The problem with Feminist language

I feel that the biggest problem holding back a more effective discussion about gender equality is a problem of language.  What is alienating about the feminist movement is the use of somewhat exclusionary language.  I think in order to reach a broader spectrum of people, language must be carefully used when hashing out the important issues.

When driving any kind of revolution forward, I think it’s natural to create an ingroup.  This ingroup will automatically empathize with its own members.  This causes a kind of doublespeak in some internal dialogues.  Out of convenience, these movements will create their own words to describe certain concepts.   Like any kind of political party, nationality or ideology, it’s members know more about the “real” issues than outsiders.  Projecting an image of ignorance and incredulity on the outsiders of the movement.  

I’ve been a part of many of these ingroups which create their own mini-languages to explain the paradigm they’re attempting to overthrow.  Its very easy to sink into a closed off intellectual bubble, where only those who are inside can understand what you are talking about.  This becomes problematic when you attempt to relay these concepts to outsiders.  This is especially problematic if your bubble is intent on overturning the current system and replacing with their own way.  

It can be most easily seen in religious movements.  its very hard for religious to address the outside world if they’re so enveloped in the language of their tradition.  Words and phrases like “redemption”, “fear of God’ and “sinner” probably have a much different meaning to those who hear them outside of their religious contexts.  This can only alienate and confuse those well-intentioned outsiders.

This unfortunately, I feel is true about the feminist movement.  Any kind of group with an “ism” at the end of their name is going to encounter alienation problems.  While the ideas behind the movement are by and large good, they present an unpleasant and alien image to the outside.  The feminist movement is appealing to those who are already alienated from the male-dominated culture.  It’s language is appealing to those who have found alienation and emptiness in gender identities.  But it’s true intention is to change the culture.  It’s not going to be attractive to those still fully connected to the gender system who in fact need feminism the most.  

The first language problem I think stops most people is the use of the word “Feminism”.  “ism” is a sure sign of a political ideology.  The root, “feminine” denotes the inclusion of the female sex as the biggest component.  The word by itself is exclusionary to anything masculine.  If someone sympathizes with feminism as a man, they often must caveat their identity with “male-feminist”.  I believe that the true ideals of “feminism” would not need anyone to declare their gender identity.  

I think the word “feminism” is creating a problem that is counterproductive to it’s own cause.  Because of its name, it’s creating an ingroup of people, simply based on a single sex or a gender. Naturally It will gather together people who are alienated and angry at the gendered system we live in.  

Its a stereotype and an oversimplification of feminists that they are “angry at men”.  For the most part, I agree that its just a stereotype.  But even the most offensive stereotypes have their origins in some kind of small truth. To illustrate this point, I would compare this to people calling atheists “angry at God”.  While the atheist would say that they don’t even believe in God’s existence.  The theist may not properly comprehend the very idea of a godless world.  They can’t truly understand the mentality of an atheist.  So, to them it looks as if the atheist is behaving like a rebellious teenager against a parent.

When someone says “Feminists are just angry and hate men.”  That person is probably well situated deep inside the gendered system.  To an outsider, all they see is a group of upset women.  Since this person takes the notion of “men and women” for granted, who else can feminists be possibly angry at?  They are like the theist who doesn’t understand the mindset of a person without a belief in God.  The outsider to feminism doesn’t understand that the whole dichotomous gender system is what is being targeted, not men.  They can’t understand a world without gender as a personal identity.  Gender is such an important part of their world, its very hard to see these issues without it.  The word “feminist” enforces that mentality with its inherent dichotomy of feminine versus masculine.        

Are there feminists who do actually just hate men? Sure, I wouldn’t bet against it.  But they’re no different than those men who hate women.  I would say that these people have legitimate complaints about their gender and its relationship to the “opposite”.  But this negative energy is just missdirected.  Without recognizing the real source of their issues.     

       

I should expand this to all kinds of movements that are attempting to change gender and sexuality in our culture.  I truly believe these groups are trying to change the world for the better.  But the way they’re presented to the world is often in an unfavorable light.  Its often because of the language used.    

Words like “patriarchy”, “hegemonic masculinity”, “CISgender” “rape-culture”, “male privilege” have a way of unconsciously talking down to those who don’t know their meaning.  How many letters have to be added to the LGBTQ..(?) abbreviation to be politically correct?  Is it offensive to call someone “transvestite?”, “transexual?”, “transgendered?”.  It feels like if I don’t know the correct term, I’m a bigot.  It’s these sorts of concepts only privy to insiders have an alienating effect to those outside.

