvas. The courts put no value on creativity in this way or register the violence that one does to dreams. Only some violence makes public record.
I like sharing ideas too. I like recording events. I like playing with words. I love all the creative 'stuff", stuff of writing and I like other writers. So blogging has been a marvellous 'journal' which I've shared with other. I've been concerned at times about the 'transparency' but then as I got older I found that there were a lot of 'lies' being told about me. Indeed one of my enemies (or friends for all I know) said I was dead and had a city I'd lived in with a whole lot of friends believing it. I found a blog was a way of maintaining at least the appearance of life and challenging the individual who would kill me as an idea, if anything.
The greatest risk of the media today is that it will quote out of context, cherry pick or show selectively biased bits to work their 'story' whatever their story will be. I like that there's this deeper more extensive record of my life that shows it's rather unlikely I've been devoted my time to the end of the world. Like most people I have a rather ordinary life with it's own peculiarities. Working as a psychiatrist I've seen that most people have mostly ordinary lives but it's the spin that they or others put on their lives that make them individually extraordinary. So many people do lead 'lives of quiet desperation' and often people are stumbling about in 'survivor mode' from one chaos or other. When people share they find that they're not so alone and often that many others share the same views. By sharing my thoughts I've shared that yes I may be crazy or no I'm not crazy or whatever. When I was younger I was much more concerned about my 'thoughts'. Masturbation was an especially concerning thought. And thoughts of wanting to run through the halls of the school. I was thankful when I heard that line in a song. Oh I thought I'm not alone. Like the book "little prince' so much of what we do is to get beyond the alienation. Often all we do is say hello. I'm learning from Jared Daimond's work on tribalism and the development of civilization why people are so afraid of strangers.
My work has had me confronting disease in individuals, schools, universities, and governments. In time I've always been 'vindicated' and invariably some 'bully' falls but I'm never rewarded. Indeed bullies have friends and the corruption seems often to just morph into another corruption so as I've got older if anything I've regretted any fighting I've done. Even now I'm condemned for 'advocating' for my patients 'too much'. Sins of commission are highly frowned on in Canada but sins of omission are rewarded, hence the gross negligence that permeates our health care system. Those who question it are called any number of names. Everyone is vulnerable. These days 'racist' is a common term. I caught a thief and sociopath only to be called 'sexually harassing'. The sociopath thief went free and was rewarded whereas I was punished severely even though I'd sexually harrassed no one. My crime as it turned out was my very existence.
I don't understand the morality or ethics of this but have found it all helps my prayer life and my relationship with God. Often I want to go home rather than go to work and face the dangers the bureaucracy has put up to perpetuate sickness and to take advantage of the already ill. I actually was told by a senior bureaucrat 'the patient is the enemy, you're do better when you understand that."
I have tended to see God in strangers and asked myself how would I want to be treated or how would I want a family member treated. This is not at all 'clever' or 'profitable' thinking. Business models are adversarial to a large extent and the 'client' is the 'enemy' except in some enlightened realms. The idea is how to get the most for the least and now as I look around at those 'clever' colleagues I once thought less of I see them taking early retirement or living in fine homes and I frankly can't say my 'sacrifice' and 'holier than thou' thinking or 'rewards in heaven' was particularly wise. I'm happy and content but I don't know things like I once knew things. My certainty has gone with experience and knowledge. When I encounter any fanatic I tend to think 'ignorance'. Only in ignorance can we be truly passionate unless it's on behalf of love. I like Leonard Cohen. In so many ways my life has been coloured by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. They're all passionate for love. That's the artist.
The joke goes that when bankers get together they talk about art and when artists get together they talk about money. The grass is always greener over the fence. We want what we don't have. Even now I'm thinking about breakfast whereas I was a moment ago thinking about writing. Blogging has been fun. One kind person said I should separate my blogs into 5 blogs. There's the serious one. Then there's the sexy one. Then there's the personal one etc. They were big on organization and I admired that their blog and their life was separate like that. But I was like that as a family physician. I told people about their weight and didn't think that I should exercise as well. Now I'm not a walking image of health and as I compare an obese gym teacher with a non obese gym teacher, if both are saying the same thing, then frankly I'd like the model of health. I think the philosophers of ancient greece and most of the history of the world except a small hundred years of the age of 'intellectualism' asked that there be some coherence between what people said and what they did.
Interestingly I wrote 'fiction' , some erotic stories, only to have these used legally against me as 'evidence' of my wanting to have oral sex with a woman. So there I was being 'tried' on the basis of my 'fiction' and frankly it wasn't anything that Harlequin Romance hadn't published 25 years ago. However there was this powerful and pompous 'censor' condemning me based on her lack of boundaries between separating reality and fiction. Just because I wrote in a fictional account about cunnilingus didn't mean I thought about cunnilingus in another setting. Yet Jesus did say what we thought was important. So the 'Secret' as evidenced by "Oprah" would clearly suggest that Steven King and Tarantino should at least be hung in the public square for their negative contributions to our collective thought. I love that Little Sisters has fought these vainglorious 'censors' for years. I just wish that Little Sisters could get on with the job of selling books to adults and not have to deal with the sorts of people who hide behind courts and committees to get priority exposure to pornography to be disgusted by it and insist others don't see it. I frankly don't care but I've studied history and know even today the Bible is still censored around the world. That's the problem with 'censorship'. Just look at a list of what communist countries have censored and you'll see why I don't trust even the Canadian government to know good literature and new ideas from the limits of their own IQ. Einstein and Gandhi and Jesus would all have been censored by Ottawa or Victoria. There's a need as Jefferson saw for 'separation' of powers. That doesn't mean I should 'separate' my blog. I've been told by wiser minds I should use a pseudonym too but haven't.
This mars edit no longer maintains the 'formatting'. So when I press publish I have to then go through and create paragraphs. It defeats the 'first draft' joy of blogging. I liked that my blog was 'uncensored' and reflected the stream of consciousness. I figure someday I might go and edit them and create a tidy liftle bit of 'second draft' or 'thirties draft' writing but the idea of a 'blog' is its immediacy. It's not a 'grand work' It's to me like the 'artist's' journal. I know that to others its something else but the idea of a blog is. if they want that sort of thing, then they can go to the trouble of making that themselves. Also because there's billions of blogs out there you can find one you want to read. That's why I'm thankful and a bit surprised by all those who've read whatever it is I've written. Or maybe they've just liked the pictures. Whatever, it's touching and appreciated.
I was told no one wants to read something so long and convoluteed. Clearly today's style of writing is 'brief'. Friends are back to writing haikus. The scottish 'rant' or the 'English' rave are no longer relevant to the fast times. I like the executive summaries BBC gives the the news but I do sometimes read a friends three page epistle. Mostly no one reads these ends of these blogs. I don't feel like I've cheated when I just read the opening paragraphs of a blog and never get to the end. I'd feel this way with a book. Sometimes I do scroll to the end of a blog to see if theres been an about face or the things remained consistent. It's odd though to consider over a hundred thousand have looked at the ramblinggs or even looked at the picture.
Today though a thing can go 'viral' and suddenly a million people are looking at your picture of your cat. Humans are odd. I don't know if Shakespeare would go 'viral' as quickly as 'Cheech and Chung'. I still love the symphony but know that it's not funded nearly as well as most rock bands. The same as the income of ballet dancers versus strippers. There's no doubt that the ballet dancers, the males at least, and the women with breast implants, would make far more if they were dancing and stripping but they are ballet dancers and not strippers for a reason. That seems to show the limits of the our present monetary system. It appeals to the base and raises the question of why?
