American Amnesia, 1/3 Through

https://www.amazon.com/American-Amnesia-Government-America-Prosper/dp/1451667825

I'm only 1/3 of the way through this pompous and ridiculously wordy leftist tome, but the thought has occurred to me that I may have been snookered. Supposedly, a lefty acquaintance read it, was really impressed, and was willing to read Thomas Sowell's "A Conflict of Visions" in a sort of a "ideological exchange". I'm hoping he didn't this book ... at least not too closely, and perhaps was feeling bad because some of his friends had so figured he would snooker me into reading it and writing a review to save him a lot of time wading through turgid prose.

The big picture summary so far seems to be (unsurprisingly) that "Government is God" ... little events like industrial revolutions, world wars, mass communication, computers, the internet, etc have minimal effects. The key to everything is a properly balanced "mixed economy" -- with government being the senior, virtuous, intelligent partner in the decidedly unequal "partnership" with greedy capitalists, biased research not properly funded via tax dollars, etc.

Ergo, the success of the US from 1946 - 1970 is PROOF that a properly balanced "Golidlocks"  mixed economy is what made this country rich! Simple.

The other leading world economies being bombed to ashes while we were unscathed save Pearl Harbor, and thus supplying damned near everything for their remaining populations to recover isn't mentioned -- so clearly not a factor. That time period being the rollout of all sorts of technologies, plus a burst of growing children (us, the vaunted "boomers") was also not a factor. Keep repeating GOVERNMENT!

Unsurprisingly, the book seems to lack a single chart (I have the Kindle version, so maybe that is the issue). You see the mixed economy was "balanced" until sometime around Reagan, and it has been grossly too small since then, thus accounting for all our problems -- well except for PeterPeterson and Ayn Rand, but I haven't gotten to the conclusion of their nefarious deeds yet. That is why you see in the following chart the huge and continuing drop in government spending as a percentage of GDP starting around 1980:

You don't see it? Well then obviously you are not a liberal, and likely under the influence of Ayn Rand or Pete Peterson -- perhaps you should seek psychiatric care. I must confess, I seem to have a similar issue. I'm guessing that means I'm a clear victim of "amnesia" -- perhaps the use of data and charts is a symptom?

Well, in my obviously incorrect world, government as a percentage of GDP has actually GROWN steadily! From just over 20% to just short of 40% today. To the extent it was "balanced" from 1945 to 1980 and we became amnesic about it, the proper level of spending would be "20-25% of GDP". Strange. 

Oh, they seem to think that MORE REGULATION will help ... so that must be much lower. Hmm ... 2015 was a record year for federal regulation, surpassing the old record set in 2010. Admittedly, that was a "scant" 81,611 pages -- expertly rolled out by an administration brilliantly led by Obama. I'm sure each of those highly effective contributions to the proper functioning of our mixed economy was a gem of great value! 

Now it could well be that pages of regulation as a percentage of population, GDP, or unicorn farts IS actually out of it's "proper mix". However,  other than "more, more, more", being nefariously blocked by Randian Republicans cruel and foul, actual assertions about "what is the goldilocks amount" (mysteriously achieved from 1946 - 1975) remains a mystery not deemed worthy of revelation in this lengthy tome. 

What IS very obvious to me at this point is that the authors of the book are very much in the "unconstrained" vision where the latest is the greatest (unless a Republican gets elected) and more government is ALWAYS better -- data and charts are a distraction. They are so smart that anyone not feeling grateful for their efforts in explaining all this is clearly a Neanderthal and likely voted for Trump. I did --- mea culpa, mea culpa! 

On to the rest of this brilliant treatise ... I'm sort of imagining a "Raiders of the Lost Ark" plot where Pete Peterson conjures the spirit of Ayn Rand and they hypnotize most of the population of the US to use numbers and data and such to attempt to understand reality -- thus becoming "amnesic" about the TRUE reality being described in the book. 

Well, back to the excitement! 

**** I am sort of joking -- I think the "slight" point they missed (or more likely just left out) is that the Democrat purchase of votes via FICA, medicare, BOcare, etc is sucking up way too much of the total government cash now and they need VASTLY more money to support the house of cards "entitlements", PLUS reign in those nasty capitalists. The actual "properly balanced mix" for "liberals" always ends up being 100% government control and guys like me either at room temperature or sitting in a gulag on the N slope of Alaska munching rat in a tent. 

The True Believer, Eric Hoffer

https://www.amazon.com/True-Believer-Thoughts-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915

The subject book is a classic published in 1951 by a rather interesting gentleman who was once homeless as well as being a longshoreman, self taught, read massively, and went on to win the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.

He believes that all mass movements are interchangeable in that they are driven by the same human needs. He considers the Roman Empire, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation, the Puritans, the US revolution, the French revolution, the communist takeover of Russia, and others to be "interchangeable".

...the vigor and growth of a mass movement depend on it's capacity to evoke and satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. When a mass movement begins to attract people who are interested in their individual careers, it is a sign that it has passed it's vigorous stage. 

He argues that mass movements depend on the "frustrated". Those that see their lives as somehow "spoiled" and they crave a "new life", a "rebirth". The mass movement let's them lose their spoiled selves in a cause.

"Those who clamor for freedom are often the ones least likely to be happy in a free society."  

"Where freedom is real, equality is the passion of the masses. Where equality is real, freedom is the passion of a small minority. Equality without freedom creates a more stable social pattern than than freedom without equality" 

In the old USSR there was a lot of "equality" and the small cadre of the "elite" had freedom. Here, at least in BOistan, the constant cry of the supposed mass was for "equality", while the "elite" like Hillary were able to be free from even the law.

"The poor who are are members of a compact group -- a tribe, a closely knit family, a compact racial or religious group -- are relatively free from frustration and almost immune to a mass movement." 

Therefore, those trying to move the mass into their column attack the family, the church and the community and attempt to balkanize races and other identity groups so people are "all alone" except in relation to the mass movement.

"The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority of the middle."

By "best" he doesn't mean "morally best" -- he means powerful, educated, those with resources. "The elite". The elite are "true believers" because they will get the power, the poor are the "true believers" because the elite have promised them the spoils. The "silent majority" are a bunch of stooges still working hard, trying to keep their families together in the face of attacks by the elite, often going to church. You know them -- "The Basket of Deploreables".

"The loyalty of the true believer is to the whole -- the church, party, nation -- and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in loose and relatively free society". 

.... when the frustrated congregate in a mass movement, the air is heavy laden with suspicion. there is prying and spying ...  

The surprising thing is that this pathological mistrust within the ranks leads not to dissension, but to strict conformity. Knowing themselves continually watched, the faithful strive to escape suspicion by adhering zealously to prescribed behavior and opinion. Strict orthodoxy is as much the result of mutual suspicion as of ardent faith.   

I could go on quoting at length -- it is full of them. He was writing assuming that communism was likely implacable and would nearly certainly "win", but as always (in his mind), it's success would breed complacency in it's upper ranks which would finally be detected as weakness by the masses and result in a new mass movement.

Hoffer considers mass movements to "just be" -- Luther, Hitler, Stalin, Cromwell, George Washington, Jesus, Mohammad -- all "merely mass movement leaders". Sorting out the details on "good or bad" is not his real purpose -- just pointing out that the "active phase" as the movement is growing is "messy", maybe even "evil" (one could think of it like childbirth), but what comes after varies a lot.

I think it is clear that the left in this country has been on a sputtering attempt to create a mass movement in the US since at least FDR, and probably Wilson.

The most decisive for the effectiveness of a mass movement leader seem to be audacity, fanatical faith in a holy cause, an awareness of the importance of the close-knit collectivity, and above all, the ability to evoke fervent devotion in a group of able lieutenants. 

 The biggest thing missing in Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary was "fervent able lieutenants".  There were simply none to name. It is ironic that Nixon, Reagan and W all had their "fervent able lieutenants", but lacked a "holy cause" and certainly any concept of "close knit collectivity".

Trump? Well, it remains to be seen -- "Make America Great Again" isn't exactly 99 theses!

The book is a classic of political philosophy. As an atheist, Hoffer naturally discounts the idea that "Jesus is different", but as mass movements go, Christianity has been around a LONG time, and actually encourages it's adherents to be worthless but redeemed with infinite worth in Christ. They can "lose themselves" in Christ who is fully God and fully Man, without having to lose themselves in some "mass movement" -- rather than "suspicion, prying and spying" (definitely a factor in hyper fundamentalist sects), they can be blood brothers, watching carefully for the log in their own eye, and being redeemed without losing themselves in some earthly "perfection".  It's only 170 pages long, and more meaty than I can cover in this blog length.

Well worth your time, highly recommended.

