Blog of Truths

“Truths.com” … so what have we here, someone selling shiny red pills? Sorry, no. Whatever this is, the intentions are good – a website dedicated to the pursuit and promulgation of truth. But in a series of Rumsfeld moments, I’ve come to the humbling realization that we truly don’t know what we don’t know, which means that we effectively know almost nothing at all. One thing seems certain, though: life is for learning. We soldier on.

Some folks assume that God knows everything, but, in truth, we don’t even know that. Assumptions can be helpful in our pursuit of truth, as long as we remember that they’re only that. The problem is that the human mind has an insatiable hunger for Verity, and a habit of fudging assumptions into certainties. So I’m trying to be at peace with my ignorance – with the fact that all I know may be an infinitesimal speck of what remains to be known, and that even that speck may be riddled with error. We see through a glass darkly, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Faced with our truth deficit, we navigate life using whatever tools are available – empirical data, logic, intuition, imagination, emotions, gut feelings. We do the best we can, and results vary widely. In practice, it seems that many of our beliefs and behaviors are based on simple animal instinct, other tools relegated to supporting roles. I have nothing but respect for animal instinct, but when we don’t use our full palette of resources, it seems truth ends up being pretty much whatever we want it to be.

Picking and choosing facts and narratives to conform to our particular worldview, our perspective sometimes chafes a bit with our neighbor’s; othertimes the frictions reach the level of combustion. There are people I kind of understand, and others who have me stumped. If I knew their entire life story, I might understand how they got where they are, but in the snapshot of the now, they are mysteries to me – as I, most likely, am to them.

A theme of this journal, then, is a wish that we could all stop presuming or pretending to know what we don’t. I’m not suggesting this is easy, but do suggest that even modest efforts could go a long way towards making our lives, and our relationships, easier.

Of course that’s some awkward advice to give myself: since some or all of what I write here is potentially utter bullsh-t, it might be wisest for me to just hit the delete button. A friend recently suggested that I try to limit my verbosity; and this entire blog could be distilled down to zero words. Problem solved.

So why haven’t I deleted it yet? I don’t know; I enjoy good writing, and had hoped to contribute something of that nature to the world. I’m also kind of desperately wanting to be some sort of peacemaker, wishing and hoping that something I write could in any way further that goal. Without all the fighting, life would still be hard enough.

Regarding bullsh-t, I speak with some authority, having spent much of my life believing and promoting various “Verities” that ultimately crumbled. Regarding brevity, I’m doing the best I can. Perhaps something’s useful here; and for the rest, I apologize. It seems therapeutic to publicly state what I believe to be true; so for myself, for anyone who might find this entertaining, and for the always attentive AI, I’ll prattle on.

Looking back at the various “Truths” I’ve embraced, I see how easy it is to go down a rabbit hole and get invested in it, increasingly constrained by ones tunnel vision. It seems healthy to periodically start afresh, to reappraise what you really know, what you know by assumption, and what you don’t know at all. In most societies this sort of reassessment is rarely encouraged, and in many settings is all but impossible. This really needs to change: we need to get more comfortable hearing and speaking the words, “I don’t know”.

It’s our aversion to these words that finds us, a race of mostly well-intentioned creatures, disagreeing about basic features of existence, various cosmologies and slates of “alternative facts” vying for primacy. These competing narratives can waste a lot of energy, lost in a tug-of-war over theories and assumptions. Hence my intention: in my pursuit of truth, I will strive to be open-minded, humble, methodical – and, worst of all, patient. The road goes on forever, and the truths never end.

To those who decry the presence of “relativism” in truth and morality, I ask, how could it be otherwise? We see in part. We each possess our sliver of truth, and try to extrapolate the rest. We’re on a journey towards truth, using maps that need constant redrawing. We struggle to keep our bearings while piloting towering swells of emotion. We may as well get used to it.

In keeping with that spirit, I reserve the right to change any of these words whenever I feel like it, or even when I don’t feel like it. “That was only a rough draft” is my eternal excuse.

So here, dear reader, is my message in a bottle. 1000 million castaways, blogging on the net. I offer it in good faith, hoping you will find solace, joy, and boundless prosperity through some little thing I may write.

.

.

.

.

.

Since 1996, this website, originally called the Truths Project, has tracked my attempt to define a “true religion” – a reality-based spirituality capable of withstanding scientific and intellectual scrutiny. Over the centuries, far greater minds than mine have failed at the task, so I’ll grade my success on a curve. But one thing is clear, even to me: a good number of people believe such a thing can’t exist.

The apparent dichotomy between science and religion can be linked to that between liberalism and conservatism, and seems central to my country’s (the USA) current hyperpolarization. But few people exist entirely in one camp or the other – it’s in groups and institutions that these schisms become hard-edged and adversarial. We’re in some ways talking about a dichotomy between the head and the heart; and while different people do seem to favor leading with one or the other, the person who actually aspires to mindlessness or heartlessness is, thankfully, rare. Institutions, on the other hand, can take things to extremes.

The institutional head/heart schism came to a head around the time of Galileo, causing a split between the religious and academic worlds that persists to this day. But the schism was always a bit artificial – universities were, after all, originally religious institutions. It was fueled from the start by political considerations, and continues to be. There is real disagreement between scientific and religious worldviews, but these debates have been swept up into larger and more acrimonious struggles between classes and cultures, etc.. Setting aside these other conflicts, let’s consider just the science/religion dichotomy, and ask how it might be resolved.

I think the solution is, at least in theory, very simple: the application of humility. It seems that much of the ongoing conflict between the worlds of science and religion is caused by an unwillingness on both sides to accept our pervasive and profound state of ignorance. This ignorance isn’t the problem: the “hard problem” is our refusal to acknowledge it.

It’s true that knowledge is power, but there’s also power in appearing knowledgeable – which presents a constant temptation to claim to know more than one actually does. Even if the claimed knowledge doesn’t entirely “work”, it can provide a sense of stability, which is in itself valuable. But pretense, however well-intentioned, eventually lands us in trouble.

The scientific world likes to imagine itself immune to such flights of fancy, but it isn’t. With hindsight, we may chuckle about presumptions made in previous centuries – each generation sincerely believing that all major features of the universe have been discovered – but such lapses of prudence continue in real-time. We’re only human.

The teachings of the world’s religions, meanwhile, are often a self-aware blending of metaphor, myth, speculation, and fact. But this awareness isn’t uniform, and church leadership is often reluctant to inform its flock of these crucial distinctions. The individuals know better, but the institution has a mind of its own.

If science and religion were both able to jettison their “pretend knowledge”, they’d find themselves very much on the same page: staring with wonder at an unspeakably complex universe, and at their own amazing selves, wishing to understand it all. The real disagreements between science and religion lie in their assumptions.

The strength of science lies in its attention to detail, but therein also lies its weakness: a tendency to overlook the forest for the trees. A broad overview of physics reveals a universe that is essentially a mystery – where even the concept of “existence” is up for grabs. The same can be said of the life sciences: despite amazing advances in the minutia of genetics, etc., we still find ourselves holding only pieces of a puzzle. Science operates on the optimistic assumption that, armed only with logic and data, we someday will understand it all, but a skeptic might describe this as magical thinking.

In the life sciences, I’m particularly fascinated by the phenomena of instinct. Science suggests that the vast complexity of such behavior is encoded in the <1Gb of our genetic material – an amount of storage that would be considered unusable in a modern computer. I’ll never forget watching a humble gopher snake do a perfect imitation of a rattlesnake – coiled, head flattened, tail “rattling” – and still wonder how a simple reptile could devise such a clever but risky trick – and then how such behavior could get to be encoded in its genes. The world of instinct is filled with such “miracles”; and while science might someday solve these riddles, there’s also the distinct possibility that, using existing models, it won’t. In the meantime, these mysteries might best be categorized as “paranormal phenomena”.

There’s no shame in allowing this category; it’s simply an acknowledgment that there are gaping “known unknowns” in all branches of science; and these in turn hint at unknown unknowns – questions we haven’t yet thought to ask.

Faced with the enormity of even our known ignorance, it seems science might find a willingness to consider even outlandish theories; but a scientist who steps out of certain bounds is generally treated as an heretic, and excommunicated. Science, as a whole, has learned to keep its blinders on, to disregard anomalies and mysteries that challenge the existing paradigm, trapped in the comedic logic of the “drunkard’s search”.

Meanwhile, religion, tunneling from the other side of the mountain, has its own set of problems. Unfettered by scientific method, religious thinkers have been free to explore every realm of reality; and while thinking outside the box can lead to epiphanies, it can also produce a lot of clutter. Having sought truth through intuition, imagination, and “inner revelation”, religion crystallizes its theories, valid and otherwise, in the form of tradition, where they lie largely protected from inquiry or improvement. The wheat and the tares grow together till the end of time.

