After writing it, I felt that this post was a bit "over the top". I thought of deleting it, but decided to leave it in, since it actually does connect to many of other ideas. It's just that I don't think our situation is quite this dark. I've got to stay away from Russian novels ... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs We really should give a nod to Maslow's attempt to visualize the human situation in terms of "needs", which are almost the same thing as "values". Let's discuss Maslow's ideas - assuming that we somehow manage to "value" what we "need". My general impression is that Maslow's summary is somewhat misleading. It tempts us to over-simplify human motivation and overlook the fantastic complexity of these "needs". Once we shift to "values" and unpack the "...

Socialism and Capitalism are both ways of combining theories of value with practices "on the ground" which purportedly reflect these perceived values. SOCIALISM It seems that Socialism pays special attention to three value-related concepts: "Fairness" in the system of allocating things of value . This needs to be unpacked a bit since there is a different concept, also called "fairness" in capitalism. The two concepts are so different that we can see part of the dispute as encouraged by a problem of language. The same word used in opposite senses, as in " newspeak ". Equal influence on public policy. The "government" should act on behalf of all citizens and not be dominated by a certain segment. Being "rich" should not equate to being politically powerful. One person, one vote, not one dollar one vote. Since "Socialism" is fundamentally a political world view , "socialists" are, of course, willing...

It's natural to ask whether all this speculation matters. Asking this, it is easy to slip into the trap of making general conclusions and offering general advice for those who may agree with me on the issues raised here. That's a mistake. All I can do is say what it means to me  Others may draw their own conclusions. Basically, I can ignore religion's claims of authority (derived from beyond the observable Universe) as well as its claims that its insights trump observation reality. If I compare my life and priorities with others who allow religion to totally dominate, the advantage is huge. Millions are willing to die for their particular religious fantasy. Millions of others willingly surrender their right to chose for themselves in matters of great personal impact. It matters. This blog recognizes that I am embedded in a culture that is strongly influenced by "Christian" values and mythology. Many of us are broadly familiar with the stories in the Bible. However...

For the moment, let me talk about the world of human experience as "E". The world that Science investigates is assumed to exist a part from human experience , although we can only know it through human experience. Without really thinking about it, we imagine the "real world" to be about the shared experience: verifiable, consistent and augmented by what we call "reason". But we have long admitted that Universe, which I will call U, is not the same as "E". In fact, we assume that we can never know "U" entirely, directly or completely. We all know that "E" is not the same for each of us. In fact, it is quite remarkably different between different cultures and different times or even for a single individual throughout his or her lifetime. The question at hand is, is there anything "out there" apart from E and U? In most religious traditions the answer is "yes".  Most religions postulate a universe in ...

In Alien 1979, we were introduced to a creature that invades its host and connects itself so deeply to the host's internal organs that removal of the invader will kill the victim. When religion is installed in the mind of a baby and left to grow for years, disentanglement seems close to psychological suicide. The human "self" is so entangled with the invader that survival without the resident alien seems impossible. In fact, the invader has become the "self". The alien egg is planted soon after birth. The victim is raised in a deeply religious household that is itself part of a religious culture. Inside the bubble, the fantasy is daily reality. This is particularly insidious for women, who may find themselves mothers in their early teens, saddled with caring for (and infecting) families of their own long before they develop brains that are capable of "pushing back" against bubble-think. Religion tends to be "hard wired" into generations of wo...