News: 26 October 2024

I've been taking a break from philosophy for two years, although I haven't kept to it strictly. It was a promise I made to myself, where I could relax my own demands, but making the promise still made a difference.

It's hard to draw a line between what is and isn't philosophy (maybe all writing that tries to make a point is somewhat philosophical). It's more of a case of knowing it when you see it. While probably some kind of strict, public vow of abstinence to philosophy could be enforced, the costs of defining and enforcing it seem somewhat burdensome to me. But making a vow to myself, while probably sacrificing some rigor, is inexpensive to implement. The vow you actually try to keep is more effective than the stronger one you don't.

In the last two years, I have done the following things:
released a fiction book I had already written, recorded demos of an album, composed and improvised instrumental music, wrote three albums (one released), reviewed my blog, wrote some booklets, set up an Internet radio station, and thought about the relationship between my writing and other people's writing. (Also dealt with personal issues and a crashed computer and backing things up.)

Abstaining from philosophy at first was a welcome break (I think, since I was tired of it when I took it). But after a while, I had recovered from it somewhat and without the vow would have gone back to it. I did break the vow a few times, I guess when there was something important for me to work on, but substantially have kept it. When a book got too philosophical, I set it aside (this happened more than once). One effect of this turning aside is that I looked for other things to read.

I tried practicing Lent a few years ago. I think that Lent is too short for me. 40 days is approximately a month and a half. Two years is 24 months. 24 divided by 1.5 is 16, so I experienced 16 consecutive Lents with this break. That was long enough to really get into it. I feel sometimes like things don't fully arrive before they go away.

The last few months of the break were difficult, a kind of desert experience. I found myself making myself put off decisions until I saw how things would be when I got back into philosophy. Work can be a kind of self-punishment, or it can be like bread, and I find it's mostly the latter for me.

Now my break is over and I've been thinking about what to do next. In July, I started a new blog, called Following. It's a blog about "things following" (philosophy) and "people following things" (religion).

Since the fall of 2023, I've been trying to only post posts to this blog that are really necessary, trying to minimize change. From 2019 to 2023 I was writing in a "bleeding edge, maximalist" way, like a testing branch of a Linux distribution (or, somewhat, like regular Ubuntu). But since, I was trying a "conservative, minimalist" approach, like point releases to a distribution one would use for a server (like Debian). I've decided as of now to become even more conservative, to get close to the point where the blog is done, perhaps ready to be made into an ebook version.

So to a large extent, this blog is done. It is more or less fixed in content, more of an object than a process. The period of my life it is about is over, so the thing that it was documenting is now complete, and it can be looked at as a completed thing. The basic project that I've been working on is not over. Something new may supersede the content of much of this blog someday, but for now it's the best representation of my intellectual project.

Learning Indonesian, Part 3

I've been learning Indonesian for about two years now. I'm better at it than ever before. But I'm also questioning whether I should continue.

What use is it to learn a language for yourself, now that AI is as good as it is at translating? I think it's still useful if you want to be able to talk to people without pausing to check your phone for the translation. Also it's useful if you want to feel the full emotional impact of writing or speech. What are the connotations of words? What makes something a good joke or a bad joke? Or good poetry or bad poetry? Even prose has humor and poetry in it. Writing styles use sound, which make more sense if you know the language well. So it is still useful if you want to get close to a people group.

Do I want to do something like that? Before, it seemed clear. It could be useful to relate my writing to the Pancasila religions (Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism) and also to Indonesian culture in general. This would best be done if I knew people there and read enough Indonesian literature to belong (or to have the substitute for belonging that writers have when they know a culture well-enough to write about it). But now that I think about it, I'm probably never going to be the most qualified person to do the task of relating to the Pancasila religions. It makes more sense for someone who is a "native speaker" in those religions and/or in Indonesia to do that. But maybe I would be the only person who would be willing and available.

Is it likely that I would be? Looking at my priorities, I think that if that day comes, it will be far in the future. First, I would try to focus on philosophy. Next, on relating my philosophy to the Western world (primarily to America, where I live). After that, hopefully someone more qualified than me would know about my writing, to get into the non-Western world. If not, then it might make sense for me to learn Indonesian. But I may never need to for my writing project.

What about for other reasons? I don't see myself doing development-related writing. Maybe move there to save money? I guess it's possible that that would make sense, but it's uncertain that it would. I can already pursue relatively superficial online friendships with people in Indonesia using machine translation. (The deeper ones run into problems with indirect communication, and the usual problems with the fragility of online relationships.) Learning a language is a pastime and mental workout. But I can find others.

If I need Indonesian, I can pick it up again. My two years of learning it should give me some foundation. I took Spanish classes in high school and college, and have put basically no effort into maintaining my Spanish since, but I find that what I did know I can bring back when I need to, given a bit of time to get back into it.

So my thought for now is to forget about learning Indonesian for now, unless and until I really need it.

Instead of Acting, Pray

My writing encourages people to act. I think it is good to act, and to try to do the highest-impact thing you can. But sometimes people shouldn't act. They may have bad personalities or bad characters. Or problems with their personalities or characters. They may be unable to do things, or not have good enough judgment. They may have mental health problems, or are tied down by life's commitments.

