The doors of the temple stand open

The theme here these day is the life and thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the focus at the moment is on his 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which stirred up so much controversy that he wasn't invited back for 30 years.

It would be one thing to tick off a bunch of foaming fundamentalists with a little free ranging thought, but Ralph even managed to alienate relatively laid back Unitarians, who were more closely aligned with traditional Christianity then than now.

One thing that got him in trouble was his characteristic assertion that truth is not something once received and thereafter believed but rather something each soul must directly intuit. He believed that the same sources that inspired Jesus and other prophets and seers can inspire us today if we only let it.

If it sounds like he'd been hanging around with and reading about Quakers, he was. He was also learning or intuiting as much as he could about the religious traditions of Asia--so much so that the sounds Buddhist and even Zenlike in his insistence that every person must directly experience insight rather than merely accept some religious tradition:

...the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

That's kind of how a 19th century American might express the Buddha's advice to "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." It also is reminiscent of the teachings often attributed to the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma, who was believed to have spoken of

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.

Such ideas are pretty commonplace now. You can find some reference to them in almost any bookstore and in popular culture. But they were a bit over the top back then. They'd still upset quite a few people today.

SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO WOULDN'T LIKE EMERSON, here's an article about the fortunes of fundamentalism in the US and around the world.

WHAT WOULD FREUD SAY? WV legislators have gone gun crazy lately. Would Sigmund say it was castration anxiety or are they just trying to compensate for something?

CAN I HAVE ONE? This NRP story about an Indonesian zoo breeding Komodo dragons has me all excited.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Goodnight, Moon

If you got out any over the weekend, especially Saturday night, you probably couldn't help but notice the giant moon. Scientists say this was the biggest full moon in 18 years. All's I know is, when the Spousal Unit and I took a walk in the dark, the moonlight was bright enough to cast a shadow.

It so happened that the Big Moon coincided with said Unit's birthday, although any connection between that blessed event and word associations involving "lunacy" or "lunatic" are purely coincidental. As far as I can scientifically prove.

Looking at the big shining thing made me wonder what life on earth would be like without it being there to shake things up. Would there even be any? That question is above my pay grade.

Another thought that came to mind was the frequent association between full moons and strange behavior that many people who deal with the public swear by. I've heard that this isn't the case, statistically speaking, but no amount of number crunching will convince some folks I know.

Finally, I thought of a line by the medieval Japanese Zen master Dogen, who said, "Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet , nor is the water broken."

MEANWHILE, there's Libya.

RECOVERING FROM DISASTER. E.J. Dionne is betting on Japan.

ONE GOOD GAZETTE OP-ED, like this one on fundamentalism of various kinds, deserves another, like this one on gardening.

RIGHT WING TARGET: Elizabeth Warren.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Theological musings

El Cabrero has read (or more accurately listened to) several of Karen Armstrong's books on religion. Some are better than others and some interpretations seem a bit of a stretch but I enjoyed her latest book, The Case for God.

This book was interesting not so much in making a case for God but rather for providing a good survey of religious and cultural history. One insight from the book, however, hit home.

She notes that in the modern world people tend to interpret religious teachings in much the same way they do other kinds of statements, i.e. as more or less factual claims. This kind of literal approach can lead to the impoverishment of religion, either turning in into a kind of fundamentalism (itself a distinctly modern thing) or into something that many people find it easy to dismiss.

Older approaches to religion, on the other hand, embed teachings into rituals, disciplines and practices which place it in a special context.

I've often thought that orthodox Christian teachings separated from traditional practices and viewed as mere statements of historical fact raise all kinds of questions and problems but that these make perfect sense within the context of rituals such as the Eucharist.

Armstrong reminded me that this is the way it was meant to be in older approaches to religion. The modern reduction of religion to textual literalism and merely factual interpretation seems to be a degradation rather than elevation of religion.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD. The recession may have motivated many Americans to do more even as they spend less.

1937 REDUX? During the 1930s, New Deal programs were scaled back when the Depression appeared to ease--which made it get worse again. In this op-ed, Paul Krugman warns this could happen again.

