The Myth of Memory

In modern times we have a distinct conception of the past.  Two kinds of the past exist in our heads.  We have a version of the past we think of as absolute fact.  This is what we call “History”.  We treat history as all we need to understand humanity and its place in the world.  History is the truth, or at least the pursuit of past truth.  History is the documented version of the past as it happened.  Documented evidence and first hand witnesses are used to to write the history of the world as it truly was.

The second kind of past is myth.  Myth is a version of the past we have extensively marginalized in modern life.  If a sketchy story of the past is told to us, we often disregard it with the phrase, “Oh thats just a myth.”

If we are told about the stories of Sasquatch living in the Pacific Northwest, we may scoff at it and roll our eyes.  To the modern thinker any narrative of the world without evidence is of no use to us.  Without a body of Bigfoot, what good is talking about him doing?  We hate myths because they don’t bring us any documentation we can canonize the history of the world with.  As modern, rational, scientific thinkers we have no time for silly stories that are simply untrue.  We bravely march into the future and discard all the stories that don’t provide us with any hard testable evidence.  By removing all meaning or purpose to the past, we can discover it’s true nature.  But we don’t give as much thought to what myth can tell us about the nature of human beings .

Fact? Fiction? or does it matter?

I think that we misunderstand the purpose of myth.  We think of myth as just a primitive version of history.  I think myth is telling us much more than just what happened in the past.  Myth tells us about how humans view the world around them.  They are stories of the way other cultures view existence.  Myths are how cultures tell their stories of why the world is the way it is.  They characterize our collective fears and aspirations into clean and easy narratives.  History is way too complicated and messy to extract any kind of story worth paying attention to.       

I’m going to outline a rather radical idea I’ve come up with.  I think most of what we think of “history” more closely resembles myth.  Not only that but I think our personal memories of our lives are more like myths rather than truths.  I want to argue that we need to change the way we think about our own lives.  In order to evolve and progress as individuals and as a civilization, we need to outline a more mythical version of our past.      

One of my favorite Youtube channels, Idea Channel outlined an example of history that is more like myth.  The historical Nikola Tesla is not really the man with all his personality and characteristics but a retold version of him created by culture.  History creates a simulated version of everything.  It takes the important parts of the past and compacts it into what we need to know.  Like a myth, history is the version of the past that tells the story of why the world is the way it is.  

This is one of the reasons I find religion so incredibly perplexing.  Why are Christian fundamentalists so insistent about knowing what Jesus actually said?  Why does it matter that Jesus was truly the son of God?  Why does the crucifiction have to be a factual event?  What matters is the meaning people take out of or read into the Jesus story.  The story has been translated and retold so many times by fallible humans to create a cohesive narrative that it is truly absurd to think that these are facts.  Don’t use the bible as a historical document.  Take lessons from it like every other great myth told.

     

The Myth of your life

I recently watched a film called Dark City for my Religious Studies and Science Fiction class.  One of the features in the movie that interested me was the the idea of memory manipulation.  The humans had their memories changed and manipulated by a race of higher beings.  They would experiment with humans and change personal identities by swapping memories with other humans.  People would live their lives thinking that everything was normal but in reality, their identities had been repeatedly rewritten.    

It made me think about how we take our own memories as unchanging truth even though they are so easily changeable.  That “historical” truth becomes the bedrock of our personal identity.  We treat our memories as if they were photographic records of past events.  We pretend that we are walking video cameras that document the world as time passes by the second.  When in reality we are incredibly subjective and selective with our memories.  Memories are re-formed over and over again.  Until they are no longer factual truth. 

If you have been alive for some time, you may have had the experience of sharing a distant memory of an event with an old friend and come to the realization that they way you remember it resembles nothing of your friend’s version of it.  In any given event of our lives, we’ll tell our own version of what happened, but it will be a totally unique version of the event.  What this fact should tell us is that memory should be thought of as not historical truth, but as myths with meaning. Our own memories take the important parts of our lives and add significance to them.  It removes the boring details of moment to moment experience and adds story structure and plot.  Yet we define ourselves by these fractured and colourized versions of the past.  

Many of us are memory fundamentalists.  We treat our memories like they were written in stone facts about the past.  Our memories become the written history of ourselves and we identify with that past.  This is reinforced by the fact that you are incredibly judged by other people’s memory of you.   If you have done bad things in your past, then you are defined by those bad things.  No matter how much you have changed.  No matter how much you desire to move on with your life, you are a bad person because you ARE your past.  If you’ve been to prison, then you’ll always be a convict in the eyes of others.  We define others around us by the past as we remember it.  We hold grudges against people we should probably forgive and cling on to illusions of people that we should let go of.  

I believe the theory of the mythic memory is a great strategy to empower yourself.  By distancing yourself from your past, you don’t have to be held back by it.   Instead of being defined by your past, use it as a story to learn from.  Every instance you’ve fucked up is no longer a stain to be ashamed of.  Those instances are now examples of what not to do in the future.  Your past life is now a story to tell the world. No matter how insignificant you think you are, I believe you have a story worth sharing.  Start narrating your life as if you were the author writing the novel, The Adventures of (your name here).  Think of your life as a movie and you are the playing the hero.  Your life is no longer a historical document but an epic tale of how you turned your life around by overcoming whatever shortcomings you were perceived to have, and decided to live the life you always dreamed of having.      

    

Dancing with a ghost

Exploring Indian Reality

Rupert Ross, 1992

I want to do a little bit of a book review of a book my mother turned me on to.  My mom seldom reads non-fiction books.  So when she told me she was really enjoying reading this particular book I was intrigued.  The way she was explaining the book to me this summer, it sounded like the kinds of ideas I had been thinking about a lot lately.  I kind of blew my mind.  The book is an attempt to explain to the non-native, Canadian majority, the fundamentals of the workings of aboriginal culture.  It’s an attempt to bridge the apparent gap between two cultures.  Written from the point of view of a white lawyer from Ontario, it’s a personal account in dealing with aboriginal culture in the justice system.  Rupert Ross tries to deal with disconnections in the cultural intercourse that ends up leaving both parties in confusion.  This book was written more than 20 years ago, but I feel this is still a relevant book with a topic essential to be understood by all people wishing to understand aboriginal issues

Right off the bat I would like to acknowledge my clear ignorance of the issue at hand.  In fact I feel slightly uncomfortable talking about this issue because I feel like I am stumbling around in the dark.  I am blind to know what should be obvious to me, what sensitive issues I may want to avoid.  I hope in admitting my humble amount of knowledge, I can hopefully be forgiven for any sensitive trespasses I may cause in my writing.   I’m ignorant to even what words I should be using to refer to aboriginal culture groups.  Indian? Aboriginal? Native?  The book is titled “exploring INDIAN reality”, but this is now a small world we live in.  This is a multicultural community.  We deal with the country of India and people who are Indian who hail from said country.  For the sake of clarity, it would be just be effective not to use that word.  I heard it through the grapevine, the word “Natives” is a little rude.  So Aboriginal sounds like the current politically correct word to be using.  So that’s the one I will stick to for now.   Also, I must mention that I don’t feel entirely comfortable referring to myself as “white”, but I cant find a replicable word for it at the moment.

Culture is your operating system

This is the one thing that jumped out at me when I was reading the opening few chapters.  The way that culture acts as the basis of your social blueprint is fascinating to me.  One of my favorite pet theories these days is that culture acts like an operating system of a computer.  Now, this book was written before the general public had incorporated the concepts involving computers into their lexicon.  But this idea is vivid in this book at least in my own eyes.  The operating system is the blueprint that a computer uses to interpret and filter the code world into a uniform system so that people can move around the digital world effectively.  Likewise, culture is the way our own mind takes the raw data of experience and human interaction and processes it in order for the human being be able to move around the social world effectively.  Computers must all be running the same operating system in order to effectively share information properly.  Because like humans, computers operate using different languages of code.  Macintosh computers can interact somewhat with Windows computers, but it is sometimes difficult to share certain files.  Perhaps similarly the way someone speaking Newfoundland English might have trouble trying to talk to someone who is from South Africa.

Different models of the universe

I think what Ross is trying to point out, is that the cultural operating system of aboriginal culture is very different in fundamental ways to that of white North American culture.  Things we take for granted as first premises of existence are not as concrete as we would like to think.  The structure of Aboriginal metaphysics is based on a different view of the universe.  The place that human beings occupy in nature is nearly polar opposite in White and Aboriginal culture.  This has huge implications on the purposes of life and has a ripple effect all the way to the shores of mundane interaction with other people.   

A culture that is still relatively near in time to its hunter-gatherer roots is going to have a different purpose than that of an agricultural people.  A hunter gatherer operating system will be focused on the fundamentals of survival.  In a land so harsh as Canada, the day to day activities are going to be a matter of life and death.  The cultural operating system is going to create a lens for the human being that will make the decisions for life and death of the group as first premise assumptions.  Whereas in agricultural society, the lens focus is elsewhere.   

One of my favorite thinkers, Alan Watts described that the agricultural, Judeo-Christian society has the idea of the “ceramic model of the Universe”.  Or the “universe as an artifact”.  Mankind’s place in the universe is that of an alien.  In our view, humans are foreigners in a static and dead world and we are in some fundamental way, separate from nature.  Because the world is an inanimate object, the world can be owned, taken apart and controlled.  We feel we have the right to make the world as we see fit.  I have the feeling that since we developed agriculture, we had to develop a cultural framework to deal with food surpluses, sedentary life and ownership.  Because of these new problems, to effectively move around the agricultural world, human beings need a fundamentally different set of metaphysical first premises than that of nomadic, hunter gatherers.                

So then, the aboriginal people of modern day Canada are the inheritors of culture that is operating under a set of cultural assumptions that developed in a nomadic, hunter-gatherer context.  This may be why there is such a huge disconnect with white culture.  This may be why there are so many problems in aboriginal communities.  There is a malfunction in the way people are relating to the sedentary reality of the 21^st century. 

When the Canadian government and justice system pushes solutions to problems onto aboriginal communities, there is a misunderstanding of the very cultural context specific conditions that these solutions work under.  The notions of crime and punishment that white culture operates under, do not necessarily compute with aboriginal culture.  We take it for granted that the natural reaction for wrong doing is punishment, yet this does not seem to be the case in aboriginal culture, according to Ross.  If there is an incidence of violence, instead of focusing on punishing the perpetrator, there is a focus on discovering the root problem that caused this act to happen in the first place.  There is a more focus on healing and forgiveness, instead of punishment and removal from the community as in white justice systems.  Things that come off rude to one culture may be just attempts at being polite and cordial for another.  In the white Canadian culture, it is commonly polite to maintain eye contact and be complimentary about other’s achievements.  Whereas showing respect in the aboriginal social landscape is to be modest in talking about others directly and not make too much eye contact.

Rupert Ross emphasizes that Aboriginal culture operates under a strict rule of non-intervention.  This may be why there is perceived attitude of apathy in these communities.  This includes child rearing.  Instead of the commonly used authoritarian way of setting rules and boundaries for young Canadian white children, aboriginal culture uses a lead-by-example way of guiding young people.  Unfortunately due to the advancement of mass media technology in these remote communities, young people are beginning to emulate different social norms than their parents.  Yet their parents have a different framework and keep a more traditional way of socializing.  This is causing a widening gap between generations and causing a harmful alienation of young people.  These are just a few examples Ross gets into in this short book.        

Seeing through the rules

What I learned from this book was not how to solve all the problems in the aboriginal communities.  I learned that even to begin trying to solve the problems, we have to stop talking past each other.  Our cultural systems do not fit well with each other to create a healthy discourse for problem solving.  Both sides have to break down our own cultural norms and deeply question our first premises of reality.  We cannot assume what brings us happiness and well being will be the solution in an environment and a culture much different than we are used to When we rise above the cultural planes we live in, we can objectively judge where our cultures will be able to fit together well for co-operation.        

It looks like I’m late to the party.  I assume that the movement of “Idle no More” was much to do with this very topic.  But I suppose I choose not to pay attention and hoped that aboriginals would be able to deal with their problems themselves.  But I now realize it’s the responsibility to understand fundamental culture difference on both sides.  That way we can try to progress to a time where there are no “sides” to be on.

