The Mind and the Mirror: An Introductory Guide to Yourself

You are who you are.  Five words, three letters each.  A seemingly simple statement — almost tautological to the point of meaninglessness — yet, examined carefully, we can find surprising depth to what it says and, especially, what it does not say.  Like the equation 1 = 1, it says exactly what it needs to by being so oversimplified and direct as to only contain the axiomatic truth.  Ultimately, this is the only definition of self that matters — the only mirror that holds any real meaning.

You are who you are now, not who you were nor who you will be.

The first thing to know is that you can change.  Who you are right now is crystallized by the reality of the moment, but the moment by definition passes instantly, and the present remains a constant progression, defying crystallization.  The past may be solidified into the course of causality, but we have no reason to repeat it moving forward.  We can change, and the only reasons not to — from laziness to tradition — are just excuses we tell ourselves, illusions generated for our immediate, shortsighted benefit.  Moreover, because the past is irreversibly fossilized, we should not dwell on our past failures.  Certainly we could and should try to rectify the consequences of our mistakes, learn from these mistakes, but regretting them only shifts our focus away from the future we yet can change toward the past we cannot.

This is not to say that our past is completely independent of us, only that the past, like ourselves, is what it is — the path that has brought us to where we are but not a path we are committed to following further.  Like Shuzan's staff and the reality it exists in, our present and past are both connected together and each separately what they are.  To deny the context that the past is the past and the present, the present is an obvious fallacy, but to deny the flow from present to past is just as fallacious.  We need not therein deny our mistakes, we only need not regret them.

To continue to grow, we cannot abandon our roots, but remember: our roots are there to provide strength as we grow outward, holding us steady and nurturing our furthest branches as they extend, reaching to ever greater heights. They are the foundation for a tower, not the anchor for a ship.

Moreover, whatever mistakes we have made will not be our last.  Even at our best, error is inevitable.  We are each only a small part of the universe, and since science has yet to discover a way to represent a comprehensive knowledge of the entirety of everything in the universe from quark to quasar within anything smaller than the universe itself, our knowledge is inherently incomplete.  Even if we were somehow infallible agents in utilization of our knowledge, we would nevertheless be subject to the inherent limits of our knowledge.

St. Augustine argued "Sum si fallor": "I am because I err" — a philosophical grandfather of Rene Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum".  However, it is just as true to say "I err because I am."

Yet the fact that failure is inevitable is not reason to either dread the future or withdraw from acting.  Instead, accepting the inevitability of failure grants freedom for experimentation — we should avoid making mistakes and lay in place safety nets for when we do make them, but we need not avoid exploring the unknown because of the mere possibility of making a mistake; inaction can often be a bigger mistake than any we make by acting.  Additionally, true experimentation is performed without bias towards results, allowing the truth to speak for itself.  Error, being the disparity between intention and result, is negated if we allow for whatever result comes our way.  So, go out and try new things.  We are at some point going to fail whether or not we experiment, so we might as well get something out of it.
 

Sorry, Yoda, but there is "try".

The Zen-inspired aesthetic of wabi-sabi maintains as one of its core creeds the idea that perfection is impossible, and imperfection makes things (and even people) approachable and relatable, gives room to grow, and removes unrealistic expectations of perfection.  Error is inevitable, and perfection is further impossible because so many skills that we could try to perfect have no upper limit, but instead offer a continued journey beyond any claims of mastery.  To expect perfection of ourselves, therefore, is ego — either the belief that we are perfect, even though we are not, or the belief that we should be perfect, despite its impossibility.  Moreover, expecting ourselves to be either perfect or even better than we are is to ignore our path for growth, failing to start the journey because we believe we should already be at the destination.
Moreover, rigidly defining the outcomes we desire distracts us seeing the beneficial outcomes we could not have predicted (being fallible beings and all).  The chaos of our lives is best worked with and, if need be, redirected, instead of struggled against.  Pleasant surprises and beneficial opportunities are plenty if we open ourselves to them.  The idea that perfection is something we can achieve is only slightly more fallacious than the idea that perfection is something we, with our limited knowledge, can define.

Yet simply because we are certain to err and should not regret our errors does not mean we are free to carelessly charge through life.  We are not free of the consequences of our errors — even errors beyond our knowledge or control — but we can free ourselves from self-imposed consequences, such as guilt and regret, so that we can better focus on avoiding errors in the future.  We should feel free to experiment, but we should be prepared to accept whatever happens when we do.  We should not dread error, but neither should we ignore it when it happens.  Cleaning up after ourselves should be as much an inevitability as making messes.

Another cultural artifact that spawned from Zen ideals is the Daruma doll — a hollow doll designed to resemble the founder of Zen, Bodhidharma ("Dharma" becoming "Daruma" in Japanese).  According to one tradition, the doll is bought with both of its eyes plain white.  The owner paints one pupil upon acquisition of the doll, and decides a goal to pursue.  Only upon completing the goal does the owner paint the other eye.

One-eyed Daruma doll, awaiting completion of a goal so that it can be completed itself.

We all have our own one-eyed Darumas — unfinished projects and unachieved goals.  The important thing is to remember the ideals tied to the Daruma: it is not about reminding us of what we have failed to do, but what we have yet to do and therein what we are going to do.  Moreover, according to this tradition, Daruma are acquired once a year, meaning that each goal we accomplish (or not) is part of a progression.  And much like the past and present, we need not argue whether it's about the destination or the journey, because even destinations require journeys, and every journey is just a series of destinations.

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You are only who you are, no more, no less. 

Just as we should not waste our time, focus, and effort dwelling on past reflections of ourselves or things we have yet to achieve, we should not regret anything we are not.  All our grief comes from the disparity between what we believe should be and what is.  Certainly, this blog talks a lot about what should be — the human capacity for considering hypotheticals is among our greatest cognitive capabilities; to deny ourselves this tool would be a great injustice.  Hypotheticals, though, are to be pursued, not simply expected.  First we paint one eye of the Daruma, then hopefully, later, the other.

We need not abandon our capacity for creating hypotheticals and illusions, but just as we keep in mind that we are what we are, we need to remain aware of the fact that the illusions are simply illusions (the tool of acknowledging things for exactly what they are remains ever useful).  Grief arises because not that we perceive alternative possibilities and realities, but because we believe that those are the ones that should exist presently, confusing the boundary between our illusions and our reality.  Disparaging ourselves or each other for what we are or are not is simply clinging to illusions over reality.  Moreover, we should avoid replacing illusions with other illusions, as is so often the case: We tell ourselves that we are not too fat, but instead we are beautiful, and in the process forget that what we are rallying against is the emphasis on body image to either end so that we can instead focus on quality of character or health.