God And Man At Yale, WF Buckley

The version of this book I re-read was the 2001, golden anniversary edition of this 1951 book written at the same time as Lionel Trilling uttered this: 

In the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation. This does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction. Such impulses are certainly very strong, perhaps even stronger than most of us know. But the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

While "liberals" certainly thought that way, there were a lot of folks that took huge exception to WFB's (SUPER Initials!) assertion that Yale had become essentially atheist and collectivist, rather than Christian and Capitalist, which are the ideals it was founded on.

As WFB put it:

"The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level".  

He did not write the following himself, but quoted it in his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition and said it would have saved him the trouble of writing the book:

"Unless the great concepts that have been traditional to the western world are rooted in a reasoned view of the universe and man's place in it, and unless this reasoned view contains in it's orbit a place for the spirit, man is left in our day with archaic weapons unsuited for the problems of the present" 

In the chapter on "Individualism at Yale", after pointing out how Yale in 1950 believes in socialism, high taxes on business and individuals, 100% inheritance taxes and a host of well known leftist nostrums, he arrives at the following as to the effect that this will likely have on future Yale graduates after they decide it is useless to try to make it in small business:

So he finally decides to go down to Washington and get a job with some government bureau. Or maybe AT&T (his first question to the pension officer at both will be about pension provisions).  

And Dean DeVane was astounded, puzzled, and shocked in 1949 when he read that the graduating class seemed more interested in security than in enterprise. 

The word "enterprise" was once so revered that US ships and even imaginary starships were christened with the name. Today, maybe "fortress",  "lock box",  or possibly just "security".

"God And Man At Yale" (Gamay) was the book that launched the modern conservative movement that reached its pinnacle in Reagan and it's 2nd act in Newt Gingrich and the Republican House of '95-2000.

WFB was able to hold the darkness at bay with the power of his ideas and communication skills. Yale and the entire educational system was lost along with law and media, and the federal and state bureaucracies exploded in size and power, but as long as the Constitution and Separation of Powers held, it was still possible to keep the great nation from being completely being destroyed.

"Enterprise" -- "the AMERICAN Enterprise", to honestly believe in the future, in building something to PASS ON to one's own children as an inheritance in a nation assumed to get BETTER from generation to generation. Those dreams were in danger in the '50s, they are dead today.

Today we suffer the sadness of the predictions of Gamay come true and with the evil kicker of BO taking out the Constitution and Separation of Powers.

If the warning of the book had been heeded, it might be similar to the result if Admiral De Robeck had decided to continue the attack at Gallipoli on March 19th, 1915, rather than withdrawing, WWI would have been over shortly, Eastern Europe would have been stabilized under British power, and Churchill would have continued on to likely become Prime Minister and have thus been in a position of power to stop Hitler before Hitler became anything but a local madman in Germany.

America did not fall because we lacked the information on the danger. No, we fell because we willfully chose the path of sin and "security" over the path of God and enterprise!

The Catcher In the Rye, JD Salinger

I'm not much of a reader of fiction, nor very interested in teenage angst. The book however ended up lying around the house, so I finally read it. It is famous enough that pretty much everyone kind of thinks they read it in HS or "sometime", but I'm guessing less have read it than think they have.

Everyone knowns "Holden Caulfield" the 16 year old protagonist from whose perspective the book is told from. He is in the process of being kicked out of his 3rd prep academy (Pencey). He has an older brother "DB" who is a writer in Hollywood, a younger sister "old Phoebe", and a deceased younger brother "Allie" that died at 11 from leukemia when Holden was 13 -- Holden damaged his hand "breaking every window in the garage" in anger over the death. This incident provides almost enough sympathy for the protagonist for the reader to care what happens to him.

"The Catcher in the Rye" refers to a fantasy  entertained by Holden loosely based on a misquote of a Robert Burns poem, where Holden prevents children playing in a large field of rye from falling over a cliff which symbolizes "loss of innocence". The fantasy is in no way major to the actual content of the book -- it may be an attempt to assert that the book ITSELF carries out the fantasy -- it glorifies teen angst and encourages navel gazing self absorption with no sense of any reason to ever "grow up".

The cynical conservative in me summarizes the work as "Peter Pan with smokes, drinks, sex (or at least leering), a prostitute, suicide, and a possible near homosexual encounter". The suicide is "James Castle" -- who is wearing Holden's borrowed sweater when he dies, leapt from a window because a group of guys did something "unspeakable" to him, and his body is picked up by the suspected homosexual. We could easily mine that for symbolism, but I'll spare you.

Lot's of "goddam", everything is "phony", a little series of "fuck you" being written all over, possibly as an allusion to the corruption of innocence as the young move to adulthood since Holden (the imaginary "catcher in the rye") is trying to rub the words out so his sister will not see.

At the end we find out that the book is being written from some institution or sanitarium where Holden is staying until he returns to schooling the following fall. The entire book itself covers 3-4 days before Christmas as Holden is moving toward home to deal with the fact that he has been thrown out of another school. (all stories are really about going home)

My thoughts on the book:

• the adults are presented in very negative lights -- "old", "phony", ugly, either vaguely or actually corrupt, heavy drinkers or drunks, etc 
• the book is bereft of any religious or philosophical values -- Holden's admittedly juvenile perspective of all the things he "can't stand" or "drive him crazy" is a "stand in" for such lofty concepts. His younger sister Phoebe is "virtue" -- and "virtue and innocence" are essentially the same thing. There is no "mature virtue" presented. 
• While only 16, Holden is tall and has "gray hair on one side", so he is able to pose as being older "early 20's" -- sometimes, other times he is seen through immediately. The "imposter" theme is woven through the book ("phony"), relative to actors, women, etc. 
• The portrayal of women is highly sexist / adolescent. If "ugly" they are worthless, if attractive, they "drive him crazy, they really do". 

My sense is that published as it was in the 1950's, it was "shocking" and therefore  got the "cool, forbidden, sophisticated" aura. It's "message" is a purposeless meandering for potential "pleasure" that never materializes, with no overarching meaning or morality. While some teens may have at some point felt SOMETHING like Holden Caulfield, it seems unlikely that many would want to BE Holden. The only potential "virtue" he portrays is the very thin imaginary one of preventing children from growing up. He doesn't even have a good time. 

At it's simplest, "liberalism" or "progressivism" is a life of adolescence extended to death. Responsibility is always avoided and in the hands of others, things are "unfair" due to "others", the individual is convinced of their own goodness or possibly even greatness at some fantasy level, but that is vague and remote -- the immediate motive is always the next smoke, next drink, next sexual conquest, next entertainment, etc. 

Perhaps Holden Caulfield is the prototype for the modern life of the perpetual adolescent. I find the idea of giving this book to anyone under the age of 21 to be the spiritual equivalent of handing an 8 year old a .45 and a box of shells and telling them "have a good time".  

As an adult, the fact that the book is as famous as it is provides strong evidence that our educational system has failed us -- we REALLY need to understand classic literature, and then realize that this work isn't it. 

The Face Of God -- The Gifford Lectures, by Roger Scruton

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15782118-face-of-god

I finished the EXCELLENT subject book  and had one of my "vast oversimplification aha moments". Let's call the book FoG (Face Of God).

The "Aha" is that Science is psychopathic! It has been staring me in the face for years, but this book finally brought it to the surface.

The psychopath and those high on the autism scale fail to see the conscious entity behind the face in other humans. They are to varying degrees "consciousness blind". Because they are such, they tend to varying degrees to lack any sense of morality -- remorse, shame, etc. They tend to lack a CONSCIENCE ... which is very much linked with human consciousness.

The whole FoG book focuses on subjects vs objects and the "I -You" relation which recognizes that we are all "subjects" (conscious BEings) Objects are not conscious in the human sense. Subjects are US ... or God. We have BEING ... we are little "i am's" ... God is **I AM**! (consider us the eternal dog food version). I suspect that God really enjoyed the joke of Dog being God backward! How funny, considering that we are the dogs!

The book concentrates on the idea of "the face", and how it is a portal for the consciousness behind it.

"My face is a boundary, a threshold, a place where I appear as the monarch appears on the balcony of the palace" ... or the Pope appears to the faithful in St Peter's square. It isn't "I", but if you are not a psychopath or autistic, you can "see"(detect)  the "I" from my face.

"It [the face] shows the incarnate in the object, embraced by it's own mortality, and present like death on the unknowable edge of things".

"... the individual is revealed not only in the life that shines from the face, but in the death growing in the folds and wrinkles ...:".

Scruton prefers "I-You" as the standard human relation, but I would call it "I to I" with the obvious play on words. The whole essence of human life is RELATIONSHIPS between sentient BEings that have human consciousness. Everything else is just mechanism.

He ends the book with this ...

"Our disenchanted life is, to use the Socratic idiom, "not a life for a human being". By remaking human beings and their habitat as objects to consume rather than subjects to revere, we invite the degradation of both. Postmodern people will deny that their disquiet at these things has a religious meaning, but I hope that my argument has gone some way to showing that they are wrong."

