The Crying Lot of 49

Post in Progress

What can I say about this majestic novel?

Chapter 2
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The first time I read this chapter, I liked it, but I could never remember its full breadth and implications. I always thought that Metzger was trying to seduce Oedipa, and coincidentally a movie of which he himself played in was airing - how wrong, and badly did I read it - it was many years ago.

Oedipa after same revelations that are always just out of her grasp

Consciousness, Science and Religion

Consciousness, Science and Religion

Recently the integrity of religion has been questioned. Turn on a television and you’re likely to see a debate about whether religion is needed in today’s technological and scientific world. Browse local bookstores and books against religion cram the aisles; overhear an intellectual conversation and the affirmation of atheism and science is on their lips. It can be summed up all in a phrase: anti-religious sentiment has consumed the world. However, this article examines whether religion and science share a common motivation in their respective applications, and thus have more in common than they realise.

The structure of this article is as follows. First I will highlight the problem that consciousness faces in section 1, and then I explore in Section 2(a) and (b) how religion and science attempt to combat the problem that consciousness faces, and hereby showing the common motivation in the application of both disciplines.

1

All living organisms have a self-preservation instinct, the instinct to behave in a certain way to ensure the survival of the organism. The self-preservation instinct is ubiquitous in nature, for instance, stamp on a worm and it will try to wiggle out of the way; injure an animal and it will go into hiding to heal itself; starve a fellow human being and they will look for food. The self-preservation instinct is brought on by the sensation of pain or the fear of pain (death is included in this schemata), so the mechanism for the self-preservation instinct to come to the fore is the potentiality or the actuality of pain. For example, suppose a fox is running after a rabbit and manages to get some claws dig the rabbit’s skin and the rabbit feels this sensation to be painful, the rabbit will try to escape … next time the rabbit notices a fox it will attempt to hide or run away because it fears feeling the same sensation of pain again: the self-preservation instinct mechanism “kicks” in.

Nature, on the other hand, is terribly painful, overwhelmingly violent and extremely destructive. Imagine a world without the scientific and technological trappings of today’s society, imagine the extreme cold and hot weather conditions the human body had to withstand, think about the bloodshed they faced everyday killing and hunting the animals they would eat for dinner that night. Life eats on life; it’s a process of be the devourer or be devoured, it’s an existence imbued with pain, violence and death. Even without its self-preservation instinct, consciousness does not like experiencing pain: universal empirical evidence conveys the following truths uttered by people, “I wish I could lead a life without pain” and other sentiments.

Moreover, everything in nature that is born eventually dies. Plant a seed in the ground, and it will blossom until its decline results in withering away and dying. You also are born and then one day you will die. Nature is omnipresent, and death is the inevitable. So the problem now comes into sharper focus, it is the conflict between the self-preservation instinct and nature: it is the conflict between the instinct for survival and the inevitability of death.

All human beings have a consciousness. Consciousness is simply the states of awareness and qualitative experience that start in the morning and continue until we fall into a long dreamless sleep. By qualitative experience, I mean experiencing that a rose looks like this, or that music sounds like that. In contrast to a robot whom has no qualitative experience, it cannot tell you that the experience of pain feels like this or that, for example. This goes for all qualitative experience.

Self conscious is the capacity to be aware of one’s own consciousness. To reflect on the reasons we choose to act and your own thoughts and feelings, to notice oneself in relation to others and to notice oneself’s existence in the world.

The unconscious is consciousness that is not aware of the thoughts and feelings that it holds, usually these thoughts and feelings are those that if known to exist in the person’s consciousness, they would face wrath or punishment. Repression is the psychological mechanism that occurs when a consciousness holds those thoughts that will be reprimanded by pain and punishment. Repression, then, is when consciousness forgets certain thoughts and feelings, and then forgets that it has forgotten about having certain thoughts and feelings, even though it does. For instance, suppose that a man is sitting near a camp fire, and he feels the need to urinate on the camp fire to put it out. However, the rest of the group sitting around the fire have notified everyone that if they extinguish the fire, they shall receive severe punishment. The unconscious mind represses these thoughts and feelings due to the self-preservation instinct that consciousness does not want to face pain, violence or death for having those thoughts or feelings. Finally, projection is unconsciously attributing your own thoughts to someone or something else, for example, a workman blames his tools for his poor workmanship, rather than blame himself.

