DRAFT: The Law of Attraction

Definition of the Law of Attraction

 The Law of Attraction is a universal Law that says, “That which is like unto itself, is drawn.” - Abraham Hicks

This is further explained in the book The Law of Attraction (by Esther and Jerry Hicks) with 

“When you say, ‘Birds of a feather flock together,’ you are actually talking about the Law of Attraction. You see it evidenced when you wake up feeling unhappy, and then throughout the day things get worse and worse, and at the end of the day you say, ‘I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed.’ You see the Law of Attraction evidenced in your society when you see that the one who speaks most about illness has illness; when you see that the one who speaks most about prosperity has prosperity. The Law of Attraction is evident when you set your radio dial on 630AM and you expect to receive the broadcast from the transmitting tower of 630AM, because you understand that the radio signals between the transmitting tower and your receiver must match.”

“To better understand the Law of Attraction, see yourself as a magnet attracting unto you the essence of that which you are thinking and feeling. And so, if you are feeling fat, you cannot attract thin. If you feel poor, you cannot attract prosperity, and so on. It defies Law.”

Everything Is Energy & Everything Is a Manifestation

To fully understand the Law of Attraction you have to know that everything is made of energy and everything in your life is a manifestation. When you hear, you are translating energy vibration into sound, when you see, you are translating light waves into different colors, and so on. Even your thoughts are energy. The other important concept to nail down is that EVERYTHING is a manifestation. The Law of Attraction is not a process you apply when trying to achieve a goal. It is a Law that applies itself to everything at all times. What you want to do is alter your thoughts so that the Law of Attraction works in your favor.

Because the Law of Attraction applies itself to everything, you don’t only have to think about its effects in abstracts or extremes like world peace, winning the lottery, or war. You can look at your own life: How is your health? How is your timing? How do strangers treat you? How are your relationships? This, along with your emotions, tell you about your “vibrational set-point,” as Abraham Hicks calls it. Your vibrational set-point is the signal or energetic frequency that you are sending out, which the law of attraction responds to. This comes from the essence of your thoughts. It’s important to remember that the Law of Attraction is responding to your vibration, not the words you speak. You can shout “I am rich!” from the rooftops, but if you don’t feel it and believe it, it won’t come to you. 

How do thoughts turn to things?

The Law of Attraction gathers things of the same vibration. So your vibration attracts a thought, which attracts another thought, which leads to an impulse, to an action, and on and on and on. Other people are attracted to you, and you create things and situations together. For another short explanation, watch from 1:06-2:16 of this video of the Teachings of Abraham Hicks. Heads up: They talk a bit fast.

This Part of “New Age” Is Not New

Although the Law of Attraction is considered a part of the “New Age” movement, it has been written and spoken about for a long time. Some of the concepts are even seen in the Bible. People such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, born in 1803, and William James, born in 1842 are mentioned in Joseph Murphy’s book The Power of Your Subconscious Mind. He explains the meaning and language behind many Bible quotes throughout his book. An example of one of the Bible stories that Joseph Murphy covered is Matthew 9:28-30. In the English Standard Version of the Bible, it reads: 

“When he [Jesus] entered the house, the blind men came to him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them, “See that no one knows about it.”

Jesus’s warning to the healed blind men was to keep what happened to themself because he knew that if they told others, the other people would most likely doubt and subsequently lead the healed men to doubt, which could reverse the healing that was done by their faith.

Abraham Hicks

At Abraham-hicks.com, the first thing you see is a picture of the interpreter Esther Hicks and text that says, 

“IT ALL STARTED HERE: This is the original source material for the current Law of Attraction wave that is sweeping the world, and it is the 21st century inspiration for thousands of books, films, essays and lectures that are responsible for the current paradigm shift in consciousness. 

Here you will find accurate clarification of the basics of the Law of Attraction and practical applications as well as up-to-the moment leading-edge expanding information regarding the Law of Attraction. (Also known as ‘The Teachings of Abraham’) 

This is the fountainhead of the information upon which the hit movie, ‘The Secret’ was based.”

The Teachings of Abraham are the clearest, most straightforward sources of information and answers your questions about the Law of Attraction, for the source of the information is Abraham, a non-physical consciousness, who is spoken for by Esther. Click here for a 10-minute introduction to Abraham-Hicks video.

Practical Applications

You may be wondering, How do I work with the Law of Attraction to achieve what I desire?

The most useful book I could recommend is Ask and It is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks. It covers the Law of Attraction, the basis of life, gives over twenty-two processes to improve what you are manifesting, and answers many introductory and frequently asked questions. But it’s a lot to ask that you read an entire book.