The word “rape-culture” is one such example of a topic worth addressing that is alienating to those who don’t know what it is.  When I first encountered the concept of rape-culture, it was in a dialogue in a university newspaper. I found the term to be unnecessarily aggressive and shrill.  Whoever was arguing against rape-culture, the writing seemed to be coming from a place of high emotion.  I can totally understand why.  But keep in mind, that kind of passion will be alienating to men who’ve never heard of it.  I was one of those men.  I didn’t know what it was, but the article certainly didn’t win me over.  From then on I associated that term with an air of confrontational feminism, which I had no desire becoming a part of.  As a man, “rape-culture” made me feel guilty by association.  I’m the one of most timid guys you’ll ever meet.  I felt I would never do anything to enable that kind of behaviour.  All it did was make me even more confused than I already was about how to behave around women I was attracted to.  

Keep in mind, I’m not trying to discredit any of the facts about rape culture.  I’m just trying to point out how the concept isn’t the most endearing to those uneducated.  Many men are probably now feeling the same way I used to about “rape-culture”.  

 It wasn’t until I took a sociology of gender course, that I began to really understand these issues.  It took maturing and self examination to see feminism as a good thing.  But it took a process of becoming fluent in feminist language to fully grasp what the intent was.  To be clear, I’m not proposing any kind of alternative to the words we use.  I wouldn’t know where to start.  I’m just trying to illustrate some of the unintended problems that naturally occur in social movements and language.       

2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A space Odyssey is a film filled with philosophical, scientific and religious themes.  Like many of Kubrick’s works, this is a film that has and will be analyzed over and over again, as long as screens to watch films exist.  It has come to a point where its very difficult to find new meanings in this film that someone hasn't already found and deconstructed to the last frame.  This is one such depth analysis of the film so If you have not seen it, I recommend that you do.  Its the granddaddy of all science fiction films.

In my research in reading blogs and watching Youtube videos about the meanings of 2001, I’ve realized how complicated and symbolically dense people seem to think it is.  Its a film where it’s cult following may have read too much into its meanings than the creator may have intended.  It’s taken on a life of its own like a book of scripture.  But, much like the canons of religious texts, it may not matter what the writer intended it to mean.  What matters most is what the audience takes from the text.  That is what is worth talking about.  Since its had such a profound effect on the speculative fiction that followed 2001, I think its worth talking about some of the ideas I took from this film and other people’s analysis of it.  I will talk about the ideas of human progress that are most prominent in the film.  As well as the themes of a future transcendence that is creeping into our cultural and religious zeitgeist.  What role does what we think of as “God” play in this film?

Why is studying the bible interesting?  There are many reasons of course.  But what what is least interesting to me is whether or not these events actually occurred.  Its not very interesting to ask what the authors of these texts intended to mean when they wrote them.  What is most fascinating is to study these texts from a retrospective point of view.  Its interesting to see the profound effect on our culture throughout the centuries that the writings of the bible have had.  It’s only as important as the people who read them say it is.  People who believe that the bible is the actual word of god, will read deep meaning into any given passage.  Of course depending on the religious context it is read.  I think the same is true for 2001.  Kubrick is known for his deep subliminal messaging and hidden meanings in his films.  Because of this, people will read as much meaning as they want to into every scene from 2001.  People watching 2001 in the year 2013 may find different meaning in this film than someone watching it in 1968.

If the books of the bible had fallen into obscurity shortly after they were written, they would not contain all the meanings they do now.  Even if they had been written word for word, they wouldn't mean anything religiously significant.  Similarly, if 2001 or Kubrick had not found the cult following of the counter-culture youth of the sixties, the film would probably not have the kind of thematic influence it has today.  Adding to the film’s mystique, Stanley Kubrick has since passed away.  So this leaves only the audience to speculate and exaggerate what this film really means.  But despite my cynicism of this cult-film phenomena, I think 2001 has some very worthwhile subjects worth talking about.

The most important message I took from 2001 was the evolutionary direction the human race seems to be going.  The ominous, rectangular monolith that appears before the characters at crucial points of the movie, signifies an evolutionary quantum leap.  These leaps are significant to our religious sensibilities because the film seems to point the human race in a direction of ascension to transcendental god-hood.  Stanley Kubrick conveniently sidesteps the hornets nest of directly commenting on religion or God by representing the divine as a race of super-intelligent, unseen extraterrestrials.

The first important evolutionary jump was made when early hominids learned to use tools, hunt for meat and wage war.  We continued on this technological path for 4 million years.  We are shown this linear progression with the juxtaposed scene of the tossed animal bone cut to directly to the spacecraft.  The next evolutionary leap we are shown is directly after the second appearance of the monolith.  The story proceeding the moon monolith scene is about the emergence of an artificial intelligence.  The invention of A.I is the most important technological event we as a species, see on the horizon of technological progression.  It will be the most significant event in human history since we developed the ability to control fire or the invention of tools.

The computer program Hal 9000, seems to develop a true sentience during the Jupiter mission, by demonstrating human characteristics.  Hal lies to his human masters about his true intentions.  When Hal kills the human Frank Poole, he shows a sentient desire to be free.   He also demonstrates flawed logic despite his apparently flawless programming by allowing David Bowman to survive.  He shows a desire to live and a fear of death.  The roles of man and machine are seemingly swapped as Bowman shows a machine like ruthlessness when he deactivates the computer while “it” begs for mercy.  Its interesting to note that Kubrick adds in subtle stabs at IBM with the Hal 9000 character.  Alphabetically the letters H-A-L are all one letter removed from I-B-M.  The IBM logo appears in various scenes.  When Hal is being deactivated, he sings the song “Daisy”.  In 1961 IBM scientists created the first computer so synthesize singing, the song they first had it sing was in fact “Daisy”.

The next quantum leap is represented when Bowman encounters the monolith in orbit around Jupiter.  In the story, the monoliths are supposed to be artifacts left by extra-terrestrial intelligence.  Whenever humans come into contact with them, they gain some sort of knowledge left behind by the extraterrestrials.  In the third encounter, the meaning of the knowledge or power that is imparted onto Bowman is very cryptic on screen.  This part of the film is where an endless amount of symbolism and meaning can be gleaned by its viewers.  (Whether or not Kubrick intended them to).

Bowman is thrust through a psychedelic tunnel of information and colored light.  Then possibly witnesses a abridged narrative of the universe’s history.  He apparently sees the big bang and the expansion of the universe.  Then he sees the development of life and a tour of unknown alien worlds.  The way I saw this sequence, Bowman had an encounter with an incredibly higher form of intelligence attempting to impart it’s knowledge onto him.  The way this experience is portrayed on film is analogous to a powerful psychedelic drug experience.  This movie was released during the peak of the introduction of LSD among the counterculture of the sixties.  I think the significance of the imagery of Bowman’s experience would not have been lost on those who would have experienced similar things with LSD.

He then finds himself inside a renaissance styled hotel room viewing himself in the third person, rapidly age and his own bodily death.  In a making-of documentary I watched according to one of the commentators, the sterile hotel room was supposed to be a kind of human nursery.  The same way human beings would construct a familiar jungle environment for gorillas in a zoo, the higher intelligence provides a familiar human setting for Bowman.

The fourth and final encounter with the monolith occurs at the moment of Bowman’s apparent bodily death.  What the monolith gives him is a rebirth, over the Earth as some sort ethereal being.  “The Starchild”.  Its representative of what we see ourselves eventually becoming.  We aspire to become that which we've always felt we are.  We’re animals but we feel like we’re more than the sum of the flesh and blood we’re made of.  We feel angelic but trapped in the shell of an ape.  One of organized religion’s main purpose is to address that very feeling.  This film is a story of our struggle towards that ineffable other we can sense.  The film represents the other with an extraterrestrial artifact.  The ominous tone of the monolith encounters signify our simultaneous fear and fascination with something so alien and ineffable.  Our religious traditions have the same kind of fear and reverence towards their transcendental object, usually God.

A very interesting blog I found explained to me the symbolism of the monolith.

http://www.collativelearning.com/2001%20analysis%20new.html

The Monolith is supposed to represent a movie screen.  Proportionally, its the same size as the screen that 2001 was intended to be shown on.  The creepy music that plays during the monolith encounters, is also played during the intermission of the film.  The intermission is a blank movie screen.  So you are actually staring at the monolith itself.

