Ego

I've written about the importance of knowing yourself a number of times on this blog. Today I'd like to tell you about the single biggest obstacle to accurate self-knowledge: that sonofabitch, the Ego.

The Ego isn’t you: it’s an amalgamation of all your false-identities. When you identify with stuff that isn't you, you're giving life to the Ego.

Your beliefs, opinions, biases, ideas, judgments, job, possessions, accomplishments, and relationships are not you: they're just the things you do. 

Luckily the Ego doesn't control you: it merely tricks you into acting out. It pulls your strings and you dance like a little puppet.

When someone calls your deeply-held beliefs into question, the Ego says, “Are you gonna let him talk about you like that?”

When someone points out a mistake you've made, the Ego says, “Quick! Blame somebody else!”

When someone criticizes you, the Ego says, “Don’t listen to her: she’s just jealous.”

The Ego pretends that it's looking out for you, that it's defending you from the unjustified attacks of lesser people. In reality, the Ego only looks out for itself.

Eckhart Tolle has a lot to say about the Ego in his book The Power of Now. For instance, 

If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down.

The good news is, once you stop identifying with mental positions you lose the desire to defend them.

If you don’t identify with your work, you have no problem admitting your mistakes.

If you don’t identify with (or worse, idealize) your imperfect state, you gladly listen to criticism.

The sting that accompanies your wounded pride is an illusion. The sting is Ego’s finger jabbing, not at your pride, which cannot be wounded, but at your insecurities, doubts, and anxieties. It appeals to emotion, manipulates, and pushes your buttons.   

It deflects, redirects, and projects.

Everything that stems from the Ego is toxic. Even when the Ego tries to make you feel good, it does so in a destructive way.

The Ego uplifts you by bringing others down. It boosts your self-worth by decreasing the self-worth of others.

The Ego loves nothing more than to help you demolish another person's hopes and dreams so that you might climb up the mountain of rubble left behind and feel, for a brief moment, that you're the winner.

Winner of what, exactly? Of being a douche bag. Congratulations!

Want to throw a wrench in the Ego's plans? Be vigilant. Listen for the Ego's sweet whispers. Tolle wisely advises us to "Watch out for any kind of defensiveness within yourself. What are you defending? An illusory identity, an image in your mind, a fictitious entity."

Being offended is a telltale sign of the Ego's handiwork.

Question your basic assumptions and opinions. This will help you detach from them and rob the Ego of its fuel.

It's not that you should abandon your opinions, only that you should recognize them as just that: your opinions. They don't belong to anyone else. In truth, they aren't even yours. You didn't create them, after all. You're just lugging them around in your mind. They're mental baggage.

If someone wants to question your beliefs, let them! What does it matter to you?

If someone points out your mistake, take ownership. The only people who never make mistakes are the people who don't do any work.

And if someone criticizes you, take it with an open mind. Genuinely consider what they've said. Do as Seneca advises and put yourself on trial. If you find no evidence to support your critic's charges, you can disregard them calmly, knowing full well that they are unfounded.

If however you find some truth in the charges brought against you, thank your critic and take heart: you're one step closer to becoming your best self.

Morning Prayer part 2

"When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly." 

- Marcus Aurelius

Compared to Aurelius' other morning prayer, the above probably sounds a little pessimistic. Whereas before he urges himself to "think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive--to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love," he now prepares himself for a long line of unpleasant, unsavoury, and difficult people.

But is it pessimistic to prepare yourself for the inevitable, or simply pragmatic?

We must all interact with people who fall outside our circle of compassion. It's foolish to go around thinking we will get along with everyone we meet. People have different values, opinions, and habits, and it stands to reason that these will differ from your own. And good thing, too. Imagine what a dull world it would be if everyone agreed on everything all the time!

Although Aurelius is prepared to encounter all types of unpleasant people, he takes great care not to resent them, reminding himself that "they are like this because they can’t tell good from evil." In other words, it's not their fault that they're meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, or surly: it's because they are blissfully ignorant or because they cling to a skewed perception of reality. They value the wrong things because they confuse the good with the ill and thus fall into negative patterns of thought and behavior.

Aurelius continues:

But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. 

