revenge of the private life

It's often illuminating to actually read the classic books that have become famous cultural references...even clichés. Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is an excellent example. Before, I would've parroted the common idea that Jekyll and Hyde are two sides of one person that are in constant conflict. Now, it's abundantly clear that the relationship between them is far more nuanced in the source. And this loss of understanding comes with a loss of the insights the book portrays about the tangled complexity that a person's private life can take on. 

To start with, Jekyll admits upfront that he's always had a hidden side of himself, and it's a side that's had antisocial (...to say the least...) tendencies. His potion for manifesting the soul in a more direct bodily form merely provides a channel for that hidden side. The shallow interpretation that Jekyll is good and Hyde is bad fails immediately. Rather, Jekyll is the complex ambivalent whole and Hyde is one part temporarily separated. Hyde is Jekyll's opportunity to live out a private life freed from the blows to reputation that would normally be the consequences. He's Jekyll worst sets of impulses driving full-speed with all the brake lines cut. This is a form of freedom, despicable as it is. 

The pair share memories and in that sense they cannot be separate people. Personal memory is part of the essential definition of what distinguishes one person from another. And, just like setting up the mundane details of a private life, Jekyll starts by being all too happy to accommodate for Hyde. Hyde is provided with his own entrance and own discreet servant. To his upstanding lawyer's alarm, Hyde has a right of inheritance to all of Jekyll's possessions if Jekyll is gone. Finally, there's the obvious point that Jekyll drinks the potion regularly to give Hyde time to enjoy himself. Two beings in all-out war wouldn't keep drinking the potion to let the other take over for a while. Jekyll wants to give himself over to his private life, personified by Hyde...at first. Similarly, Hyde is fine with escaping into Jekyll to preserve the neat arrangement. Private life or not, the pair need to continue to make a living and take part in the public life of society with its interactions with lawyers and bankers and so on. They each recognize the uses for the other. Hyde's psychopathic selfishness approves.

Yet again this is the source's greater nuance and allegorical insight. To me the text is explicit that Hyde isn't an unthinking beast, just as Jekyll is no perfect angel. In the time periods that someone is gratifying their immoral and/or socially-shamed private life, they remain capable of normal thought. As already mentioned, this capability to think about long-term ramifications is how they're able to justify giving up the private life's, er, liberties again. Hyde's lack of empathy or any concern for society, as well as the greater strength and speed of his passions, results in a truly despicable level of self-control in the moment. But he can form coherent plans, albeit fear-driven ones, and manage to speak with some minimal courtesy when he must.

Naturally, the conflict does develop further. The need for rising dramatic action demands it, of course. It wouldn't reach a climactic ending if it stayed in a harmonious compartmentalization of public and private lives. My guess is that more people manage this sort of split than we hear about—by definition these successes are quieter than the catastrophic failures. I'd say that the best moral is that people need to find a compromise between their desires and the rules they live by. Jekyll's hardly the first who's ever needed to find a productive or at least harmless outlet. Smacking strangers in the face is bad, but punching a punching bag isn't. An extremely strict society that has no place for meeting the needs of the whole person isn't great. Generally speaking people are better off when they live authentically instead of setting up a private life. I don't think that's much of a revelation these days, though.

The striking aspect of the developing conflict between Jekyll and Hyde is its similarity to the experience of the addict. As with an addiction, the actions of Hyde escalate. The urges that drive Jekyll and Hyde adapt by requiring more and more drastic acts to achieve the same satisfaction. With Hyde this is accelerated because he isn't repelled by the more drastic acts in the way that a whole person would be. Jekyll narrates that while releasing Hyde was difficult in the beginning, his growing adaptation to Hyde gives him greater hesitation—represented by requiring greater doses of potion—in going back to his complete self. At the same time, he feels obligated to spend more and more effort undoing or compensating for the shameful things he does as Hyde. He feels that he's begun to go too far, but like an addict he cannot give it up or slow it down. After all, Hyde's appeal to Jekyll is a lack of moderation: normal limits on the self are inactive in that persona.

As if all this weren't intriguing already, the story makes another fine point that rings true: the revenge of the private life is that the lines blur. His mounting horror and desperation about his private life is accompanied by increasingly spontaneous switches to Hyde. One subtle effect is that this can be simply embarrassing, given that Jekyll's clothes are too big for Hyde. Addicts too are subject to any embarrassments that their out-of-control addiction leads to. Furthermore, he's eventually unable to conceal Hyde from his staff at home, in the manner that addicts are rendered unable to conceal their addictions from close associates over time. 

Jekyll becomes so fearful of transforming that he puts off sleeping or relaxing his self-resolve. The side of him that's primary is arguably changing from Jekyll to Hyde, bit by bit. Hyde was akin to a mask worn by Jekyll, but is Jekyll becoming more akin to a mask worn by Hyde? The more that a particular identity is engraved into someone's brain, deepening neuronal paths, then the harder it is to disrupt its activation. Reactions that are appropriate for the second identity start to cross over. Jekyll stops playing with fire by embracing Hyde, but he continues to feel the desire to give in, as if Hyde is growing restless. This is like someone who discovers that a starved urge will "take on a life of its own" after it's been indulged many times. When he releases Hyde to get some relief, Hyde's passions are stronger than ever. 

Then Hyde does his worst, which as everyone knows is "hitting rock bottom". Hyde is in trouble with the law and escapes by switching to Jekyll, who's absolutely contrite now. After rock bottom, he's more than eager to cut off Hyde altogether. Only now is the shallow picture of "good and evil sides fight" relevant. Again like an addict who's recovering by remaking himself, Jekyll commits himself to doing all the good he can and resuming his normal life before the potions. And again again like an addict in recovery, he's protected from the temptation of Hyde by his feelings of repulsion at the kind of person he once was. 

For him there cannot be a happy ending. One day he's feeling particularly complacent about his present moral superiority, and in that moment Hyde returns. His fear of the law's punishment motivates him to try to mix up the potion, but an ingredient is unavailable. He locks himself in at home, only for others to assume that he's murdered Jekyll and break in. He resorts to suicide; in fact Jekyll has been murdered at last by Hyde.