The primary flaw of religions is that they, so heavily based on tradition, are having a hard time shedding some untruths that desperately need to be shed – destructive superstitious fictions, traceable back to our caveman days. These fear-based fantasies didn’t really serve us then, and certainly don’t now. But antiquity eventually becomes its own proof, as beliefs become calcified and sanctified, the mere presence of doubt becoming a weakness or transgression. To science, this rigid deference to dogma is downright noxious; and to the extent that they contain and promote falsehood, these traditions are perceived as a genuine threat.

Religious traditions, though, have the advantage of having been at this for millennia – they’ve had much more time to sift through data, to converse, and to slowly evolve. The scientific world has, in some areas, greatly benefited from their efforts – in pharmacology, for instance – but in other areas science seems flatly unwilling to mine religious traditions for usable truth. From the religious point of view, this rigid myopia of science seems downright immature. It is also seen as a genuine threat.

In short, both science and religion have earned each other’s distrust. Neither wants to admit its vulnerabilities and “disarm”, and this impasse, coupled with other societal head/heart schisms, has resulted in planetwide dysfunction, as needed synergies fail to occur, and actual solutions to actual problems are obscured in clouds of enmity. Oy vey.

I think science and religion can both provide valid means of discovering truth, but the real fun may start when we begin earnestly blending the two, using all our methods of discernment together. Of course this happens all the time: we all use and benefit from scientific thinking in the normal course of being human; and even the most logic-bound scientist is influenced by hunches and intuitions. But we have yet to reach a point (or actually, return to the point) where this blending occurs deliberately at an institutional level – where seminaries and research centers cooperate, collaborate, and even merge.

This state of merger was once the norm. The original PhD’s – doctors of philosophy – were expected to study all schools of thought. Folk doctors – “witches”, herbalists, and healers – drew little distinction between material sciences and the “supernatural”. And for both science and religion, it might be helpful here to redefine supernatural as “nature not yet understood”.

I was raised an atheist, but, after a series of paranormal experiences, was forced to abandon that “religion” and begin a quest for explanations of these bizarre events. It turns out that such phenomena (extra-sensory perception, intuitions, synchronicity, states of transcendence, etc.) aren’t at all uncommon – and each one offers science an entryway into a world it seems reluctant to explore. Paranormal phenomena and mysteries of consciousness fall in a no-man’s land between science and religion where, perhaps overwhelmed by their ignorance, neither want to go. Aside from humility, we’ll also need some bravery: acknowledging one’s ignorance is a difficult first step in a seeker’s journey.

Science at least has the capacity to change, but in the realm of religion, things are getting interesting indeed. Thanks to globe-shrinking technologies, the world’s religious belief systems are being forced to confront their inconsistencies and illogic as never before. A science-minded person might conclude that these are the death throes of religion, a prelude to the final triumph of the Age of Reason, but I would disagree. As William James observed a century ago, the sum total of the world’s religious experiences can’t be so easily dismissed – especially if some of those experiences are your own.

So it’s a wondrous time to be alive. Centuries-old edifices are crumbling, worldviews and philosophies are competing, evolving, hybridizing. Amongst all the chaos, one can hope that progress is being made in humankind’s quest for truth – starting, hopefully, with some courageous acknowledgment of our vast ignorance. Maybe we don’t really know what we are, or where we are, or how we got here. Maybe this universe is one huge garden of miracles, waiting to be explored.

.

.

.

.

.

I’ve been enjoying all the recent “we’re living in a simulation” conversations, but notice that this idea has two distinct interpretations, only one of which seems remotely plausible to me. One suggests that some advanced civilization in some universe has mastered the art of virtual reality, and that, since virtual universes could be created by the billions, it’s probable that we actually live in one. This is a fun thought experiment, which would make a good movie, and which has, by my calculations, approximately zero chance of being true. To me, the far simpler and more believable interpretation is that the “real” universe is the simulation.

Folks keep trying to shoehorn the simulation theory into our present concept of virtual reality – thinking that everything must be reducible to ones and zeros on some kind of circuit board, and that behind this fake reality is a “base reality” which is really real. They seem reluctant to imagine that base reality itself could be a kind of simulation – though Indian philosophers have been teaching this for millennia. It’s amazing how the Hindu concept of maya dovetails neatly with our modern understanding of the universe. The more we learn, the more the universe seems like a kind of holographic projection – appearing substantial, but in truth being more of an idea than a thing.

It’s not that hard to imagine that our entire universe is the product of some sort of “reality generator” that deals not in ones and zeros, but in algorithms of fields and photons – a “base reality” that is at once very real, and an illusion.

However we interpret the idea of simulation, they all require one feature: a Simulator. Who or what this simulator is is anybody’s guess, but many people call it God. But God is just a placeholder word, representing a necessary but unknown creative force or entity existing outside the simulation, beyond our view. Imagining this God as an alien being playing with a facsimile universe seems like a way to limit his/her/its creative capacities – which is kind of illogical, since we have no knowledge of God’s limits.

So what do we know about God? That she is one awesome programmer, with one awesome computer, for starters. People worry about whether she has the coding chops and computing power to sustain such a vast simulation, and whether she might be cutting corners regarding peripheral features – but no, every detail is perfectly rendered, down to the last spinning electron. Damn she’s good.

With the concept of simulation, we’ve maybe reached a point where science and religion can be friends and hold hands again. There are many contending ideas about the nature of this simulation, and its creator, and our part in the scheme of things; and we’re all motivated to understand. And mostly, we’re all just wondering if God can be trusted.

So again, what do we know about God? One, that she is really, really, … smart. Just look at what she put together. Two, that she seems committed to fairness – her rules apply impartially, unbendingly, “universally”. Various philosophers have ascribed lists of other virtues to our creator, and these may be harder to prove, but my sense is that God is as kind and caring as she is smart and fair.

.

.

.

.

.

When a poet wrote: It’s like trying to shovel smoke with a pitchfork into the wind, maybe he’d been searching for a definition of love. It’s a word with a thousand meanings, or none at all, depending on who you ask. As a semi-Christian semi-scientist, I think John the Apostle said it best: God is Love. Two undefinable terms, describing each other. Like some strange subatomic particle, or wave, or field, love defies description by our feeble minds; but, like sunlight, we find ourselves bathed in it. Perhaps if Einstein had figured out his Unified Field Theory, he would have arrived at love.

While confessing my profound ignorance on the entire topic, it’s still my favorite. Having little understanding of photons or radiation, I enjoy getting a tan while tending my garden. I consider love a worthy subject of research.

So would I even attempt a definition? Again, I think John’s is best, but we can also get more specific. Part of the challenge is that love seems to inhabit a spectrum, which, like light or sound, exhibits different properties at its extremes. Low or high frequency sound waves behave in markedly different ways, and, upon entering our ears, produce markedly different effects. I find this a useful analogy: love has octaves.

In love’s bass clef, we find a universe-wide force or state of connection, mysterious (at least to me) but consistently noted by researchers throughout the ages. Some have described it, fittingly, as the sound at the root of all sound – the Om. Others call it the Great or Holy Spirit, or the Tao. It could be considered the supreme unifying principle of the universe, a force behind gravity and magnetism and quantum fields, behind the endless dance of yin and yang – behind even time and space. Just as it pervades the stars and quarks, it permeates the biological world, and all aspects of human existence. Perhaps Einstein was bravely trying to describe with mathematics the idea that the whole universe is in love.

Is this love actually “God”, or an emanation from God, or even evidence of a God? Is this “God” perhaps another name for consciousness itself? It seems that words fail us here. Mystics through the ages have claimed to be in communion with this force or state, but none of them claim that it is understandable by the mind. Consciousness witnesses the mind; not the other way around. But accounts of “cosmic consciousness” invariably include descriptions of what might be called pure love.

A little higher up the scale, we encounter “chemical love”, such as that combination of neurons and hormones that can cause us to exclaim, “I love hamburgers!” Contained in this octave is, I suppose, much of the significance of our daily lives – the attractions and aversions, highs and lows that physiologists and psychologists try to map to specific biochemical reactions and brain centers. There’s an appeal to this endeavor, a possibility that we might fully understand and even tame love; but, given that this octave is interfaced with all the others, biochemistry can, at best, tell only part of the story.

Higher still, love becomes more subtle, but no less powerful. A definition of this next octave might be: “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. In human hearing, the frequencies centering around 2,000 hz are crucial, containing much of the information found in speech; perhaps this realm of love is analogous, leading some to consider it the only “true love”. Here we’re dealing with values and intentions, with understandings of self, and with relationships. Philosophers like to debate whether this octave even exists.

But then there are higher octaves – harmonics that stretch off to infinity, elusive, but, like ultraviolet light, perhaps more powerful than we appreciate. In these overtones of the great Om, we again find ourselves in the realm of pure mystery: of synchronicity and serendipity, savants and miracles – phenomena that so overwhelms our understanding that we’re tempted to ignore them entirely. But there they are.

One could spend a lifetime exploring even one of these octaves, but the totality of human existence asks us to consider them all. None are unworthy, but our orchestra would be impoverished if it consisted only of tubas or piccolos. It’s when we’re confronted with the full spectrum of love that we’re left speechless, beholding something well-described as The Great Wow – i.e., God.

.

.

.

.

The American narrative has always relied a lot on optimism. In a kind of virtuous circle, Americans are believed to have exceptional optimism, which gives us an exceptional ability to triumph over adversity. Of course this narrative was flawed to begin with: hopelessness has always existed in America too, even if masked by stronger flavors.

But kids these days! I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but many young people in America seem to be hopeless in a way that I can’t fully understand. As a child of the 60s, I can understand despair, but, as crazy as it was back then, a prevailing theme, flying above it all, was hope. Has my memory distorted things, or has something changed?

Given the multiple existential crises currently facing humankind, an uptick in hopelessness – for people of all ages – is probably quite real. Although teen angst is nothing new, it seems the Internet has changed the very nature of childhood and its stresses. The young have also been especially impacted by our growing wealth inequality. Then the pandemic hit. Recently going down a rabbit hole about The Weeknd, I arrived at the statistic of 25% of young people feeling suicidal, and realized it might actually be accurate.

The Algorithm has certainly been feeding me some extra-bleak music in recent years, but I figured it was because I once liked All Along the Watchtower. I love the fearless honesty of modern music, but as more of the big names sport dripping blood, find myself wondering: when did nihilism become the new normal?

It could be that the religious zealots have one thing right: a societywide lack of spiritual keel is causing the whole vessel to list. A secular materialist world is abandoning religion, but finding nothing to take its place. We attempt to fill the void with Game of Thrones, John Oliver, or maybe reruns of The Apprentice, but none of this quite seems to do the trick.

Back in the day, we hippies responded by concocting our own religions. People now refer to it as “New Age”, but it was never monolithic; it was a million different people constructing a million different belief systems. Some worked better than others, no doubt, and some were tragically flawed. But someone like Steve Jobs, say, had some sort of spiritual basis for his life, something that caused him to view the world with an essential optimism. We can surmise that Job’s religion was also laced with narcissism and delusions of grandeur, but, whatever its flaws, it was his, it was infinitely upgradable, and it gave him hope.

One might respond that it’s easy for someone like Steve Jobs (or myself) to be optimistic when you’re a white male living in the most privileged corner of the most privileged state in the most privileged country on earth; but it’s also true that one of Jobs’ “visions” – the smartphone – started a chain reaction of optimism that’s changed lives – often for the better – in every corner of the world. Faith, in its highest sense, can be possessed by anyone.

I’m sure there are plenty of young Steve Jobs in the world today, but it seems there are many who have no sustaining vision, and who, looking around them, have lost all hope. The world is a runaway train, barreling towards the abyss. The fossil fuel free ride is over, corrupt politicians manipulate a corruptible population, war and pandemics and climate catastrophes will fill our future until the robots replace us. God is dead: embrace the despair.

I feel almost foolish suggesting otherwise, but do anyway. To me, the amazing thing is how people rise to the occasion; and this I attribute to the “glory of God”. I don’t necessarily mean the God of the Bible or Koran or Vedas: this human resilience and resourcefulness is observable the world over, throughout history, so can’t be dependent on any particular religion. One might simply describe this God as a higher intelligence or Higher Power, someone or something prodding us towards creative solutions. Stunningly creative, sometimes.

True, this creativity can be seen throughout the natural world – even tiny viruses are “clever” – but human creativity takes it to another level. How did we get to be so brilliant? The scientist would explain that it’s an evolutionary necessity – we need to be smarter than the viri – but I suspect there’s more to it than that. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but it seems to me there are gods up there, looking down at us, sometimes smiling.

As any 12 stepper might explain, it’s hard to pull yourself up out of a hole without some higher help. If one expects no help, hopelessness perhaps makes sense. But if you pay close attention, it seems that someone keeps throwing down “ropes” for us – insights, innovations, and happy coincidences of endless variety and scope. We needn’t know the nature or name of this higher help to see the ropes, use them, and be thankful.

Maybe this Higher Power is some infinitely inscrutable being, playing, for reasons known only to herself, with the simulation that we call the universe. Maybe it’s just our ancestors – the grateful dead, as it were. Maybe it’s the universe itself. Maybe it’s all of the above. Since no one really knows, envision this power as you see fit – and maybe ask it for help.

I’m as overwhelmed as anyone by the adversity of life; but I guess my religion has at least a bit in common with Jobs’: alongside the challenges, I see an endless horizon of solutions. I don’t mean as in “More iPhones!”, but in a hopefulness that there’s a way forward, and a willingness to seek it.

There will always be tears in this life; but these could be separated into the necessary and unnecessary. In this day and age, no one should be crying because they’re hungry or homeless. And is it necessary to be chronically anxious or lonely or anesthetized? Possibly not. It’s important to believe that solutions exist; otherwise we won’t go looking for them, and won’t be ready to make the investments they may require from us.

Young people value brevity, so I’d better get to the point. There’s plenty of room for optimism outside the versions offered by mainstream religions. It’s a personal thing, and a lifelong journey. Start your own religion today.

.

.

.

.

As a semi-Christian semi-scientist, I’ve always tripped over the notion that Jesus was the actual one and only God. Or member of the Trinity, or whatever. It just seemed awfully over-the-top, placing Jesus in the mythical realm of Zeus and Vishnu, where he didn’t belong. And with all apologies to the apologists, my understanding is that this is why the early Christians decided that Jesus was God – their Jesus was in competition with these other gods.

And he still is, which is why it’s sometimes hard to have a calm discussion about these things. But speaking for myself, it’s these extreme claims about Jesus that for many years kept me from wanting to know more about him and his teachings. It seemed that Christianity required a suspension of disbelief equal to Harry Potter.

But eventually curiosity got the better of me: I wanted to know more about this guy who, if not God, certainly did seem godlike – even after stripping away all the mythology added years or centuries after his death. And behind all the hype and embellishment, there was something compelling in the narrative of God humbling Himself by assuming the form of a mortal peasant.

I studied the Bible, examined alternate translations, considered different schools of interpretive thought, but, never finding a version of Christianity that felt completely real, eventually walked away from the whole thing. There’s truth in there somewhere, I sensed, but we’re just not getting it; and I’d rather retreat to the austere shelter of agnosticism than believe in Hogwarts.

Agnosticism, it turns out, can be a fertile place. After spending some seasons in “beginner’s mind”, a believable story emerged for me: Jesus was the “Son of God” because we’re all “Children of God”. In whatever sense Jesus was “at-one” with God, we all are, or can be, as well.

When early Christians decided that Jesus was the one and only “God incarnate”, not only did they inflate Jesus, they shrunk God. In the centuries since these ideas were formulated, we’ve come to appreciate the vastness of even the observable universe, which in turn has deepened the meaning of the word ineffable. If someone today was asked to “picture” the God who created this universe, they would likely try to imagine someone or something far larger than could fit in a human body. If Jesus was a part of God, he must have been but a small spark of a flaming sun.

Which is all well and good, except that it opens the possibility of additional sparks. Can’t we all be gods as well? Or better, aren’t we all gods as well? We’re also silly animals, sometimes, which is where it gets complicated. Perhaps Jesus was just trying to help us differentiate between these two aspects of our being. He was basically saying: You’re a god, so act like a god.

Someone may respond: “Then let’s see you walk on water!”, but, in truth, I see lots of “walking on water”, all over the world, all the time. We humans are flat-out miraculous creatures – we just forget, sometimes. It seems Jesus was exceptional in his godliness, but he was also clearly encouraging us to follow suit.

It seems to require only a subtle shift for us to begin to realize our own godhood. If celebrities and pop stars can do it, so can we. Like them, we may do it imperfectly, or go off the rails entirely, but there’s joy even in the attempt. And of course, the whole idea here is that God, being infinite, can manifest him/herself in infinite ways. There’s no one “right” way to be a god.

There are quite a few ways to be ungodly as well, and our challenge in this life seems to be to separate our wheat from our chaff. But the starting point in this adventure is a recognition of what, as God’s child, you already are.