I learned that because I didn't value my writing and gave it away for free it wasn't considered as 'valuable' as another person who put a very high price tag on their writing. I loved therefore hearing Ian Weir say he was writing a book for one reader. I thought of Narnia being written for his children and the Lord of the Rings being written for the family. My best love poem was written for my lover. I shared if after we broke up because then it wasn't ours alone. Our love had been dragged through the courts and reduced to the shit of passage that it had become. I wanted to keep the memory of the flowers we ate that first day instead.
Time to go. Gilbert wants a walk. I'm as confused as ever. My certainties lies elsewhere. Lord, I love you. Thank you for all, the alpha and omega and all the alphabet of existence, the symbols and signs and all that is behind, before and around everything and nothing. Guide me in all my actions. Be with me always and let me know your presence and show me what it is I can do to be the best I can be and serve you and my community as best I can.
And thank you for all who still read and particularly those who are kind enough to read my blog or at least look at the pictures.
There's apparently been over a hundred thousand visits to this blog with something like 130,000 page views.
When I started this blog three years ago I was so excited when someone read my first post. Then I was really really joyful when friends began to join. I think I was moved at ten thousand views. I didn't quite understand it. I have this read out that said people from all over the world were reading my blog. I thought that was incredible. I would look at this map for a bit comparing what I wrote with whether more East Europeans were interested or not.
I added the advertising at some point. I have over many years done pro bono work and given my time freely wherever there was a need. As I've got older and with the economic times as they've been I've tried very hard to be more of a grown up. So the advertising was that sort of thing. As it turned out my blog was 'used' and 'violated' by countless advertisers but I never received a 'cent'. There were a whole slough of conditions. People had to actually buy something or click on an ad or something small printish, beastial and clever.It was interesting. I liked that some machine out there could figure that when I wrote something about pillows people who read it might want a mattress.
I mostly struggle these days to find ways to reduce the incredible tax burden I've been under all my life. The government patronage and free hand outs to their 'favourites' have over time got to me as I've no say in this 'favouritism' yet am indeed the benefactor of all these folk whether they are corporate leaders or streetside bums. All of them treat me with disdain as a kind of 'mark' and at times the 'vote' my taxes gives endorsing government has me wanting to not work. But I love work and mostly what the government does is satisfactory. So I think if I'm trying to make this blog a 'business' and my writing has over the years been a source of income and a 'business'. Perhaps, I think trying to think cleverly like business and government peopole, I'll be able to 'write off' something. Years back an accountant told me about this 'write off' thing. I've been very impressed at how rich people rarely pay taxes because so much of what they do or have is a 'write off'. Similiarly I've been so impressed that government workers can 'hide' the true value of their incredible wealth in indexed pensions, health and dental care, travel allowances and all manner of freebies that added together make them millionaires. I've thought about it a lot but mostly it's not reduced my tax burden anymore than any one else not writing. I just do so much pro bono work in all aspects of my life. "Smart" people "take' and 'stupid' people give when it comes to business and money. The fact is I'm 'envious' of these 'smooth operators' and 'cannabalistic' clever folk. I forget to ask what's in it for me at the bottom line of money and wealth and prestige. I usually am satisfied that what I've done is 'good' and the 'right thing'. Yet I learn such considerations rarely hamper the actions of so many I know.
I also thought about the 'freeware' idea and sharing ideas like we do as scientists so I thought my blog would contribute to 'truth' with my ideas honed from experience having some validity and being valuable for that. It seems that has been the case though I did find that very 'clever' colleagues were using my writing and quotes and such and including them in their cleverly orchestrated books for profit and self promotion. Several have over the years phoned or emailed me and asked for my permission to use material I've shared freely for which they'll profit but that's only told me how many are indeed doing this without acknowledgement. When I look for my material on the internet it's literally everywhere, sometimes in free journalism, with it's own advertising revenue or for profit enterprises. I find that interesting. I've had this happen hundreds of times to date and seen my 'ideas' and even my medical reports as the basis of others very expensive medical legal reports. The fact is I myself am using the 'ideas' of C.S. Lewis, Einstein, Montague, Thatcher and Clinton without consideration of source on a regular basis. Ideas are part of what Jung called the 'collective unconscious'.
The creative copy write is a difficult process given the common ground. I think there's merit in this because 'artists' . mystics, writers and all those other creative people are commonly 'used' by more business minded folk with the agenda of seeking money rather than beauty or truth. The starving artist motif doesn't bother them one bit just so long as they get theirs.
I realize that in the eyes of some of my colleagues in different fields, I'm like an amateur sexaholic taking business away from the street prostitutes who rely on their trade for their income.
I thought about the advertising a lot and procrastinated about doing anything about it. Here were these people putting billboards up all over my various lawns and promising to pay me, and wanting me to work for them. Since then never paid on their first promise I became somewhat skeptical about who was profitting. Somewhere along the chain there were fat cats and I was probably a 'mouse' in their jargon. Now I think they owe me $20 or a $120 but I don't have their industry or machines to go after that at this moment. I've more important things to do like writing this.
The fact is I like writing. I've loved editors and publishers. I've done both but haven't particularly liked it. I 'm apparently good at it. When I've done this stuff for others it's been incredibly well received. As an editor I apparently can kill half formed babies with the best of them leaving only the healthy bits for the reader. I haven't had much of the same desire to do this to my writing runts.
What I like is writing. For decades before it was fashionable I kept journals that no one read. I've thousands of pages in boxes and lost thousands of pages in divorces where the ex's destroyed my writing as so much junk. I've an artist friend whose ex wife burnt dozens of his canvas. The courts put no value on creativity in this way or register the violence that one does to dreams. Only some violence makes public record.
I like sharing ideas too. I like recording events. I like playing with words. I love all the creative 'stuff", stuff of writing and I like other writers. So blogging has been a marvellous 'journal' which I've shared with other. I've been concerned at times about the 'transparency' but then as I got older I found that there were a lot of 'lies' being told about me. Indeed one of my enemies (or friends for all I know) said I was dead and had a city I'd lived in with a whole lot of friends believing it. I found a blog was a way of maintaining at least the appearance of life and challenging the individual who would kill me as an idea, if anything.
The greatest risk of the media today is that it will quote out of context, cherry pick or show selectively biased bits to work their 'story' whatever their story will be. I like that there's this deeper more extensive record of my life that shows it's rather unlikely I've been devoted my time to the end of the world. Like most people I have a rather ordinary life with it's own peculiarities. Working as a psychiatrist I've seen that most people have mostly ordinary lives but it's the spin that they or others put on their lives that make them individually extraordinary. So many people do lead 'lives of quiet desperation' and often people are stumbling about in 'survivor mode' from one chaos or other. When people share they find that they're not so alone and often that many others share the same views. By sharing my thoughts I've shared that yes I may be crazy or no I'm not crazy or whatever. When I was younger I was much more concerned about my 'thoughts'. Masturbation was an especially concerning thought. And thoughts of wanting to run through the halls of the school. I was thankful when I heard that line in a song. Oh I thought I'm not alone. Like the book "little prince' so much of what we do is to get beyond the alienation. Often all we do is say hello. I'm learning from Jared Daimond's work on tribalism and the development of civilization why people are so afraid of strangers.