But it's important to care. How can you care without acting? Acting helps you care. If you care, you tend to act. It's tempting to force yourself to act, or to do a particular thing, so that you can care. But sometimes that makes things worse than if you hadn't acted.

You can always pray. This enables you to care, even if you are not the instrument for God's action in the world.

Problem of Evil / Temptation Contract Theory talk

This is based on a talk I would have given to a rationalist group, but then I found out that it was too long for their format. It's based on various previous posts on "theodicy" and I think is my best presentation of the topic.

The topic for this talk is the Problem of Evil, and one way of resolving it through a labor relations approach. Most of my interests are in philosophy and religion and might not be conventional subjects for a rationalist community group to talk about. However, I bring this up due to its use of economic thinking, in a way perhaps slightly reminiscent of the George Mason University economists.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL

The Problem of Evil is the apparent contradiction caused by the following statements all claiming to be true:

1. God is all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful
2. Evil exists

If God is all-good, why doesn't he prevent evil? Is it because he's not all-knowing or all-powerful? Maybe he is all-knowing and all-powerful. Then he must be less than all-good if he doesn't prevent it.

One way to soften things is to say that humans are the source or occasion of much evil. Either we commit the evil directly (it follows from our free-willed actions or inactions), or it is useful in "soul-making" (it gives us the occasion to become better people). This idea makes sense to me, to a point, but I think that it's hard to rule out the idea that some suffering is useless for that purpose. Suffering in wild animals being maybe the easiest example.

One approach that theists take is to say that we don't understand, but somehow these threads will be tied up for us someday, and the ultimate good and necessity of evil will be explained. I find this approach somewhat unsatisfying. So I thought I might try to come up with a more concrete solution to the Problem of Evil.

BACKGROUND TO TEMPTATION THEORY

First I will talk about my theory of God, my "theology". I think that God is primarily a good God. His goodness takes priority over other characteristics. In fact, for reasons I am not prepared to defend right now, I think that his goodness is the source of being, and thus of his power. This means that God is limited by his own goodness. I think this is a necessary property of a trustworthy God. Ultimately, a maximally trustworthy God is better for us than a maximally powerful one.

I want to show that God's allowance of evil flows naturally from his goodness.

For reasons that I won't defend here, suppose that in order for us to live in God's presence, we must be free from any evil in our hearts (in our intentions). God wants us to live forever, and so wants to provide a way for us to fully turn against evil in our intentions.

We need to really choose good. The way we do that is to really reject evil, even when evil looks attractive, even cartoonishly attractive. So we need evil presented to us in a way which looks good.

I postulate that God is incapable of presenting evil to us in such a way that it looks good. I'm not sure I could prove that, but on first inspection I think it sounds likely. A God who is goodness itself might have scruples against tempting us.

TEMPTATION CONTRACT THEORY

If so, then we have a situation where God's goodness makes him powerless to do a necessary part of bringing us to a state of having truly good intentions.

He needs other beings to tempt us. What kind of beings would tempt us? Presumably, evil beings. So God has to go to evil beings for help.

Temptation may be beyond the power of all the evil beings to actually implement. But God clearly acts out the will of his creatures. For instance, if you shoot a gun, you don't really will the bullet to go where it goes. You make a decision to shoot and where to aim, but the carrying out of that decision is done by God. So God could act out the decision of the evil beings.

If we sin, it is often God who is the efficient cause of the sin. He is our servant or slave. And God offers to be our servant or slave in this for the greater good of letting us act. So he can do the same, being the slave of evil beings. But the evil must come from the will of the evil beings.

How does God get the evil beings to will temptation for him? I propose that he does something like work out a contract with them. At a point in time, presumably far in the past, God allows his situation of need to be known. The evil beings know that they have leverage over God. They can demand concessions. Some of these concessions could include whatever evil that has no redeeming value. Because they are evil, they are paid with evil.

Does this mean that God tempts the evil beings to tempt us? My response as of now is to say it doesn't count as temptation for two reasons. One is that God does not will them to tempt, but simply lets them do what is in their nature. He doesn't put his thumb on the scale, the way they do with us. The other reason is that perhaps the critical sin in temptation is calling bad good. That the tempters tempt is actually a good thing, from a consequentialist perspective (since it allows us to come into tune with God) but for deontological reasons it is impermissible for this to be done by God himself.

WHY ISN'T THE WORLD WORSE?

If evil beings can have such serious bargaining power, why isn't the world worse? Are there any checks to their power? My theory has to explain why there is the amount of evil we have in the world, which seems finite, mixed with considerable finite good.

God and the evil beings are both bargaining with each other. God chooses which evil beings to work with. He can choose the ones who give him a good deal. He will not sign a contract that includes evil that keeps us from being with him forever. Things can happen in this life, and we can make decisions, which contribute to us failing to fully come to have good intentions. I don't believe God can know what is unknowable (states of affairs that don't exist yet, like future events). But whatever states of affairs have to obtain to give us the chance to make the right or wrong decisions, to create that risk, are ones which God would not sacrifice to the evil beings' negotiation. We live in a world in which it was worth it to God to create. So this predicts a generally hopeful state of affairs in the end, as long as each of us seeks to be in tune with God.