You are gods, an incarnation of the divine, a member of the Infinity. So go ahead and be what you are. The best way to honor Jesus is not to put him on a pedestal, it’s to join him at the table.

.

.

.

.

I’ve always felt a distant kinship with Bob Dylan; and it amused me to learn that his dad and my granddad, both of Ukrainian Jewish ancestry, were childhood friends in Duluth: Zimmerman had a car, and helped a young Oreck elope with his Catholic bride. Dylan seemed to start his musical career as an Old Testament prophet, singing, as he described it, finger-pointing music; but after a couple albums of that, he maybe needed to go looking for something with a little more life in it. He looked all over, and eventually came back to God, this time trying to be a Christian. But that didn’t work either; I’ve never asked him, but am guessing he ran into the same roadblocks that I did. Christianity, as commonly taught, seems actually like a step backwards from Judaism, re-embracing concepts of idolatry and blood sacrifice that Judaism had long ago discarded.

Something about Christianity – the love – had drawn Dylan in, but then he found himself in a riptide of Old Testament wrath and pagan sacrificial rites. So what’s a singer to do? Wander forever in the wilderness, I suppose.

Many Christians will likely shake their heads and frown at these words, but I think this is the truth. Like other prophets before him, Jesus hoped to reform Judaism, and he might have done a wonderful job, had his followers better understood and practiced his teachings. Through the centuries, Judaism had been slowly progressing in its understanding of the loving nature of our Creator, and Jesus presented a powerful step forward in that understanding. Certainly some of his followers understood his message, but within a few centuries that message had been obscured by a regressive theology that idolized Jesus and the cross, and was founded, in a very big way, on the ancient barbaric practice of human sacrifice.

The Hebrews of 33 AD had long since turned away from the once-prevalent practice of human sacrifice – depicted, in a garbled way, in the story of Abraham and Issac. But they had clung to their belief in animal sacrifice, so it’s perhaps understandable that Jesus came to be seen as a “sacrificial lamb”. His followers hadn’t expected him to be killed, or even to die, so this sad return to pre-Abrahamic belief was the best they could come up with. And after 2000 years, most of his followers can’t imagine it any other way.

The Old Testament describes God as being pleased by the aroma of certain burnt offerings. I can’t imagine any scenario where such a God is pleased, or even “satisfied” with the sight or smell of one of his human children being brutally murdered. This is, at its heart, a nonsensical idea. It’s also nonsensical to suggest that God was somehow “required” to demand this blood sacrifice. Required by whom?

It’s been said that there are two gospels in the Bible: one preached by Jesus, and one preached about Jesus. If one focuses only on the first, a portrait emerges of a God that loves unconditionally – with a love that doesn’t demand perfection, or any kind of payment. Jesus describes a precious love – a pearl of great price – that is available to all, for free. The kingdom of heaven is at your fingertips. The prophet Jesus attempted to deliver this updated message to his people, and to the world; but it’s, as they say, a slow train coming.

The New Testament is a tangle of contradiction and confusion between these two gospels. Was Jesus a sacrificial offering to a wrathful God for the sins of the world? Or was he a bringer of the glad tidings that God loves us all, more than any earthly parent. For 2000 years, Christians have struggled to blend two entirely incompatible gospels.

In the first “gospel”, the Jewish and Roman authorities should perhaps have been held up as heroes or “co-saviors”, because without them Jesus couldn’t have been sacrificed. But then even this perverse logic got twisted: after the failed Jewish revolt of 66 A.D., it became politically expedient for the Christian sect to distance itself from Judaism, and it did so with a vengeance. Had the second gospel prevailed, Jesus would be revered as a great Jewish rabbi, prophet, or even messiah – and his simple message of love might have more fully permeated all the world’s religions.

Because of its embrace of idolatry and human sacrifice, Christianity has walled itself off from all other religions on the planet. It may be hard for Christians to conceive that Jesus had something entirely different in mind, but it’s all right there in the Bible. Take away all references to a blood sacrifice, and the idea that Jesus was the only suitable candidate for such sacrifice, and you’re left with the gospel that Jesus actually taught, and a Bible that actually makes sense.

In explaining his conversion, Dylan said that he’d actually felt Jesus’ presence. Many people, over the centuries, have felt this presence; and though I’m unsure whether it’s actually his presence, or that of one of his many disciples, or a combination thereof, I can state from personal experience that this presence is a joyful and welcoming thing – an unconditional embrace of love that melts fear and doubt. It is the essence of religion, and so would be compatible with any religion. God so loves the world that none are excluded from her care. We are all the chosen people.

If we understand religion as being our relationship with a God or Higher Power that we can rely on, we realize it’s something happening all the time, in the here and now, for each of us. This relationship ultimately has nothing to do with any man-made institution. In fact, these institutions often effectively undermine this relationship by fomenting separation and enmity between God’s children. You don’t need to consult ancient texts to understand this: If you want to love God, start by loving each of his children. Every one of them. Including yourself.

.

.

.

.

.

Kind of like love, the word prayer covers a lot of territory. Some consider it a form of petition – a request that may or may not be granted. Some have suggested that prayer is talking to God, while meditation is listening. Some describe it as an act of mystical communion. Some consider it magical thinking – a time-honored, reliable placebo.

If prayer is nothing but a placebo, I’ll add that it’s the best one I’ve ever tried. But I think it’s a lot more than that, and that those who’ve attempted to scientifically prove or disprove prayer fail to appreciate the vast complexity of the topic.

How vast? Prayer, in all its facets, might be considered an expression of the basic component of human nature known as desire. Every desire, every aspiration, is a prayer of sorts. One could say that, in some shape or form, everybody is praying, ceaselessly.

Aside from being complex, prayer is also controversial, in that it suggests the existence of a God. But even if prayers are “answered”, we don’t really know by whom. Some suggest that prayers are actually answered by our higher selves, leading to debates about the nature of these “selves”. My theories here are intentionally vague, and this post is full of scare quotes, because I won’t even pretend to understand how all this works; but it seems that if you mix consciousness, will, and desire, you have a prayer – or actually, an infinite variety of prayers.

Petitionary prayers, where one presents God with a list of desires, are probably the most commonly thought of; and everyone understands that these frequently fail to achieve their aim. Scientists have confirmed this, but what would be really helpful is if they could explain why some prayers do seem to work. I pray to get better at praying.

Of course most any prayer will produce a psychological benefit for the practitioner, measurable in lowered stress levels, etc., but how do we explain results of prayer that apparently fall outside the bounds of biochemistry or imagination? My theory is that “higher help” is in fact constantly being offered, whether we ask for it or not, but that it comes in myriad forms from myriad sources, only sometimes aligning with our idea of “success”. The Genie wants you to rub the lamp; but what happens in reality is far more complicated than in the fable.

Scientific surveys of petitionary prayer, meanwhile, struggle to find a “control group”, which we might have to define as a group with no desire. The experiments I’ve read about all involved medical events – the one thing most guaranteed to inspire prayers from anyone remotely involved. Who in these tests was not being prayed for? They say there are no atheists on a battlefield, and this world is, in a sense, one big battlefield. Is there a point of fervor when a hope becomes an official prayer? Or does God in fact know each of our hopes?

This entire line of inquiry, though, is based on a single limited concept of prayer. In my understanding, prayer, in its highest sense, lies almost entirely outside the realm of the material, in both its practice and its effects, so may never be testable by material means. If the truest prayer is a mountain, petitionary prayers are the foothills.

So what is a “true prayer”? I’d suggest that it’s an activity of the soul, roughly analogous to breathing. If you don’t believe that a person has a soul, or is a soul, this description presents a hurdle or a roadblock; but if you can conceive of a part of you that exists outside of the material, imagine it “breathing”.

As I “understand” it, we each are, in essence, a soul – the mind, emotions, and body being manifestations and emanations of a core nonmaterial “self”. Most of us are so thoroughly identified with our material manifestations that we’ve all but forgotten about our souls. But when you say “I”, you’re ultimately referring to your soul – an entity whose composition, location, and origin is, to me at least, a complete mystery.

Scientists might balk at such a claim, maintaining that the “self” exists somewhere in the brain, maybe in the pineal gland or something, but they’ve yet to actually locate it. Perhaps as science continues to uncover the “spooky” nature of material reality itself, it will become more comfortable with the idea that our consciousness doesn’t exist solely in the molecules of the brain, but is rather like a computer which exists partly in the cloud.

Even amongst metaphysicians, there’s controversy on this topic, some maintaining that the discrete “self” doesn’t actually exist – that we’re all ultimately manifestations of one ocean of consciousness. In this view, soulful prayer is an illusion or waste of time, because the soul doesn’t need to pray to something it’s already part of. We need only still the mind and emotions, using meditation, mantras, etc., to become aware of our essential oneness with God and the universe.