For me, his argument is a pearl of great price in a mechanical world.

Science is in the business of "disenchantment", but like some sorcerer's apprentice, it takes pride in the fact that it has NO MORAL SENSE, nor "sense" at all. It doesn't "engender the Terminator" (SkyNet from the Terminator movies), it **IS** the "Terminator" ... of humanity, of morality, of meaning, of life, of love, of "god" ... only GOD is very much it's master, it is just that due to Free Will, our choice of science over God has crushed our sacred *I* (subjectness).

By definition, science totally lacks any recognition of ALL **I ams** ... to science, there are no subjects, only objects. Objects that can be reduced to component parts, classified, ordered and disposed of with "efficiency". "Morality" and "meaning" simply do not compute -- they can't be measured, therefore they are not.

We have released science from the slave status which a TOOL that refuses to recognize the most basic element of humanity needs to be confined to. The fact that we are SUBJECTS, not objects ought to always be conceded by any sentient human who understands the nature of at least man, if not having the beginnings of understanding the nature of God and the universe (the beginning of wisdom).

I can't recommend this book too highly. My review COMPLETELY fails to do it justice. It is quite reachable, yet it is a profound statement on the human condition, and our profound peril in a modern world that has lost the  understanding of what it means to be human.

The Face Of God, Preview

I'm enjoying this book by Roger Scruton and ran into this:

"Take away religion, however; take away philosophy, take away the higher forms of art, and you deprive ordinary people of the ways in which they can represent their apartness. Human nature, once something to live up to, becomes something to live down to instead. Biological reductionism nurtures this "living down", which is why people so readily fall for it. It makes cynicism respectable and degeneracy chic. It abolishes our kind, and with it our kindness."

Humans are a mass of paradox. We want to be unique, yet an intimate part of a community of "people like us". We want others to see us as US ... unique and special, yet loved, respected and desired as friend, lover, family member, team member, etc. If I have no faith or philosophy, perhaps a tattoo or body piercing will substitute?

When we are reduced to mere animals like any other beast, we are abolished as human -- and our "kindness" goes with it. Human life becomes a "race to the bottom". "Culture" and "Country" become a series of broken primitive tribes. All is injustice, victimhood, alienation, privilege, degeneracy (often demanded to be celebrated!), etc.

In a world where "sin" has supposed to have been abolished by the death of god, it strangely rushes back in as in the "America's original sin", or "the sin of ... police killings".

Humans are quite good at both seeing and committing sin, wholly without god. What they are completely unable to do is to repent, forgive and BE forgiven without God -- as Truth, another word for Christ!

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X

A good and worthy book, and I LOVE the title.

The premise is simple, brilliant neurosurgeon about to embark on his career contracts lung cancer (he never smoked, as if that makes a difference) he fights, he dies. It is a good and worthy read, but while exposure to this particular work might be of special use to some, it is well worth it to read  Ecclesiastes 1 and just ponder a bit even if you ARE going to read the book:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
3What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
4A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
5Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.
6Blowing toward the south,
Then turning toward the north,
The wind continues swirling along;
And on its circular courses the wind returns.
7All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.
8All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
9That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
10Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.
11There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still ... 

Remember, this is Solomon writing this -- the wisest man that ever lived.

Page 167 begins Paul's (the author) discussion of his Christian faith, and this passage especially hit me:

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning — to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

The Biblical definition of "vanity" is anything apart from God -- which is MEANINGLESS! Human life and wisdom is "vanity" ... which apart from our relationship to God (which is ETERNAL) is meaningless. Consider the words of Solomon and replace "vanity" with MECHANISM. If we have no spirit, then ALL is mere mechanism, but if we do have spirit, then we are spiritual beings having a mechanical (physical) experience which is VERY short!

Science is all about mechanism and mechanism only. In programming, I can write a program in any programming language,  a wealth of styles, run it on at least hundreds of operating system / hardware combinations. etc. What counts is "the algorithm" which started in my head and was "expressed" in the program, then "reified" (made real) by the interaction of the compilers, interpreters, operating system, and under it all, the hardware.

I agree with Paul (the author) when he says "Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create with each other and the world, and is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them ... " 

Being the sort of person I am, I realize that it is definitely by the Grace of God that my wife is 3+ weeks into recovery rather than 3+ weeks into the grave. My model has always been that I would precede her in death ... it seems "fair", she is younger, and lord knows that I need her MUCH more than she needs me! 

But I know that is not Truth -- that is a wish, which is as ephemeral as the passing of a gravity wave. 

The author was willing to admit that even two very much in love and committed people had problems in their marriage .. prologue, page 9 ... "But I'm worried we want different things from our relationship. I feel like we are connected halfway. I don't want to learn about your worries by accident". 

"Half way"? Pretty damned good for a relationship. One human brain is the single most complicated thing we know about in the universe -- at least trillions of connections, and mostly we are completely clueless of how it operates. Two brains? And for believers, "spirits", "love",  and connections to the infinite? Perhaps .0001 % "connected" is all even the closest can hope for in the life in which we breath. 

I fear I did not give the book high enough praise. READ IT, there are a myriad of things that make it worthwhile to read -- you get to know a brilliant neurosurgeon on a fairly deep level and understand a TINY bit of what it takes to walk that road. 

In the end though, Plato, Caesar, Augustine, DaVinci, Luther, Einstein -- pick your favorite. Only ONE life and death really matters eternally -- Jesus! ALL of us DEARLY want to be "special" -- The author talked of his expertise, the fact that he had not caused a leak of spinal fluid in a year, and some surgeon trying to help him did. I sometimes feel pride in my writing, or my maybe "imposing presence" in some cases. The author was WAY more special than I will EVER be, and  ALL of our works which we so very much want to be "special" are "filthy rags" --- BUT, in the power of Christ, we are all infinitely loved! (sadly, not all of us accept that love)

My kitties love me, which makes me feel good day to day. More importantly, I realize the greatest theological truth in history -- "Jesus loves me, this I know!" Next to eternity, the length of our lives here is definitely "vanity" -- we have a lot of very dear wishes, but they are not truth, they are vanity. 

So, when my breath becomes air, I'm ready. 

Books, Tolstoy, "The Cossacks"

It's just a paragraph -- but there is reason that Tolstoy is one of the greatest.

'Three months have passed since I first saw the Cossack girl, Maryanka. The views and prejudices of the world I had left were still fresh in me. I did not then believe that I could love that woman. I delighted in her beauty just as I delighted in the beauty of the mountains and the sky, nor could I help delighting in her, for she is as beautiful as they. I found that the sight of her beauty had become a necessity of my life and I began asking myself whether I did not love her. But I could find nothing within myself at all like love as I had imagined it to be. Mine was not the restlessness of loneliness and desire for marriage, nor was it platonic, still less a carnal love such as I have experienced. I needed only to see her, to hear her, to know that she was near--and if I was not happy, I was at peace.

 I think that rings true for at least any male that has ever been in love. No idea how it works for a woman  -- is there a female writer with the kind of insight of Tolstoy? Could I understand it if there was?

The character "writing the letter" is a wealthy Russian noble, somewhat "looking for his head" in the military -- it seems that his heart found him first.

The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom

I'm thinking that I'll occasionally link to an "alternate review" for those that want more detail than I provide so here is an alternate view.

"Evil (Lucifer) is a by-product, a component, of creation. In a world evolving into ever higher forms, hatred, violence, aggression, and war are a part of the evolutionary plan." 

Plan? Higher forms? Bloom is an atheist, so he needs to realize the fact that his faith REQUIRES that there IS NO PLAN! There are also no "higher forms". A godless universe has no "preferences" -- slime mold is just as "good" as Einstein, and there IS NOT such a thing as "good / evil / Lucifer / etc" in such a universe. So his premise is completely flawed -- if there is no god, there is NO DIRECTOR FOR EVOLUTION ... it is RANDOM! What survives and breeds survives and breeds, and what doesn't, doesn't. No planner, no plan.

"Lucifer is the dark side of cosmic fecundity, the cutting blade of the sculptor's knife. Nature does not abhor evil, she embraces it."  

Again, no god, no plan, no "sculptor". Whatever form breeds best is just fine with the blind watchmaker. No consciousness in "nature", so no "abhor or embrace" -- it just "is".

The conclusion of the book is this:

Super-organisms, ideas [memes],  and the pecking order, these are the primary forces behind much of human creativity and earthly good. They are the holy trinity of the Lucifer Principle. 

Super-organisms are societies / groups -- the United States, Exxon, The NFL. The assertion is that each individual is like a "cell" in the super-organism in which they live.