So, to start your journey, here are two videos, one consisting of Neville Goddard’s teachings and the other of the “5 lessons to live by” from Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.

Neville Goddard

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

RESOURCES to Explore

The Law of Attraction by Esther and Jerry Hicks

The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy

The Teachings of:       Neville Goddard

Alan Watts

Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Louise Hay

Dr. Joe Dispenza

Aalayis Suggs, Section 8, Final Blog Post

Natality and Mortality

 The terms come from a Greek Jewish Philosopher named Hannah Arendt. She gave natality the definition of the fact that we are born as a counterpoint to the popular term mortality which means the fact that we die. Mortality first appeared in the ancient Greeks vocabulary as a man being simply mortal. For example, they said “All men are mortal, Socrates was a man, Therefore Socrates was mortal. Mortality also showed up a lot in Hannah’s teachers views. Hannah’s teacher was Martin Heidegger and he was pretty much obsessed with death just like most people in the world today. Opposing her teachers views Hannah focused in on the natality of humans rather than mortality.  What made Hannah dive into natality was that she believed the origin of life from inorganic matter is so infinitely improbable that it prefigures every action. Hannah’s turn from mortality to natality really changes the way we think about birth and death in todays times. She takes natality and breaks it down into several different factors and stages. The different stages that she breaks it down into starts with the ability of humans to preform something so unique that with every birth something new comes into this world. Then comes admiring the baby after birth, Hannah really focuses on this stage of our lives by saying during these times the way we act could change the outcome of history in the slightest way. Then Hannah goes to talk about the development stage in the baby’s life when they start putting things together and developing their own ideas and thoughts. I could keep going down the line of what comes next in life but just doing this little amount of research and reading on natality makes you stop and think about the topic as a whole. To me this was an eye opener because as mentioned earlier most people in the world fascinate over death. So as all the stages in life start to wind down, we come to the end of the time we have here on earth and eventually face mortality. So, mortality in philosophy is such a very vague topic that can go many different ways while talking about it but one topic within mortality caught my attention.

Jeff Mason argues that the concept of death has no subjective meaning. Philosophers and non philosophers stand on a level of equality with respect to death. There are no experts on death, for there is nothing to know about it. Not even those who study the death process have an edge on the rest of us. We are all equals in thinking about death, and we all begin and end thinking about it from a position of ignorance.

Death and its concept are absolutely empty. No picture comes to mind. The concept of death has a use for the living, while death itself has no use for anything. All we can say about death is that it is either real or it is not real. If it is real, then the end of one's life is a simple termination. If it is not real, then the end of one's embodied life is not true death, but a portal to another life.

Having no content, we must speak of death metaphorically. For those who think death is real, death is a blank wall. For those who think it is not real, death is a door to another life. Whether we think of death as a wall or a door, we cannot avoid using one metaphor or another. We often say that a person who dies is relieved of suffering. However, if death is real, then it is metaphorical even to say that the dead do not suffer, as though something of them remains not to suffer. As there are already many speculations about some sort of  next life, (https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/17-death-and-its-concept)

The reason this concept was so interesting to me is because I think this is the question that crosses most people minds at least once when it comes to death, what happens once my time comes. Maybe its something to just put aside and figure it out once the time comes because we have no control over it. 

Dylan Love 

Section 004

Tearing down, building up

I had a moment of mild distress over the weekend, when I was out riding my bike in the Sylvan Park neighborhood of Nashville and came across yet another recent teardown. There are lots of those here, as the building/housing boom proceeds apace. Damn the pandemic, full speed ahead. But the mindset (not just in Nashville, in the U.S.) has always seemed to be devoted to "progress" of a sort that obliterates tangible traces of the past.

 

One of those old and reassuring traces for me was a house on Utah Avenue that was once home to a continuing series of my friends and colleagues in grad school at Vandy in the 80s. Fortunately for once, memory misled: that house was at the corner of 44th Avenue, not 42d. It still stands, it's not reduced to a fading pile of rubble just yet. Confirmation of its precise location came from a former resident, now living in Seattle, who requests that I snap a photo of the place that holds such fond memories for her next time I'm in the neighborhood. I'd better get on that, the dozers are restless. Historic preservationists have their hands full... (continues)

There's something about a train

If we're ever going to transcend politics and address our national infrastructure woes, evoking bipartisan sentiment around the romance and pleasures of train travel just might be the ticket.

You Can Hear the Whistle Blow a Hundred Miles
Just the possibility of riding trains again has me humming folk songs.

...Today the train sheds are gone, the grand old station is a luxury hotel, and Nashville is one of the largest cities in the country without passenger rail service. For a city so centrally located, this absence is odd, especially at a time when we recognize the damage cars do to the environment.