Now, heres where I go off the deep end of crazy.

In the film when the monolith/film screen is encountered, the characters begin to realize they are inside a movie.  This makes sense to me as a philosophical principle.  Every time the characters encounter the monolith, they achieve another level of intelligence.  The movie screen is a feedback loop of awareness.  An evolutionary step.  They become more self aware when they look inwards at themselves and they realize what the game is.

 In real world, sentience is achieved once the agents realize the matrix they’re inside of.  Humans achieved a higher level of sentience when they began to realize what kind of biological game they’re a part of.  We started using tools and technology to “hack the system”.  The first monolith encounter was supposed to represent this.  The second encounter was supposed to represent when human created technology(Hal 9000) will reach a higher level of intelligence.  The last two monolith encounters represent transcendence to higher forms of being we may see in our future.

The last thing I’d like to point out is the period of chronological time between each monolith encounter.  Between the first and second monolith there is a period of millions of years.  Between the second and third, there is a period of 18 months.  Between the third and fourth encounter, there are only minutes.  This may have just been the way the film turned out.  It may have been unintentional, but to me this is significant.  If this is a film commenting on the progression of the human race, it would be helpful to notice the pattern in time in the way progress seems to follow.  Each major evolutionary step happens in shorter and shorter intervals.  I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s cosmic calendar from the old TV show, Cosmos.

Whatever.  That was only my interpretation of it.  Take what you want out of this review.  but more importantly, watch this movie for yourself.  What hidden cryptic messages can you find?  Did Kubrick produce a film to demonstrate that he helped fake the moon landing? Or did Kubrick predict a race space fetuses invading earth? Who knows.

"I"-deology, The ego centered proof of existence

I have been thinking a lot lately about how an individual defines oneself.  How much do words, symbols and ideologies form the identity of the individual human being? I talked a little bit about language and words forming identities in a previous blog post.  But now I wish to address cultural and ideological identities more specifically.  Its interesting to see that as I wrote this blog entry, it seemingly turned into some sort of life manifesto by the end.  It may be a little rambling and disorganized, so read on if you dare.

A few months ago I had come to an important intellectual conclusion which could be summed up in a Facebook status update.

“It is very bad idea to build an identity on the ideas of other people”

I had come to this while writing about how important language is and how it can be misused.  One of the worst ways people can misuse language is to use it to define their existence.  Our language is by its very nature, cold and logical.  The language of logic is all about assertions and contradictions.  And so I have the inclining that we get very insecure when our existential bedrock is nothing but abstract logical dictions.  A perfect example of this is fundamentalist religion.

The western forms of religion are essentially absolutist in their interpretations of existence.  They are very logical in regards to interpreting scripture as the final truth of the universe.  Everything else must follow that (holy book x) is true.  Just like in any logic equation, you must have at least one given truth(or faith) to figure anything out.  In scripture based religion, the entire universe then must fit into perfect order because the ultimate truth behind everything is assumed.  Followers of fundamentalist religions will tell you, things which don’t appear to make any sense actually do make sense but we just aren't able to totally understand God's plan.  But rest assured everything is for the best.

I don’t want to seem like I’m picking on religion exclusively.  I want to demolish all forms of ideology. Fundamentalist religion seems to be the most obviously flawed ideological system that sticks out like a sore thumb.  But I believe that all ideological definitions of the self are illusions at their very core.  Political ideologies are also very weak and function with these kinds of faith based belief systems.  They usually begin with an assumption of the nature of humanity.  For example, socialism begins with the belief that humans left to their own devices are naturally bad and therefore need to be controlled.  Libertarianism assumes that humans left to their own devices will behave naturally good and therefore need no government to control them.

I want to show you that you don’t need to prove your own existence.  For some reason, we are very insecure about our own existence if we don’t have anything that appears external to define it.  Here is the most critical flaw of the modern idea of existence.  The idea that the self is something different than the world.  We feel like the “I” is something that sits behind the eyes that makes decisions and controls the body.  Nonetheless “I” is a foreigner in a strange world. For example, look at the various linguistic ways we make this distinction.  When we are born we say we are brought into this world.  When we refer to the human body, we say we “have” a body.  As if the body were something of an object that the “I” can posses.  This is an idea that is so totally ingrained into our language and culture that we take it for granted.  It appears in religious rhetoric as the “soul”.  Even in secular society the idea as the self as something separate from the world, greatly informs the worldview of the modern person.

I think ideologies are phenomena that occur when our ego centered sense of self feels insecure and attempts to prove that it exists

Huh?.  

Before I continue, I want to say that these ideas of the self are heavily influenced by a man named Alan Watts.  I have been listening to a lot of his lectures regarding the nature of consciousness and what the modern conception of the self is.  He was an utterly captivating orator and he has introduced me to whole new ways to think about life.  Its amazing to me that some people’s personalities like Watts’ can be so alive in my mind yet they have been dead for decades.  

The Ego

The idea of the self is what we should be focused on here.  What am I?  What are you?  The harder you look into this question, the more vague the self appears to be.  If you strip away all constructed ideas of identity such as gender, race and culture, the self appears to be nothing more than moment to moment experience.  You are nothing more than the continuation of consciousness of an individual human being.  You are not your past.  You have access to this person’s memories and you assume the responsibilities and consequences of their past actions, but you should not be defined by them.  Even your sense of agency and free will as an individual is illusory.  Your moment to moment thoughts you act upon arise seemingly unintentionally out of thin air.  Every thought originates at very rudimentary levels of neurochemistry.  Did you come up with those thoughts?   How could freewill be an actual concept if there is no intentional control of all the brain and body’s functions?  Are YOU responsible for the beating of your heart?  are YOU digesting the food in your gut?  Do you have the freewill not to feel hungry?  Where do you draw the line between “You” and your desires?

The funny thing is when you try to control something that comes naturally, it gets tripped up.  When you draw a line between “you” and the body’s behaviour it becomes an uncomfortable mess.  Just like a microphone held up to it’s own speaker creates a disturbing feedback sound.  For example, if you constantly think about your breathing, it becomes disordered.  Breathing only works properly if you don’t think about it.  In a social situation, If you are constantly reviewing and second guessing what you want to say, you come off as awkward.  People who stringently monitor and try to consciously control their social interactions with people, present themselves as unnatural.  There is some sort of act going on and they don’t appear to be expressing themselves properly.  If they would just let go of the controls and say what comes naturally, their genuine person shines through better.     

The idea of the ego seems to be an illusion created by a pattern in the stream of consciousness.  We have been constantly reminded since birth, that there is a thinker behind our thoughts.  We are unintentionally taught that there is a separate entity of the self that “Thinks our thoughts” and “feels our feelings”.  When those are perfectly obvious to be absurd statements.  Our language and culture has created a rhythm of thought that creates an image of a separate self.  This image is created by our patterned stream of consciousness that goes something like: Thought thought thought THINKER, thought, thought, THINKER.  We constantly acknowledge the presence of a being that thinks our thoughts.  But I am starting to believe that the default human stream of conscious thought does not require the perceived presence of a thinker to function normally.  Altered forms of consciousness achieved through means such as sleep, practices of meditation or psychoactive substances offer windows into a state of being free of an ego.  It shows that a reality with a self-other dichotomy is not the default state of being.    

We know that any pattern when repeated enough, fades into the background and taken for granted.  This happens in everything we sense.  We don’t feel our clothes on our body we wear all day.  We only notice it when we take our clothes off.  We don’t notice how bad our house smells if we live in it all day. We will notice the smell only if we leave the house for a while and come back.  We only notice a difference when the pattern is interrupted.  So in this way, our fundamental first premise of reality is based on the simple and constantly repeated thought pattern of self and other.         

Hey Scott, what the hell does this philosophical bullshit have to do with ideology?

What I’m trying to say is that the “I”, the “self”, the “me” or the “ego” is an illusion plain and simple.  I’m also trying to say that ideological labels such as: Christian, Atheist, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, American, Canadian, Vegan or Feminist are expressions of the ego trying to define it’s existence.  Since our culture is so insistent on the concept of the ego as the thing that is YOU.  We try to find our true existential identities in ideologies and culture.  We think of ideologies as fundamental truths that exist outside of ourselves.  If I use an ideological label such as “I am a child of God”.  On some level, I am saying “my ego exists”.  “I exist because of a relation to the other”.    

I’m not saying that we should now strive to destroy our current egocentric thought pattern paradigm, but we should just begin to acknowledge this as just one of many possible states of existence.  It’s not the default state of humanity, but just one possible way that we can exist.  This way we can take one step back and look at the definitions of ourselves, once thought to be taken for granted.    

