Black Cats in Dark Rooms

Found this analogy... I love these...

Philosophy is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat. 

Metaphysics is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there. 

Theology is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, and believing you have found it. 

Science is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat using a flashlight.

... extending this analogy...

Buddhism generally is like being a in a dark room looking for a black cat you were sure was there, but not being able to find it and concluding that cats don't exist.

Pureland Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; but deciding to worship an imaginary red cat from another universe instead.

Lay Theravāda is like looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there by leaving a bowl of cat food outside the door.

Monastic Theravāda is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, by dissecting all the cats into their constituent parts and declaring that cats don't exist.

Madhyamaka Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and being smug because you knew it was neither there, nor not there, nor neither, nor both; and though no one knows what this means, it is a great way to win arguments.

Yogācāra Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; except... [reverb] the room is your mind [/reverb].

Zen Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there by staring at the wall until the cat comes to you.

Tantric Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there; but instead of looking you try to become the cat by imagining that you are the cat. oṃ āḥ hūṃ caṭ svāhā.

Triratna Buddhism is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there, only to discover there's an elephant in the room instead.

... incidentally...

Advaita Vedanta is like being in a dark room and looking for a black cat that isn't there and concluding that you are the cat.

Poem

Letter to Bruce Mason 
— Gary McCormick.

Dear Bruce, your letter finds me to the South,
Two months into a mild winter.
The news you bring of Madam Cancer
Makes me want to shake.
It is an injustice I cannot reconcile.
As if birds without wings
Were born to fly
Or children left to stumble without limbs.

It is difficult to contemplate a God
Who strikes so ruthlessly
As the best.
His is a queer sense of humour
And if He were man like you or me
—If you'll excuse for a moment, the blasphemy,
We'd quarrel in a bar.
And I'd be bound, thinking of you
To kick him in the balls.
Before leave, as he lay there heaving,
To drop into his hand
A copy of your plays.

But then, amongst those we know
There is a distinct mortality.
A disposition to injury.
Old Baxter with his heart worn to a walnut
And Sam, whom people call
A melancholy drunk
Alastair with his smile of tears
And Denis stumbling in the Wellington sun.
These, and Hone with his gut sewn up
Of all who walk these islands,
Are the ones that I admire.

My letter to you, then
Is in the kindest sense, a letter to all.
Those who have worked alone, as you have done.
I have in my mind's eye
A picture of you in the hills somewhere
Back-bent and toiling.
A fencer in the back-lit sun.
Where this picture ends I cannot tell.
It is in your solitary toiling
And your hawk's eye.
The distances you travel still.

~o~

People mentioned...

Bruce Mason (1921-1982)
James K. Baxter (1926-1972)
Sam Hunt (1946 -).
Alastair Campbell (1925-2009).
Denis Glover (1912-1980).
Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)
Gary McCormick (1951-)

The poem was first published in Scarlet Letters (Gisborne: Piano Publishing, 1980).

Insecurity

On Twitter someone posted a recent YouGov poll showing that Brits feel uncomfortable hearing people speak in foreign languages. The tweeter concluded that Brits are nasty, small, minded xenophobes. But I have another way of looking at it.

Most of the time fearing the unknown has evolutionary advantages. We're more likely to survive if we reduce risks in our environment. Some risk-seeking individuals is fine. Too many and we die out.

We evolved to distrust strangers for very good reasons. We also evolved the capacity to develop trust when required (for trade for example).

The present rise in xenophobia is probably not a character flaw. It probably reflects the general insecurity of life under neoliberalism which treats labour as an overhead to be minimised.

Work is much less secure than when I first worked. Pay is lower. Housing is about 1000% more costly. Education is 10,000 % more costly. Everyone is in debt now (to the tune of 100% of GDP).

So, yes we're anxious about strangers. This is a positive adaptation to insecurity.

Let's not demonise people for responding rationally to insecurity. Let's aim the anger at the people who deliberately create the insecurity in order to maximise profits, e.g. the billionaires and the politicians who enable them. The billionaires treat us like cattle. And we've become so used to it that we prefer to vote for the devil we know rather than the leaders who will protect us from psychopaths.