There are many brilliant proposals embedded in President Biden's mammoth infrastructure plan, and most aim to address climate change as they also address other critical needs. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in this country, and inspiring fewer people to drive cars will be a crucial element in the fight to limit the damage wrought by climate change. Expanding both freight and passenger rail service across the country is one plan that does double duty.

It's sorely needed here in the South, where car culture is endemic. Nashville to Savannah, Ga.; Montgomery, Ala., to Atlanta; Houston to Fort Worth; Mobile, Ala., to Baton Rouge, La. — all, I am grateful to note, are on the list of possible new train routes if Congress fully funds Mr. Biden's proposal.

It also happens to be a plan that ministers to the agitated traveler. If you've ever experienced rush hour Interstate traffic in Nashville or Atlanta, whether you live in one of these cities or are only passing through, you know what a gift these new routes would be, especially if other provisions of the infrastructure plan — like expanding public transit and simultaneously making cities more pedestrian-friendly — are also carried out.

Aside from enhancing the walkability and breathability of our communities, there's something about a train that reaches out to meet the yearning in the human soul. Perhaps it's the rhythmic rocking of steel wheels on a steel track, as soothing as the motion of a rocking chair. Perhaps it's that trains figure so prominently in our folk songs, linked to escape or adventure but ever joined to the tracks that point the way back home. At a deep, atavistic level, train travel is different from driving, different from flying, different even from riding the bus...

Margaret Renkl

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/opinion/Amtrak-trains-travel-south.html?smid=em-share

The Banality of Evil at 60 by @Samantharhill

Hannah Arendt was vacationing in the Catskills in the summer of 1960 when the news broke that Adolf Eichmann had been captured in Argentina by Mossad agents of the Israeli government. She put down the book she was working on, rearranged her teaching schedule, and flew to Israel to cover the trial. It was her "last opportunity to see a chief Nazi in the flesh," and she wanted to expose herself to the evildoer. 

Eichmann was one of the major figures in the organization of the Holocaust, and as Hitler's chief logician, he was responsible for the murder of millions.

Sixty years ago today on April 11, 1961, the trial of Eichmann opened before an Israeli Tribunal. But as the trial began, and Arendt was confronted with Eichmann in a glass box, she wrote to her husband, Heinrich Blücher: "The whole thing is so damned banal and indescribably low and repulsive. I don't understand it yet, but it seems to me that the penny will drop at some point, probably in my lap." (continues)

https://t.co/Bst6LhvUcQ
(https://twitter.com/philosophybites/status/1381283833388089346?s=02)

Rich & poor

"If you live in harmony with nature you will never be poor; if you live according what others think, you will never be rich."
- Seneca https://t.co/XSaist5ZnA
(https://twitter.com/EthicsInBricks/status/1380872293551853572?s=02)

"Spiritual"

Indeed! #CalvinandHobbes pic.twitter.com/N9C46vQGTt

— Calvin and Hobbes (@Calvinn_Hobbes) April 10, 2021

Questions Apr 13

 WGU

• "Children make more compliant subjects and consumers." 193 Are we a nation of children, in this sense? 
• Do you know any adults who never grew up, or who say they admire Peter Pan, or who are "young at heart" and "open to the world"? 194 Or any young people who missed out on the joys of childhood? 
• Do you wish you looked older than you do? Why?
• Is life like a journey in Neurath's boat? 196
• "Maturity cannot be commanded, it must be desired." 198 Do you desire it?
• "I wish I'd known enough to ask my teachers the right questions before they died." 198 Do you (now) have questions for people it's too late to ask? 
• "Most people grow happier as they grow older." 198 Does this surprise you?
• "Growing up means realizing that no time of one's life is the best one," just as each season of the year brings its own unique joys. 202 "To be interested in the changing seasons is, in this middling zone, a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring." (George Santayana) Do you agree?
• Do you understand what Kant meant by saying you have duties to yourself? 203
• Have you yet discovered the pleasures of generativity and generosity? 204
• Do you know anyone who treats people as means to their own ends? 206 Do you want to?
• Did you grow up in "a home filled with good books and articulate people"? 209 Do you intend to provide such a home for your children? 
• If musicians and bilingual speakers have more neural connections than others, why aren't music and languages more heavily emphasized in our schools? 210
• Do you see college as an opportunity to "expand your judgment and enlarge your mind"? 213
• Is "think for yourself" necessarily vague? 215
• Are you glad you didn't live before the Enlightenment, when your life would have been largely determined by your father's (and his, and his...)? 216
• Do you agree with Leibniz, that most people would choose on their deathbed to live their lives again only on the condition that they would be different next time? 
• Do you prefer Nietzsche's version of eternal recurrence (220), or Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day, or Hume's preference for the next ten years and not the last (221), or none of the above? 
• Do you enjoy the music of any older popular musicians (Dylan, Springsteen...)? 225
• "The fear of growing up is less a fear of dying than a fear of life itself." 230 Agree?
• Was Shakespeare really saying life sucks and then you die? Or was he mocking that view?