Rather than hate these wrongdoers, Aurelius feels a sense of brotherhood with them. Though they know it not, they too possess a splinter of the universal intellect and so there is a chance that they will one day see the beauty of good and the ugliness of evil.

And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. 

No matter what these wrongdoers do, they cannot touch Aurelius. They cannot even incite his anger, only his sympathy.

We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions.

Those ignorant to the nature of good and evil are like the malfunctioning parts of a machine: they have fallen out of harmony with the whole and now hinder its proper functioning. To feel anger towards others--even those who purposely hinder the working of the human machine--is not only unnatural but an obstruction to right living.

Aurelius' words also happen to fall in line with one of Christ's most powerful teachings: that we should love our enemies and do good to those that hate us. Indeed, what merit is there in loving those who reciprocate our love and treat us well? It's natural to love those who love us back. The real challenge is to love those who spite us, insult us, obstruct us, and otherwise mean us harm.

We're so accustomed to fighting fire with fire--to countering insults with insults, aggression with aggression, and so on--that Aurelius' advice may sound backward. And yet a brief examination of our tendencies (and, more importantly, their results) shows them to be fallacious in the worst way.

Wars always fail to resolve the conflicts that spark them. Interpersonal disagreements worsen and become grudges when both parties remain disagreeable. Disease and illness are compounded by poor diet and lifestyle choices.

A force cannot be overcome except by its exact opposite.    

Next time you interact with someone who chafes you, try focusing on their good qualities, however few and minute. Try putting yourself in their shoes or thinking of a time when you irritated and annoyed others. Ask yourself, "What faults of mine resemble most closely this person's faults?" And lastly, try showing them kindness, understanding, and love.

They might not acknowledge or appreciate your good treatment, but then you're not doing it for the recognition.

You do it for yourself, because you know better. You know that people were made for one another, that the only thing that can conquer hate, anger, and the other toxic fruits of bad thought and wrong action are the forces of love, empathy, and sympathy.

You know that by showing kindness to the unkind, generosity to the greedy, and understanding to the ignorant, you fulfill your purpose and serve as a beacon of goodness for those around you.

/rant over

War

Ex-smokers often talk about the difficulty of breaking the habit. "The hardest part," they say, "is right after breakfast," or "during coffee break," or "right after sex." Why? Because that's when they were accustomed to lighting up. So right after breakfast, when they would normally be having their first cigarette of the day but aren't, their mind starts shouting at them.

"What are you doing?" it cries, tapping its watch. "You should be smoking right now. It's time!"

It's not the physical addiction that's difficult to overcome: it's the habit.

Habits are like ruts in your life-path. They're formed and deepened by repetition. Henry David Thoreau wrote,

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

After a year of writing daily, these last weeks have felt strange to say the least. Like the ex-smoker, my brain keeps telling me I should be here working on my next post.

So what am I doing instead?

Preparing.

You can't charge blindly into war. You need a strategy. You need to sharpen your weapons and train your soldiers. 

Every time that voice pipes up and yells at me to go write, I put my head down and keep working.

Remember the plan, I tell myself. 

First, I'm putting my arsenal together. And since my war is an internal one, a war of words, it is only fitting that I start with my notes.

Every book I've read int he last year is filled with highlighted passages and sections. These are the bits I want to study in more detail or the lines that rang with truth. These are my weapons and I've spent the last two weeks making a detailed inventory of them by manually copying all my notes into word documents.

It's as exciting as it sounds, folks, but there's no avoiding it.

I'm sure there's an easier way of doing this. I could probably export my Kindle notes without typing them up all but then I wouldn't get to revisit some of the ideas that jumped out at me over the last year.

Being organized facilitates the work ahead. Sure, right now it feels like I'm wasting time, like I'm shirking some responsibility or avoiding an inevitability, but I know very well that this is Resistance trying to slow me down.

When I finally get down to the task at hand, it will be with swords sharpened and armour polished. Not only that, but with a strategy for winning the war. No more going in blind for me.

Once I get all my notes transcribed, I'll start labeling and organizing them thematically. And in order to silence my nagging mind, I'll share some of my favourite highlights right here and throw in some rambling commentary to boot.

And what better way to start than with a few lines from Steven Pressfield's most excellent book, The War of Art!

The premise to Pressfield's book is simple to grasp. According to him,

Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.

