11.30.06
Posted in Religion, Philosophy, Background at 7:44 pm by Dan Jensen
I have been relating the story of the Camel, a prophet of ancient Iran. I wouldn’t say he was a Persian prophet, because he probably never saw the kingdom of Pars in his life, and he lived before the founding of the Persian Empire. However, his entire life was spent in what would become the Persian Empire soon after his death.
As I’ve said, the Camel found success as a prophet in Bactria, far from his home in Medea. This country might be called the birthplace of monotheism, God, Satan, Heaven, and Hell, for it is the Camel that is often credited with these doctrines, which have all had long, successful careers throughout the world since that time.
From the time the Camel found an audience in Bactria, a war between the forces of Good and Evil began to dominate the thoughts of people, even to this day.
Now I might mention another man who lived on the opposite end of the Persian Empire, maybe a century younger than the prophet whom we have been discussing. He was sometimes called “the Riddler” for his obscure and perplexing language. He was an unorthodox kind of poet, and it might be said he was also a prophet, and even a philosopher. Some believe it was he who coined the word philosophy.
He was not a Persian, but it is thought that his family was allied with the Persian throne. The Empire suffered great military defeats against Greece in his lifetime, so he and his family lost influence as the Empire declined. He gained great fame as an outspoken critic of society, with a scathing, eloquent wit, and his reflections on the metaphysics and politics of Good and Evil have had great influence upon Western thought.
The Riddler had certainly been familiarized with the war between Good and Evil. There were many people in the Persian Empire, such as King Darius himself, who believed in this universal battle, and the Riddler seems to have been among them, except that he gave the idea a startling twist. He didn’t speak of a war between Good and Evil, but rather a war between opposites. He didn’t speak of two opposings Powers, but rather any number of opposites, all in simulataneous battle. There is not really anything but opposition, so far as the Riddler was concerned, and every last bit of it, he suggested, is in harmony.
Now if we look at the Good War as it was known to the Persians, it was thought that there were as many warriors as there were people, each fighting a moral war of the will. For the Riddler, though, there was a War alright, but there were not really any warriors.
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11.29.06
Posted in Religion, Background at 4:42 pm by Dan Jensen
Long ago, there lived a Kurdish priest in the kingdom of Medea. I say that he was Kurdish because that’s what he’d be today. I say that he was a priest, for that’s how the story goes, but some say that he was an imposter.
Whether priest or imposter, this man was certainly a instigator who refused to leave well enough alone, and he was cast out of his village. You see, the people in his city, they just wanted to do whatever would please the gods. That’s the way people are. They don’t ask questions, and maybe that’s wise. Well, this priest, maybe he was a little bit crazy. He asked questions, and those questions led to some troubling propositions. He started preaching that there’s right and wrong, and that’s it. That’s what’s holy. If the gods don’t like that, well they could go straight to Hell; and then came the day when he realized, In a flash of inspiration, that he could create his own God, an ideal deity: a righteous God. And he would believe in that God, and he would worship that God, because that God is Truth.
Quite understandably, all his neighbors were concerned that they would fall into disfavor with the gods, so they ran him out of town.
So this upstart of a priest, if that’s what you can call him, he started wandering from village to village, preaching about right and wrong, and sending the gods to Hell, and, well, each village made sure he didn’t hang around too long. He came to wander so long, they started calling him the Camel. Some called him the Yellow Camel, on account of all the dust he collected along the way.
So this camel, he kept preaching and wandering and collecting dust, until he came to the kingdom of Bactria, in a place we call Afghanistan today. There was, it turned out, a king there who caught wind of this camel, and there came a day when he grew curious, and he called the camel to his court. Kings, you see, are different than most people, because they’re harder to run out of town, and also they sometimes have a different outlook on religion. That is, sometimes they find religion useful in keeping the peace, so to speak. So this curious king, he brought in the Camel and he heard him out. He thought this upstart camel might have an idea, so he put the idea to work. This right and wrong thing, it could be easier to rally the people behind than just a gang of selfish gods. All a people really needed was a single God; it was much simpler. So the king made this Camel high priest of his kingdom, and together they remade the world. Whereas before the world was mortals currying favor from immortals, it was now one big war between right and wrong, and there wasn’t any doubt about which side was going to win. This was a battle you couldn’t be excused from.
This was an empowering idea, and perhaps it was destined to triumph. Before long it became the mantra of the most powerful man in the world:
On this account Ahuramazda brought me help, and all the other gods, all that there are, because I was not wicked, nor was I a liar, nor was I a despot, neither I nor any of my family. I have ruled according to righteousness. Neither to the weak nor to the powerful did I do wrong.
— King Darius, Behistun
Though this king of kings was somewhat inclusive, and tolerated the gods of his subjects, yet the only Power that he seems to have recognized was the power of righteousness.
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Posted in Religion, Philosophy at 2:55 pm by Dan Jensen
When we look into our basic perceptions, it seems that every slightest perception is in some way pleasurable or painful. Objectively, we can describe the mechanism of pleasure and pain, but we cannot explain the ultimate fact that there is an observer. It is the I am. Whether it is the I think is a matter of some debate.
It seems absurd that somehow the observer is a product of some objective mechanism. How could subjectivity ever emerge from objectivity? The two must coexist at the root of existence. Thought may emerge from some mechanism, but it can hardly be argued that perception itself is thoroughly mechanical.
The Observer does not experience sensations with an indifferent eye, but rather, it always seems to make some kind of value judgement. We can never be truly indifferent: it is not our nature. It seems to me that this moral polarity is a fundamental characteristic of perception itself.
Good and Evil are not simply emergent charateristics of things, but rather, Good and Evil are fundamental, coexistent attributes of subjective reality. This is not to suggest that we can ever comfortably give names to Good and Evil, as Nietzsche put it, but rather, that Good and Evil are two ubiquitous, mutually-opposed aspects of reality. Good and Evil, it might even be proposed, are, in a subjective sense, the stuff that things are made of.
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11.21.06
Posted in Religion, Personal at 11:16 pm by Dan Jensen
At present I am reading three books: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Jack London’s Martin Eden, and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I suppose they’re all books about knights-errant, be they holy fools or creatures of fate. Not entirely unlike my friend Mr. Norland. It’s slow going, but each book is holding my attention, as disloyal as it is.
I have also been renovating the Kaweah FBI site of late. FBI is an acronym for Forum for Baha’i Investigations. As might be guessed from this title, the site is a more-or-less light-hearted rant on the Baha’i Faith, my religion of birth. The renovation has been a long time coming, as many of the pages of the site are nearly a decade old now.
Continuing on the Baha’i theme, I have recently become a moderator for the Yahoo! group ex-bahai. Imagine that! Do drop by if you can.
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