2

As great mythologist and thinker Joseph Campbell continually pointed out in his lectures, the phenomenon of death is the most challenging task that human consciousness has to face. Campbell goes onto say that the human being is a special animal as it is the only animal that knows it’s going to die, it is the only animal that can foresee the inevitable future that all human beings and animals are subject to, namely, death. So reverting back to the pertinent question: how does the human consciousness and the self-preservation mechanism come to terms with nature and death? The two options are (a) religion and (b) science.

Just a quick caveat here, religion is to be used in a context between the 5th century and the 15th century; the middle ages were belief in religion were rampant, and held to be literally true. Science here is in contrast to religion, rather than invalidating its claims. The scientific context is between the 20th century and the 21st century, where science is now the mainstay of empirical and rational knowledge.

Option (a) - religion. The human life, at this time period, is at the constant mercy to nature, and life is painful, violent and filled with death, and consciousness, especially with its self-preservation instinct can not remove itself from any potentiality or actuality of pain. Consciousness desires an existence without the conditions of nature, an existence full of pleasure, without pain and without death. Consciousness knows the pains of nature are impassable and cannot be removed, so how does consciousness deal with this fact?

Friedrich Nietzsche reminds us in his book “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”: “weariness that wants to reach the ultimate in one leap, in one fatal leap, poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more; this created all gods and afterworlds.” Simply, consciousness projects the belief of the existence of God and heaven (or re-incarnation – or any eternal life principle), an existence of eternal life and everlasting pleasures, but this projection is an unconscious defence mechanism against the conditions of nature. Consciousness cannot be aware that these religious beliefs are merely projections, so it must repress them, otherwise they would not have the psychological impact that consciousness depends on them for, and the self-preservation instinct would be rooted in limbo. So, the concept of heaven is the concept of eternal life filled with maximum pleasures and the elimination of pain. Heaven is a beautified existence without the inevitable conditions of nature, that is, pain, violence and death.

Now, someone might object that some human beings do not want an eternal life brimming with pleasure without pain, as some human beings commit suicide. Self-consciousness, as far as we know, is special in that it’s only available to human beings. Suicide is an act of self-consciousness to go beyond the self-preservation instinct, and to end its own consciousness, so it doesn’t affect the claim that consciousness wants to naturally survive. Moreover, the motivation to commit suicide is to remove suffering from experience and to forever stay in the sweet pleasurable slumber of sleep, so in that way it is similar to the afterlife. Lastly, in the religious middle ages suicide was seen as a sin against God (isn’t this consciousness trying to protect itself against its own self-annihilation?) that would be rewarded with eternity in hell, and thus strongly prohibited and rarely acted upon, sine they literally believed it to be true

Option (b) - science/ technology. Now science has many aspects, such as attempting to find out the causal law-like regularities of nature, and the attempting to find out the nature of reality. However, I will be using science in a narrow sense, focusing on the usage of science and technology to benefit mankind as a practical, rather than theoretical, application.

Now science rejects God and the afterlife, but science is still subject to nature and its consequences. One aspect of consciousness has not changed through the ages of man, and in fact it never changes, is consciousness desire for an existence without the conditions of nature, an existence full of pleasure, without pain and without death. We can see this as science, specifically by the medical industry, attempts (and sometimes successfully) to find cures to pain, sickness, sorrow and death. If consciousness did not have any problems with these aspects of nature, then consciousness would not attempt to deal with them, and it clearly does.

So one aspect of science is used by consciousness (how else could it be developed?) to ensure the organisms survival against nature and death. Science, unlike religion, tries to solve these natural occurrences in the present time, as it has the means to attempt to do so. Consciousness abhors its own destruction, and uses science as a means to attempt to combat the natural phenomenon of death. This can be seen in the current instances when medical doctors merely try to prolong an average life-span from death.

Lastly, consciousness uses (or hopes to use) science to finally escape death and live in a pleasure filled existence by transcending the disliked aspects of nature, that is strongly reminiscent of a religious afterlife. Recent scientific movements, such as, Transhumanism is a world-wide and popular intellectual movement using science and technology to improve mental and physical characteristics and capacities. The movement regards aspects of the human condition, such as suffering, disease, aging and death as undesirable. Furthermore, many science-fiction writers have devised non-religious utopian visions were death and pain is abolished, and life is pleasurable; this is a modern day wish fulfilment. Lastly, scientists talk eagerly about the possibility about freezing the body until a time when an advanced race of scientists could finally cure death.

It doesn’t matter whether the belief that science can eventually cure death is true or not, it may just be a fantasy, but that’s the whole point. The projected religious beliefs were found not to be true, but the society did not to know that at the time, and the same applies to the fantastical and non-fantastical scientific beliefs.