Acknowledging something for what it is, like a good mirror, shows only what is there.

Contrarily, it can be just as dangerous to define ourselves by things we actually are if we do not define ourselves wholly, and creating complete definitions of ourselves is an insurmountable task, ignoring our subtleties and dynamics.  As such, there is no need for any of us to define ourselves infallibly and fit everything we are into tiny, neatly organized boxes.  By announcing that we always do one thing or never do another without underlying reason, we limit ourselves to our present reality, preventing growth in new directions.  Such guidelines can be useful for maintaining beneficial behaviors, but, as all else, we must remember them for what they are and not mistake them for immutable facts.

The idea that we need to search for ourselves seems to lead us away from ourselves.  The self is what is left when all the illusions are stripped away — those created by ourselves, those created by others around us, and those created by society.  The self is the part that simply is.  It is not defined, invented, or created by ourselves or others.  It is defined by what we actually are.  In that sense, Yoda was right.  We do not need to try to be ourselves, we need simply allow ourselves to be.

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You are who you are, no one else.

Just as we should not compare ourselves to others, despairing over who or what we are not, we should also acknowledge that we are each only one person.  As simple as the equation 1 = 1 is, it is just as simple to understand that 1 ≠ 2.  We cannot each do more than one person, and so we should not expect ourselves to.  We cannot do everything, and to not allow others to help in our endeavors is ego, ultimately limiting both our own potential and that of those we could be sharing our efforts with.  Trying to do for others is definitely good, but trying to do more than we are able — even if not everything — for others is at its core selfish.

There is a common fallacy that not needing help is a sufficient dismissal of an offer of help.  Simply because we can be — and, in many cases, should be capable of being — self-sufficient does not mean we should deny ourselves or others the opportunity to do more through cooperation.  As is a recurring theme in this blog, the universe is full of emergent phenomena, and likewise our efforts combine with others to produce more than the sum of its parts.

Moreover, we should avoid competition whenever possible.  Certainly, competition can drive progress, but if that is the only motivator, then when either a clear victor arises or a stalemate is reached, progress is also stunted.  Given that we live in an era of abundance, we are typically competing for resources we could be cooperating over and for, increasing the wealth for everyone, and there are far better motivators for progress.

When playing guitar, we should not worry about which hand is better than the other, but what they can do when they work together.

Surely, there are tasks that can only be performed by one person, and other situations where adding another person to help is inefficient if not infeasible — there simply is not room in the kitchen for another person, or the amount of time and effort it would take to explain a project to catch someone new up would not be returned in the benefits they bring to it.  This, though, is not carte blanche to refuse help.  We should simply be mindful of the nature of help for what it is, and offer it and accept it freely to the best of our abilities.

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You are where you are.

"You are here" — a seemingly less useful statement when not on a map.

The places we find ourselves and the situations we encounter there are just what they are.  They do not define us.  Moreover, they do not control us.  Yet neither do we control them.  We may influence our situation, but only in as much as one person can.  Although we can try to effect particular outcomes, we may not always succeed.  We need not despair when things do not go how we want them; the universe will do what it does regardless of how we feel, and thus it is our desires we should reconsider.

To blame our own actions — or even emotions — on external factors is to give up control over the one thing we do control: ourselves.  Even if we do find ourselves victims, whether simply of circumstance or the ill-intent of others, simply declaring our victimhood does little to rectify it.  Moreover, we cannot invariably expect others to rectify our problems for us, even those they cause.  Certainly there are those who err unknowingly, and bring the problem to their attention will lead them to correct their path.  Yet there are plenty of others who will either err knowingly or neglect to correct their path once informed of the error, and to continue to simply shout accusations and shake fists is a futile endeavor.

Yet just as there is no problem with seeking change internally so long as we do not disparage ourselves for having not already achieved it, there is no problem for seeking external change in the same way.  Whether changing our environment or traveling to a completely different environment, we are free to improve our situation as long as we remain mindful — mindful that the destination is not where we should be now but where we seek to be in the future, mindful that our environment does not control our emotions, mindful that our journey is only partly in our control, and mindful that if we improve our situation at the expense of others we ultimately limit our own potential.

Most of all, we need to remember that the one thing in the world we do control is ourselves.  If we hope to achieve anything in the world beyond ourselves, we can only do this through the self.  As such, if we hope to better our ability to achieve anything, this is done through the betterment of the self.  If things go wrong, it may be because of things beyond our control.  Yet we do still control ourselves, and we therein must remember that all influence we have on the world is through ourselves.  If we lose control of ourselves, we have nothing left.  However, this is not a point we should grieve; understanding what we can and, moreover, cannot influence underlies our ability to enact whatever influence we do have.  If we understand our abilities, then we can use them; if we do not understand our limitations, we will overstep and falter.  If we understand both, we can be at our best.

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So go forth and be yourself.  Change yourself if you desire and are able, but do not despair if you cannot.  Better yourself.  Help others, and accept their help.  Ask for help sometimes.  Make mistakes and clean up after them.  Experiment.  Be open to the unexpected.  Above all else, remember to consider things as they are.

Proper Use and Maintenance of Electric Monks

A 16th century clockwork monk.

The Electric Monk was a labor-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder.  Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.
- Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

There is a certain irony in the number of posts that spread across social media that decry the various pitfalls of social media:  A video or comic exaggerating the tendency for no one to look away from the perpetual onslaught of glowing screens we are surrounded by, often by our own choice.  Mockery of and "How Not To" lists about all the inane posts on the trivial details of our lives that contain neither interesting nor useful information, adding to the overwhelming trend toward white noise in the content of social media.  And, as Facebook adds and enhances an algorithm to filter through the clutter of content to attempt to deliver us the cream of the social media crop (while also giving Facebook an excuse to demand money for delivering content to fans), growing concern mounts that Facebook will devolve into an echo chamber, delivering us only the content that conforms to our existing preferences, feeding back into our biases, and failing to provide challenges to our ideas or intellects.

Although it is certainly a possibility that Facebook's filters will exacerbate our existing biases, pointing fingers at Facebook only serves to distract us from the fact that these biases exist anyway, and that without addressing our own fallacies (such as blaming external factors like websites for our failures) we will continue to find the same faults reproduced in whatever media we use.  Similarly, complaints about the noise on social media and the tendency to prefer even this noise to direct, personal interaction is like blaming a hammer for not pounding the nail in properly — the tool is only as useful as our use of it.  Certainly, tools can be faulty, but even then if we continue to use them instead of replacing them, then we forfeit our right to reasonably complain.

"Truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty you need only look into a mirror."

Social media, like any form of communication, is only as useful as the messages we use it for.  Being social creatures by nature, it is only natural that we desire to communicate.  Moreover, as is a recurring theme in my writing, communication is our most effective tool for combining our efforts with those around us, expanding our influence and growing ourselves.  The thing we need to remember, though, whether using social media or speaking with someone directly, is that communication is important, but so is having something worth communicating.

The tendencies toward self-gratification and reinforcement and a preference towards shallow, low-risk interactions seem plenty prevalent in person; social media just tends to amplify our noise.  Small talk prevails and discussion of deeper matters such as religion and politics is often taboo.  We avoid offending each other because we are so easily offended ourselves, seemingly incapable of fathoming that anyone might have and even adhere to an opposing point of view, or that we could tolerate such differences in people.

Often we see the opposing view not as a passing disagreement but as an affront on beliefs we hold dear.  Other times, we seek validation because we do not believe others see us the way we see ourselves, or because we fear we are not living up to our own expectations.  As with much of our lives, problems arise because of the disparity between what we expect to be and what is, often because what we think should be is what we think we deserve.  Problems arise because we fail to challenge our own beliefs — we fail to determine how much our beliefs reflect actual truths, and moreover we fail to examine how much these beliefs actually matter.

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When I first read Adams' description of the Electric Monk, I thought the idea a comical exaggeration of tendencies towards gratification for minimal effort, shirking the intellectual responsibility of actually having to believe anything or consider whether any of our beliefs were objectively true or otherwise worth adhering to.  I imagine this was at least part of the intended tone, considering that in another book, Adams described humans as "ape-descended life forms...so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea."

Yet, surrounded by both our own beliefs and those of others, it becomes difficult to remove ourselves from the context of such beliefs to consider their efficacy.  Perhaps, like social media, the Electric Monk as a tool reflects its wielder.  Granted, the Electric Monk is so far purely a construct of science fiction, but the important use of the tool is not that it believes things for us, but it frees us from having to believe those things.  Why could we not, then, simply take a moment every now and then to stop believe anything, to simply observe, and to determine what beliefs arise from what we can ourselves determine?

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - René Descartes

How far, then, can we doubt our beliefs?  Should we believe in our own existence?  Surely, cogito, ergo sum.  What about others?  We can witness their behavior, and it certainly seems intelligent, at least sometimes.  But what about our perceptions?  Can we not believe we observe something that is not there or fail to observe something that is?  Whether or not we believe what we perceive, we have no other evidence to act upon besides our perception, so we might as well use what we have.  Object permanence seems a safe enough belief, but it is still only a belief.  However, until evidence starts to suggest that there is a flaw to my assumption of object permanence, I am comfortable believing in it.  It certainly so far seems a useful assumption that things continue to exist when they are not in my immediate perception.

Easy enough so far.  What about the real challenges?  How can we attribute our emotional responses to the world when our emotions are purely in our own heads?  What are we doing with our lives, and why?  Is there a God?  If there is, what then?  If there is no God, what then?  I do not know what you believe, and, moreover, telling you what to believe would defeat the purpose of suggesting the pursuit of our own individual understandings grounded in truth instead of derived from logical fallacies or the dictates of others.  If you are curious as to my beliefs, you will find many of them in my writing, and moreover I welcome anyone to further explore their curiosity by leaving a comment.

Eventually, though, we inevitably encounter questions we cannot answer and beliefs we cannot prove with pure objectivity, observation, and reasoning.  The first things we must ask is what happens if our belief is wrong?  I have been lead to believe by various articles that water has been found on Mars.  However, I have not visited Mars, nor do I ever expect to, and therein will likely never have direct proof of whether there is water on Mars.  Yet, if there turns out to be no water on Mars, I doubt my life will be significantly altered.  I might have to change my beliefs slightly, and I imagine the nature of the scientific articles I read will change.  What about more immediate things?  I have never seen an atom, for instance, not even by using any sort of electron microscope — the workings of which I would in turn have to have some faith in.  Yet what I know about chemistry is supported by the evidence I encounter in my life, and therein, like object permanence, so long as that holds true, I am comfortable accepting such beliefs.

What of beliefs we cannot prove and questions we cannot find answers to, even through evidence provided by others?  The first thing we must do is ensure that the beliefs do not contradict evidence, even if neither evidence does fully justify them.  Secondly, we must consider alternative possibilities and weigh why any one holds more merit than others.  Lastly, we must consider the consequences of a belief.

Is there a God?  As I have said before, I am agnostic, lacking even context for a definition of what a god is to begin assessing available evidence. Nevertheless, I can examine the question: Does the belief in God or the absence of God contradict available evidence?  If we maintain a belief in young-Earth creationism, perhaps.  Otherwise, the nature of a possible God is so arcane and abstract that it can easily be defined to be supported by or contradictory to available evidence, depending on our desired endgame.  Similarly, alternative possibilities are difficult to consider when we do not know which ones play into the definition of God.

What then, of the consequences of the belief, one way or another?  Morality and meaning can be found outside of the context of a God — a pursuit I have devoted much of my thought to.  On the matter of an afterlife, all I know is that if my destiny postmortem is determined so decisively by my answer to an unanswerable question, it is done so by a deity I do not wish to follow.  I hope that, if there is a God, He is as merciful as dictated in some sources, and that my efforts to seek and share truth are as valuable to Him as they have been to me.  If, somehow, I am wrong, then in the end I hope to be less worried about myself and more worried about the good I have done for others.  Indeed, there is probably more use trying to do good in Hell than Heaven.

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Not long after we are introduced to Adams' Electric Monk in Dirk Gently, we find that it had already begun to malfunction, specifically believing all sorts of unusual things:

The Monk currently believed that the valley and everything in the valley and around it, including the Monk itself and the Monk's horse, was a uniform shade of pale pink.  This made for a certain difficulty in distinguishing any one thing from any other thing, and therefore made doing anything or going anywhere impossible, or at least difficult and dangerous.