My work has had me confronting disease in individuals, schools, universities, and governments. In time I've always been 'vindicated' and invariably some 'bully' falls but I'm never rewarded. Indeed bullies have friends and the corruption seems often to just morph into another corruption so as I've got older if anything I've regretted any fighting I've done. Even now I'm condemned for 'advocating' for my patients 'too much'. Sins of commission are highly frowned on in Canada but sins of omission are rewarded, hence the gross negligence that permeates our health care system. Those who question it are called any number of names. Everyone is vulnerable. These days 'racist' is a common term. I caught a thief and sociopath only to be called 'sexually harassing'. The sociopath thief went free and was rewarded whereas I was punished severely even though I'd sexually harrassed no one. My crime as it turned out was my very existence.
I don't understand the morality or ethics of this but have found it all helps my prayer life and my relationship with God. Often I want to go home rather than go to work and face the dangers the bureaucracy has put up to perpetuate sickness and to take advantage of the already ill. I actually was told by a senior bureaucrat 'the patient is the enemy, you're do better when you understand that."
I have tended to see God in strangers and asked myself how would I want to be treated or how would I want a family member treated. This is not at all 'clever' or 'profitable' thinking. Business models are adversarial to a large extent and the 'client' is the 'enemy' except in some enlightened realms. The idea is how to get the most for the least and now as I look around at those 'clever' colleagues I once thought less of I see them taking early retirement or living in fine homes and I frankly can't say my 'sacrifice' and 'holier than thou' thinking or 'rewards in heaven' was particularly wise. I'm happy and content but I don't know things like I once knew things. My certainty has gone with experience and knowledge. When I encounter any fanatic I tend to think 'ignorance'. Only in ignorance can we be truly passionate unless it's on behalf of love. I like Leonard Cohen. In so many ways my life has been coloured by Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. They're all passionate for love. That's the artist.
The joke goes that when bankers get together they talk about art and when artists get together they talk about money. The grass is always greener over the fence. We want what we don't have. Even now I'm thinking about breakfast whereas I was a moment ago thinking about writing. Blogging has been fun. One kind person said I should separate my blogs into 5 blogs. There's the serious one. Then there's the sexy one. Then there's the personal one etc. They were big on organization and I admired that their blog and their life was separate like that. But I was like that as a family physician. I told people about their weight and didn't think that I should exercise as well. Now I'm not a walking image of health and as I compare an obese gym teacher with a non obese gym teacher, if both are saying the same thing, then frankly I'd like the model of health. I think the philosophers of ancient greece and most of the history of the world except a small hundred years of the age of 'intellectualism' asked that there be some coherence between what people said and what they did.
Interestingly I wrote 'fiction' , some erotic stories, only to have these used legally against me as 'evidence' of my wanting to have oral sex with a woman. So there I was being 'tried' on the basis of my 'fiction' and frankly it wasn't anything that Harlequin Romance hadn't published 25 years ago. However there was this powerful and pompous 'censor' condemning me based on her lack of boundaries between separating reality and fiction. Just because I wrote in a fictional account about cunnilingus didn't mean I thought about cunnilingus in another setting. Yet Jesus did say what we thought was important. So the 'Secret' as evidenced by "Oprah" would clearly suggest that Steven King and Tarantino should at least be hung in the public square for their negative contributions to our collective thought. I love that Little Sisters has fought these vainglorious 'censors' for years. I just wish that Little Sisters could get on with the job of selling books to adults and not have to deal with the sorts of people who hide behind courts and committees to get priority exposure to pornography to be disgusted by it and insist others don't see it. I frankly don't care but I've studied history and know even today the Bible is still censored around the world. That's the problem with 'censorship'. Just look at a list of what communist countries have censored and you'll see why I don't trust even the Canadian government to know good literature and new ideas from the limits of their own IQ. Einstein and Gandhi and Jesus would all have been censored by Ottawa or Victoria. There's a need as Jefferson saw for 'separation' of powers. That doesn't mean I should 'separate' my blog. I've been told by wiser minds I should use a pseudonym too but haven't.
This mars edit no longer maintains the 'formatting'. So when I press publish I have to then go through and create paragraphs. It defeats the 'first draft' joy of blogging. I liked that my blog was 'uncensored' and reflected the stream of consciousness. I figure someday I might go and edit them and create a tidy liftle bit of 'second draft' or 'thirties draft' writing but the idea of a 'blog' is its immediacy. It's not a 'grand work' It's to me like the 'artist's' journal. I know that to others its something else but the idea of a blog is. if they want that sort of thing, then they can go to the trouble of making that themselves. Also because there's billions of blogs out there you can find one you want to read. That's why I'm thankful and a bit surprised by all those who've read whatever it is I've written. Or maybe they've just liked the pictures. Whatever, it's touching and appreciated.
I was told no one wants to read something so long and convoluteed. Clearly today's style of writing is 'brief'. Friends are back to writing haikus. The scottish 'rant' or the 'English' rave are no longer relevant to the fast times. I like the executive summaries BBC gives the the news but I do sometimes read a friends three page epistle. Mostly no one reads these ends of these blogs. I don't feel like I've cheated when I just read the opening paragraphs of a blog and never get to the end. I'd feel this way with a book. Sometimes I do scroll to the end of a blog to see if theres been an about face or the things remained consistent. It's odd though to consider over a hundred thousand have looked at the ramblinggs or even looked at the picture.
Today though a thing can go 'viral' and suddenly a million people are looking at your picture of your cat. Humans are odd. I don't know if Shakespeare would go 'viral' as quickly as 'Cheech and Chung'. I still love the symphony but know that it's not funded nearly as well as most rock bands. The same as the income of ballet dancers versus strippers. There's no doubt that the ballet dancers, the males at least, and the women with breast implants, would make far more if they were dancing and stripping but they are ballet dancers and not strippers for a reason. That seems to show the limits of the our present monetary system. It appeals to the base and raises the question of why?
I learned that because I didn't value my writing and gave it away for free it wasn't considered as 'valuable' as another person who put a very high price tag on their writing. I loved therefore hearing Ian Weir say he was writing a book for one reader. I thought of Narnia being written for his children and the Lord of the Rings being written for the family. My best love poem was written for my lover. I shared if after we broke up because then it wasn't ours alone. Our love had been dragged through the courts and reduced to the shit of passage that it had become. I wanted to keep the memory of the flowers we ate that first day instead.
Time to go. Gilbert wants a walk. I'm as confused as ever. My certainties lies elsewhere. Lord, I love you. Thank you for all, the alpha and omega and all the alphabet of existence, the symbols and signs and all that is behind, before and around everything and nothing. Guide me in all my actions. Be with me always and let me know your presence and show me what it is I can do to be the best I can be and serve you and my community as best I can.
And thank you for all who still read and particularly those who are kind enough to read my blog or at least look at the pictures.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Selective Negative Attention
All of our studies of memory and attention and cognitive behavioural therapy have taught me that I cannot trust my mind to give me a 'true' representative of even my little piece of the world. This 'information' that I experience is constantly being processed and edited by past prejudice and by emotional tone.