While an eternal battle of good and evil is a superb theme in its own right, I must say that the day by day struggle to keep caring is one that resonates with reality better. If one's EEEEEEEVIL side grows into a formidable enemy, that's usually because we've made it into one ourselves. In the past I might've agreed that there's a terrible Hyde evilness lurking in every "human heart from conception"; now I'd rather say that we as humans just have the starting material, both biological and cultural, that we've inherited over many many generations. It's up to us to choose what to do with it.

out of order

Here's a quick way to express the change in perspective that helped dislodge me from my former faith-based beliefs (which were in the US white evangelical category). Back then, my commitment to those beliefs was the starting point of my thinking. Those beliefs literally were introduced to me first before I learned various other ideas. Then, because those other ideas happened to correspond very well to reality, I was obliged to try to harmonize those with the faith-based beliefs. I had to cram the pieces I'd been handed into the crooked frame that I'd been handed long ago.

The epiphany was to stop assuming these grandiose ideas were accurate to begin with. The reason behind this tactic is simple: ideas like talk are cheap. None should be necessarily trusted because an idea can be fabricated and spread so easily. The way to cope with the deceitfulness of ideas is to decide that each one, no matter where it came from, is only as accurate as the results of the the methods that are used to hold it up next to reality. The details of the results matter of course, but equally as important are the details of the methods. "Good" results obtained through unsound methods haven't gained much credibility for the tested ideas.

I'd gotten the order wrong. Another way to put it is that people shouldn't start with an end result in mind and then proceed to manipulate the facts so it remains feasible. The instructions to follow are: take the idea that you wish were accurate, consider what facts you'd reasonably expect to find due to the effects of the idea, then finally examine reality through appropriate methods and judge whether the expected facts have been found in practice. 

The change was like asking myself, "If I weren't someone who'd been raised to treat my beliefs as presumptions, who instead had to treat my beliefs as conclusions to be demonstrated, how well would that go?" The mental shift to giving the honest answer to this question was a lengthy process. After thinking out of order for so long, backtracking was the only way forward.

my response to the newest exvangelical book

The book I'm responding to is Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon, an author in my generation. Overall it's both thorough and heartfelt. The thoroughness resulted in more chapters than I would've expected. Each one is devoted to a different topic and does an admirable job at covering it. Rather than speak in generalities, the book contains direct quote after direct quote expressed in actual interviews. (This has the side effect of displaying the value of expert hard-working journalism.) It strikes from many angles, all of which are worthwhile.

At the same time, this book's heartfelt nature stands out. While this is more than a memoir, the author is impressively blunt about her personal background and long journey. Her story rises to the front time and again, and it's always relevant when it does. Yet she also brings in concrete stories from a wide range of people who have different experiences than hers. It's striking how emotional it all is.

After reading these accounts, I find myself surprisingly grateful for the middle-of-the-road evangelicalism I came through. (I'm going to use "evangelicalism" to mean "typical U.S. white evangelical Protestantism".) I wasn't part of theologically-liberal, metaphorical-Bible, Northeast-respectable Christianity. Nor was I part of an ultra-conservative, literal-bible, Southern-country-fried Christianity. My family was in the conservative but somewhat laid-back camp, as paradoxical as that might sound. Hell for the unsaved was there, the distrust of modern culture was there, the belief that real miracles took place in olden days was there. But I wasn't taught in a school with a dubious "Christian" curriculum, or forbidden from the local library, or kept completely isolated from mass media, or attacked by "physical discipline". 

I even was permitted to ask honest questions about what I had been taught—although years later I tore apart the standard evasive answers to these questions ("free will *mumble mumble* ", "God's mysterious ways *ahem ahem* "). Furthermore, I'm not part of a minority group that would've resulted in knee-jerk mistreatment by this culture. In a nutshell, my evangelical story was just far less traumatic. This is partially why it took me longer to exit the beliefs, of course. In that way I was privileged by comparison. I remember reading once that the unplugged people in the Matrix movie trilogy tended toward minority groups because they were the ones who were less likely to find the Matrix's reality acceptable... 

I had the luxury of not being shocked into moving on from evangelical faith-beliefs. I gradually discarded them based on my own growing awareness and internal realizations. Because of this important difference, I suppose I'm in a closely related but distinct category to most of the people McCammon is fixated on. Several other differences spring from that one. Perhaps the most obvious is that I feel that the word "deconversion" fits me (the reversal of conversion i.e. de-conversion), where the book consistently uses "deconstruction". Along the same lines, I wouldn't particularly mind the label "atheist" or "agnostic", where the book is abundantly clear that exvangelicals, such as the author, are frequently settling down in flavors of Christianity that suit their taste better: flavors with loose and/or progressive-compatible beliefs.

Let me emphasize that I'm not strongly opposed to these flavors. And I'm fine with exvangelicals drawing vaguely defined inspiration or comfort from these sources. They may claim that they derive a few beneficial moral teachings from these, too. I'll roll my eyes a bit but won't complain; I know there are many devotees of many religions throughout history who've preached wisely sometimes. The vital point is that exvangelicals have moved to the driving seat of their brains and lives, rather than following inaccurate ideas. They themselves are filtering out inaccuracies, rather than trusting in religious authorities and texts to do the filtering for them. In fact, my suspicion is that more than a few evangelical church attendees, especially in popular megachurches, quietly take this approach. They attend out of family pressure or a lingering appreciation for the rituals, for instance, but their own stances and behaviors don't align with the church's official standards (and they like it that way). 

I can't help thinking that a crucial philosophical difference is at work. "Exvangelicals" in my mold haven't reacted to the evangelical mindset by adopting softer (or "more flexible" if you prefer) definitions of religious "truth". Nor do we start worshipping questions and declare that real answers are impossible. Nor do we replace one set of premodern doctrines with a set of postmodern doctrines. We're much less determined to salvage or adapt the faulty belief system we were raised in. A zealous few pour effort into undermining it and pursuing deconversions—I don't do that myself but I certainly care about stopping its policy ideas from affecting the rest of society. Naturally, the people who actively "de-evangelize" are a small subset of us, similar to the small subset of evangelicals who actively evangelize.

Our discarding of the mindset was accomplished by adopting harder (or "more substantiated" if you prefer) definitions of the accuracy of ideas. We re-weighed the accuracy of the ideas we'd followed, and the ideas simply and honestly didn't measure up. "The love of Jesus is bigger than conventional religious concepts have said" isn't equivalent to "Whoa, every religion including mine has consisted of a massive self-perpetuating loop of disinformation". We're "exvangelicals" insofar as we share a past, because we were once part of that evangelical culture as well. 