"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.

Shedding my ideologies

Its very simple math
Me with kitten=more views

This blog entry is kind of a disclaimer for my previous blog entries and a preview of my next one. This blog was once named “The incoherent ramblings of a Libertarian Atheist”.  Both of these ideological labels I wish to no longer be associated.  I do not wish to identify as a Libertarian any more.  I want to say I am libertarian leaning when I’m asked political questions.  But frankly, I really don’t care about politics anymore.  At least the way politics is force-fed to us by the mainstream media outlets.  When I was passionate about politics, I noticed that I was an unhappy person.  The more I knew about how much nonsense the political world was made of, the more stressed out I became.  I thought I could make a difference by voting in elections and buying into the way political systems worked.  In short, I used to believe it was real.  But that is a discussion for another time.  As a libertarian I’m tired of people assuming I believe certain extreme right-wing dogmas.  So I am disowning myself from the political arena.        

You ruined it for me Rand!

I do not wish to be identified as an atheist anymore.  Only when I am asked, “Do you believe in God?” am I an atheist.  More specifically the Abrahamic, anthropomorphic God.  No other time will “atheist” define me. Because now, “Atheism” comes along with a lot of ideological baggage.  There is a sort of assumption that if you’re an atheist, that you’re also kind of a lefty, and a skeptic to an extreme.  It would be great if Atheism was only the answer to the God debate, but this is unfortunately not the case.

"Atheism Plus" was/is an attempt to make a leftist ideology out of atheism

Now I enter a new chapter of my intellectual life.  This chapter will be defined by nothing other than my attempt to mold ideas of my own.  No doubt my ideas will change over time as I collect and reform better ones from minds much greater than my own.  In fact I want to be a flip-flopper.  I think it shows intellectual honesty.  I want to be as open minded and scientific as I can be, without being constrained by an ideology.  Science only forms rough frameworks of how reality works.  Real science in theory isn’t attached to any theory of the world.  It creates a blueprint that works better than the one that existed before and discards the previous one.  But it is never 100% true.

Religion and ideology however do not act like this.....

To be continued

My top five lyrical Rush songs

So this is a list of my top 5 Rush songs that lyrically mean a lot to me.  Rush is not only a great instrumental band to listen to, but they are also a great philosophical band to listen to as well.  Probably the reason I love Rush so much is because we tend to be on the same intellectual wavelengths.  Here are a few songs that explain why.   

5.Faithless- Snakes & Arrows, 2007

Its so refreshing to hear a rock song thats so openly atheist yet so full of soul and hope.  Not that there anything wrong with the angry, anti-theistic music of heavy metal.  Songs such as “God hates us all” from Slayer definitely have their place.

I can tell Neil Peart has probably been reading some Daniel Dennett.  The line “I don’t believe in belief” is familiar to me because the idea of belief in belief was coined by Dennett in his book Breaking the Spell.  Its the widely held idea in our society that the very act of believing in something such as God, is inherently good no matter if it exists or not.  The positive effects of believing in something outweighs the negative of it not being true.  Dennett calls BS on this idea because he believes that there are real consequences to believing in things that aren’t true.  Peart obviously shares this sentiment.  Faithless is a great song if you tend to be someone without a “faith in faith” but also have a great love for humanity and hope for the future.   

I've got my own moral compass to steer by

A guiding star beats a spirit in the sky

And all the preaching voices -

Empty vessels ring so loud

As they move among the crowd

Fools and thieves are well disguised

In the temple and market place

Like a stone in the river

Against the floods of spring

I will quietly resist

Like the willows in the wind

Or the cliffs along the ocean

I will quietly resist

I don't have faith in faith

I don't believe in belief

You can call me faithless

I still cling to hope

And I believe in love

And that's faith enough for me

I've got my own spirit level for balance

To tell if my choice is leaning up or down

And all the shouting voices

Try to throw me off my course

Some by sermon, some by force

Fools and thieves are dangerous

In the temple and market place

Like a forest bows to winter

Beneath the deep white silence

I will quietly resist

Like a flower in the desert

That only blooms at night

I will quietly resist

4.Roll the Bones- Roll the Bones,1991

One of my favorites not only because of its upbeat and unique sound, but for its great message as well.  Roll the bones, meaning that most of life is just a series of chances and random events.  Why do bad things happen to good and innocent people?  Why am I so fortunate?  If all people are created equal, then why has the creator created me with such wealth and abundance and so many other people are destined to suffer a short and miserable life?