For example yesterday, I was driving to work, two seriously whacked out drivers nearly hit my car, one changing lanes without signalling and the other jumping a light in front of me at high speed but causing me to break with concern. Now there were hundreds of other cars on the road. All the other drivers were such model citizens and so thoroughly toilet trained as to drive with the group and be responsible motorists in all ways. In the 20 minute drive two yahoos stick out. I was unable to park because thieves working the parking meters with string and magnets had jammed the meters. It's a recurrent problem. I wanted to report it to the police. Instead of a brief encounter the police wanted me to describe the fellow in detail who had been casing these parking meters even though it might be a long shot that he was the one who was working this city block.
At work I saw some 40 people. The staff were amazing, truly amazing, wonderful competent, reliable delightful people. My colleagues were superb, pleasant, efficient reliable, knowledgeable, informed, courteous. The staff and colleagues and I chatted and exchanged New Years good wishes. The people I saw were all thoroughly pleasant and hard working trying each in their way to be compliant with treatment, making small progress here and there and greater progress in some cases. One person was typically obnoxious and belittling to me and staff and disrupting, loud and ultimately offensive. I asked them to leave. Even the person who had vpmitted in my office was upstaged by the loud person. The man who vomitted had said "I'm going to be sick, looked about, found the wastebasket, vomitted there, and then emptied the bag himself' saying he'd eaten something he thought off from his fridge just before coming, drunk a coke and now felt better with it gone, apologizing profusely for vomitting. Now there was a true gentleman considerate of others even in his distress and really a true contrast to the 'king baby' of addiction the attention seeking drama queen I'd seen earlier who plays the 'big shot' all the time and disdains others psychopathically looking for weak individuals to exploit.
At the end of the day I had a headache not from the thoroughly pleasant and enjoyable people I had to work with, My plan had been to drive to work. 2 yahoos threatened my vehicle en route. After that I was disrupted in my attempt to park by a criminal scheme. Then in the workplace while I had a man be sick in my office the Febreeze helped, there weren't windows as in my other office and by the end of the day the 'stuffiness' and sheer volume of work plus the always routinely offensive person ordering me to hurry up and stop wasting his time, had me exhausted at the end of the day wondering why I do this work and wishing to escape to work in the country or back on a polynesian island.
I was focussing on the frustration of city experience, the encounter with what I euphemistically call 'assholes' all the while my little dog simple loves assholes and sniffs any he can demonstrating that one's negative is another's positive. Or in this case, that I can choose to focus on the highs of my days or the lows and too often and too routinely I'm paying most of my attention to the negatives. In contrast I would like to remember the smiles of the staff. They are truly beautiful people with the greatest greeting manners, incredible love and tolerance for their fellow man, do a myriad of tasks all the while people like the most difficult person that day, "grind" and "grind" at them demanding preferential treatment and wanting to jump the queue and complaining and criticizing them endlessly all the while they're cordial and pleasant in return.
We all tolerate the greatest degree of abuse their daily with belligerence threats, swearing constantly, shouting and squabbling with everyone accepting that this is sickness and the emotional immaturity and social devolution that goes with the disease and the self centredness of people who often have been in jail, some live on the streets where the very traits that are so offensive in community and in waiting rooms actually may have some survival value. The staff and my colleagues smile. They are humorous. Someone had brought an arrangement. Everyone working there was dressed well and were clean. Some of the people I saw had clearly made an effort with their clothing and hygiene to appear as well as possible for the visit. In a way our mind doesn't register the masses of good people.
It's like the media that never reports 25 million Canadians today did not kill their neighbours. Thousands of schools did not have a mass murderer invade their doors today. No tsunami struck anywhere today and no hurricane hit a continental mass yesterday. There was no major new war offensive reported in BBC, just the smouldering old make work kind of wars that reflect the bad marriages of socially inept countries around the world. No one said Canada fed all it's people and provided shelter from the horrible weather conditions of winter for refugees and indigents alike. Elsewhere people are having trouble getting water and food but here at home we did that and kept the trains and planes flying and while more and more people are expecting more and more people to take care of them, frankly because of increasing entitlement and self centeredness, the vast majority of people in the country went to work and paid taxes and worked together with other to make this 2nd day of the year rather spectacular.
If I had the means to see 'truly' without the horrible filters I have I'd be setting off fire works at the end of the day. It realy was a historically great day though here in Vancouver but it's probably not going to show up in history text books. I also forgot that all the people I saw were pretty much dead men and women walking. Their conditions by all rights should have killed them years ago but despite the horrendous burden of disease they keep struggling to live in lives that are so chaotic and messed up that one really should celebrate any day they survive the level of abuse they experience through their own hands and the consequences of their society. I was given the miracle of this day. I was able to be a part of one of the greatest days the universe will ever give someone. I had food and shelter and friends and work and love and everything was truly sacred and amazing. Yet somehow rather than praising God and being eternally thankful that I was participating in the sheer wonder of creation I was focussing my attention on the negatives.
I can't trust my mind. Only my soul is truthful. My emotions are too often reflective of what I think and what I think is too often hijacked by any number of distractions. At the end of the day I need to remember the light. I slept through the night and today there is a new dawn. I sure hope I can see more clearly today. I must somehow ignore the misinformation of my mind and concentrate on the truth and wonder that God gives me. My soul knows better than my mind or sentiment. My soul is the very heart of the matter where wisdom resides and I can appreciate what is true. Please God let me see more truly today and know that truth even in the midst of the moment to moment reality of existence.
For example yesterday, I was driving to work, two seriously whacked out drivers nearly hit my car, one changing lanes without signalling and the other jumping a light in front of me at high speed but causing me to break with concern. Now there were hundreds of other cars on the road. All the other drivers were such model citizens and so thoroughly toilet trained as to drive with the group and be responsible motorists in all ways. In the 20 minute drive two yahoos stick out. I was unable to park because thieves working the parking meters with string and magnets had jammed the meters. It's a recurrent problem. I wanted to report it to the police. Instead of a brief encounter the police wanted me to describe the fellow in detail who had been casing these parking meters even though it might be a long shot that he was the one who was working this city block.
At work I saw some 40 people. The staff were amazing, truly amazing, wonderful competent, reliable delightful people. My colleagues were superb, pleasant, efficient reliable, knowledgeable, informed, courteous. The staff and colleagues and I chatted and exchanged New Years good wishes. The people I saw were all thoroughly pleasant and hard working trying each in their way to be compliant with treatment, making small progress here and there and greater progress in some cases. One person was typically obnoxious and belittling to me and staff and disrupting, loud and ultimately offensive. I asked them to leave. Even the person who had vpmitted in my office was upstaged by the loud person. The man who vomitted had said "I'm going to be sick, looked about, found the wastebasket, vomitted there, and then emptied the bag himself' saying he'd eaten something he thought off from his fridge just before coming, drunk a coke and now felt better with it gone, apologizing profusely for vomitting. Now there was a true gentleman considerate of others even in his distress and really a true contrast to the 'king baby' of addiction the attention seeking drama queen I'd seen earlier who plays the 'big shot' all the time and disdains others psychopathically looking for weak individuals to exploit.
At the end of the day I had a headache not from the thoroughly pleasant and enjoyable people I had to work with, My plan had been to drive to work. 2 yahoos threatened my vehicle en route. After that I was disrupted in my attempt to park by a criminal scheme. Then in the workplace while I had a man be sick in my office the Febreeze helped, there weren't windows as in my other office and by the end of the day the 'stuffiness' and sheer volume of work plus the always routinely offensive person ordering me to hurry up and stop wasting his time, had me exhausted at the end of the day wondering why I do this work and wishing to escape to work in the country or back on a polynesian island.
