Curt Doolittle

Category: Religion, Myth, and Theology

  • “Myths and Traditions provide information, not argument. It’s often good informa

    —“Myths and Traditions provide information, not argument. It’s often good information. But that does not mean it provides us with an argument.”—

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-11 13:54:00 UTC

  • Evolution of Religion (early sketch) in technological context

    Evolution of Religion (early sketch) in technological context https://t.co/rGkSyhDxZQ

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-10 16:41:21 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/664120670536769536

  • 21st CENTURY RELIGION – PART II – ANTI MONOPOLISM The other point I try to make

    21st CENTURY RELIGION – PART II – ANTI MONOPOLISM

    The other point I try to make is that while the world practices political monotheisms (Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity), that this is a POLITICAL statement not a factual one.

    In china they practice Maoism in the leadership, Confucianism in the upper classes, Lao Tzu in the lower, and Buddhism as a moral binding principle across all.

    In the west we demonstrably practice (a) Aristotelianism, Natural Law and Legalism, (b) Christianity – political and moral religion (c) Paganism – myths and traditions, as well as nature worship)

    I know I am ‘inspired’ by trees just as our ancient ancestors were, and I understand completely why the churches were intentionally built upon our sacred groves. My politics and law may be aristotelian, my morality and commons may be christian, but my mind, heart and soul are pagan through and through. Whether it’s genetic or not we don’t know yet.

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-10 07:09:00 UTC

  • ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE 21st CENTURY? FOOD FOR THOUGHT: I usually position this

    ROLE OF RELIGION IN THE 21st CENTURY?

    FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

    I usually position this question within intellectual history as the sequence:

    (a) anthropomorphism / narrative oral tradition / hunter gathering / Shamans vs Warriors / Tribalism

    (b) theism / writing / agrarianism / Temple and Church Bureaucracy vs Warriors / Tribal Unificationism

    (c) moralism (rationalism) and modernism / printing / capitalism / State/Temple-Merchant-State shared power / State Formation.

    (d) postmodern propaganda, pseudoscience and innumeracy / mass media, democratic secular socialist humanism / industrialism / State-Academy-Media against Warrior and Merchant Class and absent Temple class / (new world order formation???)

    (e) scientific / digital zero-distribution-cost / (worldwide search yet unfound???) / information era / (power structure still emerging but swinging toward authoritarian capitalism) / (new order formation – looks like return to higher tribalism? Nationalism?)

    I agree that ‘religion’ is with us to stay, but religion requires shared belief in a falsehood, for purposes of cooperating and organizing – usually as a resistance movement against human discretion and hubris.

    We know that religious experience (spirituality) is caused by the pack-response (submission to the pack). We know that religions and cults must be costly for members, to survive their initial members.

    We know that religions are advantageous for members in establishing limits of rule, moral norms, and metaphysical value judgements.

    For example, the TED movement is considered by many to be a postmodern church, and each lecture no different from a Sermon from the Pulpit, where technology and will provide the promise of salvation.

    We know that postmodernism is a religious revolt against the meritocratic unpleasantness of science. We know that evangelical christianity is a revolt against the secular state. (and it works).

    But where does this lead us? I have been working on this problem for a while now and I am struggling with it.