Resistance is a force generated by the ego and its sole function is to stop you from bettering yourself. Whether it's a diet, new business venture, or that book you want to write, Resistance will find ways to confound and trip you up. It lies, cheats, appeals to your fears and insecurities. It's that little voice that tells you you're not good enough, that there's no point, that it won't work anyway.

Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still, small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times before, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you.

That's your unlived life. You know what it is just as well as you know your own name. You might bury it under the worries and fixations of the ego but beneath those layers of bullshit, you know exactly what your soul desires. This is the life you were meant for but fear pursuing.

And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you.

Indeed! Like an anchor it will bog you down mentally, physically, and emotionally. When you get home and complete the mundane tasks of adulthood, the last thing you want to do is [paint/write/organize/exercise/think/study/build/plan] You're exhausted from carrying Resistance around all day. [Painting/writing/organizing/exercising/thinking/studying/building/planning] just feels like more work, anyway.

What you need to do is relax. Put your laptop away! You had a long day. Don't lace up your runners. Don't start that project. See that couch over there? It's warm and comfy and it's been waiting for you all day.

And then, when you're at the office, job site, or shop doing real work, you think to yourself, "I wish I could do what I love for a living!"

You could! But you never will unless you start. Only whenever you get the chance to start you cop out. You're tired. Not in the mood. Work was brutal. You just want to watch TV and unwind.

Meanwhile, you're not getting any closer to manifesting your unlived life. You're drifting aimlessly, knocking from port to port and acting lost when in reality you have the map and compass in your damn hands! And you feel this vague gnawing in the pit of your being, this nagging sensation that says you should be doing something else, that you were meant for something greater.

And you're right!

We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who we are from the cradle, and we're stuck with it.

No, you haven't been robbed of your rightful destiny; you simply haven't taken steps to claim it.

Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.

Stop waiting around on uncertainties and future promises. Whatever your calling, whoever you need to become, the time is now. Don't surrender to procrastination, doubt, and the other lies Resistance peddles. It's your job to become the best possible you there is.

Now get started!

Thanksgiving Rant

The end of a melody is not its goal: but nonetheless, had the melody not reached its end it would not have reached its goal either. A parable.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

When I first started the Meme Merchant, my intention was to write for a year and then convert my articles into a book. I don't know whether I'll do that now but I do know that my year is up (it's actually been a year and a month, but who's counting?) and it's time for me to move on to some new projects.

Before we get into that, I'd first like to say thank you to the people who helped, supported, and inspired me over the last year. 

Steven Pressfield: I've been writing on and off for decades but I never had the discipline to write consistently until I read your book, The War of Art. Your take on the writer's path and the obstacles that obstruct it really put things into perspective for me. It's so simple: the most important part of being a writer is writing. I get it now. Every day I wait for the Muse to visit me and she rarely misses our appointments.

Jessica: thanks for giving me some valuable feedback regarding the look and feel of the blog. I hope it isn't too hard on the eyes!

Big Shaq: thanks for giving me feedback on the length of my articles and suggesting that I post on the same days every week. Having a structure and routine really helped me get organized with my writing and I think it's probably helped with my traffic as well. As always, you're a sexy scholar and a gentleman.  

Thanks to Dan Meilleur for his contribution and for letting me read an advance copy of his Atheist's Bible. I look forward to reading the finished product when it's ready and I hope to work with you again in the future.

Thanks also to Tom Ippen for his excellent piece on the role of war in the modern world. It's a must-read and timely reminder, especially in light of recent and ongoing events in the Levant and Ukraine.

Thanks to Stephen Harper for being the worst prime minister in recent memory. You'll be happy to know that you single-handedly shattered my political apathy. Well, that's not quite true: your flunkies helped quite a bit, too. In any case, 2015 will be a historical year for me as it will mark the first time I vote in a federal election. I am eagerly awaiting to do my part in getting you and your Northern Republicans out of office.

David: thanks for putting me onto Alan Watts and the video attached below. I've re-watched it more times than I can count! The perfect balance of truth, beauty, and #pewpew. Greatly appreciated.

Kyle and Aaron: you two are by far my most vocal cheerleaders. No one has shared my work with others as much as you two and I am deeply grateful and humbled by your support. Not sure what I did to earn it but I'll do my best not to lose it.

Thanks to Cyrus the Great for being so goddamn awesome. Yours was a shining example of wit, wisdom, might, and philanthropy. The world desperately needs more leaders like you. October 29th is marked on my calendar, dude. Your life is worth commemorating!

Jason: thanks for suggesting that I write about the teachers' strike. I know our opinions on this topic differ and I hope you weren't offended by my assessment of the situation. That post, by the way, drove more traffic to my blog than anything else I've written and I couldn't of done it without your suggestion!

And Crystal, my little pendeja: your aggressive and shameless promotion of the aforementioned teachers' strike piece made me feel like I was actually part of something greater, like I took a stand and it meant something. Thanks for getting behind it and for pushing it out to your people!

Tarek and Youssef: thanks for putting me onto Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce. Now if only our politicians read it and applied its principles to policy making! Thanks also for showing me that the Law of Attraction does indeed work. How else do you explain the circumstances of our meeting? It's not every day that you meet strangers in the Sheraton hot tub, strike up a conversation about politics and religion, and go out for dinner afterward! You guys are classy as fuck and I wish you both the best. If you're ever up here again, drop me a line!

Almost done.

Thanks to Socrates, Zeno of Citium, Lucius Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius for putting into words what has long resided in my heart. Discovering Stoicism earlier this year was like coming home for the first time. It clicked instantly.

Your collected works and ideas have had a profound effect on how I view the world and operate in it.
You've helped me get off the treadmill and appreciate what I have. You've taught me to regard the universe and my brief time in it with reverence and awe. More importantly, you've confirmed what I always believed: that happiness is a state of mind completely unrelated to the external world and
available to anyone who wishes to grasp it.

Last but not least, thanks to DJ Candy Pants for supporting and believing in me. I'm blessed to have a wife and best friend like you. Your love is like fuel: it drives me to be the best husband, father, and person I can possibly be. I can say without a shred of exaggeration that you are my inspiration and the sole reason I put down the toilet seat. Thanks babe!

Okay, so what's next?

I'm going to shift gears a bit. Instead of writing about all these heavy, confusing topics, I'm going to keep things really casual. I'll update you guys on the projects I'm working on, drop samples, or document my oddball opinions and observations about news, pop culture, or anything else that takes my fancy.

Come to think of it, that sounds a lot like what I'm doing now! Only, I'll be doing a lot less of it going forward. Expect shorter posts and fewer of them.

Thanks to those I mentioned above and everyone else who has taken the time to read my work. I hope you derived some value or benefit from this blog: I know I did!

Cheers,

Oscar

Semantics

All this time I've been talking about how ideas shape our world but I neglected to discuss a key piece of this phenomena. Ideas alone can't do much. In order to have an impact on physical reality, they have to spread from person to person. The topic of this article is not the ideas themselves but rather their vehicle: words.

Words are symbols that represent concepts, notions, feelings, and meaning. When I say the word "chair," an image instantly materializes in your mind: a four-legged contraption with a flat section for your ass and a piece to support your back. The chair in your head probably looks different from the chair in mine but that's to be expected. Cosmetics will vary based on past experience and memories but the core concept, the essence of "chair," is the same.

Simple ideas are more easily carried by words than their complex or ambiguous counterparts. When dealing with simple or static ideas, language exceeds its mandate. When dealing with nebulous concepts such as "truth," "reality," or "God," misunderstandings emerge. Disagreements become more frequent because definitions vary from person to person.

It was my use of the word "sin" in this article that convinced me to write about semantics. When I shared the above piece in a Stoic message board online I got the following feedback from a user named TheWhiteNoise1:

Not too bad except: "For most people, the knowledge of sin is nothing more than an opportunity to practice denial and willful ignorance" is absurd to me because sin is not a reasonable concept to me and therefore not in line with stoicism.

Clearly TheWhiteNoise1's definition of "sin" differs from mine. My guess is that he/she reacted to the Christian connotation of the word, which is unfortunate because the context of my article was distinctly un-Christian. My reply went as follows:

Don't get hung up on semantics. You're letting words have power over you when it should be the other way around. We own words, we make of them what we want. Call it flaw, weakness, whatever, the idea is the same.

Thing is, I get into these types of misunderstanding all the time.  It's fully my fault, too, because I insist on using words as I see fit, definitions be damned!

We have to remember that we invented language. Words work for us, not the other way around. We rule them. We determine what they mean and how we use them. If they were rigid or absolute, their definitions wouldn't change over time. When old words are used in new ways, their meaning changes by consensus. Language is fluid and we direct its flow whether we know it or not.

Language evolves, just like everything else in the universe.

I enjoy taking charged words and making them my own and I don't mind switching between different words to describe or express the same idea. It's my belief that concepts such as "God," "soul," "sin," "salvation," and "fate," among others, all have valid counterparts in modern language that work in concert with our scientific understanding of the universe.

Let me give you some examples.

When our ancestors wrote about the human soul, they were merely describing human consciousness. What is consciousness if not the essence of the Self, the knowing, observing entity lurking behind your thoughts and driving your decisions and actions? Science still can't explain what human consciousness is or how it emerged so it's not like we're contradicting an accepted definition here, just using a different label to describe the same mysterious thing.

When our ancestors wrote about heaven and hell, what do you suppose they were talking about? As the poet John Milton once wrote, "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven." In other words, heaven and hell are internal conditions of the mind, not actual places you go to after you die.

A mind rooted in the hateful, bitter, jealous, paranoid, anxious, and unhappy manifests for its owner a world fully furnished with dangers and painted in sombre colors. On the other hand, a mind rooted in love, joy, compassion, hope, patience, and humility manifests for its owner a world of stunning beauty furnished with awe-inspiring miracles and permeated with the infinite Love of God.  

Which brings us to the G word itself.

When our ancestors wrote about God they were talking about the highest power they could conceive. The barbaric God of the Old Testament represents the cutting edge of Hebrew imagination at the time. Yahweh was literally the greatest being these people could dream up, and they painted Him with all of their hopes, fears, biases, and grudges.

What is the highest power conceivable to a modern, scientifically literate person? Is there something that is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful, and whose existence can be fact-checked?

When I use the word God, I mean the sum of all things--all matter and energy--along with the seemingly intelligent laws that govern it. If you've been following along, this is more or less the pantheistic God of Seneca, Aurelius, Jefferson, and Einstein, among others.

You are not a single unit: you are the sum of your limbs, organs, fluids, and intellectual capacities. Your liver isn't you, but it's a part of you. Likewise, the individual parts making up the whole are not God, but a part of God.

When taken together as a whole, these parts constitute the ultimate power, the unity of all things, infinitely divisible but to which nothing can be added.

God is the sum of existence, the Alpha and Omega, the self-created and eternal Universe.

This is usually the time when someone objects, saying: "We already have a perfectly good word for the universe. Why call it God?" To which I would let Paul Harrison, president of the World Pantheism Movement, reply:

To call the Universe "God" or "divine" is not at all meaningless. Although it does not tell us anything extra about the Universe itself,  it expresses the powerful emotions that pantheists feel towards the Universe.

Intelligent design is evolution. Salvation is self-improvement and fulfillment. Fate is the external world you inherited from your ancestors, the result of cause and effect stretching back to the Big Bang itself. Free-will is freedom of choice.

I could go on but I'm quickly surpassing my 1,000 word limit so I'll summarize my view on words with this quote from the late Alan Watts:

The menu is not the meal.

/rant over

Long Lost Logos

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
- Albert Einstein 

For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
- Jesus Christ

Are humans merely a fancy breed of ape, no more special than any other beast on the planet? Is our existence inherently devoid of purpose? Is the search for meaning, happiness, and fulfilment a pointless pursuit?

Or are we different from other animals? Were we chosen by a higher power for a special purpose? Do we hold within ourselves a fragment of the divine, and is this fragment key to achieving joy and fulfillment?

Dan Meilleur did a fantastic job laying out the particulars of this debate in his post entitled "Special or Not?" In it, Meilleur clearly disagrees with the Judeo-Christian view of humanity's superior status. He states that

human life is no more important or intrinsically valuable than that of a kangaroo, a carrot, or a flea. Our sentience is different, yes, but our importance--our “special-ness”--is not.