Evil beings offer their labor for wages, and collectively, there is a wage floor. Humans won't work for less than their wage floor (which might be "the amount of money necessary for minimal shelter, clothes, water, and food"). Evil beings want a certain amount of evil done in compensation for the good they do. If they were perfectly rational, they might push for a truly nightmarish human existence. But perhaps not all evil beings are rational to that extent. Lust is part of the psychology of evil beings. The lust for evil can lead to a strong demand for it, but also to a kind of pragmatism and impatience in seeking it, seeking to have what the evil being can have, now, rather than holding out for a really "excellent" implementation of evil-doing. Lust for evil could be an appetitive rather than calculating thing, or appetitive enough to inhibit or distort an evil being's utility-maximizing calculations.

So God may be able to negotiate with the most pragmatic and impatient of lustful evil beings, the ones who will sell out their labor for the lowest evil wages, yet these beings, because of their lust, have an absolute floor to what they will demand from him. The nature of the evil beings' psychology, how much evil their lust absolutely demands, determines the exact level of gratuitous evil that we see in the world around us.

Does God create the nature of evil beings' psychology and thus determine the level of evil in the world all by himself? Not if the nature of evil beings' psychology is substantially created by their own free willed choices to become evil.

The theory I have mentioned, I could call a labor relations theory of the Problem of Evil. The negotiations between different economic actors, in the economy of good and evil, produces a nuanced world. Just as the world we live in is the product of governments, corporations, civil society, individuals, etc. with differing points of views negotiating the mixture of all sort of different values in what we actually see and have to put up with, among these different voices there are also both God and evil beings. From a theistic standpoint, the way to analyze it might be that reality is a negotiation between God and what is not on the side of God.

CONCLUSION

What I hope to have accomplished in this talk is to show that the evil in this world flows naturally from the existence of a certain kind of good God. However, as you have listened, perhaps you have thought of questions or objections. I'm interested to hear them.

News: 16 April 2024

I released a condensed version of the MSL argument today in this booklet.

I hope that it makes it easier to see the whole argument in one view.

Recently thinking about Islam some, and have been working on new music.

Afterward Release

I made a MIDI album that fits in with my overall writing project, called Afterward. If you've read this blog a lot, you will probably understand what I was trying to communicate with it.

Voluntary Millennial Holiness

At some point in the past, a commenter on this blog pointed out the resemblance between MSLN and Mormonism with regard to soteriology and eschatology. Having read Gospel Principles, an introduction to Mormon doctrine put out by the Mormon Church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), I think that Mormonism does fit the two basic ideas of millennial holiness of 1) Everyone must become completely holy before going to heaven, and 2) there is a long but finite time in which to complete this process. (I am less sure, but suspect that at least to some extent this is also true of Catholic and Orthodox theology.)

In terms of the potential power of the motivational structure of MSL, I felt as I read that the Mormon perspective does not drive motivation as much as the New Wine System, or my concept of "millennial holiness" would. Millennial holiness, as I defined it before, exists, and we know about how strong it is in motivating people. Certainly the Mormon, and perhaps Catholic or Orthodox, churches are active and productive in their own ways, but they are what they are. Yet, I think that there is something else, which I think I remember from the New Wine System, and which I do see in my own "millennial holiness" doctrine, which is different than Mormonism and may not have ever been implemented in a major way, the way Mormonism has been.

I would say that I emphasize the freedom of the will to the extent that people's salvation is really up in the air. We really could decide not to trust God fully. We really could decide to harden ourselves against God, and shut down our ability to freely choose God. This would be an element of voluntariness to salvation. I can't be sure, from what I read, that Mormonism didn't support this at all "officially" or "on the books". But it was not emphasized in Gospel Principles and if I were writing the equivalent of Gospel Principles for my own beliefs, I would emphasize clearly that there is a risk of hardening, or of failing to fully repent, because this is an important thing to know, to avoid a seriously bad outcome.

So I would add "voluntary" to "millennial holiness", thus "voluntary millennial holiness". Those three words are a mouthful, but they do (I hope) now convey the essentially "New Wine" or "MSL" belief system that I think has such motivational power. I could shorten them to "VMH", which unfortunately adds to the "alphabet soup" of my writing. But at least if someone hears me say "VMH" and asks about it, I can say "it stands for 'voluntary millennial holiness'" and not have too much trouble explaining those three words. Whereas I would have a harder time doing that with "New Wine" or "MSL", and those two labels go beyond what "voluntary millennial holiness" is talking about.

2023 to 2024

Review of 2023:

From my perspective now, looking back, 2023 was a year of wrapping things up and closing out accounts. In terms of the major things that I did, the only thing that doesn't fit neatly in that category is the release of Wordless Prayers and some glockenspiel music. Everything else (releasing Waiting for Margot, releasing Reality, re-reading New Wine for the End Times, re-reading this blog and making various related posts) fit into the category of "finishing up a particular writing project I've worked on since 2013".

In what sense is the project really finished? I do see myself moving away from writing that pursues secular well-being (more or less, the "how can we love?" and "exilic/familial" categories) toward more theistic / religious, etc. So maybe the "highwater mark" for my writing about some of the secular categories was reached in the blog already. I think the blog could be a sketch of my whole project, and from now on I could be filling in details.

I did not discover any major new intellectual scenes or interests in 2023. (Unlike getting more into effective altruism in 2020, discovering the "Christian humanists" in 2021, or getting into Indonesia in 2022.) At least, none that stand out in my memory. Relatively minor interests in some YouTube channels and in movie-watching. (I did keep up with the EAs and "Christian humanists" some in 2023.)

I did delete my Twitter account finally. (That's another "closing-up of accounts".)

Comparison of expectations with reality

Last year's predictions were mixed in quality. I did release an old book (Waiting for Margot) and a demo of an album (Reality). I didn't do much with poetry. I wrote blog posts. But I missed the whole "summing up" theme, which seems to me to be the most interesting aspect of 2023.

Preview of 2024:

I feel like Wordless Prayers and my glockenspiel music are OK, but seem to me like they have limited potential. My songwriting, I think, is more interesting to me and seems like it has more potential, but I feel like I probably won't pursue it a lot in the coming year. [On further thought, I'm not as sure I won't pursue it.]

I plan to start reading (and maybe writing) philosophy again this fall. I want to see if I can get MSL to a state where it is fleshed-out and persuasive. Also to improve on the articulation of MSL with people like Rawlette, Moynihan, and the EAs. This could take multiple years and give me plenty to do.

I think my main focus until the fall is to read books that may not fall directly in the path of my writing project. I want to fill in gaps in my general education and also make a list of books worth recommending. A similar project I have going is to update my subreddit.

I don't think I will use the blog much for a while, but if I do and it's really important, I will post about it on the subreddit.

News: 23 October 2023

I have recently released two booklets: The Cross: altruism through self-risking, and Simple Millennial Holiness: (and Other Religious Thoughts) (which is a partial rewrite of the Simple New Wine System booklet).

Missionary Care for Creatives in Los Angeles; or for others

I wrote a post about cultural altruism hubs. That post, and this one, which is related, discuss a kind of organizational or "scenic" structure or structures that people could build. I don't feel like this is a thing I should pursue, so I'm not looking to try to build those structures myself. But I think the ideas are worth writing up. Maybe someone else will find them useful.

I often write to a secular audience, or to no audience / to myself. But in this case, I write more to a Christian audience.

Creative people are especially susceptible to spiritual attack. Culture war brings out Satan. Some cultural-spiritual warfare is fought by "foot soldiers" (through interpersonal contact). Others through "air support". Airplanes are sophisticated machines. Books, movies, etc. are machines made out of thoughts and images. Culture "flies in the air". So producing cultural artifacts puts new "airplanes" or "drones" in the sky. These artifacts fight each other and fight people on the ground. With good air support, ground troops can have an easier time. So (I think) with good cultural artifacts, interpersonal evangelism and discipleship can go better.

Los Angeles is a center of the movie and music industries, which manufacture cultural artifacts (that part of the "air war"). Those industries are not always kind to the people who try to work in them. Many people have dreams of success in them, but only a few can succeed. There are stories of exploitation in those industries. This can affect everyone who tries to "make it". The overall culture of these industries seems to largely be non-Christian. Christians trying to work in those industries may experience as much exploitation and as many broken dreams of success as non-Christians. They may also experience culture shock and spiritual attack (for instance, being invited to hedonistic parties (something that I would guess happens), or being acculturated to the dominant secular culture to the point of compromising their faith). They may also experience hostility, due to their beliefs.

Are Christian creatives in Los Angeles missionaries? Arguably yes. So they can be supported and cared for like any other kind of missionary. (I recommend reading Serving as Senders Today and The Reentry Team, both by Neal Pirolo, to understand what I have in mind by "support" and "care". Briefly, churches or other sending teams can provide moral support, prayer support, send and receive messages about what's going on in the field, maybe money or logistical support, and help in missionaries transitioning in and out of service.)

Creative missionaries could care for fellow creatives and engage in evangelism and discipleship like any other kind of missionary. But they also "translate the Bible into the native language" of their fellow creatives, by being creative themselves, and/or into the language of the US in general, or even of other parts of the world, where LA culture industries reach.

I feel like if I were a suspicious secular person (perhaps an ex-Christian), an incorporated missionary agency sending financially supported creative missionaries into LA would be disturbing and lead to bad press (if evangelical Christians think that there is an oppressive, militant "other" in the cultural world, so do secular people -- everyone is "David" seeing "Goliath" in each other). Creative people tend to have their own ideas and some might not want to work with a missionary agency themselves. (It's good for creative people to be independent-minded in order to see what other people don't see.) Financially supported missionaries might be harder to relate to by struggling actors, writers, musicians, directors, etc. that they may be trying to reach.

So I think maybe the best way to implement creative missions is to set up structures to care for and support the creative Christians who find themselves in Los Angeles, as though they have sent themselves already, but maybe without enough support.