 

FL

• If/when you become a parent, will you be "anxious, frightened, overprotective" and constantly worried about the threat of child-napping? 326
• What do you think of "the message of The Courage to Heal"? 328
• What accounts for the "rising chorus of panicky Christian crazy talk"? 330
• Do you know any real "Devil worshippers"? Do you believe devils exist? Why? 334
• What do you think of Bakersfield's "big outbreak" and LA County's "Satanic Panic"? 337
• "Younger people know nothing about [our Satanic Panic of just a generation ago], and almost nobody is aware of its scale and duration and damage." True? 340
• What's the harm of obsessing about flying saucers etc.? 345
• Do you know anyone who believes that "everybody has been in on" a one-world government conspiracy orchestrated by space aliens? 347-8
• Were the Branch Davidians fundamentally different from mainstream Protestantism? 350
• What do you think of The X-Files? 354

"No pessmistic parents"

Hope rising https://t.co/FH6Bi9AlII

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) April 7, 2021

Natality

 

...The two central features of action are freedom and plurality. By freedom Arendt does not mean the ability to choose among a set of possible alternatives (the freedom of choice so dear to the liberal tradition) or the faculty of liberum arbitrium which, according to Christian doctrine, was given to us by God. Rather, by freedom Arendt means the capacity to begin, to start something new, to do the unexpected, with which all human beings are endowed by virtue of being born. Action as the realization of freedom is therefore rooted in natality, in the fact that each birth represents a new beginning and the introduction of novelty in the world.

To be sure, Arendt recognizes that all activities are in some way related to the phenomenon of natality, since both labor and work are necessary to create and preserve a world into which new human beings are constantly born. However, of the three activities, action is the one most closely connected with natality, because by acting individuals re-enact the miracle of beginning inherent in their birth. For Arendt, the beginning that each of us represents by virtue of being born is actualized every time we act, that is, every time we begin something new. As she puts it: “the new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting ” (HC, 9).

Arendt also stresses the fact that since action as beginning is rooted in natality, since it is the actualization of freedom, it carries with it the capacity to perform miracles, that is, to introduce what is totally unexpected. “It is in the nature of beginning” — she claims — “that something new is started which cannot be expected from whatever may have happened before. This character of startling unexpectedness is inherent in all beginnings … The fact that man is capable of action means that the unexpected can be expected from him, that he is able to perform what is infinitely improbable. And this again is possible only because each man is unique, so that with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world ” (HC, 177–8)...

Hannah Arendt, SEP

"Baloney"

Carl Sagan (November 9, 1934–December 20, 1996) was many things — a cosmic sage, voracious reader, hopeless romantic, and brilliant philosopher. But above all, he endures as our era’s greatest patron saint of reason and critical thinking, a master of the vital balance between skepticism and openness. In The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (public library) — the same indispensable volume that gave us Sagan’s timeless meditation on science and spirituality, published mere months before his death in 1996 — Sagan shares his secret to upholding the rites of reason, even in the face of society’s most shameless untruths and outrageous propaganda.

In a chapter titled “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,” Sagan reflects on the many types of deception to which we’re susceptible — from psychics to religious zealotry to paid product endorsements by scientists, which he held in especially low regard, noting that they “betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers” and “introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity.” (Cue in PBS’s Joe Hanson on how to read science news.) But rather than preaching from the ivory tower of self-righteousness, Sagan approaches the subject from the most vulnerable of places — having just lost both of his parents, he reflects on the all too human allure of promises of supernatural reunions in the afterlife, reminding us that falling for such fictions doesn’t make us stupid or bad people, but simply means that we need to equip ourselves with the right tools against them... (continues) 

Squishies, loonies, and demons (oh my!)

 LISTEN (recorded November 2020). Is it safe to look away from politics yet, for at least a day?

In CoPhi today our Fantasyland focus is first on the "nonjudgmental Squishie" academics of the '80s and '90s--presumably the period of Peak Squishie, coincident btw with my time in grad school-- who taught that reason was not for everyone, or that "someone's capacity to experience the supernatural" depends on their "willingness to see more than is materially present."

Yesterday [11.9] was Carl Sagan's birthday (as his daughter Sasha, an accomplished author herself, noted), making it the perfect time to consider his Baloney Detection Kit and its particular application to UFO "abductees" and their sympathizers. He also thought it would be very cool to have a close encounter with E.T., but it's really more than okay not to think with your gut (as Sagan said to his cabbie).

