RoR: Forum

Post 20

Sunday, April 10, 2005 - 5:26pm

Link

Edit

Marcus, of course. "How and why" does religion fill the spiritual void? And how and why has Objectivism failed to do that for many people who have familiarized themselves with it, then parted ways with it?

I think my reading list may contribute some answers.

Post 21

Sunday, April 10, 2005 - 10:19pm

Link

Edit

Thanks, Robert. Since you noted Campbell's HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES, I will check out the WRITER'S JOURNEY, since I believe that Rand drew upon the mythic archetypes to great effect. I wrote an essay about this called THE OBJECTIVIST HERO CYCLE (http://jungianobjectivism.tripod.com/id9.html) that examines her usage of classic hero archetypes. I believe you're right that Rand's powerful writing was because of her of that influence.

Thanks for recommending THE TIPPING POINT; I have been meaning to read that, now I have a reason.

Post 22

Saturday, February 4, 2006 - 7:41am

Link

Edit

This is definitely a good one to reprise - glad it came up again.

Post 23

Saturday, February 4, 2006 - 1:42pm

Link

Edit

Hate to be a drag (well, perhaps not) but anyways, it will take more than the concept of salesmanship.

You need a "unified" product. MacD's and other big franchize standardize, so customers know what to expect.

O'ists are kitties, not doggies.

Religions have more than Rand's philosophy of reality and idealism. They have church-services, standar-sermons, (book-studies are amenable). Singing (perhaps some inspiring art). Activism - acts of benevolence that demonstrate for-real people doing for-real good things for a good reason.

Fellowship; religions admonish people to tolerate injustice, let alone under-recognized intellectual prima-donnas (please respect my fragile ego on this point).

Perhaps Branden has come closest with his self-help material. Identify typical neurotic stupidity, by watching the idiots on CNN or reading pop psych books and self-help lit. Then present rational, rather than sensational solutions that fix relationships rather than, like exercise equipment, make the person who buys it blame themselves for not benefiting from it.

I'm tempted to study cults and Scientology, and come up with a fancy neuro-feedback box that goes "beep" with flashing eye-candy (maybe some mild stimulant) and claim with daily affirmations of truth, weekly checkups from a well-paid "coach", you'll get healthy, wealthy and wise.

I don't think so. But that would be a "religion" of rationality. Some kind of reality "boot camp" coupled with periodic reinforcemnt to keep the pervasive cultural memes and idiots from ruining the conditioning.

Scott

Post 24

Saturday, February 4, 2006 - 1:47pm

Link

Edit

Oops, I forgot one of THE most important points. A "conversion experience" of 1. coming to terms with one's limitations, dishonesty, evasions and delusions; 2. recognizing Reality (God) will not respect delusions like their sick culture; 3. Repenting of the evasions in favor of the "truth". 4. Promise of forgiveness.

If they believe an ideal of honesty, and justice exists, they can be forgiven and get a new chance to be for-real, they just might explode with joy and hope at living a rational rather than a treacherous life in a rat-race.

Promising a heaven would be nice too.

Scott

Post 25

Saturday, February 4, 2006 - 7:52pm

Link

Edit

> Promising a heaven would be nice too.

Well, the big brains at TOC and ARI have given this a lot of consideration and decided "we'd really like to, but...".

...My inside sources at both think tanks tell me that the showstopper was that Oism is a rather small movement and the cost of engineering a Heaven turn out to be rather prohibitive. First of all you need to build Heaven and launch it into space and supply it with necessities such as oxygen, clouds, angels, togas, and harps. Then there is maintenance: things like a meteor shield which need to be constantly repaired when punctured. But most expensive of all is the transport and shuttle service. You need to capture the soul at the moment of death with metaphysical tongs and insert it into a high tech vacuum tube. And run a constant shuttle service containing and boosting these canisters into space on a trajectory to Heaven. It might be doable, except for the numbers: Millions of people die every day who would have to be transported constantly. (The only way to get around the enormous logistical problems and the extreme expense would be to invent a God or Several Gods who could be dragooned into helping with the initial construction and the ongoing minute by minute transportation. This is under research by both organizations.)

The suggestion was made that maybe Oists could just -lie- to the people, only -promising- a heaven. Once people are safely dead and turning into compost they can't very well complain, can they? But that false advertising market niche has already been filled by religions who are willing to initiate force against those muscling in on their scam, oops, I mean their market sector.

(Edited by Philip Coates
on 2/04, 7:57pm)

Post 26

Saturday, February 4, 2006 - 8:08pm

Link

Edit

LOL!

Phil...you're bad!

Post 27

Sunday, February 5, 2006 - 2:17am

Link

Edit

Strong materialists or AI folk will dispute my "hope" of a kind of afterlife, a scientific case for a kind of "universalism" which quantum-mind could imply;

A quantum mind would be a kind of particle, a brief coherence of brain-sized matter-waves in a universal Feynman diagram. "Particles" are thread-like paths between scattering "events".

Implications are somewhat like the crude metaphor; a snowflake crystalizes from a confluence of myriad steam atoms into a specific form on its journey to the sea from which it was evaporated. But we don't strive to crystalize our lives then evaporate in vain. We are part of a chain of living causality - field as it were, in an immense fractal-like entity which evolves in complexity. Our first "ancestor" is the big-bang. Our DNA, and influence on the DNA of others by even casual actions, are part of this living chain.

Its too bad we can't make it part of our consciousness. No doubt if we could be aware of the value we are instilling in it, people would act more like angels than men. When I go to the library, or an old church, some can sense it.

I wouldn't be surprised to "wake up" as it were one day, just like coming out of hypnotic trance (immersion) I fall into while fragging the enemy in a game of doom or quake, and choose some other cartoon-avatar to teleport into "the Matrix" as it were.

Until evolution and consciousness can be demonstrated, I have cause for my SWAG and hope, which isn't unique to myself. That encourages action, which is better than believing this is just a brief novel phenomena with no greater significance. Practically, you'll get more flies with plausable eternal-existence honey than death-is-it scepticism. Those recovering from the fear of hell notwithstanding anyways.

Scott