Meilleur rightfully blames the Judeo-Christian view--that the creator of the universe personally made us, takes an interest in our daily activities, and that the earth is our birthright--for some of the problems we are facing as a species today. By thinking that we are superior to other lifeforms and that the earth is ours to subjugate, we can pollute and destroy without a shred of remorse.

On the other hand, blaming a book or ideology for human behavior is like blaming a wrench for the mechanic's sloppy work. The Bible isn't at fault: our interpretation of the Bible is.

There are splinters of wisdom and insight embedded within the Bible but in order to glimpse them we must read the Bible symbolically, as it was always meant to be read. The problem is that many people interpret the Bible as a literal history of the universe and in doing so miss the truth contained within its pages.

What truth?

That humans are indeed special; that we were chosen by a higher power for a specific purpose; that we carry a shard of that higher power within ourselves; and, that this shard of the divine is key to  discovering our purpose and achieving happiness.

Best of all, this truth does not contradict reason or modern scientific understanding; to the contrary, the two sides, seemingly at odds, compliment each other remarkably well. Let's examine the statements listed above.

We are Special

This isn't hubris, folks. Just look around you for a moment. You see the cars driving by, buildings towering above, and planes shooting across the sky? Did gorillas make these wonders? Did ants? Fleas? Seagulls?

I'm not saying we're special as in "better" or "superior" to other animals, nor am I saying that we aren't animals: we most certainly are. When I say special, I only mean that we are otherwise different from what is usual. If humans are animals, and no other animal has come close to rivalling our accomplishments, then one cannot deny that we are somehow different.

What is it that distinguishes us from our animal relatives?

The ability to analyze, hypothesize, organize, predict, and override our biological programming. Combined, these allow us to literally rearrange the world around us into forms that serve our needs. Tables, street-signs, wheelchairs, pace-makers, computers, and every other human-made object on the planet was once raw material which we extracted and reshaped for our own purposes.

No other animal on earth can do this.

That's not to say that we should mistreat other animals or subject them to needless cruelty; only that we are indeed different from them. As you will see, the thing that makes us different also demands that we take care of one another and treat all lifeforms with dignity and respect.

We were Chosen

It's important not to get hung up on terminology here. When I say we were chosen by a higher power, I don't mean that we were hand-crafted by a bearded sky-father. I don't mean that a deity told us that earth and everything on it was ours to do with as we please.

When I say we were chosen, I mean that we are the product of evolution, which is also called natural selection. This implies that certain lifeforms are selected or chosen to survive, breed, and evolve further. And since we exist here and now, we can safely assume that we are among the races chosen by nature to survive and fulfill our purpose.

When I say higher power, I'm not referring to an anthropomorphic deity who judges and doles out punishment to his unruly children; I'm talking about the "superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe," as Einstein put it. It's the pantheistic God, aka the Universe. Nature is simply the creative spirit organizing God's parts into ever more complex forms.

Humans just so happen to be the most complex form on earth and, in all likelihood, in the solar system. If that doesn't make us special, I don't know what does.

We have a Purpose

When comparing like objects, what leads us to judge one as superior to the other? For instance, what makes one type of car better or more valuable than another? Only this: that one fulfills its purpose more efficiently, beautifully, and effectively than the other.

If a garden produces an abundance of fruit and another very little, one will judge the first to be better than the second. It is because a garden serves a purpose: to bear fruit.

We hold in our minds ideas of what different things ought to do and prize those that do it best.

In order to discern our purpose as a species, we must look at the basic functions or traits of human beings. What are some hallmarks of humanity? What is unique about us? What do we do better than other animals?

In other words, what is our function?

First, we are social animals. This isn't a unique trait, of course. Most animals function in packs, tribes, colonies, etc. but no other species has devised such vast and complex social networks, nor leveraged them into a global civilization. No other animal has developed advanced methods of communication, nor the ability to contact others instantly across vast distances.

Second, and more importantly, we are reasoning animals. This, I believe, is the thing that also makes us special. Without the ability to recognize and analyze patterns, organize information, plan, predict, and rationalize, we would be no different from our cousins, the great apes.

There is no other trait that is uniquely ours. Everything else we do, every other skill or attribute we possess, exists in the animal world in greater abundance. We are not the strongest, fastest, or most resilient beast in the animal kingdom. Only reason allows us to reshape the world around us and more importantly, override our biological programming or instincts so that we may act rationally.

