I've had some good thoughts, realizations, and ideas about how best to live one's life. I suppose everybody has, and I really have no right to think that mine are any better than anyone else's. So why share them? I suppose that it's part of a larger system of neural cross-pollination happening across networks of individual minds, and that I had better be willing to accept a few new ones as well as pass some of my own out.
That's what bugs me about fundamentalists, no matter what you tell them, they're so convinced that you're wrong that they'll never absorb anything from what you're saying. It's sort of like talking to a bot in chat. And you can tell it, too, that's what annoys me.
Really though, it's a protection mechanism for a meta-organism built of memes. I suppose I have my own, to protect my mind from being absorbed into the amoeba-like mass of any particular religion.
But is it so bad to be absorbed by a particular religion? In discussion tonight I noticed that religion is the combination of philosophy and ritual. Those are the two really important aspects to an effective method of subconscious control. Ritual without philosophy is aimless and ultimately ineffective and potentially harmful; and philosophy without ritual still allows the subconscious free-reign of your life. Sort of like having a network plan without actually implementing it.
And that network plan will be tested by the implementation. If the philosophy is lacking, then no amount of ritual will make it an effective method of managing anything. So then you've got to have a corrective mechanism, which I suppose would be (in our case) some sort of analog measurement of whatever state you're trying to adjust.
I think a good one would be "overall sense of well-being". There are others, like mass, energy, productivity as defined by financial income, reproductive success, physical prowess, etc.
Although those things, I think, ultimately are discarded as the person realizes the true goal, whatever that is that brings about a strong, lasting sense of well-being that can stand up to the tests of everyday existence (other people).
I'm sure it's easier to be zenlike when you're a hermit.
To the end of creating more peace in my life, I'm going to try to incorporate ritual and philosophy into my life. There are some other components which are better left for another post, but I plan to create a "church", to use the vernacular.
What is a church? It's a group of people who attempt to synchronize their memeset as it is expressed in their behavior, ultimately attempting to achieve a particular goal. This is done constantly and naturally in every small group of people, and also in large ones. Sort of like cellular/organ/system cooperation.
I have a very strong aversion to the idea of a church, but that is because of the ones that I have been exposed to. Whenever anyone's attempted to get me to join their church I feel unsettled, and I think they sense it. I think they sense that, No, I'm not going to go to your church. The feudalistic nature of the modern Christian religion is what irks me.
I know I have to give up control, but I don't want to give it up to physical incarnation. I like my gods amorphous. I think that's a dangerous precedent, really, and I completely understand why Muhammad didn't want people to draw his picture (that doesn't explain why anybody would try to kill someone else for doing so, that's really missing the point).
Time for sleep.