--

Implementation:

I don't know anything about what might already be going on in this area. I can imagine that something like this is already going on.

I think churches in Los Angeles are already doing some of this support and care work. What they might not have is the sense that their creatives are missionaries dealing with spiritual warfare, culture shock, etc., and not know as much as they could of how to be good "senders" and "carers". Perhaps what is needed is to equip those churches.

Also, creatives might not have the sense that they are missionaries on a mission field. They might benefit from additional teaching and encouragement in having a really Christian worldview and practice in their art and life.

Other ideas:
1. Establishing refuge places in Southern California so that people can (affordably) get out of LA to take a break from it.
2. Connecting churches that have creatives to creatives in LA. (Not every church is a good place for a creative person to be.)

Southern California (plus northern Baja California) could be seen as having two areas of strategic significance for cultural people: Tijuana which is a gateway to Latin America and/or to understanding the non-American, non-"developed" world; and the cultural artifact manufacturing center of Los Angeles. In between is San Diego, a quieter place (maybe the military in San Diego is of cultural strategic significance?).

--

Caveats:

I have not spent a lot of time in LA. I was involved in a low-budget film production that got actors from LA and have seen the incentives for exploitation and selling yourself in filmmaking. I can sense a certain amount of felt unhappiness and spiritual darkness from Los Angeles filmmaking (Hollywood and I guess "aspiring Hollywood" or indie film productions). I don't have direct experience with the music industry in LA.

--

Postscript:

What about film directors? I mentioned them above. They are employers, people in positions of power. But they are at the mercy of their funding sources. Directors have to cobble together funding and employees from various sources, and then work intensely during production, with long pre-production and post-production times. Once finished, they sell their product on the market and hope for critical and financial success, which is uncertain. A lot of money rides on what they do. If they lose too much money, maybe they can't work again. It sounds like a risky, stressful, "disestablished" line of work.

This sounds like perhaps a more intense (or not) version of what entrepreneurs in general go through.

A film director could do the wrong thing because they are under some kind of pressure. Perhaps it is true of any kind of entrepreneur. Or business executive. How much wrongdoing comes from powerful people who are (subjectively or objectively) in insecure positions? Perhaps it would be good to come up with care and support for them.

Maybe if a person doesn't have money, that's their hard limit, and only with additional funding would they be able to do the right thing. (Maybe there could be funding to help them do the right thing?) With better support (prayer, moral, logistic, communication) and the expectation that they can get care if they fail, they might have more courage to do the right thing in marginal cases where they may not really be risking their success, (where perhaps it is some kind of delusion of danger or sin that puts its thumb on the scale of their perception of risk), or even in self-sacrificial cases where they have to sacrifice their success (their business venture/film? / career?) to do the right thing.

(Funding to help do the right thing: a director could develop a relationship with a funding agency that would commit to providing at least a significant part of the director's funding for each of their films, conditional on them doing the right thing and not necessarily on them being commercially successful. In other words, provide grace, or slack, so that directors can fail commercially if they do the right thing on set or in their other operations.)

(Conservative talk radio, to me, sounds like the voice of people who are suspicious and hardworking -- maybe small business owners who could easily go out of business and who have to deal with other insecure people who might cut corners or make untrustworthy deals to survive. Can there be care and support for them?)

Likewise, people in the spiritually dark worlds of the elites. Do Washington, DC churches adequately care for politicians and staffers who fight a culture war of their own? Political theater is part of the "air war" that movies are also involved in. Political decisions and governmental implementations of them have cultural consequences.

(Silicon Valley sounds like a place with its darkness and its own, different culture. What about it?)

People with bad reputations (criminals, prison guards, and police, for instance) may need care and support. It requires discernment how to support someone who has directed their life toward wrongdoing.

Like with creative missionaries in LA, I don't know anything about what might already be going on with care / support for people in these areas.

--

The church I grew up in had a sign over the door as you went out, that said "You are now entering the mission field". Probably everyone could see themselves as a missionary, and everyone experiences occupational hazards as they interface with the world. And so everyone could be sent and cared for -- by other people who also could be sent and cared for. Do churches send and care for their own pastors? (Maybe pastors should have some support from outside their own congregations.)

--

Everything is powerful, culturally. Everything sends a message. The way you do business as a small business owner affects the overall culture, the sense of how things are and how people act. Similarly with the products a business owner releases on the market. Each one is a movie or book, conditioning people's minds. The caring professions are culturally powerful.

This raises the question: if everyone has cultural power, if each person can say something that has a significant effect on someone (at least on him- or herself), what should you say? Are you the missionary for God and the truth, or for an off-flavor of God and a somewhat misleading truth? You have to seek to know what is true, so that you can correct what is wrong.

This process of self-correction has to go on on a societal level. Society (people within it) must speak against what is believed by society (other people within it). What does it take to oppose a consensus or effective consensus? What if the consensus involves the caring structures that you can find? Who will care for you when you burn out? Will the price of getting care be that you have to stop pointing out what's wrong?