And so, in order to fulfill our purpose as human beings, we must first employ reason, our greatest tool, in all aspects of our lives and second concern ourselves with the common good of those around us.

The Divine is Within

If you agree with the above, this last one--which at first glance is probably the least believable of the bunch--becomes much easier to grasp.

The Universe is a higher power and Nature is the creative spirit that shapes and governs its parts. Using Nature, the Universe recycles and reinvents itself, moving from simplicity to complexity and manifesting itself into new forms.

Doesn't that sound a whole lot like what we do with our surroundings? We take existing matter in its crude form, refine it, reshape it, assemble it, and put it to work fulfilling some new purpose. It's this very ability that distinguishes us from other animals, and coincidentally, it is the very thing that drives the Universe along.

If we regard Nature as the intellectual force of the Universe, the thing that drives evolution in all its myriad forms, and we alone of all the animals on earth are capable of imitating the Universe, doesn't it stand to reason that we too must possess a fragment of the universal intellect?

That's what a bunch of ancient philosophers believed. They called this piece of the divine intellect the Logos and they claimed that only through it could humans find salvation.  Oddly enough, Christianity agrees with this notion. In the opening verses of John's Gospel, the author refers to the Logos by name, claiming that

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

We later find out that the Logos came down to earth in the form a man named Jesus Christ, who tells us that he is "the way and the truth and the life" and that "no one comes to the Father" except through him.

The Father is none other than the wondrous Universe itself and the only way we can truly know God and find salvation is through the Logos, which dwells within each and every one of us.

Conclusion

We have inherited a great and powerful gift that no other animal on earth possesses. That makes us special, but not invincible, and it certainly doesn't give us the right to poison our beautiful planet or abuse the other lifeforms who dwell upon it.

We would do well to remember Uncle Ben's warning to a young Peter Parker: "With great power comes great responsibility."

Atheists like to point to the book of Genesis as the source of our reckless behavior and ego-centrism. What they ignore is the second chapter of this book, which retells the creation story from a slightly different perspective. Here we are told that God made us to look after his garden. In other words, we are the earth's caretakers, not its masters.

As such, we must look out for our home and all its inhabitants. We must strengthen reason in our minds and use it to govern our instincts and passions. We must banish ignorance and destroy greed. We must put our petty, superficial differences aside and look to one another for strength, love, and support.

Alone even the mightiest human can accomplish very little; but together, working coherently toward a set of common goals, we can finally stop worshiping imaginary gods and become gods ourselves.

Look around you again. Clearly we've already begun our transformation but our progress is hindered. Along with the Logos, we carry the baggage of our animal heritage--our tendencies toward tribalism, violence, competition, insecurity, and fear--and this burden threatens to grind our progress to a halt.

Only the light of the Logos can frighten the animal mind into its cage where it rightfully belongs.

The holy spirit isn't upon you: it's inside you. You need only awaken it to transform your life and the lives of those around you.

/rant over

Two Cent Rant: Jesus

Was Jesus Christ a real person or a fabrication? Was he a miracle worker, wise teacher, political radical, or a mix of all three? Was he truly God personified or just a regular dude? For whatever it's worth, here's my two cents.

People have long debated the existence of Jesus and called into question the details of his life. The four Gospels of the New Testament provide enough contradictions to fuel the debate alone; throw in the 52 Gnostic Gospels and lack of corroborating testimony in secular historical records and you're looking at a difficult case to crack.

To make matters even more difficult, those who maintain that Jesus was real and that the Biblical accounts of his life are 100% literal and accurate cannot be swayed by evidence or a lack thereof. Why should they care that the only clear references to Jesus are contained in the New Testament and no where else? To these people, the Bible is the perfect word of God and contains all the evidence they need regarding the existence of Jesus.

Here's how we can resolve the historicity debate: we can stop having it.

It's another pointless argument that leads both sides to a place I like to call butt-fuck no where. Neither side can win but more importantly it's a pointless debate because both sides are focusing on the wrong thing.