Yet whether we believe in the existence or nonexistence of God or in uniformly pink mountains and valleys, problems arise when we fail to consider whether available evidence supports or contradicts our beliefs.  Moreover, when these beliefs dictate our actions, we can be hindered ourselves or even led to hinder others.  We cannot let our perspectives of ourselves be determined by our or others' beliefs, nor can we let those beliefs alone dictate our actions, whether on social media or anywhere else in life.  Neither can we dictate the beliefs of others; we can only hope to point out the same truths we have discovered, but it is up to others to discover these truths for themselves.  Moreover, when they point elsewhere, we must be willing to accept the possibility that we are the ones in error and consider the possibilities they present.  Even if we find we are correct, we may find that their view is just the truth from a separate perspective.  Otherwise, should they err, we are best able to help them by leading them from where they are, not by shouting at them from across a gap.  And, most of all, never forget that we must occasionally put aside our beliefs and question, as far as possible, all things.

A Few Words on Words

Kyogen Oshō said, "It is like a man in a tree, hanging from a branch with his mouth; his hands grasp no bough, his feet rest on no limb.  Someone appears under the tree and asks him, 'What is the meaning of bodhidarma's coming from the West?'  If he does not answer, he fails to respond to the question.  If he does answer, he will lose his life.  What would you do in such a situation?"

- Mumonkan by Mumon Ekai, translated by Katsuki Sekida

Words carry power.  Through words, we can — with some luck — communicate our stories and thoughts across thousands of miles and over thousands of years.  The Norse considered the power of their alphabet supernatural, attributing magic to their runes.  Their runic alphabet is even said to originate from their chief god, Odin, after a period of sacrificial contemplation (often told as him impaling himself to Yggdrasil, the tree whose roots bind together the realms of the universe, for days).  Väinämöinen, a chief god in Finnish mythology, was said to have a magical voice, able to command supernatural effects.  In Jewish mythology, the Hebrew language holds power, even able to bestow life to a lifeless statue to create a golem.

Yet words hold no inherent power; simply telling a stone to move does not make it do so.  An understanding observer is necessary to draw out the power of words, but similarly, without words, that same intelligent observer is limited to their own understanding, cut off from shared experiences that cannot be immediately observed.  Words, instead, allow us to learn from the experiences of others — even those far removed by distance or time — and to share our experiences in turn.

Yet to find an individual who is completely understanding is more than any of us can hope.  Our interpretation of words is guided by our own experiences, and these are unique to each of us.  Yet, if we were ever to find an individual who completely understood the nuances of what we had to say exactly as we did ourselves, then we would have someone who was either an echo of ourselves or contextually omniscient, and either way the words would be a pointless redundancy to them.  We could, perhaps, try to establish formal definitions for every word and an infallible syntax structure, but it is difficult to pin down formalized notions for such things as "nostalgia" or "beauty", and too often already do so many debates devolve into arguments over semantics instead efforts to find truths.  Moreover, as the mathematician Kurt Gödel demonstrated, no sufficiently expressive system is not without its paradoxes, but that is a discussion for another post if not another author.

Taoist and Zen teachings both maintain the limitations of words.  The Tao Te Ching begins:

The way that can be articulately described is not the Unchanging Way.

The name that can be said out loud is not the Unchanging Name.

This seems like a rather counterintuitive way to start out a book, announcing the author's intention to put into words that which cannot be put into words.  Yet both the philosophies of Zen and Tao have at their core a pursuit of thought patterns at cognitive levels other than surface thoughts — ways of thinking that therein cannot be reached purely through the mere reading of words without deeper consideration.  Because of the inherent limitations of interpersonal communication, we can encourage patterns of thinking with words, but cannot guarantee them.  Opening the Tao Te Ching by announcing that the concepts within it cannot be fully articulated is simply to warn the reader that they must not be simply a reader but a student, not simply receiving the words but considering them more thoroughly, or else their actual meaning would be lost on the reader.

As Sekida tells it, Kyogen, while a student of Zen, encountered the limitations of words.  He had studied the teachings of Zen thoroughly, but knowing the words and reaching the mindset they described were two very different things.  Seeing that the words hindered Kyogen, his master, Isan, proposed a question to him that he knew he would not find an answer to in his texts.  After attempting to answer and begging for an explanation, Isan replied, "What I say belongs to my own understanding.  How can that benefit your mind's eye?"

Frustrated and defeated, Kyogen burnt his books and abandoned his study, declaring "You cannot fill an empty stomach with paintings of rice cakes."  Leaving his school and his master, humbled if not humiliated, he went to take up the lowly job of grave-keeper.  However, it was this acceptance of insignificance that allowed him to abandon his ego and begin his path to Zen enlightenment.

It is not lost on me that one of the most significant moments of my own life was when I, too, was feeling insignificant.  More importantly, though, was not that I felt insignificant, but that I decided to accept insignificance.  I found that it is not whether or not one's self is significant that is itself significant.  The consideration of the self should not be purely of the self, but of one's place in the world, even in a purely literal, physical, causal sense.  The egocentricity we possess imposes our beliefs upon the world and muddles the truth.  The disparity between what really is and what we believe should be — often what we believe we deserve — is the source of despair, anger, greed, etc.  Our habits of comparing ourselves with others furthers this disparity and alienates those others from us, creating jealousy and conflict when we could be cooperating to combine our efforts into something more.

Shuzan held out his short staff and said: "If you call this a short staff, you oppose its reality. If you do not call it a short staff, you ignore the fact. Now, what do you wish to call this?"

The short staff is what it is, but considered only unto itself and not within the context it exists, we know nothing about its reality.  Similarly we should consider ourselves, not as isolated individuals, but as parts of the universe we exist in.  We should strive for the abandonment of ego; not only is that part of the path to Zen enlightenment, but the Christians, too, teach "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth."

The Zen moreover teach the pursuit of awareness as a tool to find one's place in one's environment — for considering oneself in the context of everything else.  For Kyogen Oshō, pure awareness was said to have been achieved when, while sweeping, he heard a stone strike bamboo, and the sound was considered not simply as a categorized and semantic piece of experience as we tend to approach everything but in its pure form as it truly was, resonating and echoing, and stilling of Kyogen's thoughts.  For me, the first time I encountered my true, contextual self was when my thoughts were similarly arrested by a thunderstorm, and its immensity as well as my recent life experiences left me humbled, yet led me to discover that I could do far more as part of the universe than as an isolated individual.

Words, like ourselves, short staves, and everything else, should therein be considered in context.  We should know both their power and their limitations.  Relying purely on words leaves us in a situation like the man hanging from a tree by his mouth, doomed to fail whether he answers or not.  Yet we are not capable of telepathy or Vulcan mind melds; words are in many cases the most effective tool we have in communicating our thoughts, and therein participating in this pursuit of acting in context with the rest of the universe — acting with those others capable of receiving our words.