Ideas / memes are things like Christianity, evolution, free speech, money -- ideas, beliefs, ideology, religion. The book espouses the theory that these "memes" compete for "the fittest" like genes -- memes are the "genes" of the super-organisms.

Pecking order -- goes back to chickens / barnyard. Dominance hierarchies of people and super-organisms. He goes over the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the US Empire along with the rise of Islam as a "killer meme / super-organism". The book was published in 1995, his predictions on the rise of Islamic violence were right on.

The far left hated the book thinking it sounds "Fascist" as in "fittest survive, violence is part of nature / unavoidable / etc". It debunks the "nobel savage" in a number of ways -- one of the most colorful is the !Kung of the Kalahari desert -- very primitive, very warlike, lots of killing, lots of violence. No connection to "corruption" by the west -- they just naturally like to kill each other!

The book would really love to come up with some hopeful note. One example:

It is important that the societies which cherish pluralism survive. It is critical that they spread their values. It is vital that they not mistakenly imagine all other societies to be equal and their own inferior. It is imperative that they not allow their position in the pecking order of nations to slip and that they not cave to the onrush of the barbarians. 

Hmm. That is a very nice sentiment -- he likes "pluralism". Does he "like it" even if it isn't adaptive? I mean, what basis does he like it on? It feels good? He believes there is no god, so the ONLY standard is "what works" -- in evolution, what breeds. As I've pointed out, current "pluralistic", "relativistic", "post-modern" western society DOES NOT BREED! Islam does. Mormons do. Primitive backward groups in Africa do.

In the absence of a "divine meme" that is BELIEVED, then all civilizations really are "equal", because the universe has no order. At a number of places in the book, the above being one, Bloom clearly realizes at some level that "no rules means no rules", which means that the Western "pluralistic" societies may well lose out to societies of "true believers" that are interested in conquest while we are interested in getting men wearing dresses into the ladies room.

Gender uncertainty, homosexuality, abortion and birth control are not really the stuff of "healthy super-organisms" -- in fact, they are a pretty solid indication of a near death super-organism. Organisms that stop replacing their "cells" (eg stop having children), and spend their energy killing off unborn children and encouraging same sex unions really don't play in the godless naturalistic universe. "Pluralism" might feel nice to some authors, but it doesn't play well in the model universe he imagines we live in!

It is hard to recommend this book. There IS a lot of "interesting stuff" in it, some of which was new to me, but given it's flawed premises and rather dark with some "wishful hope" conclusions, it can pretty safely be bypassed for better fare. "Sapiens" would be a great example of that fare, along with "Darwin's Cathedral" to round out the "meme" part a bit.

Bloom manages to criticize "Closing of the American Mind" as "blaming our problems on progress". As you can see in my critique above, I think Bloom fails to understand the results of his own world view, so is casting around for whom he can blame -- "Closing" is just a random target.

I'm just going to stop here -- one can't love every book you read! I think the core issue is really just another attempt to get "Science" to carry the load of philosophy and theology.

Zero to One, Peter Thiel

http://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1460935376&sr=1-1&keywords=zero+to+one+peter+thiel

A book that FAR exceeds it's promise. It has a LOT of great experiential documentation on startups, but the astute observations on attitudes around the world, misconceptions people have and just plain pithy contrarian wisdom is what really sets it apart. Thiel "failed" to get a SCOTUS clerkship (barely) and thus ended up founding PayPal which merged with Elon Musk's X.com to become a very successful business -- many good stories about how those things happened.

First the title -- Doing more of what we already know takes us from 1 to N, creating something new takes us from 0 to 1. "Today's "best practices" lead to dead ends, best paths are new and untried.

The question that Thiel asks when he wants to understand someone is "What important truth do few people agree with you on"? His answer is; "Most people think that the world will be defined by globalization, but the truth is that technology matters more".

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE technology, but I think the future of the world will be defined by MEANING -- the West won't survive Islam (or the next "meaningful opponent") if we don't define a meaning and purpose for our existence -- and yes, expansion. To have a purpose, you have to believe, and if you believe, you believe that others would be served by believing. "I'm OK, You're OK" is not a meaningful philosophy!

I loved this line: "Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in shorter supply than genius". Again, it IS TODAY, because bowing to the "standard PC position" is more important than it was prior to the Reformation! Modern thought turns smaller and smaller molehills into mountains -- see NC!

My top favorite big ideas of the book are:

1) Monopoly is GOOD, competition is BAD. (in a static world, monopoly would be bad) I'm not going to argue the whole position here, but he does it very well. "The history of progress is the history of a better monopoly business replacing incumbents".  Think about it -- when Apple came along and created the expensive iPhone, people got violent in waiting lines to get at it. THAT is monopoly power, and you in fact WANT it -- badly, and it is the only way that our world will improve (technology wise).  "Creative monopolists give customers more choices by adding completely new categories of abundance to the world".

2). You are not a lottery ticket --  but first a couple one liners (I love one-liners!) "Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them."  ... thus,  "All Rhodes Scholars had a great future in their past"

" ... if you expect an indefinite future ruled by randomness, you'll give up on trying to master it. Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what's most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance..."

HELLO -- see "diverse financial portfolio", "well rounded education", etc, etc.

He covers 4 basic global attitudes and makes EXCELLENT cases for each:

• Indefinite Pessimism -- something bad is going to happen but not sure what. This is where Europe is "Europeans just react to events and hope things don't get worse". 
• Definite Pessimism -- The future is bleak and we know why. China is the prime example -- they know they are copying, they don't see how they can innovate their way to true prosperity, so they try to get their money out of the country. 
• Definite Optimism -- The future is bright and we know why. Western Civilization from the 17th century to the Moon Landing. 
• Indefinite Optimism -- The future is bright but we have no clue why. "He expects to profit from the future but sees no reason to design it concretely". The United States today.  "Indefinite optimists are so used to effortless progress that they feel entitled to it". "A whole generation learned from childhood to overrate the power of chance and underrate the importance of planning". 

For those of you that were sentenced to serve in an institution like IBM for some period of time, there is this: "...arguing over process has become a way to endlessly defer making concrete plans for a better future".  Oh, and you can "reorg" and have new buzzwords too! ;-) 

It's hard to believe this review is getting long. The whole book is a small 195 pages and I'm really only covering the first 75! IMHO, unless you are doing a startup, you COULD skip the last 90 or so pages, but that is not what I recommend. 

I'll close with what I think might turn out to the biggest mistake of human history so far -- Darwinism. "Actually, almost everybody in the modern world has already heard an answer to this question [how Indefinite Optimism MIGHT work] progress without planning is what we call "evolution"". 

Thiel goes on to point out that we may have a good deal more faith in this concept than is warranted. As I've pointed out, "it evolved" has become the modern answer to "it's God's will!", and while Western Civilization was optimistically marching to the real "God's Will" from the Reformation to the Moon Landing, we haven't really "evolved" all that well since -- or as Thiel puts it. 

"The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury."

He summarizes on Darwinism ... "Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best". Startups don't have a billion years to get it right ... does Western civilization?

I'm NOT doing the book justice -- he has some great stuff on "power laws",  computer "substitution" vs man / machine partnership (his company Palantir), what founders of companies (or lots of things) ought to be like, and some great thoughts on what kinds of futures we may be choosing from as we check our smartphones.

READ IT!

Furiously Happy Suicide

http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/08/why-some-people-commit-suicide-without-warning/

I'm doing a "combination", yes, I know the title is odd ... so was the book!

I read the book "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson a while back and was torn about how to review it. I know WAY more about suicide than I would like to from experiences that are WAY too personal as well as reading a good deal about it as a result of those experiences.

Here are some things from Furiously Happy that spoke to me:

I feel successful 3-4 days a month. The other days I feel like I'm barely accomplishing the minimum or that I'm a loser. I have imposter syndrome so that even when I get compliments they are difficult to take and I feel like I'm a bigger fraud than before" ....  

.... "I'm hoping that by writing this and posting this it will make me face this head-on and make some changes in forcing myself to change the way I see success, or in forcing myself to get shit done and stop feeling such dread anxiety every day." ... 

Life passes. Then comes the depression. That feeling that you'll never be right again. That fear that these outbreaks will become more familiar, or worse, never go away. You're so tired from fighting that your start to listen to all the little lies your brain tells you. The ones that say that you're a drain to your family. The ones that say that it's all in your head. The ones that say that if you were stronger or better this wouldn't be happening to you. The ones that say that there is a reason your body is trying to kill you, and that you should just stop all the injections and steroids and drugs and therapies.  

Last month, as Victor drove me home so I could rest, I told him that sometimes I feel like his life would be easier without me. He paused a moment in thought and then said, "It might be easier. But it wouldn't be better"  

I remind myself of that sentence on days when the darkness seems like it will never end. But I know it will pass. I know that tomorrow things will seem a little brighter. I know that next week I'll look back on this sentence and think, "I should stop listening to my brain when it's trying to kill me".  