Has there ever been a more chilling prophecy than this, from Sagan in Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1997)?

“I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.

The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir.”

What would Carl have said about the "Q conspiracy" nonsense? "Baloney!" And that's putting it mildly and euphemistically.

And would Thomas Jefferson say such nonsense "neither picks our pockets nor breaks our legs," figuratively speaking? There are worse forms of injury and harm, in a would-be democracy, than overt assault and theological dissent. The body politic takes a devastating blow when citizens can no longer think for themselves or distinguish truth from lies and fantasies.

In Why Grow Up? Susan Neiman thinks we ought to unplug from the internet periodically, and for longer intervals. The National Day of Unplugging comes up again in March [came up, missed it again]. But that's just once a year. How about one day a week? Okay, you first.

(Originally published 11.10.20)

But it's a great idea, next time I go to the beach I'm doing it. Maybe. (My wife's going to the beach tonight, I don't think she's planning to unplug entirely but she is hauling along a backlog of novels.)

Also in WGU today, Neiman notes Kant's view that "it's action that gives life meaning" and Hegel's that "actually doing something" is the "motor that pushes world-history forward" (not that he ever said it that straightforwardly, but it's not an implausible view).  And then Hannah Arendt's notion of natality gets a curtain call, with its hopeful gaze at "the constant influx of newcomers who are born into the world as strangers" and have an opportunity to create something lasting, to" find a place in a cosmos" that will outlast us all.

This, by the way, is exactly the spirit of Bruce Springsteen's and Barack Obama's just-concluded podcast "Renegades." The Boss says he doesn't want to know pessimistic parents, who are doing it wrong.

There's also another nod to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, here extolling the virtues of carpentry. Reminds me of my Carolina pal from Indiana, who'll be stepping down from teaching and stepping into his woodshop. He knows at firsthand what Rousseau probably only imagined, that working with wood and hands is clean, useful, elegant, "a paradigm for honest, useful work." 

We don't have enough of that. Too many of us, in Paul Goodman's phrase, spend (at least) "eight hours a day doing what is no good." Most of us, wittingly or not, support and participate in an economy driven largely by fashion and planned obsolescence ("product life cycle") and an expectation that "most of the objects we use will need replacement before we have finished paying for them."

The great indictment of my profession: "We tell children that all the questions they've asked... will be answered at school, and we send them to institutions that dull their desire to pose questions at all." 

That is loony.

Independent thinkers

Ernest, your statement that "we all are designed to be independent thinkers" is all the excuse I need to share this:

FOLLOWERS: Brian! Brian! Brian!...

BRIAN: Good morning.

FOLLOWERS: A blessing! A blessing! A blessing!...

BRIAN: No. No, please! Please! Please listen. I've got one or two things to say.

FOLLOWERS: Tell us. Tell us both of them.

BRIAN: Look. You've got it all wrong. You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves. You're all individuals!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we're all individuals!

BRIAN: You're all different!

FOLLOWERS: Yes, we are all different!

DENNIS: I'm not.

ARTHUR: Shhhh.

FOLLOWERS: Shh. Shhhh. Shhh.

BRIAN: You've all got to work it out for yourselves!

FOLLOWERS: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!

BRIAN: Exactly!

FOLLOWERS: Tell us more!

BRIAN: No! That's the point! Don't let anyone tell you what to do! Otherwise-- Ow! No!

MANDY: Come on, Brian. That's enough. That's enough... 

Life of Brian

http://www.montypython.50webs.com/scripts/Life_of_Brian/20.htm

Questions Apr 8

 FL 35-36

• Is there something self-contradictory about being a "committed relativist," if all knowledge claims are "self-serving opinions or myths"? 308
• Have you had any "nonjudgmental Squishie" teachers who taught that reason was not for everyone, or that "someone's capacity to experience the supernatural" depends on their "willingness to see more than is materially present"? 308 
• What do you think of Schwartz's "synchronicities"? 310
• What do you think of Jodi Dean's defense of UFO "abductees"? 311
• What do you think of "the boy who came back from heaven," etc.? 314
• Have you had any textbooks similar to Responsive Ed's science texts? 315
• Will COVID give survivalism more momentum? (317) Will it boost alternative medicine? 318
• Are Survivalists and Preppers "wacky and sad"? 319 Why is this such an American phenomenon?
• Do you agree with Jefferson's statement about freedom of and from religion? 320
• COMMENT, in light of recent events?: "Some American fantasies have become weaponized, literally." 321 
• Do you agree "that so many of our neighbors are saying so many loony things [and Kurt Andersen wrote that before the Q-Anon conspiracy loonies surfaced, and before January 6] is doing us real injury"? 322  