So as much as care and support sound like a good thing, for at least some people, those who would point out what is least popular, it may be good to develop independence from human support and care. A wise society concerned with protecting itself from its own blind spots might try to develop the strength behind that independence in people, and not only promote care and support for people. For a believer in God, deriving strength from God, rather than from people, is a way to be strong enough to say what's unpopular.

It's possible for Christian (church-based) culture to somewhat discourage the individual from seeing things from their own perspective, and instead tries to enmesh them in a social organism. An individual church, and many individual people, will fare better if they are simply in-some-sense-"properly" interrelated socially. But Christianity as a whole suffers if it becomes blind due to its success in orienting individuals toward the points of view of their nearby congregations, which all can potentially be misguided.

Long Links #4

On my subreddit I put up links to individual videos, websites, or blog posts, etc. Any of these things can be "consumed" (paid attention to) in one sitting (generally speaking). Those are "short links". But "long links" take (or take me) more than one sitting and to me seem to not belong in the same context as short links.

--

I started playing a DOS RPG called Aethra by Michael Lawrence. It's been a while since I've played a computer game seriously.

I did most of my computer game (and video game) playing between maybe the age of 11 and 20. I had a somewhat superficial understanding of what was going on in the games and in me when I played. Now, many years and many experiences later, I get a lot more out of this game than I expect I would have then.

For instance, the idea of forming an adventuring party seems to be an image for a process in everyday life. The adventuring party is made up of people with their advantages and drawbacks. Then, over time, it is necessary to mitigate the drawbacks and make use of the advantages. There is a degree of complementarity between the members of the party, but they each have to hold their own in a fight, to some extent, because the other characters can't always help them.

I've played a lot of Angband. In a roguelike, like Angband, there is only one adventurer, one whom I never really saw as a person -- really he or she was just me, I was the one in the dungeon, and when their game was over ("death") it was really just my project that was over ("try to see how far I can get in the game"). There can be a real sense of loss when you lose a character in a roguelike, but it's not the loss of a person, rather the loss of a venture. In this game, I can't identify with just one person, since the party has three members, so they seem more like separate persons to me. It's too soon to say how this will affect how I play the game or what I get out of it.

I feel more like these are real people than novel or movie characters do to me. In a novel or movie, to me, people are just images, living in a completely different universe. But in an RPG, I'm involved in the characters' world, making decisions. This is one of the comparative advantages of games, in that they get a person to live in the imaginary, or imaginal, world.

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I watched Millennium Actress, directed by Satoshi Kon. It's a good movie. At first I found its "beautiful dream"/past-oriented aesthetic too powerful, and found that it took me away from doing things I needed to do in my life in the present (helping a friend). So its beauty was kind of untrustworthy. But for me, the "beautiful dream" feeling faded, and I was left with a kind of simantic word or imaginal symbol that I think could be helpful in everyday life, in working to do good. The movie is basically about a moth who flies to a star.

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I watched We Are Not Ghouls, directed by Chris James Thompson, a documentary about a US military lawyer's representation of a Guantanamo Bay suspect. It has some relevance to "the cross" (suspect undergoes torture, the lawyer goes against the system, endures stress). The lawyer (Yvonne Bradley) was the main person interviewed and I think she had a good presence that's worth watching.

Blog Review: Formulalessness, 2019 - 2023

I have often written things in a sort of diaristic way, not knowing how they would appear to me until I finished and re-read them for the first time. This blog has been a diary of my thinking. I feel as though I've been approaching the end, or an end, of my blog (for instance, not writing too much since fall of 2022). So, I've been engaging in behaviors of summarizing and wrapping up, and included in that, I've been re-reading my blog.

I re-read the whole thing up to the present post, except I didn't finish reading the Feeling of Value notes (1, 2), because simply to read them was too philosophical for me, and as I've mentioned, I'm trying to abstain from philosophy until October 2024. (Reading notes requires trying to figure out what I was saying, and trying to evaluate what I was saying turns into philosophy, according to me.)

Certain things stood out as things to come back to someday. Maybe re-reading the Feeling of Value notes and the Lukas Gloor sequence on moral anti-realism, plus other sources, to do a better job of talking about moral realism / anti-realism. Also, maybe writing a clearer presentation of the arguments implicit in my review of X-Risk by Thomas Moynihan. Occasionally, people find my blog through the Feeling of Value and X-Risk reviews, and what I have to offer isn't too user-friendly.

Generally, I could go back and try to improve past posts, and maybe make a few books out of them. Perhaps one for effective altruists.

Another thought is to use my wiki [January 2024: which I took down] as a place to write clearer versions of many of these posts, or to break down their ideas and recombine them in different ways that suit the subject matter better than my sometimes arbitrary lumpings of them. Then I could make a book or books based on the wiki.

There were times my present self (reviewing the blog) wished my past self had been clearer, argued better, or wrote more fleshed-out posts. I suppose that if I were a professional writer, I might have evaluated myself sooner than after four years as I'm doing now. I got into writing this blog just to put my notes online (at least, that's mainly what I did), and once the habit got going, I guess I didn't question what the product would be.