Mostly the book was not my cup of tea -- too madcap and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), lots of disjointed but semi-related thoughts and activities that seemed just "too much" for me. My guess is that much of it might appeal to women more than men (PROOF that I'm a sexist!)

Oh, I DID like her names for her cats "Hunter S Thomcat" (Hunter S Thompson), and "Ferris Mewler". I also liked her discussion of "how many spoons" relative to energy. If each thing you do takes a "spoon", how many are you going to have for that day? One of the major questions for people that have depression issues for sure is "how many spoons today"? Complicated with "what is depression and what is just laziness". As I get older, there is also the question of "What is just being older"?

My Dad always had a TON more spoons than nearly anyone, while my Mom had "less than average". My wife generally has like "more than my Dad in his younger years" and I'd like to think that when things are going OK for me I'm maybe "average" to just possibly a tiny tweak above for a 59 year old guy.  The issue is often HOW DO WE FEEL about our "spoon allotment"? As in the quotes above ... and in the quotes below from the article, are we able to "come to peace" with the "spoon allotment", or do we just continually beat ourselves with "gotta do more, get better, I'm lazy,  etc"?

I especially like her "my brain is trying to kill me". Most people with anxiety and depression have brains that "don't shut off well" -- they have a very hard time "compartmentalizing" ("Just quit thinking about it!"). My personal brain model is SUPERB at running many, many, many scenarios on LOTS of things, most of which run toward the negative, but not all. This can be superb in doing design or writing, although it can also very easily cause personal "analysis paralysis" where a "combinatorial explosion" of thought stops all progress. Or writing / blogging for "a few minutes" becomes HOURS.

From the Federalist article, which purports to be about people with "absolutely no mental illness" here is the core meat ...

Adaptability seems to be the outstanding difference in the link between perfectionism and suicide. As was mentioned earlier, four defining characteristics emerged from Kiamanesh’s research: 1) success-driven personality, 2) fear of failure, 3) keeping up false appearances, and 4) rigidity.

The author does a summary of sorts in this paragraph.

While knowing the four features of maladaptive perfectionism is not a guarantee you’ll stop someone in time, it is a start. Hopefully it will at the very least increase your awareness. We all have perfectionists in our lives, and though I’m not advocating we interrogate them with our newfound knowledge, I am saying we should start paying attention for signs of unhealthy expectations, rigidness, fear of failure, etc.

At this point I feel duty bound to point out that she is all wrong about the Hemingway suicide ... if you care, you can see that here.  I think the four characteristics are useful, but I'm not sure I buy the "no mental illness" -- it is kind of like physically "perfectly healthy", or possibly even MORE rare than that! The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe that we know of -- by definition it would seem to be at "the limits of possible". A top fuel dragster is ALWAYS running on the razor edge of complete destruction. The fact they do runs WITHOUT blowing up is miraculous.

Our brains were not built for the modern world -- by design or by chance. The fact that there is WAY too much mental illness, suicide, unhappiness, loneliness, etc is actually EASY to understand -- the miracle is that there isn't MORE. (and sadly, with the decline of religion, loss of close families and communities, lack of even any interest in meaning or philosophy of life, etc, all those bad brain problems ARE getting worse!).

To the extent that any of this can be simplified, my current advice would be to read "Happiness Is a Serious Problem" -- it covers these issues extremely well.  If you are VERY low on time, read "Man's Search For Meaning" -- it gives the underlying philosophy very well, and next to the life described in a Concentration Camp, maybe we don't really have it as bad as we think.

My short and stolen wisdom in the interim:

• Acknowledge and seek a "higher power". IMHO, Christ is the only one that REALLY matters ... but if you feel he is a step too far, just accept that there is a power beyond yourself! 
• Be grateful for any "spoons" you have -- just the energy to draw breath if need be. 
• As hard as it is when times are bad, ANYTHING is better to ruminate on than yourself! 
• REACH OUT ... or at least "get out". Go sit in a coffee shop or a bar rather than your place alone if things are really bad. Even being AROUND people is worth something. 
• MOVE!!! For me, exercise is critical ... I'm still big and fat, but moving around makes me FEEL a lot better. 
• Get a cat -- or a dog I suppose, if that is the kind of person you REALLY are ;-) 

PLEASE READ! ... The Reason for God, Belief in the Age of Skepticism

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1594483493/?tag=googhydr-20&hvadid=53943455438&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=7298185130422206397&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_7vqca73v59_b

This book, by Timothy Keller, Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan may save a lot of souls, and possibly even provide a downpayment on saving America and Western civilization. It truly is THAT GOOD!

I tend to write direct and often "in your face". Quiet, reasoned, caring conversational style is not my natural mode in writing -- but I **DO** understand that it is important, and I **DO** very much respect it when I see it. Keller very much has that, plus he has an extremely well stocked brain coupled with the gift of writing both well and compactly with enough personal anecdotes to make this book more reachable than many of similar depth of content.

In part 1, called "the leap of doubt", he covers a series of objections to God with great insight and hard philosophical backing. They are:

1. There can't be just one true religion. 
2. How could a good God allow suffering? 
3. Christianity is a straightjacket
4. The church is responsible for so much injustice. 
5. How can a loving God send people to Hell? 
6. Science has disproved Christianity
7. You can't take the Bible literally. 

In an "intermission" between parts 1 and 2 he discusses the various arguments for and against -- "Strong Rationalism" -- essentially "proof of God", which is no more doable than proving our own existence. We then arrive at "critical rationality", the idea of "best fit". Evolution can't be "proven" in a strong rationalism sense given the time scales involved, yet most scientists find it compelling. 

"The view that there is a God, [Richard Swinburne] says leads us to expect the things that we observe -- that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate in it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory there is no God he argues does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, a belief in God provides a better empirical fit ..."

He then moves to Part 2, The Reasons for Faith

8. The clues of God.
9. The knowledge of God
10. The problem of sin
11. Religion and the Gospel 
12. The true story of the Cross
13. The reality of the Resurrection
14. The Dance of God 

At the end of chapter 9, which is basically my old belief that if you look in your heart, you already know there is a God, he summarizes: 

If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists then that he does not. If you insist on a secular view of the world and yet you continue to pronounce some things right and some things wrong, then I hope you see the deep disharmony between the world as devised and the real world (and God) your heart knows exists. This leads us to a crucial questions. If a premise ("there is no God") leads to a conclusion you know isn't true ("Napalming babies is culturally relative") then why not change the premise? 

As frequent readers know, Nietzsche and a lot of other lesser philosophers have decided long ago that "God is dead, so power = morality" (might=right)".  The baby of morality goes out with the bathwater of God, and the world ends up arguing in strange gibberish that has been known to be gibberish since the Greeks. It seems to be getting clearer every day that our civilization is dying rapidly without God.

The review could go on forever -- the book is a treasure trove of understanding what the COSTS are for creating a God in our own image. How God is the sworn enemy of the smug -- both the smug because they believe that they "do a better job" of following rules, being successful, etc, AND of the smug that "have a more open and sophisticated mind than the unwashed masses". Christ came to comfort the "poor in spirit" (comfortable), and more-so to  make the comfortable UNcomfortable ! ... no matter what it is in this world that they believe is to their comfort other than serving the REAL Christ, not one of their imagination.

He makes it clear that ONLY in giving our WHOLE life to Christ is there a way out of our broken state.

"It is only Grace that frees us from the slavery of self that lurks even in the middle of morality and religion. Grace is only a threat to the illusion that we are free, autonomous selves, living lives as we choose". 

He quotes a lot of CS Lewis, who I love, he also is high on Jonathan Edwards who is now on my reading list. There are others. This book is a TREASURE to anyone who seeks God and restoration of our broken nation and world! I can't recommend it highly enough!!!

I'll close with this quote from Lewis on love that is oh so true:

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

Darwin's Cathedral, Evolution, Religion and The Nature Of Society

http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Cathedral-Evolution-Religion-Society/dp/0226901351/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457489612&sr=1-1&keywords=darwin%27s+cathedral

After seeing the subject book by David Sloan Wilson referenced in a number of other books I've read, I finally got around to reading it. Certainly not a "page turner" -- lots of evolutionary terminology. "Group Selection" is the biggie -- the idea that when groups have characteristics that are more "adaptive", they will be "selected" -- meaning more babies, more babies that live, conversion of other groups, etc.

"Since Darwin's theory relies entirely on differences in survival and reproduction, it seems unable to explain groups as adaptive units. This can be called the fundamental problem of social life. Groups function best when their members provide benefits for each other, but it is difficult to convert this type of social organization into the currency of biological fitness". 

The author is attempting to resurrect "group selection" by putting it on a continuum called "multi-level selection theory" ... genes, cells, organisms, groups -- selection happens across any and all, but what is most interesting to the author is clearly groups, and how religion is a core mechanism of that selection.

