Why People Give Up on God

I will never give up on a good idea.

When humanity discovered the philosophical notion of God and monotheism, it was an intellectually superior idea. Monotheism is far more coherent and powerful than divine polytheism. The idea that there are multiple Gods who rule the universe, and who have distinctive personalities like Zeus, and can control us with their mind-powers, just doesn't make sense. Whereas, the idea that beneficial and spiritual things are faceless and nameless and full of love makes a lot of sense. Nevertheless, the question arises:

Is God a good idea?

When I was in Nelson, British Columbia on retreat, I was painting a wall. I saw a bug flying around, attracted to the wall because it was white. The wall wasn't dry yet, so I tried to whisk it away, but the bug was determined to land on that wall because it was so beautiful and white. It landed on the wall, and I had no choice but to kill it, because it got stuck in the paint.

The religious paint in Western society has not yet dried. While there are attractive things about religion, it sometimes does more psychic harm than good. I hope that when I talk about God, as I sometimes do, that I'm contributing to the positive work being done, and not causing people, including myself, to die stuck in the paint.

But look. At the end of the day, in America, God is a racist sexist old white guy in a flowey robe who lives in a cloud. So if you go around talking about God from a genuine, spiritual point of view, nobody's going to know what the hell you're talking about. And worse, they're going to think you're a jerk and avoid you. And not all of those people who avoid you are going to be bad people. So you have to ask yourself, do you really want to be avoided by good people and sought after by bad people? That's a very important question.

Why did I ever get on a religious kick in the first place? When I was young, I used to trash-talk God. And it harmed people. So one day I decided the only solution was to ask God for forgiveness. This and this were the results, and I'm proud of them. Nevertheless, to say you're a religious person carries so much baggage. Too much. What do I mean when I say I "want" to be religious? It means I don't want to be a psychiatrist. And that's ALL it means. Nothing more. I want to have delusions, because only delusions allow you to believe in things that aren't real yet. It doesn't mean I want to go to church, and it doesn't mean I want to preach nonsense I try to make myself believe.

And anyway, the first thing that comes to mind when you mention God is bullshit. Because it is bullshit. And hypocritical. People go around saying God is loving, teaches you faith, has no image, is divine, will lead you to heaven, and so on, but they always seem to conjure up the image of a hateful, superstition-inducing, commercially whored, frightening concept that causes everybody to suffer. Why should I go around wearing that as a badge of honor? I think it's telling that the most positive changes brought about in society today were made by anti-Christians, many of whom were probably pseudo-Satanists. I'm not joking. Look it up.

There's a reason why we have religion, but there's also a reason why people seem to hate it. There's a reason for everything. And it's not because people are sin-loving devil worshipers who've lost their soul. I think religious people sell their soul more often than atheists, with a few laudable exceptions. (Some of whom I'm proud to say are my friends.) But if you love God, please, don't be a jerk. By their fruits ye shall know them, and frankly, the fruits of religion smell pretty sour. Hopefully it's only because they're not ripe yet.

Hope for Obama

The set of things that can be known differs in both quantity and nature from the set of things that can be believed. Which implies the possibility that sometimes they complement each other. Beliefs are sometimes more desirable than facts for these reasons:

1. Facts don't give a complete picture, because there are inevitably facts you don't know.
2. Facts can seduce you into believing something false, because facts correlated with one perspective don't necessarily justify that perspective. E.g. it may be a fact that you met a Communist in College, but that doesn't justify the perspective that higher ed is Communist. This is how logical fallacies work. However, the fact that you met a Christian in church does work to justify the perspective that church is Christian.
3. Facts may produce a picture that's incoherent. This is why PR firms for immoral companies always seem to drum up a litany of facts to justify whatever they want to do.

Beliefs, on the other hand, can be more powerful than facts (especially when supported by facts), because the picture is complete enough to justify action, true enough to work from, and coherent enough to get people to buy onto it. If beliefs didn't have power, religion, advertising, public relations, politics, etc. would have never come about.

Case in point: cynicism about how bad congress is and how ineffective politics are is what allows Republicans to do whatever they want, because people continue to vote for them out of cynicism.

Nonsense Hollywood Myths Many Don't Bother to Question

Just about everything out of Hollywood sucks, including the things a lot of people agree with. Here's a couple.

1. You always want what you can't have. I've even heard some reasonably intelligent people say this. But this Hollywood "wisdom" is nonsense. Think about it. It implies that there's something about not having something which makes you want it. "I want every sign that says 'slow down' to be repainted as saying 'drive slow.'" "Well, you can't have it." "Ooh, now I REALLY want it." If you really wanted things just because you can't have them, that conversation would make sense. But it doesn't.