1994 REDUX? Here's E.J. Dionne on the 2010 elections.

WEIRD SCIENCE. Here are 2009's top stories from Wired Science.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

MEANING

Photo credit: everystockphoto.com.

El Cabrero has a special respect for things, people and ideas that have proven themselves in tough situations. The ideas of the late Viennese psychologist Victor Frankl would certainly qualify. He developed these in the crucible of Nazi concentration camps but found they had applications in less extreme conditions as well.

Frankl found that people who had a sense of purpose or meaning in their lives were better able to bear up to unbearable conditions and keep a sense of their humanity in the face of dehumanizing treatment. He also believed that people always retain a degree of inner freedom:

Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress....

Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him--mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings." These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost.

Some things that helped people retain a sense of purpose were love for others, a desire to accomplish certain things, a sense of accomplishment for past achievements or even the determination to bear suffering with dignity. But

Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost.

END GAME. Apocalyptic religious types can't get enough war these days.

NAFTA AND EVERYTHING AFTER. Here's a good one from the Boston Globe about the downsides of "free trade" agreements. Congress is considering extending a NAFTA-style agreement to Peru.

MORE ON HEALTH CARE. According to the Economic Policy Institute, employer-provided health insurance continues to decline. According to the author of the report, “A universal health care system would provide Americans with access to the type of health care appropriate for the most prosperous nation in the world.”

AMERICANA. Here's a lengthy but good piece from the New Yorker about how America modernized. There's a cool Thoreau thread running through it.

HOW'S THAT NEXT WAR COMING? According to the McClatchy papers,

Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Of course, the great thing about this administration is that they've never let facts get in the way of an unnecessary war.

MONKEY BUSINESS. It looks like they can rationalize too.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SCIENCE WARS

Caption: Goats study the science of irritating humans. Actually, they've perfected it.

Let's start with an unsolicited product endorsement. El Cabrero is a big fan of The Teaching Company and Recorded Books' Modern Scholar series, both of which provide audio courses on all kinds of topics by recognized scholars.

Many public libraries carry these items. With them, you can "read" and learn while, driving, jogging, mowing the lawn, chasing the goats, etc.

One that I'm enjoying at the moment is Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How they Know it by Steven L. Goodman.

Goldman points out early on that just as the natural sciences reached their highest level of prestige in the mid-20th century, they came under attack from a number of different directions. Here are some:

*In the wake of the Vietnam War and concerns about nuclear devastation, many people criticized the sciences for their collaboration with governments and corporations engaged in making and using destructive weapons and products such as napalm and Agent Orange. This was not a criticism of science as such but rather of the uses to which it was put;

*Within the sciences and the field of the philosophy of science, there was a growing movement which questioned the objectivity of science and the claim that it was value free and neutral. Some authors, such as Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, suggested that science was more a matter of developing paradigms or models of the world that accounted for observations than of "reflecting" objective processes;

*In the field of literary and social theory, some people argued that the sciences were social constructions and that knowledge claims were often based on the interests of powerful groups who inflicted their power/knowledge on others. Later, post-modernists claimed that science was just one of many possible narratives for describing the world and had no special claim to validity;

*From a completely different direction, there was a rising fundamentalist backlash against the findings of the natural sciences on areas such as evolution, the origin and age of the universe, etc.

All of these tendencies have left their mark on the current state of the public view of science and contemporary confusion about its nature and role.

AT LEAST NOW WE KNOW about that UFO/Air Force dogfight over Braxton County in the 1950s.

THIS JUST IN. If you are looking for scientific data on how to deal with a drunk person you are shocking with electricity, click here. The take home message seems to be that people who are drunk are less belligerent when distracted.

BACKLASH AGAINST GLOBALIZATION. From the UK Financial Times:

A popular backlash against globalization and the leaders of the world’s largest companies is sweeping all rich countries, an FT/Harris poll shows.

Large majorities of people in the US and in Europe want higher taxation for the rich and even pay caps for corporate executives to counter what they believe are unjustified rewards and the negative effects of globalization...

The issue of rising inequality is now high on the political agenda of every country and will feature prominently in the 2008 US presidential election.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED