October 15, 2009

• Socrates Cafe: Religion, Criticism, and the World's End.

  

  This is the latest topic entry for the Socrates Cafe blogsite. I just wrote an entriy on Oct 10th, and it's still on the front page of my blog,  but I liked these questions, and decided to participate. (Probably because the 2nd and 3rd questions were ones I wrote. LOL. I tried to include all my thoughts, and yet I hope since I attacked all three topics, the entry isn't too long. It took me about 90 minutes to write this post. MFN/ppf

  ---

  A. Throughout history, most societies have had some form of religious beliefs, which generally seek to explain where we came from, why we are here, and what happens when we die. Why do humans seem to have this almost universal need to explain life?

  Humans are the only animal on the planet who think. (There might be other species who think, but since we can't understand their "language", we don't know this to be true except in the instance of mankind.) Because mankind thinks, and has been exercising this somewhat risky practice since possibly moments after his inception, he gets to pondering about everything around him which he doesn't know.

  In the beginning, man thought about simple things, and led a simple life, hunting, fishing, and clothing himself against the weather. Men wondered what happened to those who died, and never returned to their early societies. He also wondered about the cyclical nature of the universe. The sun and moon seemed to circle the earth at standard intervals, which could be recorded. The stars seemed also to conform to time tested traditions of circling the earth on which early man stood in patterns which could be ascertained and studied. Because the sun and moon seemed to nurture and placate humankind, these heavenly bodies became "spiritual" to him, and he began to worship them as deities.

  As time went on, mankind created even more deities, each with a special power. In good times, these gods and goddesses seemed to smile on man, and everyone was happy. In bad times, man thought he needed to give something back, and usually resorted to sacrificing his enemies on a regular basis in order to insure a bountiful harvest. Some men seemed to be endowed with "prophecy" and these prophets sowed the seeds for early religions. Soon, religions became so enmeshed with the societies which invented them, that the religious leaders became, in effect, society's leaders, equally making pacts with neigboring nations, and governing the populace at large. Tithes and taxes kept the ruling class rich and powerful, and the threat of the "wrath of God" kept the plebians in their humble place.

  If man lived forever, and the weather didn't get bad sometimes, perhaps he would never have needed "beliefs" which transcend his knowledge. But death and weather, coupled with his nagging proclivity to wonder about everything, helped to foster a "faith" in the unknown, and attempt to explain "where" he went when he died, and to hopefully stop geology and weather from ruining his fragile existence by placating these "higher powers" in some way. 

  B. What is the nature of criticism? Can one be critical without seeming disagreeable?

  I have a thick book at home called "The Theory of Modern Criticism" which I bought as a text for some forgotten Comp Lit class in college. It was a difficult read. Full of wordy explanations which didn't really seem to explain anything.

  Much like Philosophy.

  Technical criticism on the nature of beauty, artistic worth, literate musings, and a wealth of other pursuits of humankind has been around since man first began to draw those cave paintings. The cave paintings simply described the thrill of the hunt, but someone figured out that since they stuck around for a few generations, they were in fact "art". And as soon as "art" became a known practice and commodity, the "art" of criticism sprang up to ascertain whether it was worth a trip to the cave gallery or not.

  On the internet, and especially in the blogosphere, where this and other essays appear and reappear like wanton weeds, criticism seems to have degenerated into a practice where thoughtful critical thinking has been replaced by virtriol and uninformed hatred filled opinion. Words are thrown around like so much wastepaper, and every blog entry or news article has a "comments" section where the "mob" can throw invectives at any statement or opinion. Warring opinions can cover many paragraphs, and waste much time in the reading therof, and no consensus is ever acheived.

  True "criticism" is discourse about the nature of whether something is worth it or not, as art or literature. Criticism as a true form can also discuss nature. Is this flower beautiful? Is this sunset spritually uplifting? The word "critical" has come to mean not the musings about the nature of why something is beautiful or not. It has negative connotations. When someone is "critical" they are negatively assessing the worth of some thing or idea. Criticism was never meant to be negative in nature.

  Before entering the blogosphere as a writer, I ran writer's groups on message boards. There were two types of groups. One didn't allow criticism and the other did. Insasmuch as these groups were supposedly created to give budding authors encouragement and assessment of their work, the lack of critical thinking concerning said work on the "fawning" group sites seemed a tad ridiculous. On the other hand, the "crits" which showed up on the critical groups were more likely barbs and attacks rather than true criticism. (One reason I don't run groups like this anymore is that I simply didn't have time to properly assess the writing at hand in a true 'critical' way.