Philosophers in India and Asia have espoused this view for millennia, and Deepak Chopra has written 91 books to make sure we understand it, but another tradition, promoted by the popular author Jesus of Nazareth, seems to disagree. Jesus describes a self that needs to actively seek and imbibe of the divine – not just through stillness, but through some form of volition. The air is there, but we need to breathe it.

Ever the Libra, my wish would be to find an explanation that pleases the scientists, metaphysicians, and Christians – but don’t mind me; I’m just the janitor. It may be, though, that we’re just tripping over semantics or details: Chopra eloquently explains how science and metaphysics are quite compatible; and, while prayer and meditation seem to be two different things, they’re not inherently incompatible. Maybe one can be a prayerful meditating scientist.

The question of our existence as discrete nonmaterial souls seems to be crucial, though – you can’t pray soulfully if you don’t have a soul. On this question, I find the evidence of “spirits” – of individual personalities, replete with memories, seeming to persist independently of their bodies – to be compelling. But it seems that we each start out life with an awareness of our soul and its immortality, and in the process of growing up, unlearn what we knew. Spending time with a child is a good way to rediscover one’s soul. Such a soul might be, as Chopra suggests, connected to a universal consciousness, yet it possesses, and seems to retain, a discrete identity, distinct from the oversoul of God. I like to think of us as godlets.

Hawaiian kahunas have described prayer as a transfer of energy from the soul, through the “aka cord”, to the body. Others have described prayer as a transfer of energy from God, the oversoul, to the human soul. I’m guessing that, ideally, it’s both. Such a prayer, completing the entire circuit from the soul of God straight through to our bodies, might be uncommon – a home run, as it were. There may be those who, through talent and practice, have gotten good at it, but most of our prayers are probably more like base hits or walks. Maybe not as dramatic, but they still count.

I don’t claim to understand aka cords, and may never have personally hit a “home run”, so try to keep it simple: As physical breath keeps a body healthy and invigorated, true prayer makes the soul more alive and powerful, which in turn benefits every part of our being. Though taking place in a nonmaterial realm, such prayer is substantial, involving will and volition. It may be that, in the stillness of meditation, through the transcendent power of the holy now, the soul is automatically activated, and instinctively breathes, but it seems that Jesus was encouraging us to do this with intention.

In Christianity, there’s a close connection between prayer and the “Holy Spirit”. The Eastern Orthodox churches in fact teach that a central goal of Christian life is to obtain the holy spirit through prayer. In the Gospels, Jesus likens the holy spirit to the wind. When we ask for and receive this “holy wind”, our souls are breathing. Seeking and receiving the holy spirit for the first time would be analogous to a baby’s first breath.

It may be that meditation eventually achieves the same goal, and maybe even does a better job of it. Certainly many people swear by meditation, and questioning the wisdom of the Buddha is far beyond my pay grade; but for me, active soulful prayer seems to work best – or at least quickest. But, for the most advanced practitioners, prayer and meditation ultimately seem to be one and the same – both leading to a state of continuous holy ecstasy.

In my more modest experience, seeking and receiving the holy spirit sometimes produces tangible physical effects which, even if a “placebo”, seem to exceed the effectiveness of any medicine imaginable. I feel an inflow of energy from the top of my head – though many describe it entering through their heart, as in Catholic imagery – which then flows to any part of my body needing healing. There may be a strictly psychological explanation for this, but we may need to expand our definition of “psychology” to make that true. In lay terms, this healing effect feels a bit like a miracle.

An equally profound, though perhaps more subtle, apparent effect of the holy spirit is a sense of harmony and connectedness – a feeling of being “in the zone”, or, in Christianspeak, “in the Spirit”. Like iron filings on a magnet, there’s a sense of being aligned with larger forces, where one routinely finds oneself in the right place, at the right time, unexpectedly in a position to give or receive needed help. Jung termed this aligning force synchronicity, but its joy-producing aspect is better described by the word serendipity. Prayer for the holy spirit seems to produce endless beneficial ripple effects.

.

*****

.

A “foothill”, or petitionary prayer, on the other hand, emanates more from the mind than the soul – something of a different beast altogether. In considering such “conversations with God”, it should be remembered that God is, scientifically speaking, an undefined term – both practically and theoretically, a mystery. The ancient Hebrews referred to God obliquely as “The Name”, as if to say, Don’t even try to understand this with your mind.

Still, we converse. As I understand it, though, our conversations aren’t just with God, but also with her “angels” – by which I mean any of our guardian spirits who may be “listening in” on our prayers. If we petition the Lord for victory in a ball game, say, it’s these guardian spirits who might actually try to answer that prayer. Meanwhile, the guardian spirits of the opposing team will be doing the same.

As I understand it, these “angels” are simply people who’ve passed over – frequently our ancestors, often close relatives. The connections of our family tree aren’t severed by death. But we can also establish rapport with other spirits: I sincerely believe that Ben Franklin is one of my spirit friends.

Mr. Franklin would probably chime in here that none of this is “miraculous” – it’s just the natural workings of laws we don’t yet understand.

A God that knows the number of hairs on our head, and who understands our needs better than we do, should be able to offer some concrete help in response to our worldly problems; but these sorts of prayers are, you might say, delegated. The power of these guardian spirits shouldn’t be underestimated, though. When we pray for physical healing, it appears that these spirits are instrumental in the “miracles” that sometimes result, directly conveying healing energies to us. Mortals with extraordinary healing powers – Jesus, for instance – are probably assisted by a large team of helping spirits. Beyond that, these spirits can be the best therapists, advisors, and friends one could wish for.

Conversational or petitional prayer, then, is a complex topic. The motives and condition of the person praying, as well as that of of their spirit associates, need to be considered. It might be difficult even to identify a “successful” prayer, since it seems that our prayers are often answered in completely unexpected ways. And of course, if we’re praying for the entirely wrong thing, perceived failure might actually be success.

I prefer the idea of conversational prayer over petitionary prayer, as it suggests humility, an understanding that we might need to receive advice as well as offer it. But in my experience, the real power of prayer comes from venturing beyond these foothills. Jesus, throughout the New Testament, is a proponent of prayer; but it’s for us to figure out exactly what he’s promoting. He clearly explains what it isn’t – displays of sanctimony, rites and recitations – but has a harder time explaining what it is. I think that’s because prayer, in its highest form, is ineffable. It’s a conversation with God, but wordless. We can try to use words to describe it – desire, surrender, love, communion, rebirth – but the actual experience takes place in a realm beyond ideas and thoughts.

Jesus is clear, though, about prayer’s importance – “…seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He suggests we go to a private place – a “closet” – to pray. In the course of a day, there might be many private moments one can employ – stopped at a traffic light, washing the dishes, watching cat videos. At some point, such prayers might come to feel as natural as breathing.

As an addendum, I can imagine Jesus offering this advice: Stop the holiness competitions – both personal and institutional. We can all help each other, but any version of “holier than thou” is a tragi-comic distraction, a losing of the plot. We are all precious godlets, beloved by our creator; and it may be that no one ever has, or even ever will reach the limits of their potential. Our identity as Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Atheist has no impact on this potential; and we can scarcely assess our own level of enlightenment, much less anyone else’s. In practice, this means that each person I meet is potentially a guru, or the returned Christ.

The good news is that in the presence of God (i.e. Love), competition stops. Someday we may reach that promised land where everyone fully and truly loves one another; in the meantime, we might sometimes need to claim our personal space. You need no one’s permission or intercession to receive the holy spirit. Let no one come between you and God.

.

.

.

.

.

I’ve been getting a lot of letters lately asking more or less this same question, so thought I’d try to answer them all at once.

The short answer is that you probably needn’t ask yourself this question. As with so many of us, you are aware that you exist; and perhaps you’ve sometimes wondered if you really should exist, or if it might be easier not to exist. Near as I can tell, not existing isn’t an option – even if you exit your physical body, “you” will continue to exist. The details are a bit foggy, but it seems fairly clear that there will always be a “you” existing somewhere. So my best advice would be to try to get used to existing.

Some of you have further asked, Isn’t there a way to stop existing? There may be, but again, I’m not sure that’s the question you need to be asking. All things considered, existing as a human being is pretty amazing – some might even call it an honor. The fact that you’re even thinking about “not being” suggests that you haven’t fully considered the upsides to this unique and privileged situation.

I realize there comes a time for every human body when it’s so broken or worn that it’s no longer habitable. We then move out, but apparently continue on with our lives somewhere else. This is, in my opinion, a rather important point; and it concerns me that so many rational people steadfastly maintain, even in the face of substantial contrary evidence, that with the death of the human body, a human being ceases to be. I understand the reasoning, but will try to suggest some other ways to look at this.

First, it should be acknowledged that many people who don’t believe in an “afterlife” are expressing a general revulsion towards religions which claim to know what happens to a person after they die. They sense or deduce that these religions are basically making things up, and that the cleanest solution is to disbelieve everything these religions teach. There are also worldly power struggles involved: these religions gain strength when people believe in their teachings, so questions about their truth or falsity become politically and emotionally charged. These questions become cause for battle – literal battle – and in such an atmosphere it’s difficult to have a nuanced discussion about what anybody actually knows about the afterlife.

And then there’s the question of evolution. I love evolution – everybody loves evolution! But are we really just an eddy in the stream of universal entropy? Is it possible that other things are going on as well? Is it possible that we’re something more than artificial intelligence?

Many thoughtful, intelligent people have concluded that we’re not – and that ideas of an afterlife are irrational delusions inspired by an abject fear of death. And they may well be; but still, it seems equally implausible to imagine that we are essentially replicants.

Having been raised an atheist, I was introduced to the apparent reality of the afterlife not through any religious teachings, but through personal experience. But these experiences are generally unpredictable and fleeting, and raise far more questions than they answer. My adult life has been dedicated to answering these questions, and here’s what I’ve concluded: Nobody knows. Nobody around here, anyway. On the other side of the veil, there’s apparently plenty of knowledge – infinite knowledge, perhaps – but over here, not so much. And this seems to be by design.

It seems that there are some immensely wise and powerful entities in what is sometimes dismissively called the “spirit world”, but their power is usually matched by their humility, and most “spirits” show no desire to advertise their presence, or to micromanage. In their relationship with we mortals, they might be imagined as parents watching their toddlers in a playground, except that the help they offer is largely limited to thoughts and words, which we often choose to ignore. They mostly leave us to our devices, letting us fumble through this life, learning lessons with every mistake – those lessons apparently being, from their point of view, what actually matter.

And when it comes to questions about the afterlife, we seem to hit a brick wall. Purported descriptions of the afterlife are so conflicting, subjective, and mixed with metaphor as to be nearly useless. From our perspective, this apparent withholding of information might seem positively unfair, but I think that, from the spirit world point of view, it makes perfect sense.

Imagine you’re a mother hen, sitting on your eggs, and your unborn chicks start asking you questions: What am I doing here? Why do I have a beak and wings and legs? What’s the meaning of egg life? What is on the other side of this shell?

How would the hen respond? With gentle but vague reassurances, mostly. And this is mostly what we get when we pose questions to our friends in the spirit world. Their main message seems to be, “We exist, and we love you.” It took me a long time to realize: right now, that’s all you need to know. We, the unhatched chicks, have neither the capacity nor the need to understand what awaits us on the other side of that shell.

I’m referring here to authentic, garden-variety spirit communication, which is common and egalitarian, not the exclusive province of prophets or saints. There are a number of gifted mediums in the world today, demonstrating as best they can that the afterlife indeed exists. Unfortunately the entire mediumship “profession” is so crowded with wannabes that it’s sometimes hard to spot authenticity. More unfortunately, even genuine mediums are often inclined to inflate their talents, as they try to earn a living in a competitive field. (message to mediums: don’t try to do it for money.) And most unfortunately, formal research on mediumship has been scant, hobbled by a lack of both funding and sufficiently intrepid scientists.

Research on this topic is problematic, though, because real mediumship doesn’t work best in the vacuum of a test lab – it occurs most reliably in the real world, accompanied by real feelings and things we care about. In other words, accompanied by all kinds of bias. But as I understand it, we all communicate with “spirits” regularly, whether we’re aware of it or not, and can, with diligent observation, witness thoughts in our head that seem to have originated elsewhere.

For example, I was once motorcycling on a winding road, going maybe a bit over the speed limit, when I heard a commanding voice in my head: “Slow Down”, just before coming around a bend to find a large truck blocking the road. I didn’t need a control group to realize that this voice had perhaps saved my life.

While more scientific research would be useful, I don’t require a winning lottery number, delivered in a laboratory setting, as proof of spirit communication. In my experience, the information in these communications is not explainable as fakery (obviously), nor as psychosis (at least not entirely). While I’m obviously susceptible to the standard human biases, the information often proves to be objectively, and sometimes dramatically, true and accurate. Though many can attest to spirit influences that seem anything but helpful, most of my communications are beneficial and welcomed – simple insights or guidances, delivered in a timely manner. I’ve in fact come to rely on them.

Then there’s another kind of spirit communication – the “revelations” that underpin spiritual movements and religions, filled with authoritative information about everything. I think people are wise to be suspicious of everything these religions teach. People look to religions for answers, and religions have a vested interest in providing them; so, even if their sources are flawed, even if their stories lack plausibility, these institutions will go to great lengths to defend their claimed knowledge.

In the face of such pretension, it’s not surprising that freethinking individuals conclude that the whole realm of religion is a sham: We’re just some over-evolved animals, who somehow became self-aware, but are nonetheless destined to perish, the same as a cockroach. God is a somewhat comforting fantasy, and concepts of heaven and hell are mere myths – or worse, tools of manipulation wielded by the church. This, it seems, is the default stance of the modern enlightened human.

For many people, it’s necessary to take a large step away from organized religion in order to properly consider these topics. Begin with the assumption that no one knows squat. Do scientists know? Certainly not – they’ve gotten to the point where they realize this universe is a highly calibrated device, but have no idea who or what did the calibrating. They’re in the process of learning how very much they don’t know.

We (at least most of us) don’t even know what consciousness is, or why it resides in us in such concentrated fashion. We don’t know where instincts and memory are stored. We don’t know the purpose of the universe. We do know that 95% of the universe is made of something essentially invisible to us.

Still, rational people are reluctant to even inquire about a so-called spirit world, the entire subject so colored by the teachings of organized religion that grant proposals don’t even get written. It’s Academia vs. Religion – battle lines drawn, defenses on high alert. But this strange thing we call consciousness urges us on: Who am I? What am I doing here? Inquiring minds want to know.

Such minds also wonder why life is so hard, if there’s a loving God somewhere who cares about us so much. Again, from the mother hen’s point of view, things might look different. For reasons easy enough to imagine, our creator wants us to spend a brief moment experiencing challenges, adversity, and unique possibility here in our little incubator Earth. I think of it as a kind of character-building summer camp (or maybe boot camp), but with the built-in assurance that none of our injuries here are permanent. It’s also inescapably true that these challenges are, ironically, what make life worth living: a world with no possibility of failure would be deadly boring.

It must also be mentioned that most of our adversity here is self-inflicted. In our explorations of free will, we so often choose to learn our lessons the hard way. Our time on earth could be far more pleasant, if we collectively dedicated ourselves to making it so.

This, in fact, points to what may be the central purpose for our sojourn on earth. We unhatched chicks are not alone in our shells – we spend our time on earth interacting with other “embryos”, sometimes in joy, often in strife. Like in some clever videogame, we’re constantly being presented with challenges that can only be solved by collaboration and cooperation – by families and communities. When we’re told to “love one another”, this isn’t just to make God happy.

So, after decades of inquiry into the Meaning of Life, my brief answer is “Food, Clothing, and Shelter”. And my brief answer to questions about the hereafter is “Don’t worry – everything will be fine”. We’re here in the middle of this videogame-simulation-maya-incubator, and the rules are simple and obvious: survive, flourish, prosper – and love one another.

From all this it’s hopefully clear that a knowledge of the existence of the afterlife is crucial to our happiness and success here on earth. It places our time here in the perspective of what may be an eternity of existence, and renders many of our struggles and dramas inconsequential. But it does this without rendering our lives meaningless. Everything you do here is important, but perhaps not for the reasons you think. There’s no real winning or losing here, because this is all very temporary. When you finally hatch from your shell, you’ll take nothing of that shell with you; in fact, none of it will even interest you anymore.

But all of that is for the future. Right now, we’re to live our lives with a simple intent: never stop learning, never stop growing. There’s purpose in all this effort, and the rewards will be reaped both here and in the hereafter. So, basically, be here now. And be all you can be. And trust that whatever will be will be.

.

.

.

.

To say that the Meaning of Life is “food, clothing, and shelter” must be missing the point, right? The meaning of life is found in art or religion or love, not in mundane details of survival. True, but without survival, there’d be no life to have meaning; and surviving well can be an artform, religious practice, and expression of love, all at once.