 "Moral communities in larger than a few hundred individuals are "unnatural" as far as genetic evolution is concerned, because to the best of our knowledge they never existed prior to the advent of agriculture. This means that culturally evolved mechanisms are absolutely required for human society to hang together above the level of face to face groups. 

At least if you reject any potential for "divine revelation" -- just where DID Newton or Einstein come up with their initial hypothesis? ... just kidding, mostly. The point is, for a pure atheist scientist, there had BETTER be SOME explanation why "unnatural things" are happening with human groups!

The other big evolutionary discussion is the "argument from design" and "functionalism". Naturally, an atheist scientist assumes that the "design" is "random", relative to some function that is adaptive (as opposed to there being a "designer")  He uses the example of a can opener relative to functional design. "The design features that identify an object as a can opener provide such a strong argument that we don't even call it an argument, we call it self evident".  He then points out that a specific religion "Calvinism" is DESIGNED to provide the function of allowing a group larger than "natural" to function -- interestingly, "designed" by Calvin.

On page 228 he really gets down to brass tacks.

" It is true that many religious beliefs are false as literal descriptions of the real world, but this merely forces us to recognize two forms of realism; a factual realism based on literal correspondence, and a practical realism based on behavioral adaptiveness."  

"Rationality is not the gold standard on which all other forms of thought are to be judged. Adaptation is the gold standard against which rationality must be judged, along with all other forms of thought."  

and then ... "... factual realists detached from practical reality were not among our ancestors. It is the person who elevates factual truth above practical truth who must be accused of mental weakness from an evolutionary perspective". 

I could do a MUCH longer review, but I think this is the core. For those that assume there is no God, the fact that humans are able to function in groups larger than a couple hundred people at most is a HUGE problem. It clearly happened, but HOW did it happen?

The answer is just what I harp on -- religion. In the West, Judaism and Christianity -- which CLEARLY were the  "most adaptive", or "divinely inspired" if you are a believer. If you are an evolutionist, they realize that they had damned well better figure out that "practical realism" is FAR superior to "factual realism" (or at least what the consciousness that we have no clue as to what it is THINKS is "factual") from an ADAPTIVE POV!

 Having the "facts" right, but turning up dead (as in "our culture")  -- meaning that you are NOT "among the ancestors" of the future doesn't fit well with having a "superior" brain -- even if you DO feel really great about gay "marriage"! "Superior" means staying in the gene pool in the evolutionary world!No matter how "good" something may be for your own moral reasoning, if you drop out of the gene pool, your "good" fails the test of survival.

Is it even POSSIBLE to have civilization as we know it without a huge majority of the people in that civilization fervently believing that the basis for their civilization is divine and sacred, or at the very least "exceptional"?  From what we have seen to date, not without massive coercive force as in National Socialist Germany, USSR, China, North Korea, etc. It remains to be seen in a couple cases if brutal force can be a substitute for belief. Even if it CAN, is that REALLY what our "factual realist" scientists find to be a "good idea"?

All in all, a good book -- most could read the first 20 pages and the last 20 and get 80% of the value out of it. It is worth at least that effort.

The Feeling of What Happens : Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciouness

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feeling-What-Happens-Consciousness/dp/0156010755

The wide ranging book by Antonio Damasio takes a shot at explaining the "there, there" of being human --- consciousness.

One of his definition shots is: "Consciousness as we commonly think of it, from it's basic levels to its most complex, is the unified mental pattern that brings together the object and the self".

Another is: "...the presence of you is the feeling of what happens when your being is modified by the act of apprehending something. The presence never quits, from the moment of awakening to the moment sleep begins. The presence must be there or there is no you."

We all pretty much echo SCOTUS Potter Stewart with the "I know it when I see it" relative to obscenity in his case, but relative to consciousness here. I'm fairly sure one of the marks of autism (which Damasio doesn't mention)  is that many autistic people can't recognize others as conscious, and sometimes the consciousness of autistic people is compared to being possibly similar to that of some animals. (One of the people making this comparison was Temple Grandin, a PHD who is autistic ...)

He talks of two kinds of consciousness "core and extended". Core is "the feeling", extended is all your biography, knowledge, and creativity. Your "higher functions". The core consciousness seems to be largely a brain stem phenomenon heavily connected to your emotions and "body loop" (mental image of your body / connection to body).

I really like how he uses real known mental conditions to talk about specifically what brain injuries will affect core and extended consciousness and how.  I believe in "spirit", and also believe that consciousness (especially core) is where "matter meets spirit". My personal view is that we will eventually find some "quantum biological effects", possibly in a specific area of the brain stem that are the link to the non-physical.

Back to the book ... "Life needs a boundary. I believe that life and consciousness , when they eventually appeared in evolution, were first and foremost about life, and the life urge within a boundary. To a great extent they still are."

"The life urge"? -- pretty close to "The Force" of Star Wars fame, or even "the animating spirit".

My reading seems to be getting feverish here, and I'm behind in blogging what I've read lately -- "the creative urge" seems to be driving me. Where might that come from? Same place as the "life urge" I'd guess, or as I'm also in Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra", perhaps "the will to power" has a similar origin?

"Time Reborn" was about figuring out "what's out there" ... but the "mechanism" (if you are a strict materialist) that we are using (running on?) to theorize, develop equations, run experiments, etc is human consciousness ... "the feeling of knowing" ... "the life urge".

Sit in a quiet place, Relax and take a couple deep breaths. Now, focus ONLY on your breathing -- gently. It's not a contest, there is no "right or wrong". You will likely have "intruding thoughts" -- you may actually get frustrated. What is getting in the way of YOU, and your attempt at simple relaxed focus on your breath is your mind -- your "ego". Your "busy brain" -- the Zen folks call it your monkey-brain.

My view is that the "you" that is observing your breathing is "core consciousness", and the distractions are coming from your "extended consciousness".  I believe that the connection to the infinite is from your core consciousness -- and that the extended is what wants to take over the ship and convince you that you and everything "out there" is a bunch of "stuff" ... and so are you. If it can't succeed in convincing you, it will work very hard to distract.

I'm definitely of two minds on this issue! ;-)

It's a worthy book -- it is well reviewed and has a lot of secular accolades. I sometimes look at books like this and the "Time Reborn" book as a NY Street game of "hide the spirit" -- see,  no spirit under this shell ... switch, switch ... oh, "life force"? "emergent"? "Principle of Sufficient Reason"?  ... nah,  "Pay no attention to that spirit behind the curtain"!

Time Reborn: From The Crisis In Physics to the Future of the Universe

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Reborn-Crisis-Physics-Universe/dp/0544245598

Perhaps one of the best cases I'll ever see of someone passionately trying to escape from shadow of God and going to ANY lengths in an attempt to create a "completely new way of thought" in order to imagine that he is free from any transcendent concepts.

I had to go back and review my blog on "Reason And Analysis", because in many ways this book was more "attempted philosophy" than physics.

Smolin tells us what is bothering him on page 11:

There is a cheapness at the core of any claim that our universe is ultimately explained by another more perfect world standing apart from everything we perceive. If we succumb to that claim, we render the boundary between science and mysticism porous.  

Our desire for transcendence is at root a religious aspiration. The yearning to be liberated from death and from the pain and limitations of our lives is the fuel of religions and mysticism. Does the seeking of mathematical knowledge make one a kind of a priest with special access to an extraordinary form of knowledge? Should we simply recognize mathematics for the religious activity it is? 

He wants to explain the universe ONLY in terms of itself, and does a good job of pointing out how the incredible correlation of mathematics to the observable world in Newtonian Physics, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and the fact that all those "models" are timeless -- in that the formulas work in any place and time and are even reversible in time, is a "cop out". WHY!!! Why do they work? Why THESE particular formulas and initial values? He must know WHY!

The standard model just assumes "it is" -- and this obviously smacks WAY too much of "god" to Smolin. So, he goes for the "other great idea" -- Darwin. "Natural" Selection -- we MUST have had a LOT of universes, so therefore, each black hole is creating yet another universe, and the fact that we see a lot of black holes in our universe "must mean" that there is "natural selection" of universes and the fact that we have a "large number" of black holes "must mean" that we are in an "adaptive universe".

Evolution (of universes) requires time ... "real time", not "relative time", so he especially hates the ideas of relative space-time, "the block universe" and the multiverse. I go into those here a bit if you have not been suitably exposed

A lot of his thinking is based Leibniz's "Principle of Sufficient Reason" ... Everything must have a reason (cause).  Smolin wants to go farther, and make the "cause" be randomness -- as in Darwin, "lots and lots of random tries" and EVENTUALLY you get ANYTHING, including in this case, the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe. Although Smolin no longer finds the "laws" to be "laws", but rather "precedents" that may well be "evolving" from our "current approximations".