 WGU

• Was Locke's "sweet" labor theory of value invalidated by the invention of money? 166
• Do we have a duty to our own humanity to work? 167
• Was Arendt correct about the distinction between labor and work, and about their rootedness  in natality? 168-9
• Was Rousseau right about the value of learning to work with your hands, particularly carpentry?  172
• Do you worry, as Paul Goodman did, that there may be "no decent work to grow up for"? 173
• Is it a "travesty" to call people who work in advertising "creatives"? 175
• Is consumer capitalism infantilizing?
• Do you regularly discard "unfashionable" clothes or other goods before they wear out or break down? Should you? 179
• Do you want to produce something of value? Why? 181
• Do you expect to find meaning in your work? If not, where will you find it? 185

Leibniz V. Voltaire, The Best of Possible Worlds!

By Haven Word

https://mtmailmtsu-my.sharepoint.com/:p:/r/personal/hw3s_mtmail_mtsu_edu/_layouts/15/doc2.aspx?sourcedoc=%7BB8689260-8B99-4A5F-8A4E-742B47E693AA%7D&file=Leibniz%20V.%20Voltaire%2C%20The%20Best%20of%20Possible%20Worlds!.pptx&action=edit&mobileredirect=true&DefaultItemOpen=1&ct=1617719382207&wdOrigin=OFFICECOM-WEB.MAIN.OTHER&cid=fda4042e-90c5-494e-8492-7226386530f3 

My Questions:

1.) Do you agree with Leibniz’s Theodicy?​

2.) In your opinion, Is this the best possible world, we could live in? What do you think could change?​

 3.)Do you agree with Voltaires Candid piece on religion?​

  4.)In your own opinion, Do you feel as though Voltaire is making a mockery of religious belief or simply being a realest?​

• ​

Traveling at home

Part of our discussion in CoPhi today concerns Susan Neiman's ideas about the mind- and maturity-expanding potential of travel, in Why Grow Up: Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age. Enlightened folk go places. "If you do not travel you are likely to suppose your own cultural assumptions to make up human reality... Travel is at least as important for learning about yourself and your own cultures it is for understanding others." (152)

In a locked-down pandemic, though, movement is circumscribed. (We're not going to LA in June, for instance.) That doesn't make it any less enlightening, as this lovely photo-essay in today's Times shows.

A Cyclist on the English Landscape

Grounded by the pandemic, a travel photographer spent the year pedaling the roads around his home, resulting in a series of poetic self-portraits.

A year ago, as a travel photographer grounded by the pandemic, I started bringing a camera and tripod with me on my morning bicycle rides, shooting them as though they were magazine assignments. It started out as just something to do — a challenge to try to see the familiar through fresh eyes. Soon it blossomed into a celebration of traveling at home...

nyt

Poets

Wonderful tribute to our fellow humans who've learned to transcend words with poetry. I'm grateful for them too. Thank goodness for them.

— Phil Oliver (@OSOPHER) April 6, 2021

Courage

"Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."
Albert Camus
(https://twitter.com/PhilosophyOI/status/1379072801399771143?s=02)

Happy Easter

Today is the Christian holiday of Easter Sunday, the celebration of Jesus' resurrection from the dead three days after his crucifixion. Easter is a moveable feast; in other words, it's one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, because it's based on the cycles of the moon. Jesus was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th. Easter also marks the end of the 40-day period of Lent and the beginning of Eastertide. The week before Easter is known as Holy Week and includes the religious holidays Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

The word "Easter" and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

This Easter marks the birthday of two American icons: poet, writer, and activist Maya Angelou (1928), and blues musician and songwriter Muddy Waters (1915).

WA

(https://twitter.com/g_keillor/status/1378667666265796610?s=02)

Philosophy Twitter

4660 philosophers on Twitter:

https://t.co/iKGj5Oi5M8
(https://twitter.com/ranilillanjum/status/1378203806882729989?s=02)

Questions Apr 6

 FL

• What do you think of Marianne Williamson's "basic idea"? 295 Would she have made a good president?
• Does Oprah live in Fantasyland? 296
• Is Dr. Oz reliable? 301
• Is "alternative medicine" respectable? 302
• Is "the placebo effect" an example of the "law of attraction" in action? 304


WGU

• What are some other signs of being grown-up, besides the ability to think for yourself? 123
• Should corporations like Coca-Cola be allowed to have "pouring rights" in public schools? 132
• "You must take your education into your own hands as soon as possible." Did you? How? 140
• Should the age of legal maturity be raised to match the age of brain maturity? 140
• Are you willing to go a month without internet? 148
• Were Augustine and Rousseau right about travel? 150-51
• Do you hope to live and work one day in another culture for at least a year? Do you think it will contribute to your maturity? 162-3

Religion In America

Religion in America

 

To put it simply, religion in America is ever-changing.  Most developed countries within the world have established and practice all religions.  While there are roughly 4,300 religions today, I have recently learned that America has contributed to that statistic by creating new religions that are based on pre-existing ones.  A significant example includes Pentecostalism.  It was created at the start of the Twentieth century by poor and disadvantaged people within the United States, and it is not a church in itself, but a movement that includes many different churches. It is also a movement of renewal or revival within other denominations, and it began in Topeka, Kansas.