Our conformist behaviour inside our culture are also attempts for ego expression.  The universal goal to be “successful” in our culture is one of these cultural ideals taken for granted.  But success is only a relative term in our culture.  You can only be measurably successful in relation to others.

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I want to make a small example of this with a experience I had.  Not too long ago I encountered a man at a friend’s BBQ in Medicine Hat.  He seemed like a nearly middle age guy, recently married and with a very time demanding oil field job   We got to talking about positives and negatives of the cities we both live in. He remarked that he would like Lethbridge as a city if not for “the certain ethnic group that refuses to work for a living and begs for money. Get a job.”   

What is very interesting to me is to compare his own apparent position in the culture and his attitude toward outsiders. I didn't know the man at all, but we had barely been talking for more than 5 minutes and he already made a very negative racist remark about people who haven’t conformed to the racial majority culture.  You really couldn't find a better example of an expression of insecurity in culture.  From what I gathered from our brief meeting, this guy has really bought into the cultural game. And he takes the game very seriously.  This is why he hates those who do not pursue the same cultural goals as he does.  It shows him a possibility that there are meaningful ways of existence that are different than his own.  Maybe he has spent all the best years of his life trying for a state of illusory happiness without substance. He spent his years trying for what culture has told him what he should want instead of trying for what he truly wants.  

I believe that a culture that is hostile to outsiders shows an insecurity in the cultural ideal.  From my experience growing up in a small town, the cultural ideal in Alberta is to find a high paying job in a booming labour industry like the oilpatch.  You are defined in this culture by how much money you can make and how many big toys you can collect.  The actual work involved in the career is very time consuming and labour intensive.  But ultimately the work done doesn't mean all that much to the person doing it.  So you spent two weeks straight, welding pieces of a big-ass pipeline together, great.  What matters is the amount of money made doing all that work.  You did all that work so you could add another vertical foot to your pickup truck. yeah budday.

Those who decide to opt out from the local culture game are hated because of the insecurity of the culture norms.  Granted, my culture is much more lenient towards outsiders than lets say Saudi Arabia, but you get the picture.   

Your Life

I believe that in order to have a healthy and open understanding of the universe, you can’t be attached to any form of limiting ideology.  Ideologies are only stepping stones to higher understandings of the universe.  Take the good ideas from an ideology and move on.  Use them as intellectual scaffolding on which to build better ideas.  If you find a better idea, discard the old one.  Instead of using ideas to create an identity, use them as a blueprint of reality.  That blueprint can help you move around the social, spiritual, scientific and physical world more easily.  

Neo: “I have these memories from my entire life, but… none of them really happened. What does that mean?”

Trinity: “That the Matrix cannot tell you who you are.”

The Matrix, 1999

No one can tell you who you are.  No group of people can tell you who you are.  No amount of old scripture can be the ultimate truth of your universe.  Don’t attach yourself to a culture that wants to turn you into an anonymous consumer.  Don’t give your intellect up to religions that only degrade and dehumanize you.  Don’t wrap yourself in cultural sentimentality because it is comfortable and familiar.  I believe life should be about constantly pursuing new experiences.  I believe it is our mission as apertures of the conscious universe to write what has never been written. To draw what has never been drawn. To invent what has never been conceived of.  Meet new people and form unique relationships with them.  Try not to mold those relationships into pre-determined roles.  Experience new things.  Travel to new and strange places.  Use those experiences to create your own personality. Make that personality unashamedly weird and unique.  Don’t define yourself as a caste that culture has laid down before.  You’re not doing the human enterprise much good by plunking yourself down into the most typically average role .  Don’t take the safe route and buy a mortgage with your perfect green lawn and picket fence like its the 1950s.  Where is the creativity in climbing the corporate ladder to buy the new mercedes and a cookie cutter suburban house?  What kind of interesting story will your life be, if you don’t try to pave a brand new path?  Culture, religion, sentimentality and ideology will only hold you back from the true human experience.