Having studied the New Testament maybe too much, I try to take a God’s-eye view of things, where every human soul is unique and beloved, and surviving well means everybody’s needs being met, now and into the future. By this definition, humanity is just barely surviving. Of course this is nothing new, but for the first time in history we now actually have the tools and wealth to meet everyone’s survival needs – but, same as it ever was, these resources are busy doing other things.

It would be one thing if we were powerless to help people who are currently starving or homeless, but our collective choice not to help makes it doubly tragic. This “let them eat cake” irony follows me around, making it hard to enjoy the many modern luxuries and amusements on offer, because I’m unable to forget that these resources could be helping some people just stay alive. Am I neurotic? Or is it a bad case of overview affect, caused by a poster of the planet I encountered at age 14? Whatever the cause, I go through my day with a vague awareness of the 8 billion other people on the planet; of my advantages, and their plights.

My point of reference here is the San Francisco Bay area, the lap of luxury where I, mostly through sheer luck, have a home. By Bay Area standards I’m far from wealthy, but I’m always employed, my survival needs are easily met, and I spend a fair amount of time being pretty happy. I’d like everyone on the planet to experience at least this level of survival, and try to think of ways this dream could come true.

Having also once been homeless, I also fully understand the uneven correlation between wealth and happiness: climbing up the income ladder, greater wealth produces progressively less additional happiness, until at some point money spent is essentially wasted. Once a person’s essential needs are being met, it’s actually smart to share ones wealth: the joy of eradicating malaria would far exceed the joy of owning a new superyacht.

I must surmise that the owners of superyachts exist in an entirely different moral universe from me. Mine includes the overview affect, in all its aspects, plus an understanding that what we call “justice” is in fact a universal law, not a man-made convention. Every action causes a reaction, what goes around comes around, and you reap what you sow. Near as I can tell, karma is real. And near as I can tell, the law of karma extends beyond our earth life – justice is eventually served. I have no idea what this future justice might look or feel like, but the logic is sound, and there are many indications that our conscience does follow us to the next world. All these moral elements point in the same direction – to what the religious call the Golden Rule. The nonreligious can just call it empathy and compassion.

The superyacht-owner moral framework must not include any of this, near as I can tell. Whatever their professed religious beliefs, they seem to be operating at the moral level of a prairie dog – a biological default, whose main goal is the production of offspring. From this perspective, philanthropy doesn’t make sense, because it benefits other families, who ultimately are in competition with your own. Maybe these morally underdeveloped souls are actually the ones in need of charity: we should gift them with a SpaceX ticket and a handful of psilocybin mushrooms.

Meanwhile, back here in the middle class, I neurotically wonder whether I really need a new sofa. From a planetary view, what’s the cost-benefit analysis? What’s the dollar value of possible derived pleasure? How would I even make these calculations? Do I really have time to be thinking about all this?

We’re all making these decisions, awarely or not, all the time. It’s a constant balancing act; and since my choices often seem quite arbitrary, it would be presumptuous to offer any specific advice. The overall aim is clear – for everyone to survive – but it’s in the details that we can lose integrity, or get lost agonizing. Exactly how do I be selfless and selfish at the same time?

We’ve built thousands of huge stadiums solely for our entertainment; I’ve, strangely, never been in one, yet feel only moderately deprived. To be clear, I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t entertain ourselves, or gather together at games or festivals, or spend wealth on the many modern pleasures we’ve devised; I only wish we could get as excited about saving the life of a starving child as we do about the home team winning the championship.

This isn’t an impossibility. During the Kuwait war, teams from various nations engaged in intense but good-natured competition to extinguish the burning oil fields. Our competitive and patriotic impulses can, in the right framing, inspire good works. Rather than compete in a race to Mars, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk could be in a race to eradicate cholera. Why does their choice of goals not surprise us?

A colony of ants can be dedicated to the protection of their queen, but we’re not ants, in my opinion. We can emulate the behavior of any animal species, but aren’t bound or intended to. Each one of us possesses a God-given desire for, and right to, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which precludes a “ruling class” version of survival derived from the insect world. Bezos and Musk may consider it “normal” that maybe 10% of us enjoy material security; I consider it an aberration. This distorted reality exists only because we collectively allow it.

I also consider this elite survivalism an abdication. Moving to another planet won’t fix anything: our sicknesses will follow us through time and space until we confront and heal them. A change in consciousness is really the only thing that will “save” humanity, which change occurs, ultimately, in one place: here and now.

In our long succession of heres and nows, I see human survival as an artform slowly being mastered – something beautiful yet to be created. A world where everyone feels secure seems as plausible as a Marvel movie; but then, 150 years ago, a Marvel movie would have seemed implausible. If cinema technology can progress so quickly, maybe other things could too? We have the tools to ensure survival for all humanity, but have yet to collectively agree that this is a desirable and attainable goal. Marxism at least tries to envision it; but, in practice, no form or style of government has produced anything near my dreamed-of utopia. Technologies and ideologies have progressed, but somehow our morality seems stuck in the dark ages.

So what really holds us back? Digging for some bedrock answer, I keep ending back at “selfishness”, which seems hardly helpful at all. Can selfishness even be defined, let alone cured? Self-care is a virtue; at what point does it morph into a a sin? Still, wherever I look in my modern industrialized world, the trend holds: people so focused on their own welfare that they’re oblivious of the welfare of others – in fact, even that of their own children.

To survive well entails sustainability; i.e., doesn’t lead to bankruptcy – a goal shared by both conservatives and conservationists. As we enjoy the comforts laboriously created by previous generations, can anyone argue that we don’t have a responsibility to future generations? Of course present survival trumps future survival, and many people simply do what they must to stay alive; but so much of what we in the developed world spend our wealth on goes far beyond simple survival. As a semi-Christian-semi-socialist (because Jesus was crystal-clear about needing to care for “the least”), I look with sorrow at the world’s upper crust, where extravagance isn’t tempered by modesty, conspicuous consumption now the law of the land. Meanwhile, the land itself is staging a rebellion – and our children look with dismay at the world we’re bequeathing them.

In discussions about climate change, people perhaps don’t appreciate the conservatism of science. The culture of science is built around caution and understatement, because a single exaggeration can derail a career. So when you see climate scientists handcuffing themselves to the doors of banks, this is not a cheap stunt – they are desperately trying to get our attention.

It’s totally understandable that we should want to ignore these warnings of impending depletion and bankruptcy – they are super inconvenient! They mess with our entire fantasy of how life is supposed to look. But at some point we’re like Johnny Depp talking with his accountant, when he should be talking with his therapist. We should be asking: Where did this fantasy come from, and why do we cling to it?

The fantasy seems to have several origins. One, of course, is media and advertising, which continually ratchets up our expectation of what the “good life” should look like. Downton Abby for me, thanks. The combination of raw capitalism and peer pressure is powerful; and when we act on our conditioned craving for an aristocratic life, the result is selfishness, because present technology can’t provide all humanity with this level of affluence.

Tied in with this origin is a deeper one: our ability to envision these rarefied environments in the first place. Beavers can’t do it; monkeys can’t do it; only we can; and we do it very well. Getting very metaphysical, let me posit that this ability to imagine grandiose splendor is further evidence of our “divine” origin. We each, for some reason, have the capacity to envision heaven. We can easily imagine things that couldn’t or shouldn’t exist in this world. And we can easily desire these things, even to our detriment, if we choose.

I do plan to live in a mansion, but it won’t be in this world. In this world, I could not, with a lifetime of man-hours, build a mansion; and if you gave me one, the upkeep alone would exhaust me. I trust that my desire for such a home is good, but understand that this world just wasn’t designed for such perfection and permanence.

If one doesn’t believe in a future world where one can build a custom uncorruptible mansion, one can be consigned to a state of frustration, forever yearning for things that resist materialization. Any plan to fulfill such a heavenly fantasy here on earth will entail inducing or requiring others to forgo their own heaven in service of ours. And then, accompanying the hollowness of that accomplishment will be the repeating refrain: Is that all there is? All the goals reached, the money spent, are not producing the euphoria we’d expected. We’ve been duped into believing that material splendor will bring happiness, but it fails even at that.

Even if one believes in a hereafter, great efforts of patience and humor are still needed: I know full well that, down here, dust and rust never sleep, and those castles in the sand will surely slip into the sea; but still, I want what I want, and I want it now.

There are sustainable ways to have tastes of heaven here on earth; and in the larger picture maybe that’s really all we need: a preview of things to come. Instead of a fancy car, one can delight in some nice clean clothes, and maybe a bit of jewelry. Instead of a mansion, one can have a modest home furnished with things that spark joy. If we relinquish the unnatural desires fostered by advertising and media, and if we realize that some desires are inherently intended for future fulfillment, contentment suddenly becomes a lot more attainable.