By Andrew Field

The Rise and Fall of Obama

The Rise and Fall of Obama.

In nature, everything that rises, falls: throw an apple into the air and it will fall to the floor; launch a rocket into the sky and it will crash onto the ground, become the most popular incoming president into office ever and your leave office as one of the most unpopular. This article charts the rise and fall of Obama's popularity as the American and world-wide public began to realise "there's no hope and change, things just stay the same."

The Rise

Towards the end of President George Bush's tenure, the United States of America had fallen into a national mindset of darkness. The public strongly criticised the Bush administration and presidency over its handling of Hurricane Katrina and its handling of the economic recession (that we are still in). They argued that the government did not prepare well enough in advance for the hurricane, or well enough in the aftermath of the devastating effects. The public felt that Bush was responsible for the state of the economy, and those who had lost their jobs or were unemployed felt resentful. Americans, by and large, were unhappy in the direction they believed the country was heading. During these events Bush's public opinion sharply declined and the American people pleaded for "hope and change,” for a better future and that America would be heading towards the right direction, and this is where Barack Hussein Obama (henceforth known simply as Obama) cashed in.

Obama appeared on the scene like a thousand points of light, displaying charm, charisma, and being a natural leader. His slogans and mantras were also simplistic and conveyed the right positive attitudes, "yes we can!" and "hope and change you can believe in."Obama's election campaign focused on giving promises that the American public wanted to hear and empowering them: nuclear proliferation, withdrawing the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, and recovering from the economy recession. Obama was lauded for his brilliant oratory skills and speeches, being crucial in momentum to help Obama win the election and become the 44th President of the United States of America on a wave of mass hysteria and wild expectation. The question was asked: Obama talked the talk, but could he walk the talk?

Nobel Prize

Like all rises in nature, the upward momentum was achieved by a “pushing” force as Obama's presidency received an early boost when he was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2009. Obama won the Nobel peace prize according to the Nobel Committee due to "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples"; all this before Obama had completed a year in office, and had made any concrete decisions in his foreign policy.

The prevailing view was one of a sceptical manner, Paul Reynolds of BBC News summed up the majority viewpoint when he said: "the award is certainly unexpected and might be regarded as more of an encouragement for intentions than a reward for achievements." Such a view was backed up when the Norwegian Committee released a statement, "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future."

Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the same reasons as being elected President: he offered change and hope for the future. Obama could certainly talk the talk after talking himself to the Nobel Prize, but could he actually live up to these slogans? Could he live up to the hype that he had promoted and established?

The Fall

Like all falls in nature, the downward spiral was forced by a heavy burden upon him: the expectation that followed him. Obama's popularity was always going to be difficult to maintain with the lofty promises he had made, and Obama now had to deliver on them. Ironically his own promises that successfully catapulted him into becoming the President could effectively be the promises that make his reign a failure. One of his policies was to stabilise the economy, it is the most important factor we believe in contributing to Obama’s fall, it is now that we turn to it.

Economy

Obama promised the American public that the unemployment rate would decrease and those that lost their jobs would be back into a work in no time. The problem for Obama is that this promise has yet to materialise. Recent polls show that 26% of Americans believe that Obama is “a great deal” to blame for the current economic crisis, and many feel that Obama’s regulations make it extremely difficult for unemployed citizens to become self-employed and start a small business. If anything Obama is increasing employment and recent trend analysts, especially highly-reputable Gerald Celente, believe the unemployment rate to have shot up to 20% and increasing. Obama signed an economic stimulus package that was aimed at recovering the economy from the worldwide recession, but the success has been negligible if any, and even Obama himself admits that progress has been "painfully slow." But painfully slow isn't good enough for Obama especially after he made sweeping lofty claims in his presidential elections to quickly improve the economy. The American public are frustrated with the economy and, once again, are angry about how the government have handled the recession.

His fall is not just due to his handling of the economy; a large percentage of American’s also believe that Obama is to blame for his inability to show leadership in the BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and combating climate change; his controversial healthcare bill and his insistent drone bombing of Pakistani villages (making a mockery of his Nobel Peace Prize.) It is telling that his most positive contribution to his presidency is the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize that many believed he did not earn or deserve, and that he received for his skilled rhetoric. It seems to be dawning on the worldwide public that the hysteria that Obama managed to generate was his ability to talk well, and make unrealistic promises (that could only be believed because of his brilliant oratory) that preyed on the vulnerabilities that the American people and the world are currently facing. As American people are finding out, its deeds not words that count.