Abandonment of ego, it seems to me, is only the first step.  Exploring the potential of the larger patterns we are part of is the natural logical progression.  Yet to fully do this, we are often left with little more than words to share our thoughts and experiences.  It is through words that we can extend our intellectual essence into others, and allow their words to build us up — being careful not to simply stare at paintings of rice cakes, considering words at their surface and neglecting to explore deeper truths.  Words may often be all we have, but, then, it is a good thing that words carry power.

The Speck in the Storm

Photo by Renee A. Pflughaupt

July 19, 2011.  I arrived home at that ambiguous hour between late at night and early in the morning as the winds were conjuring a thunderstorm across the horizon.  The clouds had yet to unleash their torrent upon the lands below, but the sky was already flooded with lightning; it was lit as much as not, and the echoing thunder of each bolt would still be rolling through the hills when the next struck.  At times, the lightning lit the heavens so brightly I could not help but shield my eyes, yet I found the beauty of the storm overwhelming, and neither could I look away.

Within the past month or so before that night, I had seen the end of a seven-year-long relationship, moved back into my parents' house, and received the offer to renew my graduate teaching assistantship in Morgantown only a week after I had left the city.  I wasn't even sure if I had lost my path in life, or if I had simply given it up.  I only knew whatever it was I lost, it was the result of having lost hope — I had over time grown increasingly disillusioned with society and humanity on a whole, and the turns my own life had taken did nothing to restore any hope to me.

Yet here I paused to simply watch the storm, its majesty overwhelming.  Its beauty and power left me in awe as I watched the immense force of lightning being tossed about whimsically by nature.  With each bolt burning hotter than the surface of the sun, unleashing thunder that shook the hills for miles, I came to realize how small and powerless I was compared to even a single lightning bolt, and here the sky swarmed with them.  How much more insignificant, then, is a single person when compared to the grandeur of the universe, when our planet is but a speck of mud orbiting one small star at the outer reaches of a galaxy so vast that it takes light hundreds of thousands of years to cross it — a galaxy which in turn is just one of hundreds of billions in the observable universe.  And these stars that populate this immense universe live their life cycles over the course of millions if not billions of years, and each of these lives is but a tick of the clock that drives the galaxies.  We are but the tiniest of particles struggling in vain to leave an imperceptible mark on the universe within the briefest of fractions of a blink of the cosmological eye in which we live.  ...And here I was wasting time worrying about how I didn't have a job or a girlfriend.

A sense of absolute insignificance flooded over me.  Yet, in the midst of setbacks and stumbles, I didn't find it threatening or insulting.  I found myself neither disheartened nor defiant, but relieved if not liberated.  Everything I was — the music I had played, the pictures I had doodled, the programs I had coded, all my greatest accomplishments faded away into nothing amongst the echoing thunder, but so too did all my failures, my mistakes, my incomplete projects, student loans, and lost relationships.  The universe did not judge me, neither good nor bad.  In the end, whatever would be would be.

In retrospect, the difference between being at odds with this nearly nihilistic rumination and accepting it had nothing to do with how significant I previously thought I was, but how significant I thought I should be — how significant I thought I deserved to be.  When I lost hope, I had not found myself lamenting that I had neither found my place in the world nor left my mark upon it, but only the disparity between the actions of humanity and what little of the truth I had come to understand having pursued objectivity and reason for a number of years.  Still seeking the same objective truth, I found no reason to fight the truth I was now confronted with — even that of my own insignificance.

Yet as my mind wandered through these concepts, the storm raged on, still demanding my attention.  After all, why would I bother thinking about myself when I knew how small of a thing I was?  And so my thoughts continued to roam freely throughout the storm, until eventually I found myself contemplating the mechanisms underlying the formation of lightning — the tiny ice crystals that collide midair, exchanging even tinier electrons, until at last they push the electrical charge of the atmosphere far enough out of balance that it snaps back into place suddenly and violently — striking as a lightning bolt.  All the awesome power of lightning that inspired my feelings of insignificance had at its core insignificant specks of ice exchanging even more insignificant particles until enough of their efforts combined to shake both heaven and earth.

Why, then, could it not be true of people?  Surely I was still insignificant, but if I were to combine my efforts with other insignificant individuals, together we could achieve something truly significant.  And unlike the storm, my influence was not limited to immediate physical interactions — through language we are capable of communicating across expanses of both space and time.  Moreover, I realized I need not be an unaware pawn in a greater game of chess when the human capacity for abstraction should grant me the necessary tools to consider the whole that I was a part of.

I knew I had realized something significant, but it would take me years to begin to appreciate what in particular that was.  The most immediate truth of that night — that we should, whenever possible, aspire to combine with others into something greater than our individual selves, choosing whenever possible cooperation over conflict — has remained unchanged.  Yet as I set down that road, I never would have predicted how far it would lead, and I dare not speculate how much further I can wander down it.

Blocks and Building

 I once read an article about the thermodynamic likelihood of amino acids — not a full scholarly article, I'm sorry to say, but just the sensationalized write up on such an article that tends to find its way around social media.  Although the article itself was interesting (if not a bit exaggerated on conclusions and understated on actual information, as such articles tend to be), the thing I find I remember most is the first comment displayed at the bottom of the page.  The comment, apparently following the site's trend of sensationalized, hasty conclusions, declared that, if the building blocks of life were likely to form, there is obviously no need for a god to have formed life.

The first logical fallacy that struck me was that this conclusion relied on the assumption that any deity would be acting as simply some sort of mediator of activity within a universe.  To the contrary, if we assume that a deity were instead dictating the design of the laws of such a universe instead of simply acting within those laws to assemble together bits and pieces of matter, we could just as easily — and just as fallaciously — conclude that a universe likely to give rise to life in the wake of chaos suggests the existence of a creator.  Ultimately, though, the only thing that the likelihood of the appearance of amino acids dictates is that life, however it came about, used the building blocks that were available.  To assume that the formation of these blocks directly implies the formation of proteins or organisms is much like assuming the presence of any Lego bricks leads invariably to double-decker couches.  Certainly, it is a possibility that such things are formed, but the end product is dictated by the assembly and not the type of parts used in it.

Yet in a system with sufficient complexity, with pieces capable of acting on other pieces in so many varied ways as is possible in chemistry, self replication becomes possible.  Moreover, variances in conditions introduce imperfections, which in turn introduce variance into the replication and diversity into the population.  Although such variance is typically meaningless and often even detrimental to the process, any sufficiently random probability distribution will have individuals ahead of the average population, and if they successfully replicate, their advantage perpetuates.

