Warrior, provoke freedom!

[mellowtigger]

I have inconsistencies of thought on the matter, so obviously I need to spend more time pondering the subject.  By my definition, a warrior is someone willing to die, not someone willing to kill.  I respect the warriors of peace.  What, though, do I call those who do both?  I think, in particular, of the Sacred Band of Thebes... the famous warrior lovers.  What are they, in my vocabulary?  I don't yet know.

Probably the most significant religious text that I have is this:

The right to live is tentative. Material things are limited, though the mind is free. Of protein, phosphorus, nor even energy is there ever enough to slake all hungers. Therefore, show not affront when diverse beings vie over what physically exists. Only in thought can there be true generosity. So let thought be the focus of your world.
- David Brin, my favorite sci-fi author

The universe constrains us; it imposes limits on resources (both matter and energy). I've seen no evidence that suggests a way to escape this fundamental restriction. So of course there will be conflict over resources. Gods of war (and therefore heroes of warfare) have their necessary place in the story of our lives. Every form of life competes for resources, from microscopic organisms to macroscopic biospheres. When war is called for, wage war brilliantly.

I am not a peacenik who thinks that universal love will overcome every obstacle. My universe is more complex than that. I do question, though, how to tell when warfare (killing for future protection of resources rather than for immediate food/shelter) is appropriate. Nature provides so many checks on unrestrained growth already. Starvation and disease are very effective ways to reduce a population. Do we add genocide to the mix of mechanisms only because we grow impatient with Mother Nature's pace? When is a soldier something more than just an impatient bully?

I am here. I am human. I was not born to fight you. I was born to live and be free. And this is me living and being free in the face of your teargas. I wanted to create, not just react.
- "Fierce Light", http://www.alivemindmedia.com/films/fierce-light/ (YouTube trailer)

This movie reminded me that peaceful protestors die just as simply as armed ones. Peacefully waiting out a conflict still results in casualties. Can the peaceful outlast the armed, starving the aggressor of money, time, food, or water? If they can, then isn't it the moral choice to maintain peaceful protest? Ultimately, there needs to be fewer humans on the planet than we have now. I see that goal as the only long-term solution. Surely starvation and disease can eliminate a great many people without the need for warfare. Most religions seem opposed to reducing birth rates, but the only alternative I see is the massive reduction of population by other (far more unpleasant) means.

Our minds display an enormous plasticity, and it is possible to transform ourselves based on deliberate uses of attention. And yet we need to understand that rationally.  We need to understand that neuroscientifically and psychologically.
- Sam Harris in "Fierce Light"

(This quote also reminds me that I still need to make time to write about Remaking.)

Perhaps there's a way to use ideals to inform our intellect, a way that doesn't require the use of traditional religious institutions or standards.  Sam Harris wrote a book titled, "The End Of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason".  Apparently he tries to posit a rational approach to ethics for people who are more familiar with religious methods.  I think maybe I should continue my investigation by ordering myself a copy of his book to read.

No answers today.  Just lots of questions.

Comments

[kauko.livejournal.com]

My problem with Sam Harris is how dogmatic and well 'fundamentalist' he is in his rejection of religion. He doesn't just limit his condemnation to dangerous fundamentalists of various religions, he believes holding any religious belief at all is dangerous and should be eliminated. Personally, I find that just as distasteful as any conservative Christian who goes around telling everyone else that whatever they believe is wrong and evil and that they need to become a Christian. Additionally, I take issue with people like him who want to set up 'reason' as some sort of absolute. I've always felt that things like 'reason' or 'logic' are just as prone to subjectivity as anything else. One can just as easily appeal to 'reason' to justify war, terrorism, genocide etc as religion.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, but reason doesn't have the additional cudgel of supernatural retribution if you don't do as you're told associated with it.

I think all superstition - including all religion - has a net negative effect on humanity.

[mellowtigger]

Yes, genocide is a very effective way to reduce population and improve living conditions (for those who remain). Maybe that's where I'm getting stuck in my ponderings. I dislike what I call the "white lighters" who seem to think that kindness cures everything in the whole universe. I look at nature and see constant battles for survival at all scales of existence. I see peaceful pockets as anomalies that we have to work to maintain. They are creative human expressions, not divine entitlements.

Where is the limit, though? At what point does a person say "The goal is desirable, but the cost is too high"? At some point we collectively decided (and argued and warred and killed and died) because we accepted the inefficiency of expanded democracy rather than the efficiency of slavery. (yeah, Civil War was more complex than that, but it always comes back to that core argument)

I've long thought that Martin Luther King Jr ("I have a dream") and Malcolm X ("By any means necessary") benefited America only because they existed together. They were the joint carrot-and-stick reinforcement that would have been less effective if only one of them had existed.

Maybe, in warfare, we need both legions in order to be effective in our warfare. Maybe we have to include both the warriors who swear not to kill and the warriors who swear to kill. Both are willing to die. Maybe they're more effective together than separate?

More questions. *sigh*

[kauko.livejournal.com]

Maybe not supernatural retribution but as Sam Harris has said that, "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.", we can see that the same threat of exists.

I think all superstition - including all religion - has a net negative effect on humanity.

I think statements like that, along with 'Religion has started more wars than anything else' or 'Religion has killed more people than anything else fit the very definition of Truthiness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness). I've never heard anyone back up such statements with evidence, they are just put forth as self evident. Realistically, though religion can just as easily be a force for good as bad, for every instance in which religion has been used to justify something horrible one can likely be found for it justifying something beneficial (the bad stuff just gets better publicity). Religion, like just about everything else, in itself is neither good nor evil, it comes down to the nature of the person. I think the problem now a days is that the paradigm of religion that has been handed down is defective more so than the very concept of religion.

[mellowtigger]

I have some measure of affection for religion that exists only on the personal level. It never stays that way, though, does it? It becomes a political force, trying to gain converts, trying to enforce standards, a meme trying to guarantee its own perpetual existence in human minds. If it really were divinely inspired, then it wouldn't need to do that. (The Divinity remains eternal and can just inspire another person directly, right? Again, "What does God need with a starship?")

That humans have to be complicit in the perpetuation of any religion is a hallmark sign of its weakness. Personal inspiration suffers no such failure. It can always be renewed "by chance", as it were.

[kauko.livejournal.com]

I dislike what I call the "white lighters" who seem to think that kindness cures everything in the whole universe.

Personally, I don't necesarily believe that kindness will cure everything in the universe, and neither do I believe that my own kindness or lack thereof will have dramatic effects on the world. However, I also strive to live my life in a way that emphasizes acting in a kind and compassionate way. I look at it sort of karmicly (not karma as in some kind of universal retribution the way many Westerners misinterpret it, but meaning that the decicions we make, the way we choose to act influences our own futures and those of other people.) So, I think that kindness breeds kindness, both in myself and in people around me. It may not bring world peace, but in my small corner of the world, with my limited power its the best I can do. Its very like the Buddhist belief that the best thing you can do to acheive peace in the world is find your own inner peace and not attending some protest for peace (I mean, after all, how many times have you seen some kind of peace protest filled with angry people? :). Does this make me more on the idealistic side? Probably, but I just can be any other way, I have to believe that things like compassion, non-violence, peace mean something, maybe its because I'm a pisces :)

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

I don't think the two are remotely the same. Sam Harris is playing with an idea - he's not putting forth legislation requiring all people who believe X to be put to death. Whereas our species does have a history of actually killing people who believe the wrong thing ... in the name of religion.

You want evidence? Superstition (including religion) promotes "magical thinking." To me, that's a horrible thing in its own right. Many religious people do somewhat keep this partitioned off, but others fling themselves into insanity, resulting in children dying of easily treated ailments (one of the most recent was a young woman who died of diabetes) because the parents think that "belief" is better than a doctor. To me, that's simply INSANE. No, doctors aren't perfect - but their track record is a hell of a lot better than faith healing.

Thus to my mind - yes, religion is indeed IN ITSELF an evil thing, because it all too often teaches people to ignore evidence and rationality (and all too often, compassion as well), and "just believe." Lots of people like magical thinking - it is easier than dealing with reality. Unfortunately, reality won't respect that "belief" as a defense.

[kauko.livejournal.com]

Thus to my mind - yes, religion is indeed IN ITSELF an evil thing, because it all too often teaches people to ignore evidence and rationality (and all too often, compassion as well), and "just believe." Lots of people like magical thinking - it is easier than dealing with reality. Unfortunately, reality won't respect that "belief" as a defense.

I would still argue that what you are critisizing here is a certain paradigm for understanding religion and not religion itself. You simply can't say, 'X people did this in the name of religion, therefore all religion is bad'. Not every type of specific religion/ religious or spirtual belief leads to those results, in fact most don't, since out of the billions of people on earth most subscribe to some form or religious belief and yet don't go around commiting atrocities as a result. Not everyone who has a religious or spiritual life takes those things and makes them into an absolute, exclusive, intolerant way of living. I don't, I never have and I've been many things in my life Jewish, Christian, Pagan. Its ironic that I as a religious person would never look down on you or call you wrong for apparently being a non believer in religion, and yet you, it seems, would never extend someone like me the same courtesy. I would never claim to have all the answers, in fact I feel that I know very little. But in your dogmatic rejection of any religious belief you claim to have a greater understanding of the universe than any current human is capable of. So, we're kinda back to my original comment, I have a hard time seeing a difference between fundamentalists of various religions and those who are fundamentalist in their rejection of religion, who seek to condescend and dismiss those who would explore religion.

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

The fact that some people don't go to the absolute wack-job extreme doesn't mean the basic concept isn't rotten either. Look at the large number of people in the USA who disdain basic science because it conflicts with their "faith." To me, that's a frightening and dangerous example of the "magical thinking" effect.

I'm not claiming any kind of "greater understanding of the universe" - I'm claiming that much/most religion is based in a practice of what I'm calling "magical thinking" that is detrimental to humanity. There's no "fundamentalist" anything about this; it's simply rational - perhaps more bluntly so than you're used to dealing with, but only that.

I suppose I can see how you derive the idea that I "look down on you" - but it's not accurate. In another bit of irony, the christian concept of "hate the sin, love the sinner" could be applied here. And there's a significant difference when speaking in broad terms of human culture generally, and then when distilling it down to direct interpersonal interaction. Yes, I believe religion is corrosive; do I behave disrespectfully to people at the first mention of such? No. The idea of evangelism/conversion is just not relevant. Obviously, I would and do absolutely resist any attempt to force religion onto me, but that's not the same thing.

To put it another way - I think astrology is absolute nonsense and completely pointless, and something humanity would be better off leaving behind. I will oppose any attempt to drag me into it, but I don't go out "crusading" against it. I tend to think of religion as being much the same.