Kafka On The Shore

Didn’t you just hate when you were given a book in English in high school and had to do a book report
on it. For Christmas 2017 my daughter gave me Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami to read.
She did this so we could compare notes after we’d both read it. She’s not an English teacher but she
enjoys critically dissecting and discussing a “classic” book or idea.

As I read Kafka on the Shore I got that deja vu feeling. I realized I’d started reading it many years ago
but had put it down. Why would I do that if it were such a good read? After all it had been on the
New York Best Selling List.  I thought it through.

First, I’ll tell you what I’m going to tell you.  This book is unadulterated crap. It is a fantastical, mystical,
hogwash, spiritual, hocus pocus waste of time. It’s only redeeming quality might be for an English
teacher to use it as a tool to determine a student’s incredulity or critical thinking and perhaps to show
a student what not to read.

I felt like the character Kevin Pearson in the pilot TV series This is Us where he denounces the crappy
script he must read. Because it was a gift this time I soldiered on reading to the bitter end. It never
gets better from “entrance” to exit. Like Kevin Pearson I don’t blame the author for writing such tripe
as much as the audience that laps it up. How could it get such good reviews and sell so many copies?

The author references the old idea that life is but a metaphor and continues with this idea ad nausea.
The whole plot revolves around nonsense instead of grounding itself in any form of reality.  There is
continual implication that most people doing a normal job are just all hollow people with no substance.
How ironic is that. The characters depicted are all hollow spiritual ghost-like holographs. The projecting
by the author of himself comes to mind. A telling reference in this regard is made to Charles Darwin’s
ten page description of something or other.  Whatever Darwin described in 10 pages, corals or clams,
it would be much more insightful than what Murakami’s does in his 450 pages of empty drivel, where
ghosts and cats talk to people and a stone acts as an entrance to another world.

I love fantasies but I would much prefer reading an honest book on fantastical things such as
Harry Potter, Jurassic Park or Animal Farm.  Here impressionistic people can clearly tell fantasy from
fiction. But in Kafka on the Shore the nonsense is depicted as though it could be someone’s reality. It’s
not made clear though that this would only be an insane person. I had the same repulsive response
when I read the Devil and Miss Prym by Paulo Coelho. At least most people realize that Coelo had
been institutionalized for his way of thinking and could consider the source before plunging in further.
After completing Coelho’s Devil and Miss Prym I swore I would never read another such book of this
genre. Life is too short and quite frankly, as Darwin realized and described, life is much stranger than
could be revealed by anyone’s imagination.

I have a sister who perpetually loves this spiritual way of thinking. Instead of the nonsense perpetuated
by religion she substitutes spiritualism for her superstitious predispositions. She’s not a critical thinker
and can thus be led to believe almost anything. Unfortunately there are enough Murakami’s and
literature critics out there to perpetuate her fantasies.

While reading Kafka on the Shore I also discovered Bach’s sublime and hypnotic motets. Bach’s music
transcends the religious and spiritualistic words used. Too bad there is no such redeeming quality to
Kafka on the Shore.

Now I’ll tell you what I really think. Reading Kafka on the Shore is a mammoth waste of time.

Aboriginal People - From Idle No More to Indian Act No More

When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada in 2015 uses the phrase “cultural genocide” to describe the indigenous experience you know you have a problem.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/chief-justice-says-canada-attempted-cultural-genocide-on-aboriginals/article24688854/

There is no doubt that in 2017 Indigenous People continue to suffer under their present situation in Canada. As Canada begins to celebrate its 150th Birthday it's time to evaluate the deplorable situation still existing for its Indigenous People. Why do Indigenous People in this country feel they have nothing to celebrate? Why after over 150 years under Canadian rule has the situation for native peoples remained the same or probably worst.

Thinking about, dwelling upon, whining about or obsessing about the past is a fool’s game. It really is not too productive. It reminds me of the old saw about worrying.  Worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair.  It gives you something to do but doesn't really get you anywhere. Forget the past if you can. At least don't focus on it. As George Burns stated: “I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.”

Being a white person, having grown up poor and having lived in Northern Ontario adjacent to Indian Reserves provided me with one perspective on the impact of "colonialism" on Indigenous People. It’s awful. I worked both in business and government in my working careers and believe this has allowed me to view the situation of Indigenous Peoples from a unique pragmatic perspective.

There are two words used frequently by Indigenous People to describe their condition. These are victims of “colonialism” and “healing”. It makes me cringe now when I hear these worn out cliche descriptions associated with them. It’s almost as if these descriptors of victims now serve to define them.  When I think of the Idle No More Movement I think of getting up from sitting on one’s hands. And the two hands that have been sat on for far too long are “colonialism” and “healing”. How can you heal when the colonial system keeps pulling off the scab? It’s long past the time to stop this vicious cycle of harm.

There's no doubt Indigenous People suffer from colonialism. But it’s not the root cause. Why has their deplorable condition persisted? Who benefits from not changing the situation? There are three primary parties involved, government, indigenous leaders, and the average suffering indigenous person. Why hasn’t positive change been initiated by any of these parties?

Let’s examine government first. A great description, by Elon Musk relating to his ongoing disputes with regulators in getting his Space X off the ground, sheds light on this.

"There is a fundamental problem with regulators. If a regulator agrees to change a rule and something bad happens, they could easily lose their career. Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don't even get a reward. So, it's very asymmetric. It's then easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It's because there's big punishment on one side and no reward on the other.  How would any rational person behave in such a situation."

So don’t look for help from the government for change. How about the indigenous leadership? Why haven't they been agents of change? That’s an easy one. If change were going to occur for the better from this source it would have already done so. Hoping positive change will come from indigenous leadership is clearly a lost cause. The leadership can answer for themselves as to why they’ve been so ineffective in this matter.

So that leaves the average suffering indigenous people to take matters in their own hands, if they're ever going to get change. Many were hopeful as the Idle No More Movement sprang up from the grassroots.  Finally, here was an initiative that seemed poised to move the needle in the right direction. But it fizzled out or at least lost momentum. Just like the Occupy Movement, it simply lacked a focus.

I believe the Idle No More Movement needs a focus, a big hairy audacious goal to spark positive change.

I believe the root cause of the deplorable condition that the indigenous people live in in Canada is the archaic colonial Indian Act. The goal should be to get rid of it. Phase it out over 20 years. The Idle No More Movement should change into the more focused and audacious goal-oriented  “Indian Act No More”.

Led Down the Garden Path by Our Analogies

Paraphrasing an Einstein quote,, I said to a fellow worker the other day that “You can get from A to B with Logic but you can go anywhere with Imagination”. Her reaction was interesting.  I could see she recognized the quote and gave it passing kudos. However, I also recognized a halting almost begrudging acceptance of this idea. It made me think that she may have been exposed to it in school as the counter argument to a more forcefully endorsed reality.

In school we’re always being taught to compare and contrast differences as though this binary premise was the default. This is probably reflecting the modern computer dominated culture we`ve been raised in. Could it be that the binary nature of today`s computers, it`s bits and bytes as represented by 1`s and 0`s, dominates all our lives by leaking into our very ways of thinking about the world. It wouldn’t surprise me. There must be some reason the modern world is becoming so polarized. Politically, for example, there seems to be little middle ground any more.  

The analogies we use to explain things colour our world. It's as if the tail is wagging the dog.

One of the best analogies I`ve heard to explain speciation on an evolutionary scale involved the idea of a field filled with valleys and peaks whereby the peaks represent new species emerging between the valleys. This is a great way to break with the linear bipolar two-dimensional way that most of us think about nature. The analogies we use certainly limit our understanding of our surroundings. Even Plato`s idea of `knowledge as represented by a dark cave with a light source, casting shadows on the wall, has an inherent binary nature to it. We either see the knowledge or we don`t. We`re either in the light or we`re in the dark.

Binary and linear ways of thinking is most often promoted in our classrooms. It is the easiest way to get from A to B. Thinking outside the box is an anomaly and it's admired by it exceptionalism. The default linear and binary way of thinking no doubt has caused us to diminish our fellow creatures on the planet. Either other animals are sentient like us or not. We very narrowly define intelligence, for example, putting ourselves on a pinnacle and then dismissing anything below us on this scale. How else could we eat animals….

It`s time to teach non-linear, non-binary thinking as a default in our classrooms. But maybe we`ll have to wait until quantum computing becomes established.

Living with The Lie: Cognitive Dissonance

As I get older, nearing a milestone of 64, I realize how much I like to get good sleep. What makes me lose sleep? Living with a lie. That is the dragon that needs slaying. We have a name for living with a lie - cognitive dissonance. By naming something we put it to bed. How ironical.

What is cognitive dissonance. It’s saying or believing one thing and doing or thinking something else.

We have individual dragons we need slaying and we have social constructs based on lies that need slaying. Machiavellian politics is alive and well creating nightmares around the world. Men cheat and it’s like pissing in their own pools. They try to kid themselves that it doesn’t matter. They know it’s wrong and dishonest but they live the nightmare thinking such macho behaviour is acceptable. Thinking lies are acceptable to a healthy individual leads to unrest. For some individuals and organizations not so much.

Consider some of our most cherished institutions or people. Mother Teresa is nominated by a Pope to be a saint. But her autobiography tells how she despaired in doubting her faith, living with the Church’s biggest sin - despair, yet she promoted her faith anyway. Einstein stated that ”religion is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions”. He got that right. The Roman Catholic priests abuse children and the church covers it up. People of religious faith are themselves stunted children. People of the southern American States have the highest religious subscribers yet are the most unlawful with the highest crime rates. Hypocrisy is the name for recognizing cognitive dissonance and living with it.

We all have dragons to slay. I used to practise praying at meals while believing in evolution. Once I stopped praying at meals I felt honest with myself and slept better.

It seems that normal healthy individuals have a true north and can keep on the straight and narrow, albeit with periodic compass re-calibrations. An organization on the other hand like a church, government or corporation, although given the rights of an individual, appears unable to reconcile lies and inconsistencies and may even create them. The organization I work for for example, the CFIA, refused to acknowledge the inconsistency of claiming to be a scientific evidence-based organization while regulating ritualistic slaughter. They rationalized it to me by claiming such slaughter was based on political science. Apparently organizations don’t require a good sleep.

The reconciliation between the laws in macro or Newtonian physics and strangeness of sub atomic quantum mechanics will probably with time be resolved. This too may be quite ironic as it seems that time heals all. In time we all get a good sleep.

Religion and Mental Illness

Religion is a form of social mental illness - a type of social neurosis.  It would be listed in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) if they removed the ban on social norms. When capitalism is put on the diagnostic "couch" we can easily see the psychosis involved. Religion too should be shown up for its harmful and delusional behaviour.

When you are over twenty-five and your brain has fully developed and you still believe in something for which there is no evidence, there are three possible reasons. One, you are a fool, two, you have a mental capacity considerably below normal or three, you have a mental illness, that is you have stopped thinking for yourself because you have been indoctrinated. We teach children to believe in something without evidence, by having faith in what elders tell them, so that we can teach them that everything being told them is not true. It's part of teaching critical thinking skills. It's a sad state of affairs when adults still think like children and have unquestioning faith. Faith is not a virtue.  It should be considered a tool to develop critical thinking skills for children.  When adults persist in faith-based thinking then we all suffer in society.

There is a psychological phenomena known as normalcy. We tend to think that what happened yesterday will continue into the future. People generally don't realize that religion is a social construct. It was developed in a time of ignorance about the natural world. People generally don't realize that this institution, like capitalism, can be de-constructed and re-designed. Nothing stays the same.  Why should we be limited by anachronistic institutions. In a healthy society social norms should be questioned. Slavery and apartheid would still be with us if this weren't the case.  Religion is still with us today because of indoctrination and a taboo about questioning social norms. So how can we call ourselves, as a society, enlightened? There is always room for continuous improvement. But it starts with recognizing there is a problem.

One of my proudest accomplishments and contributions is to have raised three children in a way that encouraged critical thinking.  This wasn't easy in a system that perpetuates religious madness. Although we expound secularism in Canada we still endorse religions in all their nefarious forms. Our politics and educational system is filled with religious undercurrents, a vestige of our ignorant past. Our present government, for example, has established an agency to encourage religious tolerance. It has a freedom of religion mandate.  Bet where is the freedom from religion mandate?

Why doesn't our school system make the Origin of Species mandatory reading. Because it's a dangerous idea to the establishment. Before November 24, 1859 when this idea was first published by Darwin you might be excused for believing in religion. At that time it appeared rational, without any other explanation as to how we got here.  Indeed, most people then believed whole heartedly in a creationist god. After 1859 if you were aware of the idea and evidence of evolution you would probably be irrational to believe in a religious explanation. Because now a viable alternative explanation to religion existed. An explanation based on evidence ususally trumps wishful or magical thinking. Why isn't a more rational idea of our world not widely taught.

At one time our school system served, by commission, to indoctrinate children with religion. This was the case even in our public school system, a supposed secular school. I remember in grade 7 being given free copies of the New Testament. Our school system today, by omission, serves as indoctrinating students by simply not teaching everyone about a basic truth in nature, namely evolution.

Don Quixote is not a satire of politics but rather a satire on religion.

Religious people suffer from a form of mental illness somewhat like Jesus Freaks on the streets handing out their mental thoughts.

Health Canada just release the abortion pill, days before an election call. Coincidence, I don't think so. Why has France allowed it for 25 years and Canada just now allows it? The tide is turning or has turned. Politicians will now do anything for re-election.

Churches still are exempt from taxes. Why? You might think that they could at least put solar panels on their roofs.

Religion is the New Race.

Religion is the new race. In the past we more identified by what country or part of the world our parents came from. Now the majority of us are more likely to identify ourselves by which form of magical thinking we engage in or were indoctrinated in by our parents. Instead of valuing the secular culture from which many of our western governmental principles and modern day achievements are derived from we are subservient to religion or our child-like way of thinking.

Religion appeals to our reptilian brains or ancient way of thinking. By not recognizing that all religions are forms of magical thinking based on unverifiable beliefs we are doomed to give this way of thinking credibility and thus the ability to wreak havoc in the world.

Faith is not a virtue, it is the opposite. Faith is thinking with your “gut” instead of your brain. Until a critical tipping point of people understand this the world will continue to be a very regressive and dangerous place to live in. When we continue to elect and respect leaders who claim that they are religious we will get the immature world of “The Lord of the Flies”.

Why aren’t we laughing at religious ideas when expressed by adults instead of esteeming those who espouse such nonsense? When someone who is over 25 years old with a fully developed brain and self-identifies as a Muslim, Christian or Jew for example, we should realize that these people are telling us something very profound about themselves. They are telling us that they are retarded. They are demonstrating that although they look like adults they are really mentally still children. I worked with a devout Catholic who said she would not allow her children to read Harry Potter because it promoted magic. The irony was almost too much to bear. Children raising children - a reflection of the world today. Let's all grow up already.

"Science, as physicist Steven Weinberg has emphasized, does not make it impossible to believe in God, but rather makes it possible to not believe in God. Without science, everything is a miracle. With science, there remains the possibility that nothing is. Religious belief in this case becomes less and less necessary, and also less and less relevant" …. from Lawrence Krauss’s “A Universe from Nothing” .

"It is a fundamental tenet of science that we can never prove something to be true; we can only prove it to be false. This is a very important idea, one that is the basis of all scientific progress. Once we find an example in which a theory that may have worked correctly for millennia no longer agrees with observation, we then know that it must be supplemented - with either new data or a new theory. There is no arguing." - from Lawrence Krauss's "Fear of Physics.

Polytheism vs Monotheism

After reading this great Guardian article by Suzanne Moore about trust it occurred to me how the virtues of trust and loyalty are compromised in multi-cultural societies.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/14/charlie-hebdo-add-faithophobia-to-my-crimes

In terms of loyalty one should remember that all religions in their development had to be disloyal to the one they believed in previously. So the virtue of loyalty has been sacrificed.

Living in a multi-cultural society with differing monotheistic faiths must certainly puts the virtue of trust in harm's way as well.

Believing in something without evidence is problematic but to be pragmatic about it it would seem that to believe in many Gods like the Romans and Greeks did would be preferable for a society that claims to believe in just one God and tolerates the rest.

Consider for example whether polytheism or monotheism is better. Doing so it reminds me just how silly all religions really are but it makes for a good thought experiment. Believing in many Gods is as useless as believing in only one God. That's given. However, believing in one God in today's multi-cultural society is probably much worst than believing in many Gods. This is because of what cognitive dissonance brings to the equation.

When we think that faith is a virtue and believe in one God it creates a situation where one may tolerate another's religious faith but one won't trust that believer. There is a cognitive dissonance created where trust in the other person is lacking because the other person doesn't have the same faith as you do, as much as one might claim there is trust. People confuse tolerance for trust. In a diverse society with multi-monotheist faiths trust must be at a deficit. Consider Islamic adherence in Europe and North America. They're in a minority in a society that claims they tolerate them.  Indeed they may tolerate them but they won't trust them. They must constantly feel threatened.

 Faith is not a virtue but that's not obvious to most. Believing in nonsense must sacrifice the virtues of trust and loyalty. No wonder our society today is under threat.  If we must have religion bring back polytheism.