What niche does the blog fill? I would say that if you are a Christian interested in futurism, it takes you a certain way into the topic of Christianity-and-futurism. If you are a futurist, it shows a vision of a particular kind of theistic/Christian input into how the future should go. I don't know what my actual readers get out of it -- maybe something else. Blogs often are really all about their themes, their vibe, and a few of their memorable ideas. I do think that this blog has a vibe to it, and that's an undercurrent of it, that there's a spiritual world that connects to our everyday experience, and a spirit that breathes through us, which is imaged by the writing. Some themes of this blog are openmindedness, trust, truth, reason, and ethical theism (not a complete list).

If I'm thinking hopefully, I think this blog communicates a unique vision of how to be a Christian, or a Christian-like theist, a new religion or set of religions that helps deal with the divisions (progressive/conservative, secular/religious, perhaps Christian/non-Christian) and lack of motivation that keep people from God, and keep society locked into conflict and ineffectiveness.

Writing the blog served me. I started the blog (in early 2019) because it felt like time to write a blog. The fact that I had been reading Slate Star Codex since fall of 2016 was in the background of that decision. In early 2019, I was experiencing a mental breakdown (which lasted about three years at full strength and then diminishing to now), which largely was caused by others' indifference and hostility, lack of support and poisonous support. Having something to focus on other than the memories of the people who caused the mental breakdown, and the thoughts of despair they put in me, was helpful and gave me a direction forward.

Reviewing the blog from start to finish eventually started resembling, to me, reading any number of my diaristic works from 2015 - 2018 (most of the books found here). Those books emerged from me as a flow of writing, expressing something subtextual through their wholes. I think the same could be said of this blog, although to me at least the subtextual note is fainter. Both those old books and this blog have an aesthetic of "formulalessness".

Moving Forward

In trying to think about my writing, I wrote a page called Categories of my Writing. I noticed different trends in my writing: "how can we love?", the "exilic/familial", "radically theistic / New Wine" (or, I should say now, "radically theistic / millennial holiness"), "aletheism". How would I now say all these things relate? And how do they relate to outside views?

Overall, I want to move forward. "Moving forward" characterizes "advancing kingdoms" -- the kingdom of God, or civilization, or justice, or something like that. One thing I have had to do is move beyond being more into advancing secular things (civilization, justice, etc.) and into doing good in a really theistic way (advance the kingdom of God, the God who really exists).

Is the project (or projects) of "moving forward" a good thing? I can think of some "dissents": postmodernism (in my mind "there are a diversity of viewpoints none of which can be said are invalid"), and elements of the "exilic/familial" (the sense that nobody wins, and we mourn the death of our enemies). If we mourn our enemies too much, then we risk being on their side, or sinking into inactivity. Being on their side might sound like a good thing if we think that we are on the side of them as persons. But we should not necessarily adopt everyone else's point of view. The truth is what it is -- that our enemies are wrong necessarily connects to the fact that there is something we need to do in the world.

Another dissent is the apocalyptic view (in the sense of, there is only a little bit of time left). I feel that this is working deep, under the surface of our culture, in a way we don't always explicitly state. But it can be an explicit view (climate, AI, the perennial religious end-times thinking). If there is no more time left, then we lost motivation to move forward.

Another dissent is the appeal to human nature, or other kinds of nature, or the body, or health. Human nature certainly isn't the best thing we can conceive of, but it's also not the worst. Health calls for moderation (for not moving forward too much, or not at all in a sense, since we already have the body and its desires).

Those engaged in the project of moving forward might become disillusioned with its failures (they might be on the side of moving forward still, in principle, but might have lost some faith in it because they see the damage it causes, or its inability to bring about what we think it promises). Prophets speak the unvarnished truth which "nobody" wants to hear, for the sake of the truth, even if it seems unhelpful for them to do so.

Part of moving forward involves the truth. How do we know the truth? Can we know the truth? For the postmodernist, the claim is that there is no one truth. For the Reformed (Calvinist) thinker, the claim is that humans can't naturally come to know the truth, and God has to give us that truth (this undermining natural reason). Buddhism and modern science also cast doubt on natural reason.

The Bible itself (I think, this is my reading) contains both moving forward and critique of moving forward. Abraham is called by God to found a new nation to bless the whole world ("moving forward") (Genesis 12:1-3). But he is also commanded by God to sacrifice his son, who is the child through whom that nation is supposed to descend (Genesis 22). David weeps for his son Absalom (who had been killed after trying to take the throne from David), but then David realizes (is told) that he has to live for the ongoing process, for the people who were on his (rightful) side (2 Samuel 19:1-7). Should you trust the voice of God? Overall you should. Should you fight for God's project (as I think the Bible would say David was doing more so than Absalom was)? Yes, but you have to acknowledge the danger in what you're doing and listen to the critique.

I use the term "moving forward" rather than "progress" because while progress is a form of moving forward, there is also the moving forward needed to preserve the things that already exist. Neither the church, civilization, nor justice will maintain their current sizes/fullness (in general) unless individual people move forward. The dissents to moving forward take away energy that can help people move forward -- whether to maintain what is good or to make things better.