In computer science, such selection of the best performing individuals of a population is exploited in genetic algorithms.  In a randomly generated population of possible solutions, some solutions will inevitably perform better than others.  These individuals are then replicated — not by their own means as in nature, but simply by the framework of the program created for them — and random variation further creates better approximations of the solution.  Although genetic algorithms by no means guarantee ideal solutions, with the right parameters they converge on accurate approximations, sometimes finding unexpected solutions to complicated problems.

In genetic algorithms, the advancement is just a probabilistic outcome of reproducing individuals that best meet some metric and introducing random variation to better explore possible solutions.  In life, the same probabilistic advancement holds true so long as there is sufficient capability for self-replication and diversification, but in the absence of an algorithmically imposed metric to compete over, survival and reproduction itself becomes the metric, further reinforcing the feedback loop that serves to perpetuate self-replication — the "circle of life".

If you try hard enough, any movie can be about information theory or heuristic algorithms.

Without much consideration, it seems unlikely that order can arise out of chaos.  It is difficult to fathom that every bird, tree, mushroom, person, and virus is just a clever arrangement of mud, digested and reorganized by fractal patterns dictated in the genetic instructions that are contained initially in a single cell.  "Dust you are and to dust you will return" — whether created by deity or probability.  Yet order underlies chaos, and just as the right conditions can rearrange the molecules of rocks to manifest that order on a larger geometric scale in crystals, so, too, can the right conditions manifest patterns in causality instead of geometry.

In the end, it seems, (or in the beginning, chronologically), it is not the building blocks that matter as long as they allow for sufficient complexity to produce imperfect self-replication.  From there, the nature of probability and causality will take its course.  Again, though, this does not presuppose neither that there is nor is not a creator.  Perhaps life is a pattern that forms in any universe where self-replicating causalities are possible, regardless of the underlying engine.  Or perhaps the existence of a universe where life is likely presupposes some sort of intentional creation.  Neither is certain.

Instead, this comments on how there are more complex patterns that arise from seemingly simple and chaotic patterns.  It suggests an interplay between things — an interconnectivity that gives rise to epiphenomena, or mechanisms that are far more than the sum of their parts, becoming patterns of higher order that, though composed of and mechanically driven by the underlying composition are ultimately dictated by something beyond them.  So, too, do the principles of interconnectivity and  diversity that drive the evolution of organisms or the growth of a seed into a tree resonate in methods for personal and societal growth.  Connections between us and beyond us are what will allow us to grow, both as individuals, and as a community.  Yet just as the fractal patterns that drive the complexity, diversity, and interconnectivity of life are dictated by far simpler rules replicated innumerable times across innumerable variations in the underlying conditions, it only takes little connections and cooperation, echoed across society, diverse as the people who participate in those connections, to create growth.

In the Beginning, God Created Science

To explain where I stand regarding religion, we must go down a path that starts with me leaving the religion I was raised to believe.  One of the first steps on questioning my religious path was the idea of young-Earth creationism.  Although I did not leave strictly because of differences in beliefs on creation, my understanding of such still played an important role in where I find myself.  The discussion of creationism may not be entirely critical to my discussion of religion itself, but it illustrates points that will be explored much further in time.  Moreover there is always value in exploring truths so long as we also explore where they fit with truth on a whole.

Although I have, admittedly informally, studied evolution and cosmology, it was not purely from these that I drew my conclusions about creationism.  Instead, I found if we assume that the universe has an intelligent, omnipotent creator, then we can reasonably from this assume that the nature of the creation reflects the nature of the creator.  If we examine the universe around us, we find that it is mechanical and logical — the moon orbits the Earth, which in turn orbits the sun, which in turn orbits the center of the galaxy, and a multitude of other moons, planets, asteroids, stars, comets, and varied additional cosmological bodies join in this synchronous, clockwork dance.  Even the multitude of things in the universe from stars to planets to people to trees to toasters are all made up primarily of different arrangements of the same three fundamental subatomic particles.  Gravity and mass, light and electromagnetism, even superconductors, dark energy, and antimatter all adhere to the laws of physics (even when we yet do not fully understand those laws).

It stands to reason, then, that the creator of a mechanical, logical universe must favor mechanical, logical methods.  I find it difficult to believe that any being would have created such an organized universe by magically calling it into existence — why begin with a poof of mysticism and then settle into physics and chemistry?  Why would we be composed of cells instead of being mixtures of classical elements housing some sort of actual ghosts if such mysticism gave rise to us?

(Although not critical to the discussion, I also believe that there is plenty of magic in the universe, even if it is driven by the laws of physics instead of some sort of ethereal, impossible mysticism.  As Lee Siegel, magician and professor of religion, said on the matter, "By 'real magic,' people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers... 'Real magic,' in other words, refers to the magic that is not real; while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.")

Maintaining the assumption that the universe was created by an intelligent deity, there are three possible conclusions here: The first, and perhaps most unsettling, is that the deity is inconsistent, and does not follow the patterns or laws he, she, or it establishes.  Whether the deity is whimsically waffling or intentionally manipulating things is difficult to say; this does not dictate that the deity is also dishonest, going back on promises made, but at the very least it allows the methods of fulfilling those promises to be wildly variable.  Although this is not quite the territory of word-twisting trickster gods, it still seems well outside the realm of what I am comfortable devoting my life to.

The second possibility is that this deity is not omnipotent.  The universe was created within certain physical laws that even the deity must adhere to.  If this were the case, though, we could assume that the method of creating would also adhere to those rules, and that young-Earth creation scripture is still simply allegory, not literal narration.  Moreover, such a deity limited in power contradicts the statements within the Bible — whose literal interpretation gives rise to young-Earth creationism — that "with God all things are possible."

The last — and it seems to me most likely — possibility, is if this logical and mechanical universe were created by some intelligent deity, then that deity, too, is logical, and not prone to fits of mysticism.  This, of course, neither serves to provide evidence that such a God is impossible, nor to show that such a God is likely.  This only serves to demonstrate conclusions that can be reached from the assumption that there is such a creator given the nature of the creation, even before we start to account for fossil records and cosmology.

One further point of interest is that, as young-Earth creationism is a strictly Biblical construct, proof of its truth would serve as proof of the existence of the Biblical God.  This, in turn, would necessitate obedience over morality and call into question the old theological arguments on free will.  Additionally, faith would be unnecessary, and devotion to such a God would not be — and reasonably could not be — any demonstration of such.