   It isn't that you can't have something that makes you want it. We want things because we like something about them. We don't want what we already have simply because it didn't turn out to be all it was cracked up to be. Things are like that. We fantasize about something, and imagine that it will solve all our problems; then when we have it, it doesn't, so we want something else. There's no causal relation between being unable to have something and wanting it. Which brings me to my next point:

2. If you look deep in your heart, the thing you really wanted was what you had to begin with. No place is like home, eh? What if you live in an abusive family? Then do you want what you already have? I think not. In fact, as stated earlier, what you really want is probably what you don't have.

   A better way to state these things is, if you look deep in your heart, you'll discover the truth. This includes truth about your own wants, and whatever you need to make it happen, IF you want something to begin with. See, I think the reason these ideas are formulated this way is because of the concept of want. Hollywood wants to get you to want something. Anything. It's fundamentalist consumerism.

3. There are some things in this world that just can't be explained by logic alone. Of course, if you actually use logic, you'll deconstruct these ideas and realize they're nonsense. As a matter of fact, certain kinds of advertising, like political advertising, have been shown to work best on people who don't go to college, where they teach you logic. Go figure.

   Why then do so many people believe this statement? Because it's a bastardization of the idea that some things can't be explained by deductive logic alone. Actually, NOTHING can be explained by deductive logic alone. To show this, let's look at a deductive argument. Every deductive logical argument is constructed similar to this:

   • Assumption: pigs can't fly.
   • Assumption: Jake is a pig.
     

     ---

   • Conclusion: Jake can't fly.

   What are the first two statements? Assumptions. NOT necessarily deductions. Assumptions can come from other deductive arguments, though they don't have to. (E.g. Jake has four legs, pink skin, short hair and a snout. Every animal with these things is a pig. Therefore, Jake is a pig.) But these other deductive arguments are also based on assumptions. And if these assumptions are based on deductions, those deductions are also based on further assumptions, and so on. So where, aside from deductive logic, do these assumptions come from?

   Inductive logic. Which is simply observation. I've observed that no pig has ever been able to fly in the history of life, therefore it's a reasonable assumption that pigs can't fly.

   So nothing can be explained by deductive logic alone. But, sorry to rain on your parade, everything can be explained through inductive and deductive logic together. Even magic and the occult. Even paranormal activity. If you observe it correctly, that by definition is inductive logic.

Art doesn't have to be a philosophical textbook. But bad art comes from unexamined ideas. And bad art has observable negative consequences, encouraging people to be deluded, chauvinistic, consumerist, racist, perhaps even violent. And there's no reason for it.

Psychosis as Sexual Pleasure

Psychosis can actually be one of the most pleasurable experiences you can have. All it takes is a little courage and self-confidence. It's really tough to gain courage and self-confidence when your world is literally falling apart around you. But if you carefully approach the other world, and get to know it, become comfortable with it in a safe place, it's really not such a bad place.

The fear, for me anyway, was always losing control. Losing control of my mind and becoming something else. But I've experienced many, many bouts of psychosis, and except for once, I NEVER lost control. At least, not because of the psychosis. I became weird and freaked people out, because I was so paranoid... of the psychosis. I would do anything to try and be absolutely sure I was being "normal." But here's a secret: the more you try to be normal, the less normal you become.

Once I overcame the fear of losing control, the fear of losing my self, I recognized that this radically "other" world was a whole lot of fun. The funnest kind of fun. The demons and spirits trying to attack me suddenly became beautiful Goddesses. The fear and paranoia became wonder. The voices (few as they were, with me) became insight. Think of it this way: if you want a real fantasy world, you'll have to make a radical break with reality. And that can't be anything but scary. But it can also be rewarding.

Make no mistake: I DO have schizophrenia. I've been officially diagnosed, and hospitalized against my will. I know what these feelings are, viscerally. I'm on medications. But I insist: I have come to enjoy them. They are worth experiencing.

In fact, they are more worth experiencing than the medications. I took medications to rid myself of these feelings, and everything became infinitely worse, and I still haven't recovered. Instead of feeling paranoia, I was asleep constantly. I slept as much as 14 hours a day. When a filmmaking project of mine fell through, in the deepest depression, I finally had to make a decision. I decided: psychosis is infinitely better than medication. From now on, I would prefer psychosis to medication every time, and if people didn't like it, too bad for them.

Of course, I'm still on a low dose, but only because it's useful to me not to jump ship to the other world and become lost. I still have a stake in the "real" world. But if the beautiful Goddesses whisk me away for a while, even regularly, people will just have to get used to it. Because having a clear and alert mind, which isn't medicated to the point of sloth, is unquestionably better, even if I lose myself from time to time. I'm sorry, but the doctors have done so much more harm than good. I won't go so far as to say I should never have been medicated. But madness has been enriching and beautiful, while medication has been horrid.