"How can we love?" is about "moving forward". "Radical theism" contains both "moving forward" and concern for every person (because every person came from God -- every person has a history of being a child descended from God, even if they choose to reject God permanently) -- thus, mourning and losing (like in the "exilic/familial"). God loses in the end -- but he doesn't have to lose as much. Love mourns what is lost, but has to apply effort to prevent further loss.

I think that evangelicals (at least, the best of them) balance this forward-moving with a concern for every person, a concern which does not demoralize them but causes them to move forward (in a way that does not "outpace" the people they try to help), and I would consider my writing project overall to be evangelical in a certain basic sense.

I think it is wise to consider the dissents to moving forward, as each contain some element of wisdom and can be a check on moving forward in a misguided way.

Postmodernism in a strong-enough form is a way to close the mind against the possibility of there being answers, and this I find hard to like. But in a sufficiently weak form, it says "you have to listen to everyone's point of view in seeking the truth, and when you start the discussion, everyone's view is equally valid". Or it could say as well "You feel like X is true from your own experience and reason, but other people believe not-X. Why do you think you're right and they're wrong?"

Apocalypticism biases us to do good in the short term. Perhaps we have too many incentives to do good in the short term already. But maybe apocalypticism biases us to act intensely in the short term. I don't know if that always is a good thing, but it's worth considering. Apocalypticism may also bias us to rest, a similarly mixed thing to pursue.

Concern for health, the body, human nature, etc. is necessary to keep us from burning out and to do good in an unhealthy way tends to be doing something that has evil mixed in it somewhere. Health-pursuing, like postmodernism, can close the mind, but if it does not make itself a god, it is something worth listening to. Respect for human nature (in the sense of seeing it there, like you see a rattlesnake in your path) and typical human fallibility is wise.

Those who move forward but in the process of moving forward critique specific ways of moving forward, are doing something good to make sure that their efforts are really good instead of bad, as long as they avoid demoralizing themselves (or other people) about the overall process of moving forward.

Reformed, Buddhist, and scientific questioning of human's natural ability to reason each have their uses.

The Reformed perspective says "you are not God". I think people should move forward, try to have the values of God and then do the things that God wants, which are in line with those people's values now that they have adopted God's values. So you should see what you see and do what you want. You want to do what is good, so your appetite is trustworthy when you want that. When you do what you and God want, you are an agent of God. You are becoming like God, on the small scale that you can act in. Everyone who acts out God's will is in a sense God himself, his body. When you behave completely legitimately, you are part of Legitimacy.

However, there is a sense in which you are not God and never will be. God's work is much greater than yours. Your work has a boundary to it and many things happen outside your work. Your work is affected by things you don't understand, but which God does understand.

If you are trustworthy, people will trust you, and some will think you are most-trustworthy on a deeper level -- they will give you the glory and not God, and this is a dangerous mistake. If they make you an idol, you (with all of your trustworthiness) could keep them from loving God.

So it is good to consider the Reformed perspective (in which it can sometimes seem like God does everything). I don't think it's literally true that God does everything and we do nothing, but it's a good perspective.

The Buddhist perspective can be taken as a means to achieve mental health (see above). The scientific perspective can elucidate human nature (see above). Also it teaches us to think carefully and biases us to not trust our intuitions, which is a good thing up to a point.

All of these things are dangerous when they close the mind to the good that we really should be doing, the forward moving that we should really take seriously. Buddhist and Reformed critiques of reason need to see the danger that they are wrong and that reason is saying something valuable (as much as it is important for rationalists to consider that their reasoning is dangerous, as Buddhist or Reformed thinkers allege). I would propose that everyone move forward with their worldview (postmodern, Reformed, Buddhist, evangelical, etc.), but periodically consider that which questions their worldview, take it as a live possibility.

This would be an "aletheistic" thing to do.

So, perhaps I could integrate all of the above into a kind of formula:

Movement: Motivate yourself strongly ("how can we love?") to go into the secular world to some extent ("how can we love?"), but primarily to reach people to prevent them from hardening and dying the second death ("radically theistic / millennial holiness"), seeing them as kin, children of a God who risks losing them if they reject him ("exilic/familial"), not as people to defeat but rather people to mourn ("exilic/familial") but overall still moving forward with the work to make the world more the way God wants it to be ("how can we love?"), anti-tempting ourselves and those around us ("radical theism / millennial holiness").

Dissents: We need to question the movement from time to time ("aletheism"). We can consider "dissents", like Reformed, Buddhist, health-oriented, human nature-oriented, postmodern, and apocalyptic thinking (mentioned above). Or perhaps even the Bible could be considered as a dissent, or both a dissent and a support (call of Abraham and binding of Isaac / David mourning Absalom and moving on). Or there could be other dissents not mentioned. The movement is improved by the dissents, but overall the movement is where you are headed.

Semi-dissents: We need to improve the movement. We might accept it as it is on a "coarse-grained" level, but on a "fine-grained" level still want to improve it. This requires self-criticism. Perhaps this self-criticism can morph into full-on dissent.

A person could try to live this out (or an improved version of it) both somehow integrating all of the above into everything they do in each moment (or getting closer to doing that), or by going through phases.