Moreover, it was not my personal conclusion that the theory of young-Earth creationism was inaccurate that led me away from religion, but the way the religious used it to create divisions between themselves and others.  Even though I was raised as a Christian, I now find myself on the theism-atheism axis as agnostic — not because I wish to sidestep the conflict between theism and atheism, even though ultimately such conflict had its hand in driving me away from religion initially, but because there either is a God or there isn't, and my beliefs on the matter will not change that.  Potentially, my beliefs on the matter could affect what happens to me, but, in pursuit of the abandonment of ego to devote my life to greater truths, I do not care what happens to me as long as I can spend my life doing good for others.

I became agnostic not over differences in beliefs, but in part to avoid the common pitfall of so many religions and religious that places theology before love.  I was dissuaded that religion can so thoroughly be distracted from the idea of love by so much else — by creation mythologies, by money and politics, by finding dividing lines between themselves and other religions, or even neglecting to serve others in the pursuit of personal growth.  I understand that this is a matter of the practitioners and not the practice, but nevertheless, having myself through the pursuit of objectivity and rationality concluded that selflessness is the best path, it is sometimes difficult to accept that religion, claiming to be from a higher source, does not more readily lead down the same path.  Furthermore, although I admit there are many things that can be learned from studying religion, I fail to see the necessity of fully devoting myself to any single religious practice.

This does not mean I would advise anyone against accepting Jesus or becoming enlightened through Zen, only that I have chosen a different path.  I would, however, advise against a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible, echoing the Zen belief that truth is not something you create, but also it is not something created by the words of others.  Truth may reflect in words, but it remains something we must seek to understand fully, not accept blindly or acquire through memorization and recitation.  We must be reminded that we should place the truth before us, and not rest our egos on our understanding of the truth — an understanding that is inherently limited and therein never gives us the right to place ourselves or that understanding before others.

This post is part three of an ever-expanding discussion of religion.  Find part one here and part two here, and expect part four by next Monday.

On Practicing Religion

Even though we have discussed the discussion of religion, we still have some things to address to further bridge the rift fully into discussion of theology itself.  Like many, I have many more disagreements with the way I see religion practiced than I do with the theology.  Ultimately, I found there to be certain truths that echo through the teachings of religions, and to let my disagreements sever these connections would be doing myself a disservice, placing me unnecessarily at odds with ideologies and individuals alike.

I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness — a declaration that brings a wide variety of reactions.  Although I ultimately turned from the Witnesses, it was not for the typical reasons alone — I was at the time too young and invincible to spend much time considering their stance on blood, and seeing birthdays and Christmas from the outside for so many years made compulsory celebration and gift giving seem insincere and needlessly consumerist.  I disagreed with their choice of young-Earth creationism over evolution, but that was not what drove me away.  In the end, it was not their interpretation of theology that I chose to leave, but the way they let those conclusions separate themselves from others.  I disagreed with their disagreements most of all, which is necessarily a difficult position to uphold.  Even before I understood the grander mechanisms of the world the way I now do, I thought it obvious that religion should bring people together, not push them apart. 

I would not go so far as to suggest that discussion of theology is unimportant — I would not suggest that we should not consider whether we go to heaven or are resurrected on some kind of restored earthly paradise as the Witnesses argue, or even whether we are to be reincarnated or if death is the ultimate end.  To the contrary, I believe that truth should be sought to whatever end it yields.  Nevertheless, I would say that such differences in beliefs on the afterlife should have less influence on how we live our current lives; specifically, we should never let these disagreements on the metaphysical side of religion get in the way of us loving others, especially when such love is one of the core commandments of the religion.

And so, disagreeing primarily with disagreement, to turn my back utterly on religion and morality would be to repeat the mistakes of the religious practices I was trying to escape.  When we let the difference between our understanding of truth and someone else's drive a wedge between us, we are ultimately serving our ego and not the quest for truth, which ultimately does everyone a disservice, most of all that which we claim to seek.  Since gods of war are no longer prevalent, there is no purpose for conflict in the name of religion that could not be better served by a peaceful approach.

This holds all the more true in conflict against religion.   The existence of a deity can neither be proven nor disproved, largely because there is no strict definition for "God" and therein arguments devolve quickly into semantics.  Every logically sound argument for theism I have encountered has been based on so loosely defining a deity that it becomes just a new semantic argument for existing phenomena.  Yet every logically sound argument for atheism I have encountered has been based on so strictly define a deity as a caricature of itself that it could not possibly exist.  As such, to believe that there is no God is no more based in empirical evidence than to believe that there is a God.  Because atheism comes with none of the same commandments to spread the word that theism often has, evangelizing atheism becomes more about attacking the beliefs of others than spreading absolute truth.

Yet as purposeless as the evangelical atheist is, the theist who attacks instead of understanding and relating directly acts against commandments to love.  We could argue whether it is worse to evangelize pointlessly or directly act against one's beliefs, but we would be missing the point.  Vilifying the opposition does nothing to overcome the problems of religion, instead perpetuating them.  The conflict is the problem, not the rationalizations we introduce after the fact.

Neither theism nor atheism are inherently flawed in their rationality.  As I stated, it is the people who practice these that are flawed and therein introduce flaws.  Religion is indeed often used as justification for atrocities, but so is nationality, race, capitalism vs. communism, and any other difference between two groups of people.  Similarly, atheism does not presuppose immorality, as there is significant basis for an objective moral stance — one that, again, very much mirrors the core moral stance of many religions.

Religion or its absence is not to blame for the conflict that surrounds it, but instead the dehumanization and vilification of others is what drives these evils.  To attack beliefs because of their practices (driven by its practitioners) is to simply complicate the matter — if we fight against beliefs because those beliefs lead to fighting, we only serve to counteract our intentions.  As a letter on Zen by Layman Hsiang stated, "If we raise our voices to stop echoes, we are not cognizant of the fact that sounds are the roots of the echoes."

On Discussing Religion

The topic of religion is often a difficult one to breech.  Even when approached calmly and rationally, it is full of difficult topics that require much more time to grasp than we typically are admitted in a normal conversation, or more space to explain than can be reasonably occupied by an article.  Even with what we already know of religion, simply compositing the ideas into coherent strings so that we can share that knowledge with others can be a daunting task.  I have both piles of papers and folders full of text files that I could present as evidence to my own efforts to overcome the challenge of discussing religion.