  On the news sites, internet wide, commenters always love to point out mistakes. Criticism seems to be a collection of pointing fingers, aimed at letting everyone know they made a mistake, even if the "mistake" can be contested. Contested discourse on the internet however never comes out evenly for any side of the matter. One can be bombarded with enough negativity that the actual truth of any situation gets muddied in the muck of public opinion. And everyone is critical, it seems, but nobody is a talented critic.

  It has been written extensively (usually in the dying journalistic traditions of the actual press) that newspaper critics are being replaced by an amalgam of opinion. Instead of a respected film criitc, for example, a website like Rotten Tomatoes distills all the critical writing, including guest comments from anyone and anybody, into a "rating" for any given film. In the "age of information" there is so much of it, that nobody has the time to read critical thought, especially when the word has such negative connotations now anyway. The average film viewer doesn't want to know the reasons why someone with years of experience writing about film might have an opinion. The average viewer just wants to know what percentage of critics liked or disliked the film.

  In the age of Twitter, information is being diluted to just 140 characters or less. That book I have which discusses the nature and history of criticism is over 1500 pages long. True criticism was never meant to be disagreeable, but modern criticism seems to have forgotten that fact, and has become nothing but disagreements and uninformed opinion.

  C. What significance, if any, does the "end date" in ancient American calendars, such as the Aztec Cuauhxicalli Eagle Bowl or the earlier Mayan Tzolk'in, mean to either the life of mankind or to geologic time? The ending of last cycle in these calendars is usually placed somewhere in December of 2012. Is the world going to end on that date?

  There is a calendar hanging on my wall which ends on December 31st, 2009. If I don't put another calendar on the wall, does the world end at that time?

  For the past decade or so, I've been reading a lot of "doomsaying" concerning the fact that ancient mesoamerican calendars have an "end date" and that date hovers around the actual date of December 21st, 2012. These tracts, which proliferate on the internet, along with various other conspiracy theories and end times scenarios, never seem to bring up the fact that perhaps the Mayans or the Aztecs simply ended their calendar because the stone got too big, and never got around to creating the next one perhaps because the Spanish conquistadors destroyed their civilization and killed most of them off.

  An upcoming film, "2012", is being directed by Roland Emmerich, who attempted to destroy the world by aliens with "Independence Day" in 1996, with "Godzilla" in 1998, and with global warming in "The Day After Tomorrow" in 2004. This time he channels the paranoia surrounding the 2012 end date. The movie comes out later this year, so it will hopefully make lots of money before the end date rolls around.

  Whenever benchmark times or heavenly bodies appear on the horizon, certain segments of mankind seem to always begin proclaiming the doom and gloom. The earth is a small rock hurtling around the sun, naked and exposed to anything the universe wants to throw at it. The moon could fall out of the sky. Meteors or comets could hit us at any time. Tides can turn, and the ozone layer can disappear. Any and all manner of end time scenarios have already been posited, and when the "end time" date passes, the event is forgotten, and the doomsayers make their corrections, set their clocks anew and mark their calendars for the next one. We just went throught this whole thing at the turn of the millennium. Just as mankind did during the turn of the last one.

  The universe didn't invent time. Mankind did. The universe doesn't have a set conclusion, or a set beginning. Mankind, in his need to know and to understand his fate, will always think about the whys and wherefores of his existence. It's in his nature, and has been since the beginning. Perhaps the Mayans did think the world would end in 2012. History proves that they were wrong. Their world ended long ago. No matter what date mankind thinks his total existence will disappear, in fact his individual existence will disappear soon enough. All men die. Everybody perishes. Ashes to ashes.  Dust to dust. It is this inconclusive fact that drives man to conclude that eventually everythning will end for everybody. It does. Eventually, one by one. Maybe there is a global catastrophe on the horizon. Maybe not. But why worry about it? People live and then they die. After death, the universe opens up for all life, and what we know as corporeal life passes into the Universal Mind, a collection of all thought, all cosmic consciousness, all in all and everything in everything. It is so large a concept that nobody living can understand it, and we're simply not meant to. Not at this time.

  So we'll continue to create calendars, and worry about the end of the world. It's been around a long time before we got here, and won't be going away all that soon. Mankind probably won't perish en masse like the dinosaurs. (And who knows, maybe we've got that scenario all wrong!) But man will continue to perish, one by one, as he has since he first stepped foot on the planet. And with each passing, those who remain, will wonder about their own personal fate at the behest of the universe.

  • 10:53 am
  • 67 Comments