I was focussing on the frustration of city experience, the encounter with what I euphemistically call 'assholes' all the while my little dog simple loves assholes and sniffs any he can demonstrating that one's negative is another's positive. Or in this case, that I can choose to focus on the highs of my days or the lows and too often and too routinely I'm paying most of my attention to the negatives. In contrast I would like to remember the smiles of the staff. They are truly beautiful people with the greatest greeting manners, incredible love and tolerance for their fellow man, do a myriad of tasks all the while people like the most difficult person that day, "grind" and "grind" at them demanding preferential treatment and wanting to jump the queue and complaining and criticizing them endlessly all the while they're cordial and pleasant in return.
We all tolerate the greatest degree of abuse their daily with belligerence threats, swearing constantly, shouting and squabbling with everyone accepting that this is sickness and the emotional immaturity and social devolution that goes with the disease and the self centredness of people who often have been in jail, some live on the streets where the very traits that are so offensive in community and in waiting rooms actually may have some survival value. The staff and my colleagues smile. They are humorous. Someone had brought an arrangement. Everyone working there was dressed well and were clean. Some of the people I saw had clearly made an effort with their clothing and hygiene to appear as well as possible for the visit. In a way our mind doesn't register the masses of good people.
It's like the media that never reports 25 million Canadians today did not kill their neighbours. Thousands of schools did not have a mass murderer invade their doors today. No tsunami struck anywhere today and no hurricane hit a continental mass yesterday. There was no major new war offensive reported in BBC, just the smouldering old make work kind of wars that reflect the bad marriages of socially inept countries around the world. No one said Canada fed all it's people and provided shelter from the horrible weather conditions of winter for refugees and indigents alike. Elsewhere people are having trouble getting water and food but here at home we did that and kept the trains and planes flying and while more and more people are expecting more and more people to take care of them, frankly because of increasing entitlement and self centeredness, the vast majority of people in the country went to work and paid taxes and worked together with other to make this 2nd day of the year rather spectacular.
If I had the means to see 'truly' without the horrible filters I have I'd be setting off fire works at the end of the day. It realy was a historically great day though here in Vancouver but it's probably not going to show up in history text books. I also forgot that all the people I saw were pretty much dead men and women walking. Their conditions by all rights should have killed them years ago but despite the horrendous burden of disease they keep struggling to live in lives that are so chaotic and messed up that one really should celebrate any day they survive the level of abuse they experience through their own hands and the consequences of their society. I was given the miracle of this day. I was able to be a part of one of the greatest days the universe will ever give someone. I had food and shelter and friends and work and love and everything was truly sacred and amazing. Yet somehow rather than praising God and being eternally thankful that I was participating in the sheer wonder of creation I was focussing my attention on the negatives.
I can't trust my mind. Only my soul is truthful. My emotions are too often reflective of what I think and what I think is too often hijacked by any number of distractions. At the end of the day I need to remember the light. I slept through the night and today there is a new dawn. I sure hope I can see more clearly today. I must somehow ignore the misinformation of my mind and concentrate on the truth and wonder that God gives me. My soul knows better than my mind or sentiment. My soul is the very heart of the matter where wisdom resides and I can appreciate what is true. Please God let me see more truly today and know that truth even in the midst of the moment to moment reality of existence.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Psychosis
Psychosis is the state of being out of touch with reality. Reality is an aggreement a society shares about the world we live in physically and socially. For example, gravity is a concept of reality. It is not uncommon for psychotic individuals to believe that the laws of gravity and other 'scientific realities' do not apply to them. Hence a person may believe they can fly and jump off a building to their death. This is an extreme form of psychosis.
At lesser levels of psychosis a person may believe that they are above the laws of society. Such an individual may say the 'police can not arrest me' for any number of legal infringements such as having sex with children or assaulting women or threatening prime ministers. These individuals truly believe they are 'immune' to such legislation and act with persistent astonishment throughout the police arrest and even during trials, often only coming to a real sense of reality when they are locked up for sometime in prison. This individual may however may appear 'normal' in all other aspects of their life, whereas a more severe psychotic individual would have a lesser grasp on aspects of day to day living and be noted as odd often even by strangers.
When I was a member of the organization "Psychiatrists Against Political Abuse of Psychiatry" our principal concern at the time was totalitaran regimes like Russia then and China now which would accuse anyone who disagreed politically with being psychotic. Then they would lock these indivduals, often world reknown scientists, up in asylums denying them all manner of human rights by claiming they were 'sick' and 'mentally ill'. While these kind of abuses occurred regularly internationally with psychiatrists voluntarily or sometimes involuntarily being part of the abuses I only witnessed such abuse extremely rarely in Canada.
When I was a member of the "Canadian Civil Rights Association" I was more often concerned about abuses against mentally ill patients. Being psychotic can put an individual at extreme risk for abuse and exploitation by individuals and institutions In these cases the rights of individuals who were ill were more likely being removed whereas it was rare for individuals to be called psychotic and treated as such by courts or state. The reason for the latter is the independence of psychiatrists generally in Canada and the legal system which requires psychiatrists often two, one for the state and one for the plaintiff when there is such a problem, to independently exam the individual. Judges in Canada, generally being a rather reasonable and independent sort, usually make very good decisions in this regard based on the sometimes opposing presentations. Having declared probably a hundred or more individuals psychotic over the years I am pleased to say that none of my colleagues or the community at large disagreed with my diagnosis. Individuals who felt they were superman, Jesus Christ, or had the right to having sex with their neighbours animals did take offense to my diagnosis but rarely did even family, friends or spouses. Indeed more often than not and especially in extreme cases the diagnosis of 'psychosis' is 'merciful' and helps protect an individual from themselves or others. That said I do appreciated the patient advocacy groups such as the Canadian Mental Health Association which works as a watchdog over this process.
Psychosis can be brief or extended in time. Brief Psychotic Episode is commonly in the range of hours or days. Schizophreniform psychosis requires months for a diagnosis. A typical manic psychosis untreated wiill last months. Historically the diagnosis of schizophrenia required a year or four seasons of psychosis. Typically these days in paranoid schizophrenia an individual will believe that their neighbours are spying on them, that car horns are being honked specifically and personally to bother them, that others can read their minds or that they can read the minds of others, that they have a special message from God or aliens to do something that in general that is not supported even by their mosque, temple or church or by the community they want to act out in.
One of the earliest and most unnerving features of psychosis interpersonally is when the other person accuses you of what they are in fact doing. Just last week I said in nearly a whisper to a manic psychotic patient, "please lower your voice, you're shouting' and their response countless decibels of volume above mine was ""I'm not shouting, you're shouting'.
This type of 'psychosis' is common when a person is emotionally challenged and their emotional range is peaked, either in anger or fear . so that they lose touch with where they leave off and another begins. At the extreme a schizophrenic patient whose room I entered was in utter terror and asked me to leave as I was 'stepping on his brain'. Each of us carries a sense of self that is 'limitted' but a psychotic person might experience their sense of 'self' as 'expanded' and filling the room or encompassing others around them. This has been speculated as a regression to the infantile sense where a child doesn't separate their mother from themselves. In such a situation, and this is just one hypothesis for the well recogised phenomena of 'loss of boundaries,' the individual who "merges' so to speak can't separate their actions from those of others. Hence the inability of the individual to recognise they were shouting, not I.
Locus of control refers to this the early aspects of psychosis in which the person feels that they are a 'victim' and deny that they are 'victimizing'. They will say that they were 'made to do something' , they were 'forced to do something" as if they have no 'agency' in actions. Later the same patient said "You're making me shout'" when we agreed they were shouting as I persisted in whispering. This locus of control and agency issue is readily apparent to trained observers and one can watch a person claim they have no 'control' over any number of actions that community would say a person has control of. Hence the psychotic gunman would say he was not the agent of the killing of the children but rather that 'decadent west' made me kill them.
This is psychosis. It's important to note to that psychosis is common in drug abuse. It's extremely common in hallucinogens, routinely seen with cannibis consumption and extremely common with cocaine. The psychosis seen with these brain altering substances can persists months sometimes a year after a person has stopped using the brain altering substance. It is more common to see the psychosis in such instances which is really close to the surface by watching the person when they are mildly frustrated, when they are unable to get something they feel 'entitled too'.
Just last month in my drug addiction practice I witnessed two relatively normal patients become acutely psychotic when I refused to write letters saying they were healthy and well and that I would approve of them and speak up for them having special priviledges that might put them in a position of risk to others. In an instant they became threatening and verbally abusive and said that I was a 'devil', 'ruining their life' 'the cause of all the ill in the world' etc. It was certainly over the top, giveing me for more power, than I had and what I was suggesting was that we review their case in a week before I gave them a letter on their behalf. Given their psychotic reaction I was clearly 'right' in feeling they were not nearly as 'stable' as they insisted. Indeed one person said they would 'hunt me down". I think that individual wanted a bus pass so the reaction by all means seemed a tad extreme for what most people would consider 'normal' or based in 'reality'. Not having a bus pass for a week is not reason to call a doctor the 'spawn of satan' yet that's perfectly reasonable in the reality of the psychotic individual where there is little measure outside the emotion and why this particular individual's psychosis would be further explained as 'emotioal reasoning'. When this person is not 'frustrated' they are relatively reasonable but when they are in 'withdrawal' from cocaine everything in their world needs to have happened yesterday to be fast enough for them.
Much more can be said about psychosis. It's a 'state' that has many causes and can occur in many situations. It is seen in depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, thought disorders, personality disorders and post traumatic stress disorders. There are treatments. The acute and more serious forms respond well to medications but psychological approaches can work in combination with social approaches over a much longer time frame. Some chronic psychosis do not respond well to treatment but increasingly specialized units are being developed to deal with these conditions where people are usually as a result of their psychosis a physical risk to themselves or others.
At lesser levels of psychosis a person may believe that they are above the laws of society. Such an individual may say the 'police can not arrest me' for any number of legal infringements such as having sex with children or assaulting women or threatening prime ministers. These individuals truly believe they are 'immune' to such legislation and act with persistent astonishment throughout the police arrest and even during trials, often only coming to a real sense of reality when they are locked up for sometime in prison. This individual may however may appear 'normal' in all other aspects of their life, whereas a more severe psychotic individual would have a lesser grasp on aspects of day to day living and be noted as odd often even by strangers.
When I was a member of the organization "Psychiatrists Against Political Abuse of Psychiatry" our principal concern at the time was totalitaran regimes like Russia then and China now which would accuse anyone who disagreed politically with being psychotic. Then they would lock these indivduals, often world reknown scientists, up in asylums denying them all manner of human rights by claiming they were 'sick' and 'mentally ill'. While these kind of abuses occurred regularly internationally with psychiatrists voluntarily or sometimes involuntarily being part of the abuses I only witnessed such abuse extremely rarely in Canada.
When I was a member of the "Canadian Civil Rights Association" I was more often concerned about abuses against mentally ill patients. Being psychotic can put an individual at extreme risk for abuse and exploitation by individuals and institutions In these cases the rights of individuals who were ill were more likely being removed whereas it was rare for individuals to be called psychotic and treated as such by courts or state. The reason for the latter is the independence of psychiatrists generally in Canada and the legal system which requires psychiatrists often two, one for the state and one for the plaintiff when there is such a problem, to independently exam the individual. Judges in Canada, generally being a rather reasonable and independent sort, usually make very good decisions in this regard based on the sometimes opposing presentations. Having declared probably a hundred or more individuals psychotic over the years I am pleased to say that none of my colleagues or the community at large disagreed with my diagnosis. Individuals who felt they were superman, Jesus Christ, or had the right to having sex with their neighbours animals did take offense to my diagnosis but rarely did even family, friends or spouses. Indeed more often than not and especially in extreme cases the diagnosis of 'psychosis' is 'merciful' and helps protect an individual from themselves or others. That said I do appreciated the patient advocacy groups such as the Canadian Mental Health Association which works as a watchdog over this process.
Psychosis can be brief or extended in time. Brief Psychotic Episode is commonly in the range of hours or days. Schizophreniform psychosis requires months for a diagnosis. A typical manic psychosis untreated wiill last months. Historically the diagnosis of schizophrenia required a year or four seasons of psychosis. Typically these days in paranoid schizophrenia an individual will believe that their neighbours are spying on them, that car horns are being honked specifically and personally to bother them, that others can read their minds or that they can read the minds of others, that they have a special message from God or aliens to do something that in general that is not supported even by their mosque, temple or church or by the community they want to act out in.
One of the earliest and most unnerving features of psychosis interpersonally is when the other person accuses you of what they are in fact doing. Just last week I said in nearly a whisper to a manic psychotic patient, "please lower your voice, you're shouting' and their response countless decibels of volume above mine was ""I'm not shouting, you're shouting'.
This type of 'psychosis' is common when a person is emotionally challenged and their emotional range is peaked, either in anger or fear . so that they lose touch with where they leave off and another begins. At the extreme a schizophrenic patient whose room I entered was in utter terror and asked me to leave as I was 'stepping on his brain'. Each of us carries a sense of self that is 'limitted' but a psychotic person might experience their sense of 'self' as 'expanded' and filling the room or encompassing others around them. This has been speculated as a regression to the infantile sense where a child doesn't separate their mother from themselves. In such a situation, and this is just one hypothesis for the well recogised phenomena of 'loss of boundaries,' the individual who "merges' so to speak can't separate their actions from those of others. Hence the inability of the individual to recognise they were shouting, not I.
Locus of control refers to this the early aspects of psychosis in which the person feels that they are a 'victim' and deny that they are 'victimizing'. They will say that they were 'made to do something' , they were 'forced to do something" as if they have no 'agency' in actions. Later the same patient said "You're making me shout'" when we agreed they were shouting as I persisted in whispering. This locus of control and agency issue is readily apparent to trained observers and one can watch a person claim they have no 'control' over any number of actions that community would say a person has control of. Hence the psychotic gunman would say he was not the agent of the killing of the children but rather that 'decadent west' made me kill them.
This is psychosis. It's important to note to that psychosis is common in drug abuse. It's extremely common in hallucinogens, routinely seen with cannibis consumption and extremely common with cocaine. The psychosis seen with these brain altering substances can persists months sometimes a year after a person has stopped using the brain altering substance. It is more common to see the psychosis in such instances which is really close to the surface by watching the person when they are mildly frustrated, when they are unable to get something they feel 'entitled too'.
Just last month in my drug addiction practice I witnessed two relatively normal patients become acutely psychotic when I refused to write letters saying they were healthy and well and that I would approve of them and speak up for them having special priviledges that might put them in a position of risk to others. In an instant they became threatening and verbally abusive and said that I was a 'devil', 'ruining their life' 'the cause of all the ill in the world' etc. It was certainly over the top, giveing me for more power, than I had and what I was suggesting was that we review their case in a week before I gave them a letter on their behalf. Given their psychotic reaction I was clearly 'right' in feeling they were not nearly as 'stable' as they insisted. Indeed one person said they would 'hunt me down". I think that individual wanted a bus pass so the reaction by all means seemed a tad extreme for what most people would consider 'normal' or based in 'reality'. Not having a bus pass for a week is not reason to call a doctor the 'spawn of satan' yet that's perfectly reasonable in the reality of the psychotic individual where there is little measure outside the emotion and why this particular individual's psychosis would be further explained as 'emotioal reasoning'. When this person is not 'frustrated' they are relatively reasonable but when they are in 'withdrawal' from cocaine everything in their world needs to have happened yesterday to be fast enough for them.
Much more can be said about psychosis. It's a 'state' that has many causes and can occur in many situations. It is seen in depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, thought disorders, personality disorders and post traumatic stress disorders. There are treatments. The acute and more serious forms respond well to medications but psychological approaches can work in combination with social approaches over a much longer time frame. Some chronic psychosis do not respond well to treatment but increasingly specialized units are being developed to deal with these conditions where people are usually as a result of their psychosis a physical risk to themselves or others.
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Psychiatric Bio Ethics 2012
Ethics is defined as the moral principles that rule the conduct of a person, class or group.
I was priviledged to study philosophy in the Elysium of Arts undergraduate years when universities were still relevant and had not been supplanted by private sector institutions. The philosopher I studied under contributed the most to writing of the Mental Health Laws of Canada. He was a humble and wise man. He knew little freedom though in his tenured cage and often seemed trapped in the class room with dubious students such as myself, when his true joy was to be alone in books and papers where he could play his Hessian "glass bead game'. He liked me as well as he liked any human, I suppose.
Finally psychiatric bio ethics is limited by the stupidity or genius of the year 2012. This is the year of the Chinese Dragon, two centuries at least since philosophers killed Jesus, long after Buddha ran away from Maya and Mohammed spoke for Allah. No physician could heal the Healer's wounds. Jesus was indeed told "physician heal thyself". Socrates, pressaging Christ, drank the hemlock given him by the State committee. Buddha at least knew virgins galore, seeming a rather sated baccanalian, compared with Mohammed who still lusted for jehad.
The Mayan Calendar said the world would end in 2012. All hope lay with the Mars expedition, the Moon havin losts its romance. Fetus killing patriarchal Chinese Intelligence outsmarts sterile Matriarchal Western Intelligence still searching for the sperm of Wiki leaks founder Julian Assange, since Clintons was reclaimed from Monica's sweater.
War is daily imminent/eminent. Israel threatens to invade Iran, 'the best defence is an offence'. Political boundaries are membranous as ideas. Power dictates new philosophies and sometimes just sprays Febreeze on the old. Cannibals are hungry. In Canada we are facing austerity.
The latest "info entertainment" facebook video shows children armed with AK47's.
Hallelujah! Praise Plato and pass the ammunition.
So begins Psychiatric Bioethics 2012.
plural noun
2.
the rules of conduct recognized in respect to aparticular class of human actions or a particulargroup, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3.
moral principles, as of an individual: His ethicsforbade betrayal of a confidence.
4.
( usually used with a singular verb ) that branch ofphilosophy dealing with values relating to humanconduct, with respect to the rightness andwrongness of certain actions and to the goodnessand badness of the motives and ends of suchactions.
-web based dictionary
As is common with definitions, further words within the definition also need defining.
Hence: the word moral. What does that mean exactly. At first I think, simply that mean's 'right or wrong' but looking to Wikipedia I see my simplification met with a whole article on morality encouraging one to truly think outside the box of one's own limitted sense of the meaning of the word in today's society. (from wikidictionary)
Morality
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Appropriate" redirects here. For other uses, see Appropriation (disambiguation).
Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (or right) and those that are bad (or wrong). A moral code is a system of morality (for example, according to a particular philosophy, religion, culture, etc.) and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code. The adjective moral is synonymous with "good" or "right." Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.[1][2][3][4]
The morality and ethics of my family, as a smaller unit in a greater community, might include the notion, 'don't kill what you don't eat', 'coupled with cannibalism is frowned on." However as anthropologists have shown us, a family of 'cannibals' don't necessarily share this lofty notion but rather simply their lives by saying it is wholly permissible to kill that which you don't eat, eat that which you kill, and indeed you can eat all but your immediate blood relations.
Further complicating this is the notion of "moral relativism', 'ethnocentricity, and power politics. Einstein showed that the position of an object altered the nature of it's mass, velocity or time relative to another. From this 'scientific hypothesis', arts students jumped to the conclusion that ideas were like the objects of physics and the position of a premise might well alter the positive or negative of a conjuction. Hence to the moral relativists it might be okay to eat one's neighbour on bad days but not good days.
Ethnocentricm was the phenomena whereby a person perceived themselves and their culture as the centre of the universe and showed rather limitted understanding of their neighbours. Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake' was such a statement of ethnocentricity that upset the French masses of history and almost restored cannibalism to that nation which had hopefully shook off that tendency hundreds of years before her reign.
Power politics suggest that while a variety of positions may exist for defining an action if a person has a gun pointed at their head and is being told what to do they are more likely to choose a solution appealing to their immediate master. Marie Antoinette lost her head to a guillotine.
A principle is another 'slippery' word in what might otherwise seem a rather benign definition.
Wikidictionary has this to say about principle:
principle
[edit]English
[edit]Etymology
From Old French principe, from Latin principium (“beginning, foundation”), from princeps (“first”); see prince.
[edit]Pronunciation
[edit]Noun
principle (plural principles)
- A fundamental assumption.
- We need some sort of principles to reason from.
- A rule used to choose among solutions to a problem.
- The principle of least privilege holds that a process should only receive the permissions it needs.
- (usually plural) Moral rule or aspect.
- I don't doubt your principles; you are clearly a person of principle.
- It's the principle of the thing; I won't do business with someone I can't trust.
- (physics) A rule or law of nature, or the basic idea on how the laws of nature are applied.
- Bernoulli's principle
- The Pauli Exclusion Principle prevents two fermions from occupying the same state.
- The principle of the internal combustion engine
- A fundamental essence, particularly one producing a given quality.
- Many believe that life is the result of some vital principle.
- Cathartine is the bitter, purgative principle of senna. — Gregory.
- (obsolete) A beginning.
- Doubting sad end of principle unsound. — Spenser.
[edit]Usage notes
Principle (moral rule) is often confused with principal (most important). Consult both definitions if in doubt.
The confused may care to remember that 'The principal alphabetic principle places A before E' as a reminder of the relative spelling.
[edit]Synonyms
- (moral rule or aspect): tenet
[edit]Derived terms
[show ▼]Derived terms
[edit]Related terms
[edit]Translations
[show ▼]fundamental assumption
[show ▼]rule to solve a problem
[show ▼]moral rule or aspect
[show ▼]rule of nature
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Help:How to check translations.
[show ▼]
Note that the definition of principle gives rise to the need for translation of 'fundamental assumption', 'rule to solve a problem' and 'moral rule or aspect' and 'rule of nature".
Inherrently then we see the beginning of a circular reasoning in the very definition of ethics and morality because increasingly as we dissect the parts we see subdivisions defined again by the part or whole already believed addressed.
At this point we haven't even got to the individual principles or the rules or morals that might be applied to a group. As a fundamental assumption it might be advantage for cannibals not to eat their children. But given the behaviour of fish this is not necessarily a rule of nature.
More importantly rules and principles and ethics have been shown to have a 'hierarchy'. It follows from this that there is such a thing as 'first principle'.
Clearly the first principles of various philosophies are vastly different. The deconstructionists believed that their first principle was that everything could be deconstructed however their critics demonstrated rather humorously that indeed the first principle of deconstructionism was that everything but deconstructionism can be deconstructed. Faced with deconstruction the deconstructionist said 'this is our God and thou shalt have no other Gods but mine". Opposing philosophers using the tools of deconstructionism deconstructed deconstructionism regardless.
Humanism has argued that 'man is the measure of all things'. In contrast theism has stated that man is a product of the creator. It sounds like a mute point but Gallileo nearly died for suggesting that the Earth revolved about the sun rather than vice versa. To show a judge in his court that he is wrong is to face his wrath almighty when the infantile ego of a judge is fragile and easily threatened by opposing arguments. The same judge might be a rather pleasant and reasonable sort if met in the cafeteria of a psychiatric asylum.
Dr. Johnson, as quoted by Bob Dylan said, "steal a little and they put you in jail, steal alot and they make you king'. As conquerers make the rules the rules serve principally to maintain the status quo and the reformer is anyone who is an enemy of the status quo.
The rules then of groups in a society serve to keep outsiders out and insiders in. Indeed 'secrets' and 'changes of rules' serve to keep those furthest from power identified as such. As one black feminist said, "we got your honky ass so tied up in knots you can't even talk about us without offending while we can call you whatever crackerjack chauvinist name we want to". Cannibals by contrast to modern more complicated and refined society had less appetising ways of resolving disputes about 'whose in, and whose out' , the courtly questions that amused King Lear and his daughter Cordelia.
Bioethics is the study of controversial ethics brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Bioethicists are concerned with the ethical questions that arise in the relationships among life sciences, biotechnology, medicine, politics, law, and philosophy. It also includes the study of the more commonplace questions of values ("the ethics of the ordinary") which arise in primary care and other branches of medicine. (Wikipedia)
I won't even begin to define these 'controversial' terms here or get into a discussion of what is ordinary to a schizophrenic homeless person as opposed to dilletante judge who only uses cocaine 'recreationally'..
Bioethics purports then to address the questions which a patient or physician might encounter and philosophise about. Indeed philosophy itself is an arm chair monday morning quarter back profession that serves to 'criticize' deeds of others. Ideally, with the assumption, even the fundamental assumption, that an ounce of prevention can save a pound of cure. The study of bioethics might well equip a physician or patient better for their mutual dance with the reality of life and death decisions, a reality infinitely far from classrooms, court rooms and academic discusions which usually focus only on sex and money. .
Having studied logic in undergraduate school and learned the nature of rhetoric and fallacies in later education I personally found that it was immensely beneficial to have this knowledge for my own edification as it helped me appreciate the extent of illogicality among those who would claim to be most rational. Indeed the field of psychiatry developed in some ways to explore scientifically the failings of philosophy especially the rationalist explanations of the day.
Psychiatry has been creditted with the invention of the conscious and unconscious. Many philosophers remain as unconscious of psychiatry today as they are unenlightened by religions. Philosophy has been called secular religion and ethics the rituals deprived of incense.
Having read many books on bioethics, attended conferences and listened to ethics philosophers I have personally been impressed by their arrogance. I have reflected on why these wordsmiths have so often sauntered with such surety and certainty when mortals such as myself quiver before the disease of nature, the tears of patients and the irrational politics of man.
So much of philosophy is an after thought that sounds so like the confabulations of the demented. The bioethicists in a committee hide behind the collective unity of a group believing in the superiority of a committee decision themselves, never having studied the dynamics of 'group' behaviour or how even sunlight alone can affect trade on global stock exchange. Being a member of a committee makes it easier to plan parties and make shopping lists while others talk about you. Words like deniability and due diligence supplant such outdated concepts as accountability.
But one must tread softly before the fragile egos of philosophers today. Administrations are toppling everywhere in the Dessert Spring that overturned the middle east and tyranny and it's Goebbels proponents are in terror screaming as Kurtz once did "the horror, the horror". Kurt Vonnegut in his earth shattering novel Gallipagos has the world as we know it ending because of a random gene error on a strand of DNA and the tendency of politicians to eat so much, especially at lunch, that their decision making is severely impaired in the afternoon.
Psychiatry finally is defined:
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities. The term was first coined by the Germanphysician Johann Christian Reil in 1808, and literally means the 'medical treatment of the mind' (psych-: mind; fromAncient Greek psykhē: soul; -iatry: medical treatment; from Gk. iātrikos: medical, iāsthai: to heal). A medical doctor specializing in psychiatry is a psychiatrist.
What becomes excruciatingly tedious is that philosophers in general argue over the existence of the brain, routinely deny the existence of a soul, and certainly are not in any agreement about the existence of the mind. This leaves it impossible for them to agree on mental disorders, the very concept of abnormality, given the morality of the normal, and whether, what and when treatment is needed. This is further complicated by Psychology that upstart branch of Philosophy which clincally can always refer dangerously difficult patient to a psychiatrist thereby passing the buck and like a committee escaping accountability while physicians and especially psychiatrists breathe sleep and eat accountability, the latter only if they are not a blood relation.
Finally psychiatric bio ethics is limited by the stupidity or genius of the year 2012. This is the year of the Chinese Dragon, two centuries at least since philosophers killed Jesus, long after Buddha ran away from Maya and Mohammed spoke for Allah. No physician could heal the Healer's wounds. Jesus was indeed told "physician heal thyself". Socrates, pressaging Christ, drank the hemlock given him by the State committee. Buddha at least knew virgins galore, seeming a rather sated baccanalian, compared with Mohammed who still lusted for jehad.
The Mayan Calendar said the world would end in 2012. All hope lay with the Mars expedition, the Moon havin losts its romance. Fetus killing patriarchal Chinese Intelligence outsmarts sterile Matriarchal Western Intelligence still searching for the sperm of Wiki leaks founder Julian Assange, since Clintons was reclaimed from Monica's sweater.
War is daily imminent/eminent. Israel threatens to invade Iran, 'the best defence is an offence'. Political boundaries are membranous as ideas. Power dictates new philosophies and sometimes just sprays Febreeze on the old. Cannibals are hungry. In Canada we are facing austerity.
The latest "info entertainment" facebook video shows children armed with AK47's.
Hallelujah! Praise Plato and pass the ammunition.
So begins Psychiatric Bioethics 2012.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