Realism and Science

This short video by Sabine Hossenfelder makes an excellent distinction between the practice and process of doing science and Realism as a belief system. In response to the question, do you really believe that X exists, Sabine responds, "Why do you care what I believe?"

Science creates mathematical formalisms that make predictions about observations. If the observations agree with the prediction then scientists adopt the formalism as part of their worldview.

Sabine argues that the step that we take in talking about the "reality" or "existence" of such correlations between predictions and observations is not one that scientists take. It is one that philosophers take. And of course, many scientists do implicitly believe in Realism and would find it strange that anyone could doubt the Realist account of the world.

I am personally convinced by Realism as a belief system, although not by the metaphysical reductionism that many scientists add to the Realism. Metaphysical reductionism is the view that all existing things can be reduced to the lowest level of existence and that only the lowest/simplest level of existence is real. In this view no structure is real no matter how long it persists or whether is has causal potential. At the present state of knowledge, only quantum fields are real.

In my view structures are real, precisely because they persist in time (with being necessarily immutable or permanent), they can be causal agents (structure cause effects that none of their parts can even in aggregate), and they instantiate information.

In this view reductionism gives us information about real substances and antireductionism gives us information about real structures. Reductionism treats structure as unreal, and antireductionism treats substance as a mere building block. 

However, much of what scientists study is patterns of change. Most scientific formulas have time embedded in them and encapsulate change over time. This is what enables us to predict future results and to understand the past.

I believe that reality is composed of substances, structures, and regular patterns of change.

I also acknowledge that Sabine has a point about this being a belief system. The problem with this view, is that everyone has a belief system about how experience relates to reality. The default human belief system is naive realism, i.e. the view that what I experience is reality. And since experience is generated by the mind, this allows for hallucinations and false beliefs to be treated as real. Hence superstition, religion, magical thinking etc.

There may be some other belief system that is consistent with science, but I don't see it. And since we cannot realistically operate without a belief system Realism is the obvious choice. Other belief systems tend to treat technology as magic and deny the validity of science. 

Help is at hand

THE GRETA THUNBERG HELPLINE:
For adults angry at a child. pic.twitter.com/JAtIKyG4Va

— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) September 26, 2019

Prajñāpāramitā

The mystery cult of Prajñāpāramitā was Conze's petulant revenge on a world full of people that he judged to be unworthy. He loved to taunt his readers over their incomprehension and "spiritual" inferiority. But he was a fraud.

On the plus side, if he had liked people even a little bit, then he could easily have become another L. Ron Hubbard. Fortunately, despite being intensely charismatic Conze just couldn't stand being around those he referred to as canaille literally "a pack of dogs".

The first step to reinvigorating Prajñāpāramitā studies is to dethrone Conze and drive a stake through his shrivelled heart.

Judas

As I understand Christianity it is the death of Christ on the cross that atones for all sins. The resurrection is also important, but the actual crucifixion.

Billy Graham has said "Jesus’ death on the cross is important because without it we would have no hope of forgiveness or eternal life. " 

"The Pope has said “Salvation comes only from the cross, from this cross where God was made flesh. There is no salvation in ideas; there is no salvation in good will, in wanting to be good. No! The only salvation is in Christ crucified because only he — like the bronze serpent — was able to take upon himself the poison of our sin and heal us.” 

I could multiple examples, but I think this suggests that my understanding of it is approximately right.

The Romans crucified Jesus and thus did all Christians a big favour, apparently. But the one guy who made it all happen is seen as a "traitor". I'm speaking of Judas who sold Jesus to the Romans for 30 pieces of silver. On the one hand, sure, it's a betrayal and I get that at the time people might have been miffed. But the crucifixion became the centrepiece for the whole religion, the rationale for redemption, and provided Christians with both their most enduring symbol - the cross.

If Judas had not sold Jesus down the river, he might have escaped custody. Judas facilitated the most important moment in the history of Christianity since the nativity.