I have a bone to pick with my science brain. I realise that to do so I need to establish some bona fides for the rest of my brain.
I am not a Creationist. I am convinced of human-driven climate change. I have no argument with the conclusions of science based on the scientific method. I'm not sure whether I am a deist or not - I find atheism terrifying but seductive to my rational self - but I am certainly not on a mission from God, spiritualists, homeopaths, water diviners, flat-earthers or alien abductees. (But I invite all of you who fall into those categories to read on - you may like some of what I have to say.)
First I'd also like to say some nice things about science.
Science has saved my life at least three times, with various medical interventions for the same kind of gallstones that probably killed one of my genetic antecedents. It has eased and lengthened my existence, with salbutamol and steroids for my asthma and eczema.
It has made so many things possible (this blog for example) that it would be a tedious bore to all for me to list one millionth of them.
Science has also fed my desire for understanding. It turns me on that the sky is deeper than it looks, that sunbirth and sun-death in space are rent with a glory beyond the imagining of gods.
But I also have a fondness, an attachment to the intangible, even if going steady with her is still beyond me.
Smartasses have been poking fun at the intangible for a long time. Around the time I was born, knowing people delighted in pointing out that humans are just a cheap bag of chemicals, and that love and all other expressions, sensations and thoughts are simply the product of electro-chemical interactions within that bag. Judging by various forums on the source of all truth, the ineptnet, that idea is alive and well. And I just saw a man on television with a bottle of water, some chalk, a few matches and some carbon saying "I've calculated the value of the chemicals in the human body and it comes to just a few pounds!" Well done.
While all that is true as far as it goes, it doesn't go very far. What goes further is the more profound idea that complexity can be generated from simple elements and interactions. Of this, more later.
On the other hand, some people still attempt to preserve some space for God or spirit in the face of the Panzer-like advance of scientific understanding of human behaviour, relationships and neuroscience. God/Spirit now looks like an increasingly amorphous blob in a shrinking pond, sluiced with water by panic-stricken acolytes who constantly reassure Them, Him, Her or It that, despite all evidences to the contrary, the pool of unknowing *will* get bigger again.
It is not therefore surprising that devotees of science can make the mistake of all conquerors and believe that their simple and elegant system can be applied to everything - in this case, everything within human apprehension.
Still to come...in Part 2, the scientific method goes up against homeopathy and astrology and loses on a DNS, love conquers all, and meaning is generated from amoeba simply by re-arranging and replacing a few letters. Don't miss it!
Tuesday 5 April 2011
Tuesday 29 March 2011
Morality and debauchery: it's all in the essence.
Recently I watched the Oliver Parker film based on Oscar Wilde's only published novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. It brought home to me again the tripod beauty of Wilde's perceptions of debauchery, morality and spirituality. I am no Wildean, but I like to think that perhaps he explored a painful divide in his own life between beloved wife and family on one side, and Bosey and the rent-boys on the other.
I've become aware of a public divide in the social world which could do with similar perception and divination. I'll state it simply: in public perceptions of sexuality, on the one side there appears to be a moral repugnance for behaviour which transgresses the current popular notion of Christian ideals; on the other, a knee-jerk reaction to the very idea of moral restraint.
The "Christian" side, shared in modified form by most of society, thinks a woman a slut if she displays a sexually open and positive nature. The other side is sometimes uncomfortable with the idea of sexual morality because it sounds Christian and we really hate that!
I grew up in a vaguely liberal, vaguely agnostic household. I converted to Christianity at the age of 14 (wait, it gets better) then deconverted at the age of 33. Eventually I recognised that I was polyamorous. A lot of my old friends had dropped away. Just as many I let go. Now a lot of my new friends were various flavours of queer.
The Church had become hoarse-voiced declaiming the orientations, choices and lifestyles of my new friends, so it wasn't surprising that below their cool and beautiful exteriors lay a festering resentment towards anything religious. Religion was strongly identified with sexual and gender-role repression. Fair enough too.
On the other side, I hear the other people in my life - the straights, the mainstreamers who are part of my mundane community - putting every kind of interesting sexual behaviour in the same rubbish bin. Of course gay is now mostly cute and cool even in the mainstream, and more than a few of these mainstreamers are even happy for gays to marry (though they're not sure they want gays teaching their kids). But the covert and unavowed behaviours of mainstreamers are, when revealed, deviant (to say the least) from the declared norm.
The Wilde story must be treated with respect because it straddles these two worlds, as did Wilde himself.
The deterioration of Dorian Gray shows not simply conventional sexual license and "deviance" in the terms of the day, but the moral disaster that blights a person's soul when they define the world entirely in terms of their own aesthetic sensation and pleasure. Wilde's story also shows the fearful and tortured remnant that crouches within the cruelest moral narcissist, a silent witness its own gradual demolition. As Mephistopheles cryptically warns Faust, "This is indeed Hell, nor am I out of it."
Contrast that with what I call "moral debauchery" a term which I use in a positive sense. Sex-positive, playful, adventurous, this first recognises the simple rights of oneself and others (safe, sane, consensual). Then it recognises that the playmate or playmates are always no less than a person, and always acknowledges at leat covertly the person within whatever game is being played. Terry Pratchett's character, the witch Granny Weatherwax, nails a preacher with a neat definition: "...sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself..."
Just like mountain-climbing, car-racing and sailing, sexual involvement is always dangerous. When it moves outside the unconscious constraints of mainstream society, it becomes more dangerous still, and needs correspondingly more conscious negotiation. Interestingly, I find my queer friends to be often more morally intelligent than my mainstream friends, simply because they have had to think, talk through and negotiate things more. The mainstream people who do get it are often people who have made a habit of understanding the essence rather than the appearance, the spirit rather than the law.
My queer friends who violently reject Christianity as an institution often have little trouble with the character of Jesus, beause he seems to be reported as someone who followed the essence into places the law wouldn't fit.
As do we.
I've become aware of a public divide in the social world which could do with similar perception and divination. I'll state it simply: in public perceptions of sexuality, on the one side there appears to be a moral repugnance for behaviour which transgresses the current popular notion of Christian ideals; on the other, a knee-jerk reaction to the very idea of moral restraint.
The "Christian" side, shared in modified form by most of society, thinks a woman a slut if she displays a sexually open and positive nature. The other side is sometimes uncomfortable with the idea of sexual morality because it sounds Christian and we really hate that!
I grew up in a vaguely liberal, vaguely agnostic household. I converted to Christianity at the age of 14 (wait, it gets better) then deconverted at the age of 33. Eventually I recognised that I was polyamorous. A lot of my old friends had dropped away. Just as many I let go. Now a lot of my new friends were various flavours of queer.
The Church had become hoarse-voiced declaiming the orientations, choices and lifestyles of my new friends, so it wasn't surprising that below their cool and beautiful exteriors lay a festering resentment towards anything religious. Religion was strongly identified with sexual and gender-role repression. Fair enough too.
On the other side, I hear the other people in my life - the straights, the mainstreamers who are part of my mundane community - putting every kind of interesting sexual behaviour in the same rubbish bin. Of course gay is now mostly cute and cool even in the mainstream, and more than a few of these mainstreamers are even happy for gays to marry (though they're not sure they want gays teaching their kids). But the covert and unavowed behaviours of mainstreamers are, when revealed, deviant (to say the least) from the declared norm.
The Wilde story must be treated with respect because it straddles these two worlds, as did Wilde himself.
The deterioration of Dorian Gray shows not simply conventional sexual license and "deviance" in the terms of the day, but the moral disaster that blights a person's soul when they define the world entirely in terms of their own aesthetic sensation and pleasure. Wilde's story also shows the fearful and tortured remnant that crouches within the cruelest moral narcissist, a silent witness its own gradual demolition. As Mephistopheles cryptically warns Faust, "This is indeed Hell, nor am I out of it."
Contrast that with what I call "moral debauchery" a term which I use in a positive sense. Sex-positive, playful, adventurous, this first recognises the simple rights of oneself and others (safe, sane, consensual). Then it recognises that the playmate or playmates are always no less than a person, and always acknowledges at leat covertly the person within whatever game is being played. Terry Pratchett's character, the witch Granny Weatherwax, nails a preacher with a neat definition: "...sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself..."
Just like mountain-climbing, car-racing and sailing, sexual involvement is always dangerous. When it moves outside the unconscious constraints of mainstream society, it becomes more dangerous still, and needs correspondingly more conscious negotiation. Interestingly, I find my queer friends to be often more morally intelligent than my mainstream friends, simply because they have had to think, talk through and negotiate things more. The mainstream people who do get it are often people who have made a habit of understanding the essence rather than the appearance, the spirit rather than the law.
My queer friends who violently reject Christianity as an institution often have little trouble with the character of Jesus, beause he seems to be reported as someone who followed the essence into places the law wouldn't fit.
As do we.
Monday 28 March 2011
Occasional essays, explorations and reflections
Welcome. You may find nothing here of interest. You may find a kindred spirit or a despicable enemy. I will be disappointed if you find a simplistic point of view. I may move to the center of the herd from time to time, but usually just to stir up trouble.
When you visit a performer, especially one new to the stage, the rule of thumb is this: applaud the first number wildly, no matter how appalling it is. That way, the performer will gain confidence, and you will get a better show. After the show, give them feedback, thoughful comment, engage with them.
Applause is always nice, but better is engagement. You don't have to engage - I'm sure most of you won't, and why should you - but if you do, engage constructively, even if you bitterly disagree. (If you can't do that, why are you here? There's not enough meat on me to satisfy a troll - there are much juicier bloggers just over there around the corner...)
It is a great privilege to be able to write whatever I want with at least the chance of reaching an interested audience, no matter how seldom or how few. I'll try not to forget that.
Be seeing you.
When you visit a performer, especially one new to the stage, the rule of thumb is this: applaud the first number wildly, no matter how appalling it is. That way, the performer will gain confidence, and you will get a better show. After the show, give them feedback, thoughful comment, engage with them.
Applause is always nice, but better is engagement. You don't have to engage - I'm sure most of you won't, and why should you - but if you do, engage constructively, even if you bitterly disagree. (If you can't do that, why are you here? There's not enough meat on me to satisfy a troll - there are much juicier bloggers just over there around the corner...)
It is a great privilege to be able to write whatever I want with at least the chance of reaching an interested audience, no matter how seldom or how few. I'll try not to forget that.
Be seeing you.
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