In some circles, it is simply impolite to discuss religion.  Yet in avoiding discussion of religion, we hide away things essential to ourselves, and we widen rifts we should be bridging.  Moreover, there are many around us who misuse religion, invoking it improperly in an attempt to justify attacks on others, whether physical or otherwise.  If we are to overcome the differences between people, whether or not they are elevated to violence, we must therein be prepared to approach the subject.  However, in order to discuss religion, I believe we all need to sit down and have a discussion on discussing religion.

The first thing to remember when discussing anything, but religion especially, is people are people, not perfectly rational robots, and as such we cannot refuse to examine the reasoning behind our own points, and all the more so we cannot expect others to immediately acquiesce to even the best reasoned arguments.  Especially in the matter of religion, where so much cannot be objectively proven, we must keep in mind that debate is about changing minds, not being right.  If we attack, we will put others on the defensive, and they will reinforce their position regardless of what that position actually is.

Too often I see opposing sides make a mockery of what they disagree with — theists of atheists and atheists of theists.  They would drive wedges between groups with straw man arguments and tactless jokes.  I am rarely an opponent of humor, believing anyone who believes a topic too serious for humor does not take humor seriously enough.  Yet if you mock the opposition while never mocking yourself, it becomes clear that your intentions are not about comedy but instead about rivalry.  I do not believe religion too sacred for jest, but only such mockery a poor mask for belligerence.  Remember, in order to have anyone follow our path, we must start from common ground.

In many of the dominant religions it is not difficult to find this common ground.  There are truths that hold regardless of religious beliefs, and many of these resonate within the religious teachings themselves.  A key tenet of most religions is love — not putting ourselves before others, and remembering to show kindness even to those who we may not think deserve it.  And, as tends to be a common theme in my writing, love is not some purely spiritual invention but an objectively beneficial approach to life — we are each only a trivially small part of the universe, yet if we work with those around us we expand our influence and use their experiences to grow.

These points echo not only in what we discuss about religion, but on how we discuss religion.  We need to remember whatever ideals we pursue — whether theistic, philosophical, or simply scientific — are to be pursued without ego.  The things most worth pursuing are those things beyond ourselves — beyond our egos — for being driven by something beyond ourselves is the surest way to make progress.  If these ideals are truly worthy of pursuit, then our pride will only serve to do them injustice.  Moreover, if we wish others to pursue the same, we can cooperate with them, and help them to see the goal, not our inevitably incomplete position on the path to it.  And if they choose not to follow us, we must not see it as an attack on the ideal, and moreover we must not see it as an attack on ourselves.  If there is truth in our paths, and if anyone else also seeks a path of truth, then, in due time, our paths will cross.

Ducks and Dehumanization

AP Photo / Bill Haber

 
Today, my sister shared the most recent Duck Dynasty scandal on Facebook, and my attempt to comment on it grew well beyond a reasonable length for the medium.  Ultimately, I decided instead to share it here:

Sidestepping the obvious logical fallacy that morality is a purely religious construct (and consequently a matter of obedience instead of any real dichotomy between right and wrong)...

I see this, and my first thought is that this man's claim to fame is essentially playing a caricature of a backwards, backwoods hillbilly, not representing a voice of reason.  As I said when there was a similarly misguided quote by some member of Duck Dynasty about homosexuality (possibly the same person for as much as I pay attention), reversing the popular axiom: If it's a duck, then we shouldn't be surprised if it looks like one and quacks like one.

Yet, earlier today I briefly overheard as a coworker was listening to some sort of talk radio, as the pundit gave his opinions on a news story.  The verbal attacks the pundit made against various individuals and organizations sadly came as no surprise.  I didn't even have enough context in the brief listening period to determine if there were any blame to be had by anyone involved, and therein had no basis for judging his claims.  What bothered me was not the obvious logical fallacies that plague so much of talk radio.  No, what bothered me was the hate.

It bothered me how unreserved the hate was.  It bothered me that this voice didn't simply feel compelled to hate, or assume the right to hate.  It bothered me that, instead, this person seemed to believe that it were his duty to hate.  It bothered me that this person not only hated without hesitation or apology, but that this person believed that such hate was the only possible response.  It bothered me that this pundit expressed that it was the only possible response for not just one misguided voice on the radio, but anyone, and that we, the listeners, were obviously full of hate as well.  And it bothered me that this was a voice that people look to for information — if not guidance.

This went beyond simple eye-for-an-eye mentality.  This was not a matter of justice, or simply punishing misdeeds.  People were utterly dehumanized.  Harm was wished upon them for its own sake.  And somehow the point was missed that what went wrong in this incident and all the incidents leading up to it was primarily the very same dehumanization, villainization, and stirring of conflict and division in humanity.

By now you have likely noticed that I haven't discussed details of the story, partly because my exposure to the topic was limited, but moreover I chose to deliberately avoid the generalizations that allow for such dehumanization to take place.  Whether it was a man or woman, liberal or conservative, atheist or Christian, or youth or elder matters nothing.  Too many times I have seen articles denouncing intolerance and bigotry against a group only to turn the very same against the group that perpetrated the injustice.  Just because some Christians fail to love their enemies doesn't mean we should attack all Christians, and just because some of those who turn against theism also turn against morality doesn't mean all do.

The problems in the world are not a particular subset of villainous folk.  The problems in the world all come from the lines we draw in the sand.  We may not see ourselves as villains, but the moment we choose to point a finger or shake a fist instead of offering a hand, we add to these problems.  The moment we separate ourselves — whether as individuals or a group — from others, we become part of the problem.  We may not harm people, and we may not even wish harm, but unless we prevent harm, then it is a matter of culpability and not morality.  There is a difference between pacifism and passivism.

We blame the problems on others, failing to see our own faults, and then wait for someone else to fix everything.  (Why should we fix it?  It's not our fault.)  We let others fend for themselves, sacrificing the potential they could in turn offer us if we just helped them, even a little.  We let economic disparities grow exponentially and unsustainably.  We let social inequalities persist that should have been dismissed generations ago.  We watch as the world is destroyed for profit.  And the moment you protest that you are are not responsible for the economic disparity, or the multitudes of inequalities, or the environmental catastrophes, or any other of the crimes perpetrated by humanity, you become part of the problem, not so much because you have separated yourself from the problem, but because you have separated others from yourself, and we can never hope to offer a solution while putting those who need the most guidance on the defensive.

We are each members of humanity, and only humanity can solve humanity's problems.  It is when humanity struggles against itself — when we struggle against others, whether through action or inaction — that problems arise.  As I have said before, progress will only be made by having others walk with us, not stand against us.