Purpose, part 2

In my previous post, we looked at purpose and man's homocentric view thereof. Much as Galileo was persecuted for insisting that the Earth was not the center of all the universe, when one says that man is not the central, final purpose of the universe we find ourselves persecuted by those who hold on to anthropomorphic Gods and mythos. When we suggest that morality and purpose could be self-generated, we are hit with faulty logic that is the basis of our society and most bed time stories. But that does not invalidate our argument, it just makes it unpopular. It is well recorded that evolution - in it's myriad of forms - is not only the most likely and reasonable of theories on how we came to be, but also that the United States is second only to Turkey as far as western nations in the wide spread acceptance of the theory. The only debate really, is if Turkey can be reasonably considered a western nation.
One of the sources of confusion is the labels applied to evolution and religious belief. Where a Christian, Jew, or Muslim may say "I know there is a God", and (at least in their terminology and definitions) an agnostic would say they are fallicious, the scientifically minded person still calls evolution a theory. The religious immediately sieze on this - "See, you have no faith in your argument; you talk of probabilities while I speak of spiritual truth". It is a different arena of discussion. The religious person now that there is no hard evidence for their belief system but they use their desire, their fear, and yes, their faith to eliminate the gap between what is presented to them and what they feel is truth. The scientifically bent may believe in evolution just as strongly and with a greater sense of certainty when the lights are off, yet they refuse to enter a dogmatic phase: "I am right and you are wrong." is, in the ideal scientific arena, an impossible statement to make. They acknowledge the portion of the argument that goes "To the best of what I have been presented and currently hold as knowledge in my mind, the belief that I am espousing has greater evidence and likelihood than the one that you are championing. I can't prove that you exist outside of some sort of coma hallucination - to get all Descartes on you - but as a matter of faith I accept that you do in fact exist, that you speak what you truly believe, and that we are in disagreement. We go ahead and assume these parts of the arguement"

Yet, one cannot discount that there may be more to the story. Newton believed that gravity worked because of an ether throughout which everything is transmitted. Einstien destroyed that ideology, but in the end posited an absolute time-space matrix throughout which everything exists and lives in relation to one another. The ideas are similiar, but Einstien's is much more advanced and intricate; in the true sense of the world, it is more subtle. But he had to destroy the old paradigm of ether to construct a new, albiet similiar, paradigm of what "space" is.
In the same way, we needed (and as I rather less eloquently than Einstien attempted to do in my last post) to destroy the prevalent ideologies of morality and purpose before we could construct a new view of it.
Words are fickle things. A friend of mine and I argue constantly over them: she believes that the current usage, since it is the popular and known usage, supercedes the original intention of the word and that I get bogged down in etymology rather than move forward in conversation. I am a lover of what something is intended for and clarity thereof. We both have positive arguments and I believe it comes down to a matter of degree. Shakespeare, the author most people reference in "Proper English" loved portmanteaus and slang, often making up or altering words to suit his immediate purpose and corrupting the language of the time. In the end, recognizing the original intention of something as well as it's current usage and emphasizing the aspect that is necessary for the situation is the correct solution. So let's look at purpose:

The online etymology dictionary has this to say:

purpose

c.1290, from O.Fr. porpos "aim, intention" (12c.), from porposer "to put forth," from por- "forth" (from L. pro- "forth") + O.Fr. poser "to put, place" (see pose). On purpose "by design" is attested from 1590; earlier of purpose (1432).

This is kind of what we thought - it has to do with intention, the phrase "by design" is kind of funny here, considering the subject matter. But let's just go ahead and eliminate the non-religious person's definition, which is more akin of the word "reason"; they would say there is a purpose in a tree's side exposed to the sun growing faster than the shady side - but that is a reason. There is no intent there, it is simple cause and effect.
So, since we went all Galileo on purpose in the last post, can we - now understanding where the Earth is in relationship to the solar system, perhaps find greater systems? Can we, taking purpose back from the great "Father God", now look for intent and aim in the universe as a whole and perhaps find a more comprehensive understanding? And once we do that, can we modify our own self-generated purpose based on a detected intent on such?
That's what we're looking at next....

Purpose

The other day we bought a new digital camera. Walking into the SuperMegaElectronicsStore, you are confronted with just over seventy four thousand digital cameras in more colors than the human eye can register. They have varying degrees of attributes, varying "megapixels", differing "blur reduction" and "motion reduction" technologies. We found ourselves - although we had no idea that anything over 3 is complete overkill - cooing at the cameras with the whopping 10 megapixels and underwater focus technologies... how great it would be to be able to make three story tall prints of stunning clarity to capture our scuba adventures!! This is advertising. It not only convinces us that the product is better, but sometimes has to convince that we need something we never actually wanted in the first place.

I remember being on my 'path' rather well - sometimes I'm fond of the adventures, other times I'm resentful of the false ideologies that led me down certain roads. I remember attending a lecture where one of the most intelligent men I've ever had the pleasure to hear in a live lecture said, essentially, that he went to Harvard Divinity and heard all these atheist and agnostic professors rallying against religion and made the conscious decision to still be a Christian, no matter how much they had evidence and philosophical persuasions to the opposite. He made the decision based on purpose - that a Christian life, even if on the surface holding a certain fallacy that could only be explained by faith, held purpose; a religion free life could hold no such claim.
Two of the major tenets that held me in a religious ideology were the argument that only in a "God" universe could we have a reasonable moral system, and secondly, only in a religious universe could we have some sort of purpose. I was even cocky as I attacked my friend's moralistic codes, things founded on Judeo-Christian ethic. I spouted off about the necessity of a Hedonistic lifestyle in an agnostic weltanschuung. I was convinced.

There are problems with this line of thought. The first is the assumption, which is popular in theological thinking, that a moral system is only applicable to a population if it comes from without the population. Of course, democratic governments (and to an extent, Communist and socialist ideologies) would say this is not true - they have generated a government - a legal moral code - of the people, not from some divine right. A moral code, when thought of in the monarchist view, is handed down and theologians hold on to the idea that morals, to be absolute must in fact come from the absolute. It also helps that it comes from a father figure to deal with whatever parental issues are running around inside each of us, I suppose. But in truth a moral code is not necessarily something handed down from the absolute - indeed, a moral code need be flexible and not absolute, so as to change with the tides of the times - morals need to be applied not blindly followed.

The second is the idea of purpose. Of course, the religious person's purpose is not that enviable to begin with - it is Pinocchio serving Gheppetto. A subservient ideology of endlessly sing a creator's praise, or an issuing in of their kingdom - a creator by the way, that cruelly sets down a moral code, a systematic free will, and a punishment system for using the second of the three systems that involves eternal damnation (or even worse under a Calvinistic ideology - the exclusion of the second system - you simply burn or glorify based on God's will without any regard to choice or merit)... wow, what a great purpose.
But if we posit a non-religious worldview, setting up a basic ideology of existence without father-Gods or angels or miracles, they will complain that we are - like the Calvinists - merely along for the ride, without free will, and at the mercy not of a God who at least embodies justice (though a rather contradictory one) - we are worse, simply evolved apes who are doing the bidding of an evolutionary DNA - simply spreading our seed so a chain of protiens can flourish! How is that greater of purpose?!
Well, truly, in a purely reductionist world, that is a view. Of course, you could also say you are confusing the mechanism by which we came to be with an eternal and external purpose model. We could, instead, much as we have done in a moralistic ideology, decide to generate a purpose either individually or as a group. But that's thinking on the eighty year plan rather than the eternity plan you say? Well... I suppose it depends, but humor me that we can, suspend your disbelief and lean in as a pastor once asked. Let's return the favor to logic, science and great thought since we did it for people living in fishbellies, resurrections, floating axe heads and such. Over the next few weeks, we'll flush this idea out - establishing a base line of purpose before we even look at some of the more metaphysical ideas - which may or may not move our end product.

Find your purpose,
B.