The Mid-term Elections, or "the half-time outcome"

Recently, as of November, the US has been holding the mid-term elections, which decides the balance of power in the Congress over the next two years. The balance of power is an important issue, since the balance of power correlates to the ease of legislation to be passed by the President. For instance, if the Obama's democratic party holds all the power, by having the majority of the seats, in Congress, legislation can be passed without much opposition as there are not many Republicans to oppose it, and if the balance of power is even between the two political party's, legislation is harder to pass as there are more Republicans who can oppose it; legislation can only be passed if a majority vote to do so.

Congress consists of two houses: the Senate and the House of Representatives; with the House of Representatives, the bigger house of the two, is seen as representing the mood of the nation. The mid-term elections have been dubbed through the years as an "unofficial appraisal" of the current presidency. So, obviously, the mid-term election results, especially the House of Representatives, convey the state of the public endorsing the President.

The Democrats going into the mid-term elections held the majority in both houses, but after the mid-term elections this all changed. Before the mid-terms the Democrats held 59 seats in the Senate, 39 seats in the House of Representatives. Post mid-term elections and a lot had changed: the Republicans made staggering gains as they won the House of Representatives and large gains in control of the Senate, however, the Republicans still have the majority of this house although it has been reduced.

The Republicans won 60 seats in the House of Representatives; the second biggest swing of seats in mid-term election history; the highest swing being 75 seats and the average swing being 25 seats. In the Senate, the Republicans gained seats, but failed to reach the 10 seats that would confer holding the majority in the Senate.

This represents just how far public confidence has fallen in Obama's ability to govern the country, especially after the wave of hysteria that followed him as he preached the "hope and change" that beckoned him into presidency. His presidency was promised to be a "dawn of a new day" (also an occult agenda), but the stark reality is that the United States of America and its people finds itself struggling to get out of the darkness.

By Andrew Field

Society and "day dreaming" - What does it all mean.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11741350

Basically, the fairly short article's conclusion is that many spend half their day "day dreaming." That instead of focusing at the tasks at hand, consciousness takes a back seat and the unconscious takes over. As Dr Matthew Killingsworth, one of the researchers, says: "Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities. This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present."
So we have two trends that are dominating society at the moment, one of them is not included within this article, but is a commonly held fact:

- People are "day dreaming"
- More pharmaceuticals for "anxiety" and "depression" are being used than ever before

Now, the important question is - is there a link between the two?

I think we can conclusively yell, yes.

Society is only formed when the individuals that make up society go through instinctual repression, that is, they forget that they forget that they want to act out their instincts. As Freud says, civilization began the day that man stopped pissing on the fire. To build civilization man needs the fire and as you can obviously see here, the instinct to relinquish the fire is not acted upon (moreover, it is more than non-acted upon, the man doesn't even realise he has this instinct - although he does).

So, all society, by its very manifestation, means instinctual repression, if you follow its codes and practices. Today's society, or our society (that is in its last crumbling phase) is a society that is completely dependent on technology. Most, practically 99%, of our entertainment is mediated by the television. Our food comes not from the earth, soil or directly from our labours, but from the nearest supermarket. Our clothes are not made by us, but for us. We do nothing. And if technology was to crash or falter, then many people would not know what to do, and many would die - no joke, homeland security in America has predicted that if technology was to go off-line for a considerable amount of time, 90% would die.

Present-day society is even worse than the template society, not only are we instinctually repressed, we are also completely dependent on the technological leviathan. We are not in control of our lives; control would be independence (here I'm not going to talk about why we agree to not be in control - but its an interesting discussion - a later post for the blog)

To perpetuate society we have to work jobs that we absolutely despise, to continue the instinctual repression. And the very reason we hate the jobs, because the jobs themselves are a form of instinctual repression: the work we do has absolutely no bearing on the life you wish you could lead, or want to be leading right now).

No wonder most people "day-dream" and access their unconscious where the instinctual urge lies, to get through the tedium and droll of a job in society. The depression and anxiety is directly linked to this, people get depressed when they are leading lives they do not wish to lead. It's a sign that their is a problem within their lives. Correlatively and interestingly, a neurosis (Freud-style), like anxiety or depression, results from the denial of an overwhelming and powerful instinctual urge.

Lets realise how "bad" depression is when no other exerting forces are a reason for its existence. Normally a person might get depressed because a friend died, or they realised that all life is sorrowful and pain. This is to say then, the life they are leading as a human being is so "bad" that they feel dead inside.