America has also been deemed as one of the wealthiest religious countries in the world.  After reviewing a research study conducted by Pew in 2018, I found that Americans pray more often and are more likely to attend weekly religious services than adults in other wealthy, Western democracies, such as Canada, Australia and most European states, according to a recent Pew Research Center study in 2018.  In our book, Anderson states than only one in every nine Americans do not actively pray for religious purposes.

There are two countries that are ranked relatively close to America’s religiousness and are similar in wealth, and they include Israel and South Korea.  Interestingly, Americans have contributed to one of these countries’ religious growth.  American missionaries traveled to Seoul in the 1960s to establish Pentecostal churches specifically, and eventually began to expand South Korea’s beliefs.  Today, approximately one tenth of South Koreans are proclaimed Pentecostal or charismatics, and many other countries around the world have also accepted Pentecostalism over the years.  In fact, precisely one century after establishing the religion, ten percent of all people on the planet have been classified as Pentecostals- which is over one hundred times the amounts of followers it had in the early 1900s.  While we are very adamant about our religions, America is surprisingly one of the lesser ranked countries when it comes to other ideology and theories.  Anderson goes into detail in chapter thirty-two of our book, explaining that when ranked out of thirty-four other developed countries, the United States ranked second to last when prompted with the theory of evolution.  Thirty-two other countries were placed before us in a ranking of which countries are the most accepting of evolution, and the only country that ranked below us was Turkey.

 

The United States is known for curating new religions that are deemed as irrelevant minorities in most other countries; likewise, there is the posed question of, Why?  Why is it that we feel the need to constantly shift and change our beliefs and opinions of what higher power we believe in?  The most common answer is to construct explanations that fulfill our cravings for existential explanations, and to also establish market systems.  Americans need to know why we are here- we demand answers.  

 

It seems as though religion in America has become more of a marketplace.  It all comes down to who can sell the optimal religion and keep the most members within the community.  It almost seems as though the main goal for religious groups is to acquire and keep the most members.  Americans have begun curating new ideas and theories in hopes of selling their views to other people and countries to gain profit from it. A basic ingredient in the economics of religion is that people systematically and purposefully strive to achieve their objectives.  That is, rational choice applies to religion as much as to other individual and social decisions. Religious beliefs are powerful incentives to behave according to the moral techniques of one’s religion.  If people believe that through their own efforts they can improve their chances of attaining salvation, then it makes sense that they will instill the moral values taught by their religion and act accordingly.  The anticipated afterlife benefits motivate believers to behave in prescribed moral ways and to invest their time in religious activities.  

 

We “purchase” religious goods in the sense of expending time and resources on religion.  If a religion demands that you go to formal services every week or pray five times a day, donate 20 percent of your income, wear distinctive clothing, or follow a specific diet, you may decide it’s too costly and opt to reduce your participation or choose a cheaper religion.  As a believer, you are a consumer of religious goods and services; that is, you have the demand for religion, and there is supply that is constantly on the rise to meet those needs.  Understandably, the point is not to bash all religion in America because there are many given benefits that come alongside partaking in religious-based activities and beliefs.  Religion often times gives hope and a sense of purpose to those who seek out explanations for their mere existence. 

 

 Our religious base is deemed as more charismatic than those in other well-developed countries, perhaps because of our free religious marketplace.  Our government holds very little power for controlling our views and beliefs; therefore, what is stopping us from continuing to write out new ideas and theories?  Circling back to the beginning, there are roughly 4,300 religions that have been established as of 2006 and 3,000 of these religions are currently present in America.  I’d like to wrap up my presentation with touching on how Anderson describes America as an apple in a world of oranges when it comes to religion and explains that although the United States is by far the largest importer of goods, we have become the world’s greatest exporter of fantasy. 

 

 

 

Questions:

 

Do you think America is vastly different from other countries when it comes to religion?

 

Do you believe religion often makes people feel as though they have a purpose?

 

Why do you think the establishing of Pentecostalism was so successful in South Korea?

 

Is money a key factor of the majority of religions in America?

 

 

 

Sources:

-, Mark Trainer, et al. “Why Religious Freedom Matters to Americans.” ShareAmerica, 4 

    Feb. 2019, share.america.gov/why-religious-freedom-matters-to-americans/. 

About the Author Jill Suttie Jill Suttie, and Jill Suttie Jill Suttie. “How Does Religion Affect 

    Happiness Around the World?” Greater Good,     

 greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_does_religion_affect_happiness_around_the_world. 

Anderson, Allan. “The Origins of Pentecostalism and Its Global Spread in the Early

Twentieth Century.” Transformation, vol. 22, no. 3, 2005, pp. 175–185. JSTOR, 

www.jstor.org/stable/43052918. Accessed 1 Apr. 2021.

Fahmy, Dalia. Americans Are Far More Religious than Adults in Other Wealthy Nations. 30 May 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/07/31/americans-are-far-more-religious-than-adults-in-other-wealthy-nations/. 

Fantasyland, by Kurt Andersen, Random House UK, 2018, pp. 286–292. 

“Religion: IT’S A MARKET.” The Wealth of Religions: The Political Economy of Believing 

and Belonging, by Rachel M. McCleary and Robert J. Barro, Princeton University 

Press, PRINCETON; OXFORD, 2019, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, 

www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc775c4.4. Accessed 1 Apr. 2021.

 

 

 

Morgan Kesler, Section 4

Happy Opening Day

Baseball definitely lends itself to storytelling and fabulation, doubtless due in large part to the daily-ness of its season. And there's nothing like #OpeningDay, when nobody's yet a loser, to stoke a fan's dreams and fantasies. I just wish Sidd was a Cardinal!
(https://twitter.com/OSOPHER/status/1377608634226606080?s=02)

Happy (mlb) Opening Day!

 Have you heard about Sidd Finch?

 

SI...Plimpton

The Curious Case Of Sidd Finch
He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball

...a 28-year-old, somewhat eccentric mystic named Hayden (Sidd) Finch. He may well change the course of baseball history. On St. Patrick's Day, to make sure they were not all victims of a crazy hallucination, the Mets brought in a radar gun to measure the speed of Finch's fastball. The model used was a JUGS Supergun II. It looks like a black space gun with a big snout, weighs about five pounds and is usually pointed at the pitcher from behind the catcher. A glass plate in the back of the gun shows the pitch's velocity—accurate, so the manufacturer claims, to within plus or minus 1 mph. The figure at the top of the gauge is 200 mph. The fastest projectile ever measured by the JUGS (which is named after the oldtimer's descriptive—the "jug-handled" curveball) was a Roscoe Tanner serve that registered 153 mph. The highest number that the JUGS had ever turned for a baseball was 103... He heard the pop of the ball in Reynolds's mitt and the little squeak of pain from the catcher. Then the astonishing figure 168 appeared on the glass plate. Stottlemyre remembers whistling in amazement, and then he heard Reynolds say, "Don't tell me, Mel, I don't want to know...." (continues)

The days are packed

 LISTEN (recorded October 2020). Today in CoPhi we continue, with Susan Neiman, to ask why grow up?

Why wake up? In the pre-dawn of day, and of life, why not snooze through "the sleep of reason" indefinitely?

 

The short answer for Neiman (and Russell would not disagree), we've already noted, is Kantian: perpetual immaturity is a benighted state of dependence on the thoughts and instructions of others, an irresolute absence of courage to think for oneself. It's the path of least resistance, of servile subjugation to the will of others, of ignorance and docility and vulnerability to manipulation by unscrupulous authoritarians. It is to make oneself a pawn in service to someone else's ends, to abrogate one's birthright of freedom.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things," says The Book. The trick to the art of mature living, though, is to retain childlike wonder and a capacity for spontaneous joy throughout life, but also to own your freedom and independence of mind and will. A properly happy childhood imbues a person with that capacity.

What does a happy childhood look like? Rousseau said "a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all," while for a child well-taught the days are packed with running and jumping and exploring and dreaming. Those are not nothing. "You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long."

You know who that reminds me of? The days are just packed, with plenty of good Nothing to fool around with. That's not quite the same as Emptiness, as Ernest was telling us last class, is it?

I'd like nothing more, right now, than to dive into the Calvin and Hobbes archive and explore their brand of Nothingness. It's a way of Being the grim authors of Being and Nothingness and Being and Time seem to have known nothing of.

But I have something to do. Freely. I don't have to do it, existentially speaking, except from the perspective of a happy childhood. Happy maturity is something else.

No fooling.

Appreciation

A question for the trans-humanists  who want to "upload" themselves to immortality: