Crazy insane work load open thread *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Sep 01 2010 at 8:49 pm | Filed under: Open Threads
After a year of professional drought, I’m having a week of deluge. Blogging will continue light at least through tomorrow. I’m grateful for the money this will generate, but I could wish for a steadier, less hysterical work load. Of course, next week, when this ends, I’ll be again bemoaning the lack of paying work. Really, you just can’t please me.
In any event, I always look forward to all the interesting stuff you guys post at these Open Threads, so I hope you’ll avail yourself of this opportunity while I go and drown what’s left of my brain cells in a loathsome stew of securities law and fraud claims.
UPDATE: Just FYI, Steven Gilbert, at Sweetness & Light, needs your help. This could be any one of us bloggers in the hot seat. Blackfive has more if you’re confused about what’s happening here — and it’s not pretty. And Glenn Reynolds gives information how bloggers can protect themselves.
UPDATE II: Random factoid — at this precise moment in time (10:00 p.m. in California), I’m getting readers from Kabul, Afghanistan and from Singapore. I think that is beyond cool. Me! With global reach!
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“Really, you just can’t please me.”
You’re our bouncing book worm. In one thing and then the next.
Since it’s an open thread, I thought I might repost a (edited and expanded) comment I made in reply to an article on ZeroHedge that discussed (among other things) the inability of modern people to live without distractions (i.e music, chatter, etc.). The author thought it was an aversion to being introspective. I offered a different take on it. I wonder what the esteemed readers (and blog owner) think about this issue. Just some food for thought that may or may not interest anyone.
I wonder if most of (American) humanity’s need for “noise” to drown out thought is due to the denigration of religion. (I’m agnostic myself but I respect the positive effects that sincere religious belief has on people.) Has our society, by removing man’s oldest source of certainty (and his only hope for protection from his own mortality) made it necessary for us to constantly distract ourselves lest our minds begin to contemplate our short lives and very long deaths?
Philosophers may be able to accept that they are just “dust on the wind” but how does the person whose day to day life is mostly druggery and who is constantly reminded of their lack of “importance” (because of a lack of money, good looks, or talent) cope with their life without hope of an eternal reward? “Pie in the sky by and by” is a sarcastic but somewhat accurate description of what religion provided to the vast majority of humans who are never going to get their “pie” (as defined by our movies, books and TV) in their mortal lives. The “poor shall inherit the earth” and the verse about a camel, the eye of a needle, a rich man and heaven both, in my mind, are examples of how religion redefined success in this life from the material to the spirtual. Material success is always relative, and even in a rich society such as ours, it is inevitable that the many will feel “poor” compared to the rich few. Spiritual success is available to everyone (ignoring predestination, a pernicious doctrine that offended my sensibilities during my religious early years–my apologies to the Calvinists among you).
One of the few things that the Marxists got right is that “religion is the opiate of the masses.” (This is not a comment on the truth of religion, just on its effect on most of humanity–it makes bearing the vissitudes of life much easier and encourages acceptance instead of anger.) However, by eliminating the “drug” that both reassured and (at times) elevated the behavior of the majority of humanity, society has created a need for a new “drug” that has all the bad effects of the old “opiate” with none of the good effects.
The comfort of truly believing (and feeling every day) “What a friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear!” would be incalculable and I envy those that possess this belief. Life’s struggles and sorrows, with no deeper meaning available and no hope that these will give way to an eternal reward, seem overwhelming to contemplate and therefore will not be contemplated. As an agnostic, I still have the advantage of a religious background and a small, but real, hope that a loving God exists. Thus, I am able, like Job, to reject the devil’s advice to “curse God and die.” If you have little exposure to and no belief in God and have been taught by society your entire life that only fools and mental defectives would even consider the possibility of God’s existence (or the desirablity of such), how can anything except dulling the pain with drugs or distracting ourselves with trivialities be logical?
I think staring into the abyss of eternity without rose colored glasses is just too much for most of us and that the desire for constant noise and false enthusiasms are just an effort to distract ourselves from the fact that “life is short and then you die.”
Before you protest that surveys show how many Americans believe in God, please note that a survey response and true belief are different things. A century ago, virtually 100% of Americans, if asked, would have said they believe in God (due both to social pressure and widespread belief). However, the fraction of people whose stated belief was expressed in their life (meaning it was internalized to the extent that if affected their everyday behavior) was much smaller. Today, the number of Americans for whom a stated belief in God is more than pro-forma lip service is small enough that these people stand out (and are constantly belittled and attacked for their trouble) from society at large.
Regardless of your opinion of the “truth” of religion it has always met a deep need of humanity. Society, by making even superfiscal religious belief not “cool,” has removed a important emotional “stabilizer” for most of humanity. They are filling that need with drugs, narcissism and other distractions that are just as illogical and much less socially valuable. The Taoists (via Robert Louis Stevenson) said “To travel with hope is better than to arrive.” Perhaps the real value of religion is that it helps us travel with hope, regardless of whether the destination we desire exists.
Similar arguments (as my wise wife pointed out) can be made for the denigration of family and love of country that the Left has also labored so hard, and mostly successfully, on. It is as if their goal is to remove all psychological supports and sources of comfort from humanity. To what end, I wonder. Is it in the hope that we will worship them instead, as the source of the only benefits that matter (those in this world) and to convince us that nothing, except the material things they control, are of any value? Perhaps posterity will regard this as the greatest crime of the Left, that they broke the heart and spirits of mankind to make us more tolerant of their dreams of power.
garyp says,
> I think staring into the abyss of eternity without rose colored glasses is just too much for most of us and that the desire for constant noise and false enthusiasms are just an effort to distract ourselves from the fact that “life is short and then you die.”
I think a phrase such as “staring into the abyss of eternity” is a rather nihilistic way of looking at things and risks ennui. I’m here for about 100 years. My dog, about 15. We are born, we live, and we die, all of us. It’s a part of our nature, a part of what it means to be human.
Four thousand years ago there must have lived at least one husband and wife upon the Mesopotamian plains, raising their kids, and these example parents surely had more human wisdom than I have. (And I am sure there were quite dumb parents, too.) They had less accumulated knowledge and toys than we have today, but they weren’t much different than you and I in their general nature. Four thousand years from now there will be a husband and wife raising their children and they will behave a lot like those parents of four thousand years ago. So for me there is no abyss of eternity to despair over.
Now, that 52.5% of Americans who were responsible for electing Barack Obama as our president, THAT is something to despair over. One hopes it will be an object (or do I mean abject?) lesson that will serve for centuries, but I doubt it. A liberal friend of mine is certain that Obama’s efforts have been quite worthwhile, and that things would have been far, far worse for all of us had Obama not taken the actions he’s taken. Egads!