Outsourcing Religion Part 3: The Internet

I believe the internet is encroaching onto the purposes of religion in several significant ways.  As for finding a community of like minded people, websites like Reddit are forming a multitude of arenas for people with shared interests in whatever field.  Thanks to the internet, people are no longer forced to be corralled into a community group because of local practicality.  In remote small towns, the church, mosque or what have you, used to be the only place where the community got together and talked about ideas.  If you were someone who thought differently than most people in the community, the house of worship may have been a lonely and alienating place.  Even in very remote communities, you can no longer be intellectually alienated in the age of the internet.  You can find a group of very like minded people in practically any specified interest.   Although I can obviously concede that the internet community has its drawbacks.  Of course the internet cuts off a huge part of community, namely the actual physical human interaction.  The internet also can be a hotbed for fostering radicalism in any kind of ideology.  Since you can find such specific interest groups, it is much easier to create your own sphere of influence without any of the checks and balances of outside criticism.  As a consequence you can have a type of radical ideology festering worldwide.  Such is the case with many terrorism inciting, brands of Islam. 

Personally I have found the internet to be an indispensable resource for finding people who are like minded as me.   I have found many niches of thought that would be rare to find in real interpersonal communication.  Also, I have found that the internet has created several virtual Gurus for myself.  A phenomenon in many eastern religious traditions like Hinduism, a Guru is a kind teacher or guide in a Master-teacher relationship.  Now through the technology of the internet, the free exchange of uncensored opinions and ideas can be broadcast through podcasts, YouTube and so on.  It has allowed for eccentric and charismatic people to have to ability to be great role models for millions of people

Through the internet I have found People such as Penn Jillette, who has taught me the value of celebrating the preciousness of life as an atheist.  He is an incredibly open, true to himself and honest person.  Qualities I respect in people more than any others.  His weekly podcast “Penn’s Sunday School” offers an hour and a half exploration of a totally free expressive mind offering his life experience, free of charge for the world to hear.  He has been instrumental in being a guiding influence on my very optimistic idealistic, political and moral ideologies. 

Comedian Joe Rogan is another one of these virtual role models.  His podcast The Joe Rogan Experience has be an incredible guide for my Intellectual, physical, emotional and interpersonal improvement.  A motivational and unconventional personality such as his offers a form of the ideal fulfilled, happy man.  A stand-up comedian such as Joe, is someone who is also unashamedly himself in the ways he expresses himself online and onstage.  On average he produces 2-3 shows per week and each show being around 3 hours long.  It would be very difficult to produce that much conversational material without being totally true to oneself.   He is someone who above all expresses unconditional love towards his family, friends and people around him.  He is someone who is uncompromisingly able to pursue his passions in life with martial arts and comedy.   He has the utmost respect for the physical vehicle of life, the body.  He has helped me understand the incredible importance of feeding the body properly and keeping it in peak physical shape.  His podcast demonstrates an insatiable hunger for knowledge.  He continually has incredibly interesting, ideologically varying, intelligent guests such as Sam Harris, Neil deGrasse Tyson and Graham Hancock on the show.  Complimentary to that, he expresses total humility of knowledge to what the possibilities of what the universe can be.  Without being tied to the very often compromising restraints of academia he is fearlessly able to admit his responsible exploration into the nature of consciousness through introspective meditation and mind altering substances.  By no means does he unconditionally encourage their use, but can objectively realize the potential of the physical, chemical realities of consciousness, positive and negative. On my quest to find a definition of secular spirituality, I believe Joe Rogan’s personality expressed through his podcast represents an ideal model for what I am searching for.  

Looking introspectively, this slightly resembles cult and religious like behaviour, but having great intellectual role models in life doesn’t mean a solid adherence to everything that person does and believes.  My admiration of Joe Rogan or Penn isn't WWJD (what would Jillette or Joe do?).  Their personalities act as more a guide to pursuing a happier and fulfilled life. If Muhammad, Jesus or Buddha were alive today, would it be out of the realm of possibility for them to have free life coaching podcasts? I think much stranger things have happened

One field regarding the secularization of religious functions that must be investigated further is the parallels in the stories of modern day science fiction and fantasy and the myths of ancient religion.  The theory of the “Monomyth” presented by Joseph Campbell is one that is fascinating and I must do more research into it.

All and all it is looking as though the purposes of religion in western society is changing no doubt.  But into what form is definitely yet to be seen.  I believe I have demonstrated that those who are of an atheist mindset, it can be possible to fill the functional properties of organized religion almost entirely.  Now according to theists, the only thing left to be fulfilled in my own life is a god and faith shaped hole somewhere inside me.

Here's an interesting video demonstrating the networking power of podcasts