My nasty brain wonders if the Principle of Sufficient Reason would be required to have a reason? Smolin apparently chooses to be nicer to himself than that.

He is not however so kind to non-believers in Global Warming, religious people, etc. He finds that:

"If our civilization is to thrive, it would be helpful to base our decision making on a coherent view of the world, in which to, to begin with, there is consilience between the natural and social sciences. The  reality of time can be the foundation of this new consilience, in which the future is open and novelty is possible on every scale from the fundamental laws of physics to the organization of economics and ecologies. " 

Oh, "consilience" ... all the knowledge of the universe fitting together and us understanding the implications for "ultimate meaning" ... whole book on it covered here. "Coherence" is a great idea, but while you are in the process of throwing out the standard model of physics for a new evolutionary "precedence model", it seems possible that there may be a "slight delay" in achieving such a "coherent / consilient" view!

I looked up Smolin on the web ... he is 60, so I'm thinking he is having a midlife crisis. In the epilog you get insightful quotes like "The problem of consciousness is an aspect of what the world really is. We don't know what a rock really is, or an atom, or an electron ..." ... so therefore, understanding MUST be "about relationships" ... oh, and "Consciousness, whatever it is, is an aspect of the intrinsic essence of brains". Hmmmm

He sums it up with "the only certainty is that we will know more in the future".

Well, assuming that we survive the scourge of Global Warming, there aren't any monster natural disasters, rogue gravity waves, epidemics, etc, we will LIKELY have "more data", but is that really "knowledge"? I'd argue that prior to Einstein and certainly prior to Quantum Mechanics, many people at least THOUGHT they "knew more".  Is consciousness being an intrinsic essence of brains somehow supposed to guide us to "a better world"? Oh, and what would "better" be? (hint ... science has no ideas)

I enjoyed his descriptions of the standard model of Physics. I think they were in some ways better because he was trying to be critical of  rather than just explaining. Ultimately though, it comes down to one of two basic beliefs as covered in the "Reason and Analysis" link:

1). "Something" (God) created what we see with order, timeless and laws DISCOVERABLE BY US -- and that "something" is the "root" ... the causeless cause.

2). OR, the "root" is chaos -- there "just was" a lot of "chaotic stuff", for "no reason". The "wind of time" kept blowing over that junkyard of "stuff" and EVENTUALLY, it just "happened" to arrive at  the 747 universe where I'm typing this.

What Smolin (and some others) add to #2 is that EVERYTHING is RANDOM -- including the laws of physics, the relation of matter / energy, the speed of light, "the wind of time", EVERYTHING!!!

On top of that entirely random EVERYTHING -- including "pre-universe", he adds the faith statement that (due to randomness we assume) that "everything MUST have a REASON" (oh, and randomly developed consciousnesses of unknown character is able to discern those reasons! Tidy!)

But, hey, people that believe in God, math, laws of physics, etc are "cheap mystical priests".

Some guys handle their midlife crisis by buying a convertible and chasing a younger women I'm told ... in a completely random universe, perhaps ????

Roger Scruton, Thinkers of the New Left

Interview

Book on Amazon

First I read the Interview/Article in the top link, which is of reasonable length and I would recommend it to anyone who has a passing interest in the decline of our academic and general culture. I found this quote representative.

‘I agree there is a paucity of conservative thought. It is partly the effect of the dominance of the left. If you come out as a conservative in a university context, you will find yourself very much on the margins. But my main explanation of this is that conservative thought is difficult. It doesn’t consist of providing fashionable slogans or messages of hope and marching into the future with clenched fists and all the things that automatically get a following. It consists in careful, skeptical rumination on the near-impossibility of human existence in the first place.’

The "impossibility" plus the GRACE and the FRAGILITY of that Grace as it relates to culture and the potential for a meaningful relatively peaceful life.  The richness of Family, Faith, Community and Freedom of Thought. All items that the left continues to destroy. "The little Platoon" of Burke -- ruthlessly replaced by the cold totalitarian state. The result of this endless destruction is NOTHING ... as he puts it here:

So, what is all this Nothing-ness about? ‘My view’, says Scruton, ‘is that what’s underlying all of this is a kind of nihilistic vision that masks itself as a moving toward the enlightened future, but never pauses to describe what that society will be like. It simply loses itself in negatives about the existing things – institutional relations like marriage, for instance – but never asks itself if those existing things are actually part of what human beings are. Always in Zizek there’s an assumption of the right to dismiss them as standing in the way of something else, but that something else turns out to be Nothing.’

The book is not long, but it is intellectually challenging primarily because the "thinkers" of the left being dissected are nebulous and obtuse in the extreme, so although Scruton is relentless in his exposure of their nonsense, parts of their texts must be suffered through.

In many places he reaches basically this conclusion on the reason that leftism lives on even after the disaster of Fascism and the fall of the USSR:

"It also provides the exact equivalence of religious faith. As in Pascal's wager, believing becomes a kind of doing, and in this doing lies the moral salvation -- the inner identity with the revolution -- for which the intellectual craves."

In "The Closing of the American Mind", Bloom reports to us on "what happened" when the left took over the American university. Scruton plumbs the modern lineage of leftism, still based on Marx, but fermenting in it's fetid juices -- prominently in Paris:

"The effect was to destroy the conversation on which civil society depends. All the delicate ideas concerning law, constitution and the roots of civil order, all the ways in which human beings argue over rights and duties, honor their opponents and seek for compromise, were flattened by mathemes, deterritorialized, and buried beneath the debris of the great Event. This was the turning point in a battle that has been raging now for a century -- the battle to take possession of the culture by defining the intellectual life as an exclusively left-wing preserve."  

"mathemes" are an attempt to use the language of mathematics to make leftist thought more impressive -- and inscrutable. "The Event" is some version of "revolution" ... economic, political, intellectual.

Throughout the book are countless examples of methods, justifications, etc for wiping out all thought that is not against "capitalism, the bourgeoisie, religion, tradition, family, etc" and in support of the inevitability of "Marxism, the rise of the proletariat, communism, atheism, nihilism, etc".

It was a read that motivated me, so I made it through it rapidly and actually enjoyed it, but I can see that if I had not been exposed to a good deal of leftist literature in the past, as I have, it would also be easy to get bogged down. Worthy, but certainly not "required reading". While in the quote above, Scruton says that conservative thought is "difficult" -- I certainly don't find it difficult to read in comparison to the left, but I think his point is that it is not "stylish". It is often unpopular, indicating that man is limited (mortal even!) and in need of salvation by a power greater than himself.

Yes, that is "difficult" for many today -- but for me it is reality and grounded in eternal vs popular truth.

HAL, Google Click Brain

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic:

I enjoy Nicholas Carr as a writer and it was fun going back and reading my Blog on "The Big Switch" from March of '08.  The world was a lot more positive back then, I was still more hopeful of technology advances helping our futures, and less worried about downsides. His predictions of computing moving to "The Cloud" are very much coming to pass.

I've also read "The Shallows" on which the linked Atlantic article is based, but did not blog on it (yet) ... I'm probably going to give that one a re-read, although it already obvious that the Atlantic article is a pretty darned good summary, right down to the "2001 A Space Odyssey" references ... in particular:

The Carr thesis, going back over a decade at least, is that our technology changes us in unpredictable ways, and we ought to be aware of that. His view on the Internet and Google in particular is that we are losing our capacity for "deep reading" and "deep thought", and are being "distracted". Like HAL, we are "losing our minds".

He recognizes that it goes back a long way. One of the fairly recent (in terms of history) pieces of technology that totally changed the world was the clock. To wit ...

The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for, and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.

Being a Lutheran, I recognize one of the other "big ones" as the printing press. Without it, Luther would likely have just been another heretic burned or hung to save his own soul at the behest of the Roman Church. Instead, 500 years ago in 1517, the printing press (invented 1436) allowed his arguments and eventually the Bible itself, to be put in the hands of the common people in their own language. The central power of Rome was de-centralized, and much of what happened with democracy, republican government, the rise of commerce and science, etc was a direct result.

However, as this blog laments, wisdom is much more dear than knowledge, and one of the many challenges with "artificial intelligence" is just what is "intelligence"? These are not new problems ...

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

Since 2008, I've become aware of at least SOME of the dangers of my own auto-didacticism (self teaching with no program of study) in the areas of philosophy, politics, theology and areas of science (primarily cosmology and mind / consciousness study).

I would argue that being "filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom" is pretty much the "disease of our day". I'm sure that the invention of writing was a contributor, but I'd argue that the abandonment of honor for history/tradition, infatuation with "the latest and greatest" as well as the pell-mell rush for "knowledge" (with abandonment of "values") and forced abandonment of "wisdom",  since it may slow the headlong rush, was a decision -- not "inevitable". As in the case of most of our modern decisions, it is hard to call it a "conscious decision" because we seem to firmly avoid thinking with enough depth to make those sorts of determinations, and have for a lot longer than the Internet has been around.