Whether a flesh-and-bones Jesus ever lived is irrelevant. The Christ meme--the idea, mythos, or character of Jesus Christ, the son of God who traveled the Levant performing miracles and teaching the masses, died, and was resurrected--exists and is alive and well. It thrives in the minds of millions around the world, affecting how they think, speak, behave, and believe.

If one can't deny Christ's effect on the millions who worship him, how can we deny his existence?

Memes are selfish replicators. They try to achieve two simple  things: survival and reproduction. Religious memes are particularly good at this because they learned long ago to exploit our fear of mortality and hunger for meaning. By offering followers a special purpose in life and continued existence after death, religious memes secure their prolonged survival.

Christianity is by far the most successful religious meme in history. A few hundred years after its birth it spread across the whole of Europe, pushing all other religious and philosophical memes to the brink of extinction.

"Hold up!" I can hear some of you atheists shouting. "Christianity only achieved supremacy by using violence, barbarity, and other underhanded tactics. The Church forced people to adopt Christianity. There's nothing special about that!"

Like I said, memes don't give a shit how they survive, just so long as they do. They will throw people under the bus, wipe out entire populations of non-believers, cheat, lie, steal, whatever.

Even so, Christianity didn't start off burning witches and torturing pagans. Anyone with a passing knowledge of history will tell you that early Christians were literally fed to the lions by the Romans.

So how did Christianity go from Rome's favorite whipping boy to dominant state religion? And why is it that millions continue to identify as Christians despite clear evidence that the Bible is just a collection of quasi-historical myths and stories?

In other words, what is it about this particular meme that captures the human mind so easily and firmly?

First, Christianity's success in Rome was due by and large to its adoption of existing pagan symbols and themes, the most influential of which is the Solar Saviour myth.

Allow me to summarize.

Throughout history we find essentially the same legend told over and over again. The legend is allegorical, a reflection of events that take place annually in the heavens above, and is remarkably consistent in its many incarnations. The story revolves around a hero or savior figure, typically born of a virgin, whose coming is heralded by a prophet in the wilderness and who gathers around him twelve disciples. The hero eventually dies and, three days later, rises from the dead.

I could go on but this topic is far too lengthy to tackle in a 1,000 word rant. If you want to learn more or just want to have your mind blown, check out this video. And if you want a more in-depth look, I highly recommend Tom Harpur's book "The Pagan Christ." Needless to say, a large part of the Jesus meme is simply a rehashing of time-worn myths.

Adopting this well-known motif might've helped early Christians convert pagans and become the dominant religion of Rome but it doesn't explain how Christianity continues to sway so many humans in the modern age. People nowadays aren't attracted to Christianity by the miracles Jesus supposedly performed. In fact, many Christians eschew literal interpretations of the Gospel altogether in favor of symbolic or metaphorical readings.

Christianity's power lies not in a list of plagiarized miracles but in the message attributed to Jesus (and moreover to the Apostle Paul, whom many believe to be the true father of Christianity as we know it). The message is in no way unique--we can find bits and pieces of it in Buddhism, Stoicism, Platonism, Zoroastrianism, and Taoism--but Christianity is perhaps the first meme to bring so many fragments together under one roof.

What is this message?

That we are all God's children; that God's Kingdom resides within each and everyone of us; that this Kingdom is accessible only through the Logos (the author of John's Gospel calls it the "Word" and equates it with Jesus, but more on that Friday); and finally, that God is love.

Byproducts of this message include loving your neighbor, treating others as you would like to be treated, turning the other cheek, living in the now, and holding in low regard earthly or material possessions.

Christ's message contains within it elements of Truth, hence why it continues to resonate with so many people. Unfortunately for those people, centuries of literal interpretation and meddling from religious and political organizations have obscured Jesus' teachings and fragmented the Christian community into countless sects and sub-sects.

Nowadays, most people who identify as Christian know very little about the man (whether real, fabricated, or a little bit of both) who gave them their name. They support political parties that claim to be Christian but whose deeds prove the opposite.

Any politician who spews lies and hatred, cuts funding to welfare and education, or who attempts to impose his personal beliefs onto others by way of government, is announcing his apostasy to the world.

Whether physically real or not, Jesus was a wise dude and more so-called Christians would do well to abide by his teachings. If everyone who claimed to be a Christian actually acted like it, they wouldn't have to wait to go to paradise: they would already be there.

/rant over