Building A Foundation

My plate is full, my cup is overflowing, fish don't fry in the kitchen, time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like oranges. There was some mental whiplash. My plate is indeed full: I'm trying to get around to writing an article about the basic structure of Blogger's main template sections for Veritasti while I redesign it up to a professional level (graphically); I'm working a real job; I'm supposed to be writing a friend's website while waiting for the domain/isp work on another site to get done... it leaves no time for goofin' around. And the play's the thing!
Of course, play requires work, games require rules. Let's flip the script and instead of looking at this work in progress, let's look at Veritasti's new 'JaPop' template I'm slowly developing. Hopefully the end product will have an effect of "Hey, neat idea, it's very fun and Japanese Yogurt Shop looking.. woah, look at that detail in the lollipop, how'd he get the sugary glossy strand look?" The success remains to be seen. Of course, the frivolity of the design comes from hours upon hours of work. I'm working all my graphics from absolute scratch - hand drawn work - right now I'm making a giant swirl lollipop for a sun in my slowly growing virtual summer day theme made of virtual candy. The renderings, the mathmatics, the color swatches, the pixel by pixel fine tuning - and then of course we realize in the end, everything we see on the screen is actually a manipulation of two things - a 0 or a 1, firing off little shots of light at different frequencies. Of course, we don't really look at a webpage and see: 01001110101010100101111001110, nor do we even care to see something like this (which is the CSS for the peppermint flower):

#leftbotf {
background: url(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIekTGkN8rkkiI8f6wWWB_iNrXCay5GKFLbPscYj7BYmHM_AoEcaJbLhdEYThmyZY3Bq9tfMRU9_m3zVtkXT-ppcaXr0D13kbgD0fP8UYnlM2Hh0zFqzouIzdCmRkwF1u2ICuFmIknaNY/s400/botL.png);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position: bottom left;
height: 240px;
width: 100%;
position: fixed;
bottom: 0px;
z-index: 4;
}

No one, myself included, finds that visually appealing to look at. However, combine it with

in the body of the code and a file called "botL.png", and you now have a peppermint candy flower with lime jelly wedge flowers. Of course, the picture itself is nothing but that 001001111010010110101001 from earlier. And the appearance is something quite different than the actual behind the scenes ugliness. Yet to a programmer, (think Link in the first Matrix), it becomes beautiful.
Much like Blogger Templates and people's interest in the final pretty product rather than the base structure, when we say 'our plate is full' we reference the plate, but we never take time to look at the actual chinaware. We give it a courtesy nod and then we immediately start talking about what's on it. The Taoists have a great metaphor for life: they compare the Tao and all of us to a field of flowers - when you look out upon the field, you see all these magnificent blossoms. What we tend to overlook however, is the soil underneath - the actual field itself from which the beauty grows and to which it will one day return. We never pause to look or thank the loam beneath the flower petals - it's to messy down there, smells funny.
My life it seems, is gaining a semblance of normalcy. This morning as I made myself some coffee and took a bite of danish, I contemplated a nap before work; I quickly recounted the television schedule wondering if I had missed anything over the week; I started a load of laundry and chuckled at the video of our President ducking Iraqi footwear; I thought about the different phone plans through AT&T and Verizon weighing the advantages of the Bold versus the Storm. I started to listen to a 'Learn Italian' CD in preparation for a possible Tuscan vacation next year. This, by all means, is a rather normal life. It would be pleasant to stop the inward searches and lay content in this new land.
I once wrote that for us to have a moral and social outlook that made any sense we needed to first establish why we're here. In the much belated 23Cantos (I'll tell you how it ends right now) I propose that in the end, we are both art and artist, but more than that, we are art, artist, art critic, museum guide, private collector, and most often if not most importantly, middle aged couple from Iowa that has no idea what the hell we're looking at. In order to truly appreciate the masterpiece of our existence, we have to understand what the artist was trying to portray in the first place, what's the message hidden in each and every stroke. And we have to appreciate it on many levels. We must experience the piece. The piece in question is not some separate thing from us, it is in fact ourselves. We are at the same time undeniably individual entities that are completely made up of the most basic of common materials and inextricably integral parts of the universe in which we find ourselves living; as the flower is seen completely separate from the earth upon which it too is completely reliant and made up of.
We don't need this information, but a true critic should not only appreciate the surface of a thing, but the grace and complexity within that makes it so. Try applying this to everything in your life, and as we look deeper, so will our own depth increase...

Dive deep!
Bert.