Some parts of the technologies are as McLuhan said, endemic ... "the media is the message". Mass radio and television begat mass marketing and everyone standing around the water cooler discussing what was on Carson last night. Airplanes trumped battleships and nuclear missiles made it clear that no visible nation could get away with isolationism unless you had "cover" (that used to be the US, prior to Obama). It seems that is a lesson that will apparently require a few more millions of deaths to re-learn.

While Carr seems to think that "technology is destiny", I prefer to believe that **IF** we, FIRST considered meaning, wisdom, culture, human frailty, Gods will, tradition, etc, and THEN made use of technology with those goals in mind and primary, we could avoid at least the most onerous of the losses due to technology.

We **CAN** still enjoy an evening around a crackling fire, and we can still shut off the lights and have a beautiful candlelight service at church, and as I often do, we can settle down in a nice easy chair in front of a big window looking over the backyard with a remote / thermostatically controlled fireplace to keep us warm while we read in depth.

It is completely true that before the invention/discovery of tools, fire, language, writing, printing, computers, Internet, etc, we had less choices and "things were different". What is far from clear however is that we can abdicate our responsibility for making appropriate use of technology and blame the problem on "the technology made us do it". I agree with the following quote from the column on the fact that we are creating a lot of "flat people" these days, but I find it to be a choice rather than our destiny.

Before even the first crude spear, God enabled us to have "Free Will" -- the rest of the creatures only have instinct on which to rely. We need to quit thinking we are "apes with tools" and recognize that we are uniquely blessed to be human with the divine gift of consciousness!

I come from a tradition of Western culture, in which the ideal (my ideal) was the complex, dense and “cathedral-like” structure of the highly educated and articulate personality—a man or woman who carried inside themselves a personally constructed and unique version of the entire heritage of the West. [But now] I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self—evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly available.”

'via Blog this'

Sapiens, A Brief History of Humanity

http://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451706273&sr=1-1&keywords=sapiens

"Sapiens" by Yuval Harari, is a bit more thoughtful than standard atheist rendering of the ascent of man, with even some small refreshing hints of humility. It is broad in scope, proposing to cover the story of man from pre-history up through the Cognitive Explosion, agriculture, civilizations, religion, the "Enlightenment" and on through modern times to conjectures of the possibility that our species will pass through a "Singularity" driven by genetic engineering, nanotech, cybernetics or AI that creates a "new species" more "god" than man.

Why? Well, he summarizes the tragedy of that quite well at one point (p 391):

Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if the planet Earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about it's business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence, any meaning that people ascribe to their lives is just a delusion. The other-worldly meaning medieval people found in their lives was no more deluded than the modern humanist, nationalist, and capitalist meanings of modern people's beliefs. 

The last line of the book,  ending with some trepidation of the potential amoral terror of meaningless power unleashed  is:

Is there anything more dangerous than irresponsible and dissatisfied gods who don't know what they want?

A fitting ending, but my opinion is that he does perform a useful function in pointing out that from the atheist scientific viewpoint, ALL of the religions and ideologies in world history are "imaginary" -- they have to be. This is the lament of Nietzsche as he said "God is dead" -- so Nietzsche suggested that SOMEBODY had better get down to business and form some "new myths", because the old "god myth" in his mind was dead. Fortunately, Nietzsche (and his soulmate, Hitler)  is definitely dead, so his pronouncements are at best "hollow".

I've been over this ground a few times, but it is fairly complex ground, so the fact that humans CAN'T OPERATE beyond "family, clan, tribe" exceeding orders of say 250 people tops UNLESS they have some shared believed order (he calls it "imagined order"). Religion, money, capitalism, democracy, liberalism, communism, human rights, corporations, animal rights (he likes that one, you can tell), nationalism -- they are ALL imagined (at least if you are an atheist, they HAVE to be!). This whole issue is covered well in "Dawin's Cathedral".

He asks a wonderful question on p176:

Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gatherer who 10K years ago left her handprint on the wall in Chauvet Cave? If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, writing, coinage, empires, science and industry? 

To which I'd put my tongue in cheek and add Scotch and ZZ Top. He does take the time to stumble around through the problems with "happiness" or "pleasure" as the meaning of life.

If happiness is based on feeling pleasant sensations, then in order to be happier we need to re-engineer our biochemical system. If happiness is based on feeling life is meaningful, then we need to delude ourselves more effectively. Is there a third alternative?

Both the above views share the assumption that happiness is some sort of subjective feeling (of either pleasure or meaning) and that in order to judge people's happiness, all we have to do is ask them how they feel. To many of us that seems logical because the dominant religion of our age is liberalism. Liberalism sanctifies the subjective feelings of individuals. It views these feelings as the supreme source of authority. 

He realizes the fact that "Liberalism" is the dominant religion, and he then points out the fallacy of liberalism. It will be interesting to see if he is spared from some sort of punishment from the liberal hierarchy, or if the fact that he espouses no specific alternative to the state religion gains him clemency. In one specific line he observes,  "Like Satan (who he does NOT believe in), DNA (which he does, and believes to be meaningless) uses fleeting pleasures to tempt people to place them in it's power."  For a non-sentient non-entity DNA, "uses" seems wrong ... "employs"? "infuses"? killing teleology (purpose) is much harder than killing "god", but without God, humans are the only teleological source available ... and so far, we haven't modified our DNA.

He recognizes that there is NO CHOICE but to throw the REQUIRED baby of the ability of humans to cooperate on scales much larger than 250 people out with the "bathwater" of god when you decide that "god is a myth" because certainly that means that EVERYTHING other than hard science is a "myth" (and that is at best an "inductive myth about mechanism ONLY"). It is this intellectual honesty that I find the best feature of the book. He realizes we have to have "myths" that nobody questions -- but he doesn't have any idea how that would be maintained in a truly "advanced" society that in his definition would be "pure science".

I don't completely agree with him that science is exempt from being pitched as well -- it requires a belief in universal order that is only falsifiable according to Popper, so it's "basic truth" is as fragile as the next experiment. Let's not even go into it being "imagined" just like everything else from a human consciousness that is a total mystery, and human perceptions which we are completely unable to check against some "other perception" (whatever that might be!).

He also realizes that science is completely value free -- it has no "right or wrong", it only has "correct / incorrect", "works / doesn't work".  Nuclear bombs or nuclear power are "just technology that works" -- science can say naught about which is "the good / better". It's methods explicitly deny such questions.

He does a good job in "The Prison Walls" (p112) of discussing how "The Imagined Order" is currently maintained ...  it's embedded in the material world (statues, buildings, etc), it shapes our desires (we buy into fabrications like "individualism" and they are so real we can't imagine an alternative, but most of all, it's "intersubjective") ... which he defines as follows:

Objective --  a truth that is OUT THERE" -- like gravity or radiation. Not ignorable by man. It would be there just the same if man ceased to exist.

Subjective -- meaning a truth that exists in the beliefs of one person (a child's imaginary friend)

Intersubjective -- a subjective truth shared by a group of people (money, christianity, human rights, progressivism,  communism,  global warming, ...)

So there you have it -- we are a species possibly on the brink of making ourselves into "superhuman gods", and we have no ideas of meaning, purpose, good/evil, etc beyond "myths" -- none of which the author finds to be apparently worthy of allegiance or even compelling.

He DOES come VERY close to one of my conjectures at one point, but he misses it by a smidgen (p 221), and there is a bit of irony in his pronouncement here considering his last line. Does he realize that he postulates the unleashing on the universe of something much akin to the belief that he finds "logical" about god (evil), but that nobody up to now has had the stomach for?

So monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism (Devil) explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: there is a single omnipotent god who has created the universe, and he is evil! But nobody in history has had a stomach for such a belief. 

No, there is at least another (and probably many) logical answers -- there are MANY universes and free will is at least one of the engines that causes them to "fork". God created a perfect universe with free will. If we would have followed Gods will, there would be no evil. Evil is simply using free will to do other than what God intended  -- his perfect universe still exists, and he has even sent his Son to allow our now mostly evil one to be saved, which I believe it will be, but unfortunately at the cost of those who reject that option, again using their free will. They will exist for eternity with the result of their own choice (a choice they freely made against God's will).

It's a good read -- it is ultimately depressing if you accept his view that there is no meaning and we are eventually going to be transformed into some new species of angry, confused, capricious "gods", but it does do a better job of covering the challenge of "what is the good" than many books of this type, even though it ultimately gives no answer.

Perhaps it is meant to be the story of unleashing an evil god on the universe -- the one nobody has been willing to stomach.