    Cheers

    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-10 06:52:00 UTC

  • Video Notes: On The Future of Religion by Harari

    “There is a huge gap between liberalism and the life sciences.”-Yuval Harari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6BK5Q_Dblo [T]HOUGHTS: 1) Any entity with which we can cooperate need only observe the principle of non-imposition of costs either directly or through externality, which we institutionalize as property rights. Whether mechanical or biological, natural life or artificial life, cooperation is dependent upon this single principle. 2) It is certainly true that by analogy the human organism consists of processes that calculate the perpetuation of the organism. that does not influence the principle of cooperation – non-imposition – whatsoever. 3) Because both evolutionary necessity and the desire to cooperate rather then engage in murder, harm, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, enslavement, conversion, invasion, and war – provide *decidability* by the the same principle of cooperation: the non-imposition of cost. 4) since we compete and there is no evidence that we will not, then any technological innovation will merely increase the rate of our competition with one another for status, and continue to increase our differences. 5) The reason liberalism, consumerism, and technological innovation have such influence over our lives is our wealth generated under consumer capitalism. But in a world where few of us are productive, most of us live in dependence, and a minority (Pareto’s 20%) produce and organize production, that means a great number of people must seek status (mating) by means of non-productive signaling. The uncomfortable option of large numbers of young men is one the world has encountered many times in the past, and is the source of all revolutions. 6) There is very little reason to develop a computer that thinks like us, because we are in a constant battle between pre-property individuals who acquire regardless of cost to others, and cooperating members of a group who do not. And the need to preserve ‘cheaters’ in order to preserve both the moral intuition to cooperate and the moral intuition to punish cheaters. If we can empathize with cheaters we can then cheat. To identify cheaters we must be able to empathize with them. If we were to build a machine with the same method of thinking of man, then it would also, like HAL’s lie, know how to cheat. For this reason the most valuable computers are those that think only with acquisition, property, and voluntary exchange, and like title registries, cannot violate property. 7) As far as we know, Patriarchy arose with property, when the value of male’s productivity allowed him to control female’s sex affection and reproduction . Females evolved as the property of bands of related males who preyed upon competing males to obtain their females, just as males humans prey(ed) upon competing male’s sheep, goat, cattle, and land. Females evolved gossip to rally and shame males into constraining alphas. 8) Socialism and Communism are based upon PSEUDOSCIENCE, not rationality. Rationality is weaker than myth over multiple generations. All major religions are supported by rational argument. It is dependent upon superstitious mythology not pseudoscience. Religions function as a means of limiting the government (nobility), and limiting men and women in the society. (Harari misrepresents natural law for what I assume are cultural reasons of interpretation.) The basis of western civilization is natural law of necessity for peaceful cooperation. That is quite different from dependent upon natural order. Laws of Nature(pseudoscience) are different from Natural Law(science), just as Rule by Law(command) is different from Rule of Law(limits on lawmaking). These are precise and technical terms that are abused in the public discourse. 9) Matriarchal societies constrain inheritance of property to the female line, but as far as we (I) know, they are always ruled by headmen. 10) Harari tried but he carries his cultural bias by demonstrating asymmetric criticism and praise. But we all do and none of us can escape it. I am as biased by my anglo aristocratic heritage as Kant and Heidegger are by theirs, and Marx and Harari are by theirs. This is due in no small part to the challenge of eliminating dependence for meaning and decidability upon introspective judgement. Harari is advocating universalism of cosmopolitanism (the Jewish enlightenment) just as surely as every single German advocates the German enlightenment, americans advocate Jeffersonian Contractualism. And there are some of us trying desperately trying to transcend the failures of the anglo, french, german, and ashkenazi enlightenments – all of which are simply restatements of their local group evolutionary strategy in universalist terms, by merely secular restatement their mythos. Hence my emphasis on the only universal rule: not how can we cooperate best, but why should we cooperate at all, if predation is preferable? The fist question of ethics is “Why don’t I kill you and take your territory, women and things?” All other positions are deceptive attempts to reason by fraud. And that is just how it is. And that is what separates the west from the rest: we invented ‘truth’ by which we mean ‘scientific objective truth’, testimony regardless of how we feel about it. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • Video Notes: On The Future of Religion by Harari

    “There is a huge gap between liberalism and the life sciences.”-Yuval Harari https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6BK5Q_Dblo [T]HOUGHTS: 1) Any entity with which we can cooperate need only observe the principle of non-imposition of costs either directly or through externality, which we institutionalize as property rights. Whether mechanical or biological, natural life or artificial life, cooperation is dependent upon this single principle. 2) It is certainly true that by analogy the human organism consists of processes that calculate the perpetuation of the organism. that does not influence the principle of cooperation – non-imposition – whatsoever. 3) Because both evolutionary necessity and the desire to cooperate rather then engage in murder, harm, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, enslavement, conversion, invasion, and war – provide *decidability* by the the same principle of cooperation: the non-imposition of cost. 4) since we compete and there is no evidence that we will not, then any technological innovation will merely increase the rate of our competition with one another for status, and continue to increase our differences. 5) The reason liberalism, consumerism, and technological innovation have such influence over our lives is our wealth generated under consumer capitalism. But in a world where few of us are productive, most of us live in dependence, and a minority (Pareto’s 20%) produce and organize production, that means a great number of people must seek status (mating) by means of non-productive signaling. The uncomfortable option of large numbers of young men is one the world has encountered many times in the past, and is the source of all revolutions. 6) There is very little reason to develop a computer that thinks like us, because we are in a constant battle between pre-property individuals who acquire regardless of cost to others, and cooperating members of a group who do not. And the need to preserve ‘cheaters’ in order to preserve both the moral intuition to cooperate and the moral intuition to punish cheaters. If we can empathize with cheaters we can then cheat. To identify cheaters we must be able to empathize with them. If we were to build a machine with the same method of thinking of man, then it would also, like HAL’s lie, know how to cheat. For this reason the most valuable computers are those that think only with acquisition, property, and voluntary exchange, and like title registries, cannot violate property. 7) As far as we know, Patriarchy arose with property, when the value of male’s productivity allowed him to control female’s sex affection and reproduction . Females evolved as the property of bands of related males who preyed upon competing males to obtain their females, just as males humans prey(ed) upon competing male’s sheep, goat, cattle, and land. Females evolved gossip to rally and shame males into constraining alphas. 8) Socialism and Communism are based upon PSEUDOSCIENCE, not rationality. Rationality is weaker than myth over multiple generations. All major religions are supported by rational argument. It is dependent upon superstitious mythology not pseudoscience. Religions function as a means of limiting the government (nobility), and limiting men and women in the society. (Harari misrepresents natural law for what I assume are cultural reasons of interpretation.) The basis of western civilization is natural law of necessity for peaceful cooperation. That is quite different from dependent upon natural order. Laws of Nature(pseudoscience) are different from Natural Law(science), just as Rule by Law(command) is different from Rule of Law(limits on lawmaking). These are precise and technical terms that are abused in the public discourse. 9) Matriarchal societies constrain inheritance of property to the female line, but as far as we (I) know, they are always ruled by headmen. 10) Harari tried but he carries his cultural bias by demonstrating asymmetric criticism and praise. But we all do and none of us can escape it. I am as biased by my anglo aristocratic heritage as Kant and Heidegger are by theirs, and Marx and Harari are by theirs. This is due in no small part to the challenge of eliminating dependence for meaning and decidability upon introspective judgement. Harari is advocating universalism of cosmopolitanism (the Jewish enlightenment) just as surely as every single German advocates the German enlightenment, americans advocate Jeffersonian Contractualism. And there are some of us trying desperately trying to transcend the failures of the anglo, french, german, and ashkenazi enlightenments – all of which are simply restatements of their local group evolutionary strategy in universalist terms, by merely secular restatement their mythos. Hence my emphasis on the only universal rule: not how can we cooperate best, but why should we cooperate at all, if predation is preferable? The fist question of ethics is “Why don’t I kill you and take your territory, women and things?” All other positions are deceptive attempts to reason by fraud. And that is just how it is. And that is what separates the west from the rest: we invented ‘truth’ by which we mean ‘scientific objective truth’, testimony regardless of how we feel about it. Curt Doolittle The Propertarian Institute Kiev, Ukraine

  • The West Like The East Practices A Hierarchy of ‘Religions’ Scientific, Legal, Philosophical, Christian and Pagan

    (sketch) [C]hristianity consists of Germanic, Mediterranean, Jewish, Egyptian, and Babylonian ideas. If you were to reduce the western ethic to the jeffersonian bible, and natural law, you would have the germanic elements of it. Indo european aristocracy is what separates the west from the rest. Christianity takes much too much credit for the success of Europe which is as much the product of aristocracy (distributed governance) and its dependence upon trade rather than direct organization of production and heavy taxation, as it was the church. The church was weak, and that was a good thing. It provided literacy, administration, status, and licensed the conquest of unbelievers or violators of the church, in a land where the production of outputs was fairly constant, but the rulership readily changed. It is not the church per se that troubles me, but the use of levantine mysticism instead of aristotelianism and stoicism. We mix our philosophers in every civilization: – Chinese use Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Mao, but call themselves buddhists. – Americans use Aristotle; Jesus, Peter and Paul; Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hamilton and Paine, but call themselves christians. Socialists use their false prophets: the marxists, but call themselves atheists and scientific. – Germans use Aristotle, Kant… – French use their authors … – Muslims (judaism 2.0) reduce it to two books … It’s hard to dispute the success of Christianity: – (a) the church desperately worked to rebuild western civilization after the fall of the empire – even if it played a part in the destruction of western civilization itself. – (b) wherever christianity goes today, wealth follows (eventually), because of the extension of kin love and trust to non-kin. – (c) christianity somehow imbues us with idealism and this produces great thinkers. – (d) the institutionalization of kinship love, the extension of property rights to all and to women and the prohibition on cousin marriage were profound advances. I reduce post-medieval ‘scientific’ Christianity to a personal philosophy: – sovereignty (non-submission: each man is the master of his fate), – do no harm: respect property (property-en-toto), and; – chivalry (try to help everyone you possibly can), – paternalism (take personal responsibility for the various commons), – piety (humility and self skepticism as a defense against hubris; the love of all life; the requirement that we create beauty; and awe at the universe great and small). and combine that personal philosophy with a political philosophy: – natural law (universal law, necessary for mutual prosperity) – strict construction (not hermenuetic interpretation) – mono-logism (one logic of ethics, and many contractual adaptations) – universalism (if it is indeed true, then it is true for all men) In other words, a political philosophy of cooperation. And I view all other political models as a failure to solve the problem of politics (cooperation in the production of commons). Everything else is merely theatre. Not that theatre is not important. Theater is ritual, and rituals bind. The more expensive the rituals, the greater the binding. This vision of Christianity is a vision of the empowered. The vision of Christianity for the unempowered, and for the weak must be different. We can have multiple religions to achieve this, we can tell multiple narratives, or we can create multiple ‘saints’ (gods and heroes) for people with different needs to pray to, that symbolize different ends. I prefer: – sovereignty to submission; – prayer as request for will and wisdom from a hero whose soul (memory) lives on in all of us; – seasonal rituals celebrating life on earth rather than lives of prophets – worship of life, beauty, joy and friends, to salvation from suffering; – many gods for many different people to one god for all; – fairies, elves, dwarves, trolls, forests to angels and deserts. – the ancient temple to the medieval church; because one-ness, monopoly, and authority are cancers for the human mind and spirit. I am pretty certain of: – Mindfulness: – – buddhism for the feminine (defensive control of the impulsive mind) – – stoicism for the masculine (offensive discipline in furtherance of action) – western myths and fairy tales – truth telling as the most important normative commons we can construct. – grammar, rhetoric, logic, scientific method (testimonialism), economics, history, as producing higher return in current civilization than our current emphasis on abstract calculation which will soon be replaced by machinery. And the trouble in the modern era is: – these are masculine prophets and philosophers. Women in each civilization, not only ours, seek to restore the matrilineal order, parasitism and de-civilization, through the newfound power of the state. The only solution I can come up with is to make use of voluntary exchange between classes and to give women a house from which to negotiate those exchanges, rather than empower them through democracy to destroy civilization. Science is reversing a century and a half of feminist and socialist pseudoscience. But it is happening slowly. Whether too slowly is the open question. (I am still working on religion. so this is just my current thinking) Curt

  • The West Like The East Practices A Hierarchy of ‘Religions’ Scientific, Legal, Philosophical, Christian and Pagan

    (sketch) [C]hristianity consists of Germanic, Mediterranean, Jewish, Egyptian, and Babylonian ideas. If you were to reduce the western ethic to the jeffersonian bible, and natural law, you would have the germanic elements of it. Indo european aristocracy is what separates the west from the rest. Christianity takes much too much credit for the success of Europe which is as much the product of aristocracy (distributed governance) and its dependence upon trade rather than direct organization of production and heavy taxation, as it was the church. The church was weak, and that was a good thing. It provided literacy, administration, status, and licensed the conquest of unbelievers or violators of the church, in a land where the production of outputs was fairly constant, but the rulership readily changed. It is not the church per se that troubles me, but the use of levantine mysticism instead of aristotelianism and stoicism. We mix our philosophers in every civilization: – Chinese use Sun Tzu, Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Mao, but call themselves buddhists. – Americans use Aristotle; Jesus, Peter and Paul; Smith, Hume, Jefferson, Hamilton and Paine, but call themselves christians. Socialists use their false prophets: the marxists, but call themselves atheists and scientific. – Germans use Aristotle, Kant… – French use their authors … – Muslims (judaism 2.0) reduce it to two books … It’s hard to dispute the success of Christianity: – (a) the church desperately worked to rebuild western civilization after the fall of the empire – even if it played a part in the destruction of western civilization itself. – (b) wherever christianity goes today, wealth follows (eventually), because of the extension of kin love and trust to non-kin. – (c) christianity somehow imbues us with idealism and this produces great thinkers. – (d) the institutionalization of kinship love, the extension of property rights to all and to women and the prohibition on cousin marriage were profound advances. I reduce post-medieval ‘scientific’ Christianity to a personal philosophy: – sovereignty (non-submission: each man is the master of his fate), – do no harm: respect property (property-en-toto), and; – chivalry (try to help everyone you possibly can), – paternalism (take personal responsibility for the various commons), – piety (humility and self skepticism as a defense against hubris; the love of all life; the requirement that we create beauty; and awe at the universe great and small). and combine that personal philosophy with a political philosophy: – natural law (universal law, necessary for mutual prosperity) – strict construction (not hermenuetic interpretation) – mono-logism (one logic of ethics, and many contractual adaptations) – universalism (if it is indeed true, then it is true for all men) In other words, a political philosophy of cooperation. And I view all other political models as a failure to solve the problem of politics (cooperation in the production of commons). Everything else is merely theatre. Not that theatre is not important. Theater is ritual, and rituals bind. The more expensive the rituals, the greater the binding. This vision of Christianity is a vision of the empowered. The vision of Christianity for the unempowered, and for the weak must be different. We can have multiple religions to achieve this, we can tell multiple narratives, or we can create multiple ‘saints’ (gods and heroes) for people with different needs to pray to, that symbolize different ends. I prefer: – sovereignty to submission; – prayer as request for will and wisdom from a hero whose soul (memory) lives on in all of us; – seasonal rituals celebrating life on earth rather than lives of prophets – worship of life, beauty, joy and friends, to salvation from suffering; – many gods for many different people to one god for all; – fairies, elves, dwarves, trolls, forests to angels and deserts. – the ancient temple to the medieval church; because one-ness, monopoly, and authority are cancers for the human mind and spirit. I am pretty certain of: – Mindfulness: – – buddhism for the feminine (defensive control of the impulsive mind) – – stoicism for the masculine (offensive discipline in furtherance of action) – western myths and fairy tales – truth telling as the most important normative commons we can construct. – grammar, rhetoric, logic, scientific method (testimonialism), economics, history, as producing higher return in current civilization than our current emphasis on abstract calculation which will soon be replaced by machinery. And the trouble in the modern era is: – these are masculine prophets and philosophers. Women in each civilization, not only ours, seek to restore the matrilineal order, parasitism and de-civilization, through the newfound power of the state. The only solution I can come up with is to make use of voluntary exchange between classes and to give women a house from which to negotiate those exchanges, rather than empower them through democracy to destroy civilization. Science is reversing a century and a half of feminist and socialist pseudoscience. But it is happening slowly. Whether too slowly is the open question. (I am still working on religion. so this is just my current thinking) Curt

  • ON THE FUTURE OF RELIGION BY HARARI THOUGHTS: 1) Any entity with which we can co

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6BK5Q_DbloTHOUGHTS ON THE FUTURE OF RELIGION BY HARARI

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6BK5Q_Dblo

    THOUGHTS:

    1) Any entity with which we can cooperate need only observe the principle of non-imposition of costs either directly or through externality, which we institutionalize as property rights. Whether mechanical or biological, natural life or artificial life, cooperation is dependent upon this single principle.

    2) It is certainly true that by analogy the human organism consists of processes that calculate the perpetuation of the organism. that does not influence the principle of cooperation – non-imposition – whatsoever.

    3) Because both evolutionary necessity and the desire to cooperate rather then engage in murder, harm, theft, fraud, free riding, conspiracy, enslavement, conversion, invasion, and war – provide *decidability* by the the same principle of cooperation: the non-imposition of cost.

    4) since we compete and there is no evidence that we will not, then any technological innovation will merely increase the rate of our competition with one another for status, and continue to increase our differences.

    5) The reason liberalism, consumerism, and technological innovation have such influence over our lives is our wealth generated under consumer capitalism. But in a world where few of us are productive, most of us live in dependence, and a minority (Pareto’s 20%) produce and organize production, that means a great number of people must seek status (mating) by means of non-productive signaling. The uncomfortable option of large numbers of young men is one the world has encountered many times in the past, and is the source of all revolutions.

    6) There is very little reason to develop a computer that thinks like us, because we are in a constant battle between pre-property individuals who acquire regardless of cost to others, and cooperating members of a group who do not. And the need to preserve ‘cheaters’ in order to preserve both the moral intuition to cooperate and the moral intuition to punish cheaters. If we can empathize with cheaters we can then cheat. To identify cheaters we must be able to empathize with them. If we were to build a machine with the same method of thinking of man, then it would also, like HAL’s lie, know how to cheat. For this reason the most valuable computers are those that think only with acquisition, property, and voluntary exchange, and like title registries, cannot violate property.

    7) As far as we know, Patriarchy arose with property, when the value of male’s productivity allowed him to control female’s sex affection and reproduction . Females evolved as the property of bands of related males who preyed upon competing males to obtain their females, just as males humans prey(ed) upon competing male’s sheep, goat, cattle, and land. Females evolved gossip to rally and shame males into constraining alphas.

    8) Socialism and Communism are based upon PSEUDOSCIENCE, not rationality. Rationality is weaker than myth over multiple generations. All major religions are supported by rational argument. It is dependent upon superstitious mythology not pseudoscience. Religions function as a means of limiting the government (nobility), and limiting men and women in the society. (Harari misrepresents natural law for what I assume are cultural reasons of interpretation.) The basis of western civilization is natural law of necessity for peaceful cooperation. That is quite different from dependent upon natural order. Laws of Nature(pseudoscience) are different from Natural Law(science), just as Rule by Law(command) is different from Rule of Law(limits on lawmaking). These are precise and technical terms that are abused in the public discourse.

    9) Matriarchal societies constrain inheritance of property to the female line, but as far as we (I) know, they are always ruled by headmen.

    10) Harari tried but he carries his cultural bias by demonstrating asymmetric criticism and praise. But we all do and none of us can escape it. I am as biased by my anglo aristocratic heritage as Kant and Heidegger are by theirs, and Marx and Harari are by theirs. This is due in no small part to the challenge of eliminating dependence for meaning and decidability upon introspective judgement. Harari is advocating universalism of cosmopolitanism (the Jewish enlightenment) just as surely as every single German advocates the German enlightenment, americans advocate Jeffersonian Contractualism. And there are some of us trying desperately trying to transcend the failures of the anglo, french, german, and ashkenazi enlightenments – all of which are simply restatements of their local group evolutionary strategy in universalist terms, by merely secular restatement their mythos. Hence my emphasis on the only universal rule: not how can we cooperate best, but why should we cooperate at all, if predation is preferable? The fist question of ethics is “Why don’t I kill you and take your territory, women and things?” All other positions are deceptive attempts to reason by fraud. And that is just how it is. And that is what separates the west from the rest: we invented ‘truth’ by which we mean ‘scientific objective truth’, testimony regardless of how we feel about it.

    Curt Doolittle

    The Propertarian Institute

    Kiev, Ukraine

    Source date (UTC): 2015-11-01 06:12:00 UTC

  • “A secular state is just Virgin territory rather than a barrier to religious dom

    —“A secular state is just Virgin territory rather than a barrier to religious dominance.”— John McKenna

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-30 09:55:00 UTC