Yet the distinction in where we ended up is illustrated by the statements of some exvangelicals in the book that atheism is nothing more than another "rigid perspective". I'd counter that I might or might not be atheistic; we should proceed as we would with any question, by laying out the practical boundary tests for what counts as atheism and comparing those stark specifics to the details of my beliefs. Words can be annoying, but my mold of exvangelical reacts to that by firming up a word to make it more useful instead of pretending that words don't serve purposes.

Fortunately, philosophical disagreement isn't a barrier to allying with each other on U.S. politics. This book is upfront about the major boost to exvangelicals' numbers by recent political shifts. As evangelicalism's totalitarian (or "Christian nationalist" if you prefer) impulses have risen to the surface, it has driven away the people who've never wanted their religion to be a force of oppression. I appreciated the focus on this phenomenon, which I hadn't noticed. I'd only noticed how blatantly satisfied most evangelicals appeared to be—from the famous leaders at the top all the way down to the high-turnout voters in the pews—with idolizing politicians who promised unmerciful control, and revenge against ideological enemies, and the rollback of cultural advancements. 

It makes sense that the sharpening of this knife-edge in the culture would prod people to finally make some hard decisions about what they're willing to be part of. My own exvangelical views had blossomed years before the present era, around the midpoint of Obama's first term. Disillusionment with W.'s terms had played some relatively minor role in the process. I was repulsed by two things. First, evangelicals proved themselves to be unconditionally supportive of multiple drawn-out wars. Second, they were enthusiastic to cast all Muslims, at home and across the world, as not merely the "tolerated believers in false religion" they were before but now as demonic tools. So the ugliness of the politics had already begun to show, but of course there was much more to come. All it took to push the ugliness further were politicians who have no capacity for shame.

Thus the exvangelicals have my earnest sympathies. It's awful what they've had to endure, but I'm glad  they've escaped. I'd consider them as being on my side...to the extent that's meaningful for either of us. The deconverted and the deconstructed shall get along just fine. And they'll have very familiar stories to exchange.

footprints

I've published a lot of entries here about the seismic shift in thinking I went through when I journeyed out of supernatural beliefs. That shift involved confronting a lot of philosophical hairsplitting and arguments—of varying quality. I must admit that some could seem too abstract to matter. But it's still worthwhile to counter the faux-intellectual justifications that people wave around, even as they're committed to their beliefs for different reasons altogether.

Despite what other faults philosophical discussion may have, it's managed to establish one conclusion beyond all doubt: metaphors are fantastic for communicating these ideas. I'll heed this lesson and offer one:

On one glorious mid-morning in summer, the owner of an all-too-costly house on a small hill near the sea decided to take a short walk along the beach. She made her way down by the water. To her surprise she found a set of fresh footprints already there. The trail of footprints started off in the distance from the left and continued to the right as far as the eye could see. She noticed that the footprints were like her own, but she hadn't gone for a walk here for more than a week. This shook her to the core, because she thought of herself as someone who had specifically paid a premium for special access to a secluded private stretch of beach. So...she needed to explain how these footprints could have happened.

The first explanation for the surprise footprints is the one anyone would leap to: another neighborhood resident took their own extended walk earlier in the morning. This explanation is obviously reasonable. But at the same time it might disturb the homeowner in the story, because it challenges her desire for privacy. 

Fortunately for her, people could easily come up with far more explanations. For example:

• The laws of physics have changed over time and diverge between places. Different laws of physics were in effect when the footprints were laid down, and these footprints only survived to the present day because of this. 
• The footprints are a hoax carried out by a frighteningly competent yet invisible conspiracy. This conspiracy is motivated by a scramble for grant money to investigate footprints. Or perhaps the evil corporations in the conspiracy are hoping to provoke people into paying for beach security or upkeep.
• At the time that Earth was created from out of nothing in the blink of an eye, footprints were also simultaneously created on the beach. Perhaps the footprints were included to test the faith of anyone who'd dare to believe that the Earth wasn't created from out of nothing in the blink of an eye.
• The footprints were miraculously formed by a sea-witch, whose goal is to draw people away from the truth. Or perhaps the sea-witch merely touched the soul of the homeowner so that she was blinded to the truth and thought that she saw footprints (or forgot that she made the footprints herself).
• The footprints were made by a spiritual being (albeit with human-like feet) that made a short visit to our mundane plane of existence. Or perhaps there was a visit from an earthly mystery creature unknown to biologists. Or perhaps a creature from far space traveled a tremendous distance for the sole purpose of taking a stroll on exotic Earth.

The point of comparing the first explanation to the alternatives isn't to necessarily claim that any in the group are flatly impossible. It's to underline that, at least to those who aren't trying to drag in their preexisting assumptions or aims, the alternatives deserve far more skepticism than the first. Could someone work hard to defend their preferred alternative as a valid "theory" just like any other? Could they concoct chains of reasoning that make their preferred alternative seem a bit more plausible for other reasons than the footprints themselves ("presuppositions")? 

Well...yes. Regardless, the first explanation continues to be the one that requires the least stretching to fit the plain footsteps that were seen. I came to a similar realization as I changed my perspective about the supernatural beliefs I was raised to follow. All the straightforward observations of reality I learned about were like multiple sets of footprints. Each set was unfabricated and unbiased and pointed in the same direction. Meanwhile the difficult project to integrate these observations into my former beliefs began to seem like outlandish avoidance of the inference that human footprints are usually left by human feet. 

I kept returning to the undeniable truth that I wasn't simply arguing with slick philosophies written by combative loudmouths who hated the viewpoint I identified with; I was in some sense strenuously arguing with the direct implications of the objective data. I was twisting my thoughts to steer clear of what mere footprints were "saying".

Furthermore, I had an ingrained queasiness for the theologically-liberal solution of fully adapting supernatural beliefs to fit reality. In my mindset at that time, following it would've involved dropping and/or rewriting significant chunks of my beliefs. I wasn't ready for that...and I couldn't get past having a lingering distaste for it. As I mentioned in past blog entries, I was taught to wholeheartedly follow beliefs that were accurate, not beliefs that were "inspirational". (Let me note that in the present I'm much less opposed to the liberal solution, although I'm still not interested in putting any energy or time into following it myself.)

The opposite strategy, preserving the beliefs and mentally rewriting the facts, also didn't occur to me. As quaint as it might sound now, I didn't assume that I could easily discard the well-supported facts I disliked. Experience since then has shown that all that's needed is to reframe them as lies told by journalists and societal elites...who are the Enemy of the nation. Or I could do the same by reframing them as lies told by people with socioeconomic power who are either consciously or subconsciously enforcing the oppressive status quo of inequality between classes and/or races and/or sexes. The next step after that would have been to latch onto infamous "alternative facts" instead, which come from sources that are careful to amplify only the bits of dodgy information that can be bent to fit the target's imagination. 

Nope, I was stuck. I accepted the strange notion that findings can be independent of people and their desires, even to the point of justifying a broad change in their thoughts. Eventually, my thoughts did indeed change. The apt metaphor for this phase is another well-known one for de-conversion: I began to understand that I was looking through the "goggles" of belief. The better I became at cautiously removing the goggles and taking a second look at observed reality, the more I had to confess that those beliefs were distorting instead of magnifying what I saw. Or it might have been worse than that. The goggles had misled me to interpret the footprints as the traces of something that had never really been there at all throughout the various scenes of my life.

evasiveness was an essential ingredient in the message of Lost

The tv show Lost evoked a wide range of reactions. One of these was the common complain that the show's writing was perceived as excessively evasive, especially during the show's second and third seasons. "I'm tired of the way that Lost never stops to explain everything that's going on." Fortunately, the creative minds (I will never refer to people as "creatives"!) working behind the scenes were able to negotiate the endpoint, which allowed them to plan and pace their episodes more evenly.

Of course, the project of keeping the show going was a crucial reason why some degree of evasiveness was always going to be needed. It would've hurt the show tremendously if its plot took a halt and had a character—probably a mythological figure suddenly appearing out of nowhere by a burning campfire—deliver a monologue with answers for every question. That would've been a lecture, not a show. And in the case of Lost, the unsettling lack of knowledge was actually one of its major emotional engines (complete with quivering strings on the soundtrack). Eliminating that would've drained its effect as surely as eliminating the "will they/won't they" question has drained the effect of many shows that have a central couple. Out of the many shows that copied the Lost formula, some were much quicker to reveal the explanation of the mystery in the premise...and then those shows spun wheels in-place trying to go somewhere interesting after the big revealing.

Nevertheless, as I watch the show again from my present mindset, I'm convinced that evasiveness was more than a practical requirement. It was essential to one of the very ideas that it played with: faith. The writers have admitted that the concept of faith was one of their inspirations. The characters have conversations about it several times, and their attitudes toward it change over time. 

To put it bluntly, Lost couldn't portray faith as thoroughly as it did and yet not be evasive. Faith needs evasiveness in order to be maintained and to be labeled "faith". If faith in the show was intended to be meaningfully comparable to the supernatural faiths of real people, then it had to share those faiths' evasiveness about precisely how reality is affected in any way by the things in those faiths. Evasiveness was a show ingredient, not an accidental oversight.

Why did the show need to be evasive about...

• ...faith in the personification of "The Island"? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about faith in the personification of a "Good Force". 
• ...the source and meaning of various visions that characters have? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about the source and meaning of various visions that religious followers have. 
• ...why numbers are bad luck or significant in some other way? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about why numbers matter in numerology. 
• ...how or why people are healed—or not—by their faith? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about how or why religious followers are healed—or not—by faith. 
• ...the connections between paranormal "scientific" occurrences and the island faith? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about the connections between paranormal "scientific" occurrences and religious followers' notions about the supernatural. 
• ...the connections between popular religions and the island faith? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about the connections between popular religions, which would be part of explaining how it's logically possible for all the popular religions to be equally accurate.
• ...the unseen actions of the competing supernatural figures on the island? So that it could imitate the evasiveness of religious followers about the unseen actions taken by their competing supernatural figures. 
• ...the details in the plans and goals of those figures, as well as how those plans and goals directed events? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about the details in the plans and goals of religious followers' supernatural figures, as well as how those figures' plans and goals direct real-world events. 
• ...the definition of a good or bad person in the eye of the island? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about how to definitively sort people into good or bad according to religious followers.
• ...whether any one character is lying or simply incorrect about island secrets at any moment? So that it could imitate the evasiveness about whether someone is sincere and knowledgeable about what they say about supernatural things.
• ...the so-called rules about what people (and human-shaped beings with uncanny powers) are allowed to do? So that it could imitate the evasiveness of religious followers about exact behavioral rules, which they debate amongst themselves endlessly.
• ...abnormal abilities or mental links that some people have? So that it could imitate the evasiveness regarding the abnormal abilities or mental links that some religious followers claim to have, such as clairvoyance and divine guidance, etc.
• ...the ancient past of the island's inhabitants who left behind exotic ruins and other structures? So that it could imitate the evasiveness of religious followers about admitting that ancient societies' "false religions" were every bit as vibrant as current religions. 

Having said all this, I must be clear that I wasn't one of the people who objected to Lost's perceived evasiveness. I don't demand that fictional stories be upfront about everything at all times. I believe the show's writing staff have been honest about their motivation to leave some things unsaid so that the audience could have differing interpretations, similar to the way that songwriters may refuse to decisively explain their lyrics. Questions are fascinating; the unknown lurking below the surface is thrilling and dangerous. (Lodge 49 too has a vibe of people pursuing an amazing realm which always seems perpetually a little out of reach,..although it's far more laid-back about it.)

That's why I'm in a position that's curiously opposite to any complainers who are also religious followers. When it comes to stories that anyone claims to be nonfictional, I echo their complaints. Evasiveness is an appalling quality for supposed truth-tellers to have. I'm stumped by how they aren't displaying the same attitude and criteria toward the stories that they consider to be simultaneously nonfictional and dreadfully important. Why should the faith stories someone was raised in be granted blanket exceptions—considering that the same people often have no qualms whatsoever in denying the same exceptions to the faith stories they weren't raised in ("how could they believe such nonsensical things?").  Lost can be evasive because, in the end, it's a TV show. Real-life ideas about how the universe works should not be.

mission inadvisable

It's an excellent idea to step back from time to time and approach a belief as a total outsider would. Otherwise, there's a strong tendency to slip into thinking a belief is reasonable merely due to comfort and familiarity. "Common sense" is often no more than a label for "the culture I grew up in". Unexamined assumptions invade and settle into someone like plant roots tunneling into cracks in rocks.

In the religious environment I emerged from, one of these assumptions was the mission to evangelize. Every follower had this mission, at least theoretically. Followers were expected to try their hardest to turn more people into followers. And this mission was for everyone's benefit: newly turned followers received transformed lives and afterlives, but they were also useful additions to the existing group of followers too. The whole concept seemed like a quite natural consequence of being a follower.

Yet now, after both literally and figuratively removing myself from that setting, I can look at this mission with fresh eyes. Through my present viewpoint, it appears...just...poorly thought-out. Its reliance on religious followers is so very inadvisable. If one doesn't assume upfront that it's their mission, then there's a truckload of superior alternative strategies for gathering new followers.

To be more specific: after granting the point that it's necessary for people to be followers before a god may show mercy to them, then using existing followers is an awful option for that god to take. It has vast powers and it would (supposedly) be overjoyed to have more followers to show mercy to. What could it be doing instead to lure more people into following?

• Distributing some more recent holy writings would be a good start. The current set has become overshadowed by insolvable controversies over the intended modern meaning of numerous sections. At the same time, debates have arisen over what to do with the sections that "appear" to suffer from the incorrect perspectives and barbaric social mores that were in effect at the time of writing. For that matter, the simple project of translating the writings into other languages has had its own share of controversies. Publishing an updated edition of the existing set of holy writings, and clearing up which writings in the set probably shouldn't have been included in the first place, would be good at a minimum.
• A god could speak out more frequently to prospective followers and even to self-admitted enemies. "Speak" refers to expressing audible words to multiple people at once, rather than popping up in hazily-remembered dreams or nonverbal impulses to attend a service. Although some wouldn't welcome the message, a lot of them would probably relish hearing from the one actual god—the experience would give them a solid reason to believe rather than keep them in undecided, half-hearted suspense.
• It could carry out undeniable, inexplicable acts of goodness in the world. What route to popularity could be more endearing? What could possibly be easier for announcing that it cares for people? Of course the good acts will need to be claimed so nobody blames any other gods that they have ideas about.
• A less showy but still deeply appreciated gesture would be for it to communicate its staggering knowledge to a wide variety of domains. At this point in human history, people who have expertise in domains other than theology have somehow gotten the strong impression that neither this god nor any other is involved in any way in their domains. Some have stated that their expertise indicates that no god of any real relevance can exist at all. It should resolve such conflicts and patiently go into detail about at what point their expertise went astray. Its sharing of knowledge would also have the side effect of immediately advancing society as a whole; who knows what inventive people could manage to do with the new knowledge.
• Most obviously, it could dispatch evangelizing beings who are far better suited than fallible finite followers. It created everything from scratch, so creating such beings would be no obstacle. They could have abilities to teleport, project loudly enough to reach entire crowds, shrug off dangers of all kinds, execute the occasional miracle, know every language, memorize the entire set of holy writings. Furthermore, they could complete the mission without the weight of a long history of self-righteousness and hypocrisy, which followers need to try to deflect in order to get in the door. Some people won't have a conversation on the topic until they get a sincere answer to the question, "Why has a good god been represented on Earth by people like that?"

the mystery con

Sometimes the urge rises to simply call something what it really is. Mystery is a con. Arguably the more impressive trick isn't to convince otherwise-shrewd people to believe in "truths" that lack confirmation (wishful thinking does most of that work); it's to convince them that the lack of confirmation is thrilling and sophisticated and broad-minded. Rather than honestly saying "I can't do a good job of thoroughly showing why you should accept my statements about the supernatural domain", the strategy of the mystery con is to say "My statements are far too amazing and otherworldly to be confirmed the way you would confirm any other far-fetched statement." The more that the speaker leaves to the listener's imagination, the more that the listener's own brain can complete the rest of the picture in whatever way they happen to prefer.

And it's doubly effective because, like any excellent con, it tugs on feelings in the listener. First, it emphasizes the speaker's special access to knowledge and the feeling of authority that comes with that: "Because I won't tell you how I know, you have no choice but to trust me as your primary source of information." Second, it stirs the inborn fascination that people have for the unknown. By nature the unknown is more interesting than the known. Through the glamour of mystery, the refusal to be upfront about a statement's base of evidence appears less like sly cheating and instead like suggesting that there are wonders out there—on the other side of the the limits of credibility, that is.

Third, it provides the invigorating experience of novelty and escape, because the statements of everyday life don't give off the same stink of mystery. It's nowhere to be found in the mundane statements that come up in the process of getting real tasks done or observing real characteristics of real things. The bluff that "Yes, there's more to the universe and it's very exciting!" can only be kept up if the speaker never quite answers reasonable questions about why anyone should be firmly convinced of their claims. 

Fourth, the mystery con boosts the pride of the listener. One would expect a feeling of embarrassment about believing in statements with inadequate support; no one wants to be the fool. Yet a statement that's been whitewashed with the color of intriguing mystery works in the opposite way. The listener is enabled to boast that they themselves are extra-special, or that their beliefs have extra-special layers, because they are chained to extra-special mystery statements—statements that go over the heads of dull normal people who merely use time-tested and well-established means to sniff out deception. (To be forthright and say the emperor has no clothes is to show that you aren't an extra-special multilayered person, of course.)

On the other hand, the lesson to be drawn from the mystery con isn't that uncertainty is repulsive. The attitude to take shouldn't be excessive in either direction. It shouldn't be reverent in the manner that the mystery con encourages, but neither should it reflect distaste. Being clear-eyed about uncertainty comes from admitting the undeniable limitations of the data and methods used to gather knowledge. Uncertainty just is. Idolizing the mystery of not-knowing is off the mark, but idolizing absolute certainty is too.

Furthermore, this difference in attitude contributes to an important difference in the approach to counter uncertainty. If someone isn't ruled by their craving for certainty, then they're far less tempted to do what countless humans have done ever since they mastered language: make something up to fill the gaps in knowledge and use the word "mystery" to bat away questions about their inventions. Both 1) to place flimsy statements in the gaps and 2) to take such statements at face value have been common practices for literal millennia. 

By contrast, the two corrective practices of 1) obtaining knowledge through painstaking work and 2) demanding that speakers go into detail about the work they did to get their knowledge, weren't all that common...and to an appalling extent aren't nearly common enough in the present day either. The purpose of the mystery con is to distract listeners from relying on these corrective practices and to give the older practices more credit than was ever deserved.

socialized truth

It's too easy to accuse the other side of being mindless. I can say that back when I was also someone whose life and thoughts revolved around sincere belief in supernatural concepts, thinking in depth about those concepts wasn't that strange. People would at least admit that it was good to love God with your mind and to learn more than the basics of the religion rather than be shallow. Of course, this part of the subculture sits side by side with a strong anti-intellectual bent of "stop analyzing and have faith instead". And fearful hostility toward publicly funded universities has only grown as the political divide between college attendees and the rest of society is purer than ever.   

Within that group, the strategy is to channel critical thinking into approved directions, similar to how there were approved "Christian" contemporary songs, approved "Christian" movies, approved "Christian" games, etc., etc. One approved direction for contemplation was to "engage with society" by focusing on specific targets. Scary postmodernism was a popular one: a caricature of postmodernism that claimed all beliefs were completely produced by, not merely colored by, cultural context. In a sense the traditional notion of "truth" didn't exist at all in scary postmodernism. It was often linked with total moral relativism, which was another approved target. 

The general line of argument was to contrast scary postmodernism to the timeless and objective statements of religion. Religion was a fixed point, neither coming from the surrounding society nor changing itself to fit in. Attempting to poke holes in scary postmodernism was a smug intellectual pastime that appeared in Christian media. The shoe was on the other foot; those postmodernists were the ones who weren't thinking coherently. Followers of religion obtained solid truth through time-tested methods. They weren't controlled by the ever-changing whims of popular sentiment. 

However, recently I had an amusing realization. Despite the attention that this subculture devotes to contrasting itself with scary postmodernism, I'd say that in practice it is an excellent example of truth that's been socially determined. One might call it socialized truth in order to playfully invite a comparison with the socialized medicine they dread. It seems to me that their truth is thoroughly socialized. Pursuing ideas that are too individualistic is one definition of grave heresy, after all.

They gather not only for mutual support but to hear other people tell them what the truth is (sermonize). They read their prized book, but it's sufficiently difficult and ambiguous that they're forced to rely on other people (or a predigested lesson written by other people) to decode it into "timeless objective truth" that has something comprehensible to say about current everyday life. They adhere to their inflexible moral rules, but deciding on what set of moral rules to have, such as minute restrictions about behavior and diet, depends on the other people in their particular religion and sect. Negative reactions from them are enough of a deterrent from committing violations. 

They vote as a bloc according to nonnegotiable political platforms, but the political opinions they hold, as well as the categorization of opinions into negotiable and nonnegotiable, come from what other people tell them is core to their identity. As for a wide variety of topics that are entirely separate from their supernatural beliefs, strangely their thoughts about those are still directed by other people who have supernatural beliefs that match theirs. (For instance, their thoughts about the best course of action to safeguard their own health and their community's health might come from their group rather than people who know what they're talking about.)

Overall, the overwhelming pattern is that their thinking is transparently steered by their social context. "I think about it this way because that's just what we think." Most followers of supernatural beliefs aren't hermits or prophets. They may not even be especially countercultural, really, if their beliefs are in fact held by a large subset of the people around them. Although they may loudly object that no one tells them what to think, I'm inclined to assume that they haven't worked very hard at deeply examining the beliefs that they say are precious to them. What an amazing coincidence that everybody in their context happened to "independently" reach the exact same conclusions over and over again...

On the other hand, their reliance on socialized truth is far from unique. Each individual has limits. Everybody needs to get truths from others. The vital distinction is the manner in which someone relates to socialized truth. As always the question to never stop asking is "How does the speaker know what they say they know?" The problem with cultures that explicitly endorse faith is that it encourages the mental habit of brushing over that important question! Socialized truth should be considered and chosen, not thoughtlessly absorbed. Trust in the speaker's credibility is essential, but credibility isn't a total substitute for the speaker explaining the work they did before they spouted something. To the contrary, the speaker's reluctance or inability to explain the work they did is a hint to lower trust in their babbling. If they worked hard to back up their statements then they should be proud to explain!

There are helpful signs either that someone is deliberate about socialized truth or that they're the opposite: nothing more than a yo-yo yanked to and fro by a culture they identify with. The signs I'm listing here aren't a complete list but only some of my favorites that echo the themes I tend to return to. First, a bad sign is when the socialized truth is conspicuously vague. "Truths" that seem to be avoiding verifiable details should raise suspicion about whether these supposed truths are undergoing any scrutiny before being accepted. Generalizations rest on top of specifics, not motivate frantic searches for justifications to shore up the generalization that came first.

Second, lack of nuance can be a possible sign of an undeserving socialized truth. The reality of many people is that they could claim multiple social groups, and the groups might not be in strict agreement. Reconciling the competing truths of their groups would take effort. They'd need to compare the "truths" coming from each and the basis for the truths. The end result would be a more complicated view with many sides and compromises. "As a _____ I think this, but as a ______ I also combine it with that." 

The lazier albeit less confusing alternative would be to make a blanket choice of a singular group and then enthusiastically accept whatever that group proposes. Then the socialized truths pushed by someone's other social groups have no moderating effect. The villains of that singular group can do no right, and the heroes of that singular group can do no wrong. Therefore another sign is when there's virtually no difference between all of someone's thoughts and the common thoughts of the group they idolize. One can be partially affiliated or allied with a group without reflexively echoing it in every way. Is someone thoughtfully choosing to identify with a group because some of its socialized truths are good matches, or is the group rewriting someone's ideas with socialized truths?  "I once thought ____ but now I realize this is something our enemies think, not us."

Third, when a socialized truth fits perfectly with preconceptions, that might be a reason to doubt. Just as the full reality of a person's social position is a complex mixture of group cultures, the full reality of all facts is a complex mixture. The expectation should be that some facts fit well with a preconception, some are merely compatible with it, and some clash with it. Each situation isn't identical with another, so the facts of the situations might or might not be identical. The speeds of falling feathers and hammers on the moon are famously different than the speeds observed at the gas-wrapped surface of Earth. Disagreements between facts and preconceptions can point to the need for deeper understanding. Socialized truths that solely confirm could be coming from someone who either intentionally selects facts to flatter and strengthen the group's beliefs...or twists facts to be more suitable...or passes along the unsupported rumors they like...or fabricates stories from start to finish.

Fourth, extremely rapid shifts in beliefs can be a sign of an improper acceptance of socialized truths. If there are established reasons for holding one belief, then uprooting that belief and replacing it would be a process. Those reasons would need to be carefully judged side by side with reasons to reject the belief. But if a socialized truth was adopted without much analysis, then replacing it is far easier. The one reason it was adopted was that it was belched out by the group; when that group belches out something else then that one reason for the old "truth" no longer exists. An individual who dances to the group's tune will switch dances immediately when the tune switches. (Cue the obligatory reference to Nineteen Eighty-Four: we've always been at war with Eastasia.)

That said, I wouldn't recommend beliefs that never shift at all. These could also be signs of an unreasonable group loyalty that controls someone's thinking. Some groups' cultures have foundational precepts, especially if a group is supposedly defined by commitment to such things. Even to ponder the limits or flaws of these precepts is forbidden. Doing that is viewed as a loathsome betrayal of the group. In countless times and places, people's own innermost thoughts have been effectively corralled by their desire to not be seen as a "traitor". Although it's been said that the one freedom that cannot be violated is the freedom of innermost thoughts, the tyranny of socialized truth does so all the time—and with the consent of people who can't be bothered to think for themselves.

seeing the love

Discussion about the love of some particular religion's god—or the absence of such—generally centers on the problems of evil and suffering. Why would a miracle-working and generous god permit so much evil and suffering in the past and present, including a lot that serves seemingly no purpose? It's an excellent question. And it's inspired many interesting (attempted) justifications.

It's also not the topic of this blog entry. Highly committed religious followers raise other questions when they continually insist through sermon and song that their god is loving, because many would say that they aren't merely repeating a piece of foundational doctrine. They'd say (testify) that their god is always loving in terms of what it does day by day in their very lives. It's active now. Its love continues past the long-ago actions it took according to stories passed down through tradition.

But when they list examples, they fail to sway listeners who don't have the same loyalty to the underlying beliefs. The examples might be minor, coincidental, and possible to explain without invoking supernatural intervention. If this is pointed out to them, they may respond, "Love isn't something that can be slid under a microscope. To believe in love sometimes requires faith and trust. Faith allows you to see a beneficial occurrence for what it really means, which is a loving act of my god. I cannot prove that my god is filled with overflowing love, but why do you say this is strange? I also cannot prove beyond all doubt that the people who are dearest to me feel love in their hearts. Faith is an essential part of the picture."

I'm pretty sure that for them, their response feels well-considered and even somehow natural. However, this is yet another illustration of the way that discarding supernatural beliefs reverses one's outlook. Seen from my current perspective, it's almost nonsensical. It verges on insulting to the people who actually are loving to me. How does it take faith to believe in the love of people who have done so many good things for me, directly and in plain view? When they've been a comforting presence in bad times, not through a cryptic email but through sitting nearby and patiently listening, or through assisting with getting food and performing other tasks? When they've laughed at my jokes and tried to cheer me up when I'm sad? When they've offered the insights they learned from their mistakes, to prevent me from making the same ones? When they gladly spend time with me, not only on big occasions but on a casual whim?

To repeat something I've written before in other contexts, the main point isn't that love is defined by what someone gets out of it. The point is whether or not a concept displays a strong if not undeniable link to the detectable differences it makes in reality. It's not an ambiguous "sign" of something that demands a skewed viewpoint to comprehend it. ("One of my life-long friends has invited me to a cookout. What could it possibly mean?") It might not be visible to the eye but it will certainly be easily traceable, like someone making a payment on the recipient's account. Picking up the pattern is like connecting numbered dots, not like stretching threads between tacks on a big board. It's possible for there to be someone who expertly manipulates various things, sight unseen, in order to eventually produce a loving outcome. This possibility requires a huge mental leap, though.

Unfortunately, there is a flipside to perceptible loving acts. Unloving acts by someone who loves you can be just as perceptible. And the category of unloving includes both cruelty and indifference. Would it be more understandable to say that it does require faith to believe in an individual's love regardless of their cruel and/or indifferent acts? It's true that real people are a mix of characteristics with varying moods and motivations. There's no question unloving acts make it harder to believe in their love. It's also harder to trust that they'll act in a loving manner again in the future.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't stoop to using the word "faith" for it. Because reality is complicated, there are a lot of factors and moving parts. That's why conclusions often aren't perfect in every circumstance. A cause that's very strong can still be subject to competing causes, at least from time to time. The result is that the full set of evidence is likely to be mixed. Statistical analysis comes into play. Genuine strong love might be reflected in committing loving acts "significantly more" than acts of cruelty and indifference. I wouldn't say that it's faith to infer love from a heap of obviously loving acts despite a few unloving acts. It's more like noticing that two fair dice have a sum of 5 more frequently than a sum of 12. 

To properly apply this analogy to the influence of an omniscient and omnipotent actor, it shouldn't be necessary to point out that a complete view implies tallying up a mountain of facts about reality's ups and downs. Unlike a person, an omniscient actor has countless more opportunities to act in ways that are loving, indifferent, and cruel. Of course, I'd maintain that the far greatest amount of hypothetical "acts" are in the category of inaction. If there were something that wasn't acting, then indifference would be the explanation that isn't strained. Perhaps it's true, with a focus that's narrowed and aimed, someone can sometimes feel that "someone up there is watching out for me". I'd say that when someone uses a focus that isn't so narrowed and aimed, this feeling is outweighed by the sheer number of times that it isn't applicable. And I'm not referring to the large important evils and sufferings that are usually brought up in the philosophical Problem of evil and suffering; I'm merely referring to an individual's own experience.  

One additional defensive analogy between personal love and the love of a god deserves some attention. It goes like: "I think your view of love is superficial. Part of maturity is recognizing that love has well-defined boundaries. Love can actually hamper someone when it doesn't allow them to make decisions, face consequences, and learn. The loved person also can't reach their full potential if love doesn't allow them to face and defeat challenges without immediate help. Boundaries establish that people believe in each other's capabilities and that they're entitled to a realm of independence or non-interference (autonomy). In the same way, my god is obligated to hold back from taking action a lot of the time. Its superior love goes hand in hand with its wise boundaries."

As analogies go, it's not that bad. Yet it seems to me that it doesn't quite work for another reason that's commonly associated with a mature concept of love: open communication. Boundaries that aren't openly communicated are misleading. Nobody knows for sure where they stand and how to correctly interpret each other's acts. If someone distinctly says they're not doing something loving because it would violate boundaries, then I agree that it's a reasonable course to take. If someone simply doesn't act, and they don't express clearly that it's because of boundaries, then I disagree. If it's for the purpose of teaching a memorable "lesson", then specific communication matters so that the right lesson is learned (i.e. not the lesson that the teacher is undependable). A god that honors valid boundaries without communicating the meaning behind its refusals to act is a god that's, once again, suspiciously reminiscent of an indifferent god rather than a loving god with boundaries. 

Furthermore, the huge range of possible actions for such a god remains a problem. If the analogy of love that honors boundaries is implicitly parent-like—noting but setting aside the psychoanalytic comparison of gods to parental figures—then this analogy has another failure: parents have sensible limits on how far they will extend the decision to not act. The god that would be compatible with what we experience would be a god of archaic brutality. Would we say that it's a loving balance of help and boundaries when the loved individual's choices are allowed to result in, for instance, losing a leg or a hand? Would we say that it's a loving balance when their choices are allowed to result in diabetes or cancer? Would we say that it's a loving balance when their choices are the right ones but those choices give someone else the opportunity to exploit them? Would we say that any kind of boundary or lesson explains why someone's house is ripped apart by a natural disaster? (Supposed divine judgments on subjectively "sinful regions" notwithstanding...) 

Forget about a love that can't even be seen without taking a leap of faith, projecting hidden influences onto commonplace events, and ignoring numerous counterexamples. Give me a love between people, concretely demonstrated and unmistakable, any day. I understand why the most admirable followers of supernatural beliefs comment that their beliefs are communicated most effectively by being their god's hands and feet on Earth. I'm not convinced of its existence, but if I were then "its" most convincing acts of love on an ongoing daily basis would be the acts of people who care.

knowledge breach

I often mention the frankly awe-inspiring ability of people to compartmentalize, because even now I think it's not always appreciated enough. They can separate their views of reality into compartments, consciously or not, neatly or not, and then they can treat their compartments much differently. Part of the reason I emphasize this is to explain that I wasn't totally irrational when I followed supernatural beliefs, and that's also true of a lot of people who still do. Thanks to compartmentalization, they may live in ways that mostly seem sensible, or they may hold a variety of opinions that mostly seem sensible, yet they assert that once upon a time a god was human.

At the same time, as I've previously described, compartmentalization gradually quit working for me. That's why I ended up discarding the beliefs I had followed. There was a breach. It wasn't a data breach but a knowledge breach. My knowledge about reality kept invading the supposed "knowledge" provided by my former beliefs. It poured in faster and faster until it swept away the counterfeits. 

I had grown thoroughly convinced of the fundamental principle that an idea is real to the extent that its predicted impacts are confirmed by actions, observations, and reasoning. Furthermore, the very definition of realness is this principle. The breach happened as I questioned why I had been raised to have a compartment that was exempt from this superb principle—and then I realized that the need for the compartment was due to the failure of the beliefs inside it to meet the standard. In retrospect, of course the least credible beliefs were the ones accompanied by the loudest appeals to faith. 

But that was my experience. Lately I've been noticing that knowledge breaches occur in the other direction too. Rather than a breach that exposes unverified knowledge to attack, there are breaches that expose the verified sort. The principle behind these is simply the distorted mirror image of the other principle. I'd characterize it as a lengthy ramble: "Knowledge gained through human senses and reason is fallible and unimpressive. Impartial and systematic investigation is an impossible myth. It mocks the all-important contributions made by what we feel to be right and what we've been taught through time-honored tradition and communication with the divine. Everybody lies all the time and prizes their goals more than objective truth. Their goals might be profit, political power, or flat-out hatred of goodness. Anyone who says they can demonstrate the accuracy of their ideas deserves no more consideration than someone who uses their common-sense to rant. Plus, as long as it's possible to cite a different poorly-run 'study', an anecdote on a website, or someone who's an expert in an entirely unrelated field, then that means there's equal proof for the conclusions I'm comfortable with. Confirmation bias is something I need to watch out for? Whatever, I've never heard of it. Every idea that's contrary to my wishes or deeply-held intuitions is being spread by evil widespread conspiracies, and the goal of those conspiracies is to destroy everything I care about. Experts and organizations made up of experts are wholly devoted to these conspiracies, no matter what they may say. Naturally, everyone who says they're similar to me but has good reasons to disagree with me is a traitor and a fraud. Trust is based solely on whether someone grew up in the correct culture and whether they're committed to the correct groups, causes, and figureheads. There are more of us than them, which implies that they only win through deception. Anything they claim, we'll automatically accept the opposite. Our scriptures literally use sheep as a metaphor for us, and that's a good thing."

That ramble was intended as an exaggerated extreme...but sad to say it's not that far off from the mindset of some people. The point is the knowledge breach that it can cause. Like I did, they probably have compartments in which they selectively do or don't define an idea's realness by its confirmed impacts. The difference is the path they're going down. I wondered why I was allowing the reality of some of my beliefs to be defined under laxer philosophical rules. In their minds they're wondering why they're allowing the reality of some of their beliefs to be defined under the illegitimate rules of the culture they consider themselves at war with. 

Perhaps truths in the supernatural domain are completely decided by the irrefutable sayings and writings of one's culture, or by the dictatorial authorities within that culture, or by the truths someone feels, or by judging the degree that something is in subjective harmony with one's preexisting assumptions and aims. If these are the methods for absolute truth in the domain that controls everything they think and do, then they may be easily convinced to reapply these faulty methods in other compartments as well. At that point the original dividing line is blurred and the high-quality knowledge they did have is exposed to the breach. Falsehoods masquerading as truths move in. The lack of skepticism spreads. It metastasizes like cancer.

Unfortunately, the risk of this is plain to see. This knowledge breach is like a keypad lock programmed with the numbers 1-2-3-4. Anyone who uses the relevant combination of inputs could use the breach to cynically push "knowledge" in for their own purposes. I hate to see it happen. When the consequences are worse health, wasting money, acting against someone's own interest, feeling fear and anger toward others or even toward imaginary foes, paying all attention to short-term effects, and on and on, discussions about the definition of realness start to not seem so trivial after all.