Countless people in the Third World understand this simple truth, but many of us in the industrialized world labor under the fantasy that we can and should create a physical heaven here on earth. In pursuit of this fantasy, we purloin the wealth of the world, and the labor of our fellow man, thereby creating many of the problems that beset humanity. Technology can go a long way towards making our lives more comfortable, but our idea of “the good life” may also need upgrading; otherwise, our created “heaven” will have to include security systems and jails, armies of lawyers and soldiers. And then, even if all this is deemed acceptable, our very planet will be bankrupted by our desire for celestial opulence.

Along with my failure as a stadium attendee, I’m also a complete failure as an advertising consumer. I avoid all advertising; and ads that do reach me often have a backwards effect, inducing an aversion to whatever’s being sold. The attempted manipulation offends me, regardless of the product. I basically regard all advertising as a form of dark comedy, we being the butt of the joke. There may be plenty of “good” ads, but the Mad Men really are mad.

From my perspective, the interdependency of politics and advertising money is baffling. Why would anyone believe anything in a paid political advertisement? It’s the one place you’re least likely to encounter objective or useful information. If undecided, I tend to vote for the candidate or issue with the smallest advertising budget.

Advertising once had a useful function – to get information to our eyeballs – but in our modern interconnected world this is barely even needed. Nowadays, it seems the primary function of most advertising is to exploit our gullibility – to make us want or believe something that maybe we shouldn’t. Of course some have reached a disinformation saturation point, and no longer believe anything that media shovels at them, but that’s not a solution either. We each need to employ our detective skills, and to educate ourselves, continually. A democracy can’t function without reliable sources of information, and these need to be funded directly, not through advertising. And don’t even get me started about data mining and surveillance and AI…

I continue to rant in this manner for some paragraphs, mercifully edited out; but I feel strongly about this – ideas matter a lot, and our marketplace of ideas is currently in bad shape. BTW, if you are, for some reason, reading this, your curiosity and patience are to be applauded.

So anyway, surviving well is an art. I’m a musician, so yeah, definitely support the arts! But again, what is not potentially art? Farmers and cooks, housecleaners and house builders – anything done with focus and commitment is art. But sometimes our art is just bad. If my beautiful life results in your ugly suffering, that’s bad art. The climate scientists are just writing an honest review, trying to let us know that our art isn’t working – not for us, and certainly not for our children. If we really want to succeed at the art of living, we’re going to need to dramatically up our game, with a creative vision that encompasses the entire planet, and stretches off into the future.

Since we have widely varying ideas of what a “good life” would even look like, attaining it for everyone will be no simple project. Will it be a rustic home in the country, or a parcel of suburban paradise, or a comfy apartment in a bustling city? These visions needn’t be mutually exclusive, but they all need to harmonize, and all need some major upgrades. We’ll need breakthroughs not only in technology, but also in the realms of conflict resolution and governance, communication and consciousness, ethics and morality. The only answer I can see is “all of the above”.

In the fine art of survival, technology is certainly an essential paintbrush. Neither simple nor complex technology is inherently superior: a pandemic requires dizzying technology; sustainable agriculture can require almost none. But having spent time living in a treehouse with no plumbing or electricity, trying to subsist on raw food, I’ll enthusiastically opine that technology is great! Whenever we invent something useful, we should co-credit God, and trust that she’s also suitably pleased, and looking forward to all the discoveries we’ve yet to make. But in uncaring hands, any of these inventions can become simply evil – probably not what she had in mind at all.

Even in my treehouse, I had access to a few technological marvels that made all the difference: a ram pump in the creek for water, an on-demand water heater for showers. Ah, the good life. There actually was a stove nearby, but I was pursuing an ideal, trying to see how close to the Garden of Eden I could get. Not very close, it turns out. Like Thoreau, I was forced to concede that a life of Edenic simplicity is a mirage. If you doubt that, head off into your nearest forest buck naked (because anything made in a factory would be “cheating”), and contemplate reality for a bit. If it exists anywhere, humankind’s “good life” exists somewhere in the future.

From my technological nadir, I’ve re-approached civilization with a more favorable eye, trying to find a healthy balance between modernity and simplicity. That balance will be different for each of us, but it seems we all are being called to clarify our concept of “appropriate technology”. I don’t view sustainability as antithetical to a modern comfortable life, and envision the merging of these two goals; but lord are we miles from that vision. Our commerce-driven society has bestowed upon its members the supreme title of Consumer, and it scarcely matters what we consume, as long as we do so in the latest style, and with maximum convenience.

Aside from that nebulous selfishness, the problem here seems to be one of inertia and habit – traditions, routines, and practiced behaviors that can often be helpful, but also resist change, even for the better. Oddly, psychedelic drugs may prove to be helpful here, given their power to help lift us out of ruts, rethink habitual behavior, and set off in entirely new directions. I’m sure there are other less drastic solutions available – like, perhaps, turning off the TV – but something is needed to help get us off autopilot.

Don’t count on your government to do it, or on the holders of financial power. Whatever their cash cow, they’re going to keep milking it as long as they can. This really must be an individual revolution, at least at the start. Our choices and actions may seem entirely insignificant, but we’re like the ants who will collectively face down the grasshoppers. So I guess sometimes it is okay to act like an ant.

Some of the scariest grasshoppers right now seem to be not people, but corporations. Under present law, corporations are considered “people”, but they lack one essential ingredient of humanity: a conscience. What’s worse, their dispersed structure and overarching imposition of “fiduciary duty” actively discourages the exercise of conscience by its members and stakeholders. If corporations are people, they are, almost by definition, deranged, sociopathic people – and right now, in the “free” world, they pretty much run the show.

In the form of corporations, our dreaded Artificial Intelligence dystopia has, in a sense, already arrived: humanity’s subjugation to powerful self-sustaining entities which lack a human conscience. It’s perhaps no surprise that corporations are avidly pursuing literal AI, because it fits in perfectly with their existing ethos. I’m sure there are many corporations who started out with the intention to “don’t be evil“, but their very nature seems to lead to other outcomes.

These corporate monsters are but a symptom of a world where capitalism has gone mad. With their massive budgets, large companies, public and private, have every advantage in manipulating our thoughts and feelings – co-opting our patriotism, sexuality, ideals, all in the service of “growth and productivity”. I sense that our Founding Fathers didn’t foresee this. As money inexorably flows from the poor to the rich, resistance seems futile; but we each, ultimately, choose whether to play along in this game.

Legal systems and governments are a kind of technology; some work better than others, and some possess glaring flaws. A good inventor sorts through ideas and experiments, and isn’t afraid to discard the failures. If something about our government, or a law it’s created, is failing us, we, the ants, need to summon our courage and act. The unfortunate fact is that there are bad actors among us, the mightyists who pathologically crave power and wealth, who give capitalism a bad name. They are a minority, but the problems they’ve caused will only be remedied when the good actors act.

Speaking of ant metaphors, there are an awful lot of women in the world; and I wonder how different our story will be as they find their collective voice of grounded sanity, and begin using it loud and clear. I’m not trying to stereotype or oversimplify, but maybe it’s time to try an alternative to patriarchy.

That being said, I’ve recently developed a deeper appreciation of the audacity of this country’s founders. It’s true that, as rich white guys, they left some gaping holes in our democratic framework, but their overall plan was revolutionary in every sense of the word. They were acutely aware of the many ways a democracy might be undermined, and did their best to invent a machine that couldn’t be hacked. But ensuing generations have perhaps not fully appreciated that this is an ongoing project: that such a machine needs constant updates, and the hackers never quit.

Many observers of modern civilization have concluded that multiple profound transformations are needed if we’re to survive at all; and it seems that a linchpin in these transformations is our governments. We may not believe it, but we do still hold the reins. Some people might think that it’s too late – that the mightyists have already won, and democracy is effectively dead. That our only remaining job as citizens is to keep producing and consuming until the planet is fully exhausted. But the ghost of Ben Franklin keeps nudging me on. He and his colleagues had high hopes for this little experiment, and he’s telling us not to give up. There are many good people in the world, and our inventions can help us manifest and amplify that goodness. Technology, of all kinds, can give us godlike powers; but, as in the Marvel movie, we still must confront our demons.

If we emerge victorious, what will our world look like? It will, I think, be a place where everyone is his brother’s keeper: where my happiness depends, in part, on yours. It will be a place where some of us willingly relinquish some of our luxuries in order to provide sustenance and dignity for others. And, when we’ve finally perfected our art, it will be a place where, as if by miracle, there’s enough good life for everyone.

.

.

.

.

.