God! I love social progress.

Other blogs that I recommend

Other blogs worthy of interest:

http://marksarvas.blogs.com

http://biblioklept.org

http://thunderboltsandlove.blogspot.com

http://descentdarkness.blogspot.com/

http://theasylum.wordpress.com/

http://secretsun.blogspot.com/

http://mindfulpleasures.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/author/jamesdelingpole/

http://shamansun.wordpress.com/

Science, Religion and its relation to Human Consciousness

More interesting posts will follow.

For my first and inaugural post, I will briefly set out how I see the relationship between consciousness, religion (more aptly named mythology) and science. Although - disclaimer - this will not be as detailed or as good as the similar (but different) critique on the blog "descent into darkness."

The structure is as follows. I start of with (1) the origination and the problem, and (3a) and (3b) are the routes that consciousness can take. In a future blog post (most likely the next one) I will detail why consciousness originally took route (3a) and now reverts to (3b)

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(1) We are born into this world with a consciousness, abiding the human individual is relatively healthy, that encompasses all the five senses (taste, smell, touch, perception and hearing) and the qualitative phenomenal experience that goes with it, i.e. thats what a rose smells like, or music sounds like this etc. (note: this is the problem of consciousness within philosophy - How can physical properties (if we assume physicalism - the doctrine that the universe is fundamentally made out of physical stuff -) give rise to phenomenal experience.)

All consciousness has is itself and its phenomenal experience. However, specifically (although a few animals may have a limited version of this) human consciousness also has a self-reflective capacity; it can reflect on its own consciousness, for instance, an adult looks at itself in a mirror - and receives the phenomenal experience - and asks: is that what I now look like?

Now, consciousness, for some reason (and I will not speculate what the reason is) has a self-preserving life instinct.

(1) Assumption - Consciousness has a self-preservation instinct

The problem for consciousness is that the world is terribly violent. Nature itself whilst nourishing and reasonably protecting, is destructive, overwhelmingly powerful and everything in the end becomes decadent and turns into death. (Hence the "mother" Kali mythological character) Nature is overwhelmingly abhorrent to consciousness.

(Kali representing primal and overwhelmingly powerful nature - standing on Shiva)

(2) Within nature is decadence, violence, and death

So consciousness has a massive problem, consciousness is brought into nature, a world of terrible violence and ultimately death. How does consciousness with its self-preservation instinct guard against the world? We have the two options:

(3a) Religion - You begin creating gods and the afterlife - why? - Consciousness realises that nature is impassable and the world will forever contain predators, danger, loss, sorrow, violence and finally consciousness itself will be annihilated. So Consciousness (not allowing itself suicide, it has a self-preservation instinct so it does want to be voluntarily annihilated - this is not to deny that suicide happens - but there is no suicidal mass movement against the conditions of life) has to envisage a time when itself still survives; and not only does it still survive, the primal destruction of nature is removed. Consciousness obviously would not accept its prolonged survival with violence and death because what's the point? Moreover, consciousness sees violence as a potentiality towards death, so its not acceptable to have a consciousness that lives ever-lasting with terrible nature because it would be a contradiction for consciousness, and obviously we can cite empirical information: when has anyone ever talked about a heaven-type existence that includes pain.

(3a) To avoid the death of consciousness, consciousness projects God and the afterlife.

(3b) Science - For various reasons that I wont go into here (but will at a further date), consciousness turns towards science. Now science (and technology) ultimately is a defence against nature and the pre-set conditions of life, for instance, we build a house to go against the weather, and we try to figure out reality so that we can defend it better against it in the future

Now, the movement of science denies the projection of God and the afterlife, which is fine. So science has to deal with nature itself. So what does Science do? It tries to find cures to disease, pain, sorrow, suffering and eventually tried to avoid the annihilation of consciousness - with all the promise (or more accurately the hope) that science will prolong life within an average life-span and finally, prolong life indefinitely so that death will not exist and be an issue.

The ultimate aim of science is to transcend nature and make nature void, we only have to look at the recent transhumanism movements, scientific utopia's, and basically, the whole world: as amazing as pharmaceuticals and medicine are, what are they if they are not to stop consciousness from feeling the violence of nature - not that itself is not an unworthy, if impossible, task.

(3b) To avoid death, consciousness "turns" to science.

And in the end, just like this post, is:

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In another post I will explore (3a) more deeply. I've named this position as religion for simplicity's sake, although more aptly it should be labelled mythology, and the difference between the two concepts is vast