The great point of the song is to say that we are lucky, and we should take advantage of the awesome dice roll we were thrown.  Not to mention the one and only Rush venture into rap music  

Well, you can stake that claim

Good work is the key to good fortune

Winners take that praise

Losers seldom take that blame

If they don't take that game

And sometimes the winner takes nothing

We draw our own designs

But fortune has to make that frame

We go out in the world and take our chances

Fate is just the weight of circumstances

That's the way that lady luck dances

Roll the bones

Why are we here?

Because we're here

Roll the bones

Why does it happen?

Because it happens

Roll the bones

Faith is cold as ice

Why are little ones born only to suffer

For the want of immunity

Or a bowl of rice?

Well, who would hold a price

On the heads of the innocent children

If there's some immortal power

To control the dice?

We come into the world and take our chances

Fate is just the weight of circumstances

That's the way that lady luck dances

Roll the bones

Jack...relax

Get busy with the facts

No zodiacs or almanacs

No maniacs in polyester slacks

Just the facts

Gonna kick some gluteus max

It's a parallax...you dig?

You move around

The small gets big

It's a rig

It's action...reaction

Random interaction

So who's afraid

Of a little abstraction?

Can't get no satisfaction

From the facts?

You better run, homeboy

A fact's a fact

From Nome to Rome, boy

What's the deal?

Spin the wheel

If the dice are hot...take a shot

Play your cards. Show us what you got

What you're holding

If the cards are cold

Don't go folding

Lady Luck is golden

She favors the bold

That's cold

Stop throwing stones

The night has a thousand saxophones

So get out there and rock

And roll the bones

Get busy!

3.The Garden-Clockwork Angels, 2012

The finale of their latest album Clockwork Angels, The Garden is one of Rush’s most emotional songs.  It is the words of some very wise people with a guide on how to live a life worth living.  I think the lyrics need no more explanation.

In this one of many possible worlds,

All for the best or some bizarre test?

It is what it is and whatever,

Time is still the infinite jest

The arrow flies when you dream,

The hours tick away,

The cells tick away

The Watchmaker keeps to his schemes,

The hours tick away, they tick away

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect,

So hard to earn so easily burned

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect,

So hard to earn so easily burned

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

In the rise and the set of the sun,

'Til the stars go spinning,

Spinning 'round the night

Oh, it is what it is, and forever

Each moment a memory in flight

The arrow flies while you breathe,

The hours tick away,

The cells tick away,

The Watchmaker has time up his sleeve,

The hours tick away, they tick away

The measure of a life is a measure of love and respect,

So hard to earn so easily burned

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

(It's a measure of a life)

The treasure of a life is a measure of love and respect,

The way you live, the gifts that you give

In the fullness of time,

It's the only return that you expect

The future disappears into memory

With only a moment between.

Forever dwells in that moment,

Hope is what remains to be seen.

Forever dwells in that moment,

Hope is what remains to be seen.

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

(It's a measure of a life)

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

(It's a measure of a life)

In the fullness of time,

A garden to nurture and protect

2.Marathon- Power Windows, 1985

As a runner myself, a song can’t get much more relevant to my life than Marathon.  Its a song that compares living life to long distance running.  Its a song that means more and more to me as I pursue my running career.  An interesting thing I noticed the last time I competed in a half-marathon was my reaction to nearing the finish line.  I was actually a little disappointed as my race came to end. Not that I was disappointed in how I ran, but it was the realization that the fun part wasn’t the finish, but the whole race itself.  The fun part is purely living in the moment of keeping the pace and not thinking about time and distance passing.  Racing is much harder if you are constantly counting the miles to the finish line.  Likewise, life is more miserable if you are counting down the days and weeks of work or school, waiting for the next day off.    Life passes you by if you are not taking time to notice the present moment.  I think my favorite line of the song is: “You can do a lot in a lifetime if you don't burn out too fast.  You can make the most of the distance.  First you need endurance.  First you've got to last.”  Its a line that means more to me as I grow and constantly try to improve myself as a runner and as a human being.   

It's not how fast you can go

The force goes into the flow

If you pick up the beat

You can forget about the heat

More than just survival

More than just a flash

More than just a dotted line

More than just a dash

It's a test of ultimate will

The heartbreak climb uphill

Got to pick up the pace

If you want to stay in the race

More than blind ambition

More than simple greed

More than a finish line

Must feed this burning need

In the long run...

Chorus

From first to last

The peak is never passed

Something always fires the light that gets in your eyes

One moment's high, and glory rolls on by

Like a streak of lightning

That flashes and fades in the summer sky

Your meters may overload

You can rest at the side of the road

You can miss a stride

But nobody gets a free ride

More than high performance

More than just a spark

More than just the bottom line

Or a lucky shot in the dark

In the long run...

Chorus

You can do a lot in a lifetime

If you don't burn out too fast

You can make the most of the distance

First you need endurance

First you've got to last...

1.Tom Sawyer- Moving Pictures, 1981

Tom Sawyer has always been one of my favorite Rush songs.  Although when I first heard the song, the meaning of the song eluded me more or less.  It just sounded really cool.  But as I intellectually mature, this song has taken on so much more meaning for me.  This is what drummer and writer of the song, Neil Peart had to say about this song.

“Tom Sawyer was a collaboration between myself and Pye Dubois, an excellent lyricist who wrote the lyrics for Max Webster. His original lyrics were kind of a portrait of a modern day rebel, a free-spirited individualist striding through the world wide-eyed and purposeful. I added the themes of reconciling the boy and man in myself, and the difference between what people are and what others perceive them to be - namely me I guess.”  

I will break down some of the best lyrics in my own eyes.  

“What you say about his company

Is what you say about society

Catch the mist, catch the myth

Catch the mystery, catch the drift

The world is, the world is

Love and life are deep

Maybe as his skies are wide

Today's Tom Sawyer

He gets high on you

And the space he invades

He gets by on you “

“today’s Tom Sawyer” is someone who is an individualist.  Someone who is a bit of a contrarian.  A little alienated from society.  Whether or not you sympathize with this person’s ideals shows how sentimental you are with how society is structured.    

“His mind is not for rent to any god or government.”

You can’t really peg me any more accurately than that.  As a libertarian-leaning Athiest, I don’t want to rent my intellectual real estate out to any political party, government or religion.  I don’t really even like to label myself “libertarian” or “atheist” anymore because those words usually imply some sort of ideological baggage that I may not necessarily agree with.

“Always hopeful yet discontent”

Yep.  How could I be as passionate about learning and teaching as I am, if I weren't so hopeful for the future and yet unsatisfied with the way things are?

“He knows that changes aren't permanent. But change is.”

The way technology is progressing and how weird the world is getting, I think its clear everything about our lives is going to change.  I don’t think it’s useful to get too used to things anymore.  The only thing that is going to be constant will be change and novelty.

“Though his mind is not for rent

Don't put him down as arrogant”

I probably come off as arrogant in an intellectual way.  If I do, I will try to improve that about myself.  its probably because I only try to express my opinions.  I believe this is the only way to be really intellectually honest.  Opinions are really the only things we have.  If you aren’t expressing your own personal opinion, you're just borrowing from other people.  Essentially you are renting space in your mind out to someone else.  In my opinion, a truly intellectually honest person will have personal opinions some things.  Anything they don’t have an opinion on, will have to admit to ignorance.

“His reserve, a quiet defense

Riding out the day's events”

I’m kind of a reserved person in large social situations and in general.  I’m not one to be a social butterfly or want a lot of attention.  I like to take all of the days events in stride and I try not to let a bad day of work ruin the rest of the day.

“The river”

I think” the river” in this song refers to the stream of experienced consciousness.  If you take things as they come, there's a lot to be said about each and every present moment.  If you focus on living in the moment, there really is a river of conscious perception to be experienced.